Biography
Throughout Vanessa Wang’s marketing career, she has always enjoyed the creative process. However, while working on the brand and marketing side at Nike, she quickly realized she was lacking important skills such as data analysis and strategy to help inform those creative decisions.
“I decided to get my MBA in order to strengthen my data analytics skills and also just be more data fluent in general, especially in this day and age when it's so important to be able to look at data and be able to analyze it and come up with deep insights that can then drive your work and decisions,” she says.
From hands-on learning experiences to professors bringing industry perspectives to the classroom, Vanessa felt she could successfully pair the data skills she learned in the program with her creativity.
“The professors at Goizueta have that industry experience, so when they're teaching lessons in the classroom, they're able to bring in real-life examples that really relate to the careers that we are going to pursue when we graduate,” Vanessa says. “That really helps us connect what we're learning in the classroom to what's really happening out there in the business world.”
During her time in the program, Vanessa also took the opportunity to develop her leadership skills by serving as the Graduate Business Association's VP of Off-Campus Activities, as well as an IMPACT Coaching Fellow.
“I have definitely taken a lot of those opportunities to grow my leadership skills, and now I feel much more confident going into a managerial or even a director role in business,” she says.
Outside of the classroom, Vanessa quickly found a sense of belonging within the Goizueta community. Originally from Hong Kong, she knew it was important to connect with her cohort and professors.
“I really feel like Goizueta and Atlanta have become my home,” she says. “That's just a really nice feeling because I come from halfway across the world, so to be able to feel that sense of belonging here, I think is something that I didn't expect coming into the program, and obviously I have a lot of memories that I'm going to take away from my time at Goizueta.”