ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Michael Stromer

Michael Stromer (MBA '04) has been part of digital marketing since its dawn, working at major brands including 1-800-Flowers.com and Publishers Clearing House. On November 11, Michael was named the new Vice President, Customer Connections for JetBlue Airways, where he now oversees the airline’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), E-Commerce and Loyalty teams.

  
We sat down with Michael to get insight into his digital expertise, JetBlue’s CSR objectives and his thoughts on career success.

What do you see as the most groundbreaking digital marketing applications used today, and what should we be looking out for in the next 2-3 years?

It would be ignorant not to say some of the main social media sites including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. With the latest count of just Facebook users worldwide at 800 million, these sites have completely changed the digital landscape and have overpowered the portal landscape (e.g., Yahoo, MSN and AOL) which owned the majority of the online share for the past ten plus years.

It is not simply the fact that these applications have created massive share-shift in terms of viewership; they have completely changed the way consumers interact with digital products and with people in general. These businesses were smart to quickly shift their focus to mobile which has really helped to propel their businesses.

On a smaller scale, there have been some terrific web and mobile applications that have entered the space that have filled gaps in customer experience. DropBox is a great example of a company that has helped solve the file-sharing problem we have all had for such a long time. As of April 2011, they have grown to 25 million users.

In two to three years, I believe the trend will continue to show more geo-relevant applications that bring the social, local and personalization techniques closer and closer together. I theoretically should be able to find anyone and anything, wherever I am, quickly. With mobile penetration continuing at its fast pace, I imagine that voice recognition will also continue to be developed across the board.  Let’s be honest, we are all looking for a safer way to stay connected on foot and in the car. With that note, I would urge students not to text and drive – it is not worth it!

Good advice indeed! And speaking of good things, can you talk about JetBlue’s CSR priorities and share any highlights of the company's cause marketing?

Our goal for Corporate Social Responsibility is to make JetBlue a world class corporate citizen. How have we done this to date? 

Supporting and aligning ourselves with not-for-profit organizations that focus on health and human services, education, environment and youth in the communities we serve. Inspiring greatness in others through enriching the lives of the individuals. Involving crewmembers in our efforts to help make JetBlue a great place to work.

Our goal is to figure out a way to accelerate our efforts and broaden our message by using some innovative approaches. For example, while we love planting trees in local communities, we also know that there are limits to how wide we can manage those types of programs – there are resource constraints around managing what can be complicated logistics.

We have initiated several very successful cause marketing campaigns gaining accolades and awards along the way. Most recently we launched a summer reading campaign with PBS and Random House called Soar With Reading. The goal was to combat summer regress that occurs predominately in lower income neighborhoods. We created an interactive website, hosted reading events across the country, created and distributed 250,000 reading activities including 50,000 in Spanish, developed crewmember volunteer opportunities to read in libraries and lastly we had more than 115,000 customers vote for their home town library to receive 10,000 new books. Without advertising resources, we engaged social media - relying on Mommy (and Daddy) bloggers to spread the word.

We would love to figure out how to use our strong digital presence and large customer base more to drive programs at a large scale where we can create even greater benefits for the communities and programs we support.

Ultimately, the Customer Connections area is about deepening the relationships we have with our Customers (capital C) without always focusing on transactions. It’s about how we can support you as a customer with the things that you are passionate about in your local community and multiply those efforts across the America.

This sounds like a terrific strategy to be leading. You have really positioned success into your career, Michael. Congratulations! Reflecting on your career up to now, what have been your keys to success?

I believe focusing on customers, building strong relationships, and spending as much time on strategy as I do implementation, have been the key areas to drive my success. I’ve learned this from some great teachers both inside and outside of school.

It doesn’t matter how smart you are – if you can’t get people to buy into a vision and to support your initiatives, you will have a much harder road ahead. Content is key but you also need to know how to deliver it. Focus on customer satisfaction - many times it is the small details that in the end help to differentiate you and your company. At the same time, if you jump into the details without a solid vision grounding it, you will get lost in them. I also can’t underscore enough the value of effective public speaking. This was one of the biggest benefits from my MBA at Baruch.

Setting a track for myself has also really helped to focus my career. I remember sitting on the LIRR many years ago plotting out a plan for my career. I am not saying that it has perfectly aligned to my actual career, but it has stayed close. This has helped me to reassess every few years to see if I am where I want to be.

Lastly, you can’t bulldoze your way to success. I am sure this works for some people but I can’t see how those people can feel fulfilled in their careers. I always try to create a fun and fulfilling environment for the people I work with including my team. Let’s be honest, there is something about popularity that helps to drive success. You can’t do it on your own. And, be thankful to people and never take credit for someone else’s work. Great leaders build great teams and they should showcase their teams and the hard work they do. In turn, they will get even better results.

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Shaun So and Paul Harrison

Shaun So and Paul Harrison are alumni of the Full Time Honors MBA program (Class of '11). After two years of planning and development, they launched Cubby: An Urban Pop-Up Experiment - Bag Check & Personal Courier. The Cubby App is also available on Android and iOS.  

Before coming to New York City, Shaun worked for the Department of Defense, he also did a tour in Afghanistan in 2005 in the Army Reserves. Paul worked  in LA in real estate for several years after graduating from USC. They both came to Zicklin knowing they wanted to be entrepreneurs. One of the factors that drew both Shaun and Paul to Zicklin was the excellent quality and affordability of the school as well as the 2010 Baruch College Entrepreneurship Competition, in which they took third place. Shaun also participated in the Executive Student Partnership Program; he still keeps in touch with his former ESP mentor Sandy O’Hearen.

