Biography
As a former high school teacher, Sammi Thiele has a strong passion for learning and education. Before coming to Emory to earn her Master in Management degree, the Texas-native received her Master’s in Education at Austin College. However, Sammi also worked as a high school swim coach, and it was her passion for sports that drove her to pursue something different. “I figured since while I'm still very young, I still have lots of life ahead of me,” she says. “I have an opportunity to open more doors and pursue something different from teaching.”
Sammi stumbled upon Goizueta’s Master in Management program, which is specifically designed for those who do not have a background in business. “It felt like this is literally a calling,” she says.
From building relationships, connecting with professors and peers and working together on presentations, Sammi has enjoyed the amount of collaboration and teamwork both in and outside of the classroom. “I have a professor who will send me any job that he sees in sports because he knows that's what I want to do,” she says. “They also foster that very collaborative and connective environment, and they make an effort to build relationships with us.”
Sammi even had the opportunity to combine both her love of learning and sports during her immersive elective by working on a consulting project with the U.S. Soccer Federation. “Our goal of this project is to determine how we can increase and optimize engagement with women's soccer, specifically women's college soccer and extend that with all of the important soccer events that are coming up.”
While Sammi enjoys working on a team and has always been able to connect with her students in a classroom, one aspect about the program that surprised her was learning how to connect with her peers. “I'm very, very good at doing it with students, but it's very different whenever you're doing it peer to peer or superior to employee,” she says. “It's a whole different kind of relationship building, so I've learned how to tone change and shift the way that I act and the way that I present myself based on the person I'm interacting with.”