Paul and Shaun founded Cubby because they realized there was no short term-storage solution; people in New York City were constantly schlepping stuff.  

Shaun: My wife is an actress and had days when she’d have to carry two or three heavy bags throughout the day to multiple locations in the city for auditions. At the end of such a day we’d meet for drinks or dinner and have nowhere to place these bags safely. I thought:  “why isn’t there a place to store all these bags!?” We saw a problem and started thinking about a practical solution. 

How did you get Cubby off the ground?

Shaun: Participating in the Baruch College Entrepreneurship Competition was how this all started, Professor Rob Foskey was a great advisor. Paul and I spent our first year at Zicklin researching and coming up with a business plan. We needed to validate our idea. The competition forced us to do research, analyze price schemes; it showed us that our idea was not only viable, but could actually be profitable. Our second year at Zicklin was spent pitching our idea.  

Paul: We tried to approach the idea of Cubby as realistically as possible. I spent a ton of time doing financial projections, as conservative as possible—to show how in reality this idea would not work, but all this work lead to the same place, the same conclusion over and over again— it showed that it would work.

Tell us about your pop-up store at 303 Park Ave South and how it fits into your strategy and goals.

We are contracted to stay at 303 Park Ave South until October 31. A pop-up store was the most economical option for us. Our initial strategy of developing a mobile app evolved in the two years we've been working on it. At first we considered a fixed site locker concept, but ran into issues of cost and image: lockers have a sort of a dingy image and we wanted to provide a nicer, cleaner, more personable experience. We wanted to build a strong brand. We also explored the peer-to-peer model - where using the mobile app, we would have bag check at hotel and restaurants, but that proved difficult. We decided to revert the fixed site concept, (no lockers!) and opened the pop-up store. Our goal is to grow into a permanent location, a courier hub with a relationship, via mobile with restaurants and hotels.

What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs?

Paul: If being an entrepreneur is your chosen path, you have to embrace it—don’t give up! You have to know that it’s very hard but also very rewarding: the downs are really, really low, but the ups are extremely high. 

Shaun: You must have the internal fortitude to handle being an entrepreneur. This is a “no-business’ where you’ll hear a lot more “no’s” than “yeses”. You have to have the endurance and most importantly: a good sense of humor.

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Anna Broek and Bevin Bullock

Anna Vander Broek, MBA 2012

Anna Vander Broek, Full-time Honors MBA, 2012 (Summer Internship with Dell)

How does this internship experience fit into your career goals/professional development?

I come from an online publishing/media background. The intention of my MBA is to break away from the media side of online and move into online marketing. I also want to specifically work in high tech.  I am fortunate that Dell fits my long-term goals exactly.

   

How did you find this internship opportunity?

Two members of the Dell University Recruitment team came to Baruch through the GCMC. I introduced myself at a talk they gave the night before interviews began, and they invited me to interview the next morning. 

What will your responsibilities be?

My title will be Intern Graduate Sr. Advisor-eDell, and I am going to be doing online marketing for the eDell team.  This will include working with customer experience on Dell.com, supporting Dell business units on Dell.com, online project execution, looking at Dell.com site design and content quality and other tasks.  When I arrive in Texas, I will be assigned a specific project and I'll be expected to present the results at the end of my internship. 

What advice would you give to students looking for an internship?

Work every single network you have. I emailed all my old bosses that I was looking for internships. I also tapped into my undergraduate alumni network.  Don’t be shy telling everyone you know you’re looking for a summer internship.  You will be surprised who will help you out.  When you go into an interview, know why you want to work in that position for that company – chances are you’ll be asked about it.

Bevin Bullock, MBA 2012

Bevin Bullock, MBA, 2012: Management/Operations Management (Summer Internship at JetBlue)

How did you find this internship? 

I spoke with two representatives from JetBlue at the Baruch Career Day event.  They advised me on how to apply online and followed up with me afterwards to help me set up the interview.

What sort of questions did you have to answer at the interview? 

I had a phone interview and an in-person interview. All of the interview questions were based on past experiences and asked me to elaborate on how I handled a particular situation or how I exhibited a certain trait.  For instance, "Tell me about a time during your MBA experience where you exhibited one of the 5 core values," or "Tell me about how you handled a conflict with a past coworker."

What will your responsibilities be at JetBlue? 

I will be responsible for analyzing current staffing levels in each of JetBlue's departments to make sure that they are staffed properly, and also analyzing various positions to determine whether each employee position matches his or her skill set.

How does this internship experience fit into your career goals/professional development? 

This internship fits into my career goals because it is a nice segue between what I did in the past and what I want to do after graduation.  My previous career experience was mainly in managing people and departments, and I would like to move into a role that is operations-based and where I will be managing a process, in addition to supervising other employees.  This role will help me to build my analytic skills, and will allow me to learn how to use Microsoft Access in greater detail. 

Any tips for scoring an interview?

My advice for students looking for an internship is to use as many channels as possible.  Although I found this one through Baruch, I also got other internship interviews by applying directly on the company's website, applying through CareerLink, or through some of my contacts.  Also, be persistent about following up.  JetBlue originally told me that there were no positions available, but because I had spoken with the recruiters several times and had developed a relationship with them, when a new position did open up I got a call from them and had the internship within the week.