Students on the Blog: A Door That Opens Another

by Shokolatte Tachikawa (MBA ’20)

I am a nontraditional MBA student with mid-career experience prior to my undergrad at CUNY Medgar Evers College. I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Finance and Economics from Medgar Evers in January 2018 and came straight to study at Zicklin School of Business from June in the same year. Before college, I had worked mostly in finance companies such as Citibank, Merrill Lynch, and Bloomberg having only a high school diploma.

My plan when I started undergrad was to go back to those finance companies because I was familiar with the corporate culture. I enjoyed studying finance and wanted to continue, but then I decided to pursue my MBA. I actually never thought I would every attend grad school in my lifetime.

When I started my studies at Zicklin, my goal was still to go back to where I used to be but with an MBA degree. However, in my second semester, I realized that the MBA is not just about learning management or counting money. I met great professors from the Marketing Department, namely Professors Diamond and Cohen. They inspired me with the science side of marketing and I found my passion in it; now there is no going back. I decided to pursue a career in marketing, revised my resume to become the best fit for marketing opportunities like which I would have never had imagined - I even CLEP'd out the fundamental marketing in the undergrad (means I did not take it in the classroom, I just passed the exam for credits). Finance was something that I was good at, but now I know what I WANT to do and I am grateful that I chose MBA at Zicklin since it opened another door for my prospective marketing career.  

Switching my career to a new field isn't easy at all. I had to start from somewhere though. While I am taking another marketing class with Prof. Sponder to keep me motivated, I kept sending my resume to any internship opportunities I saw. I also sought advice from the GCMC, Baruch Writing Center and my EOC mentor to make my resume more effective and appealing to marketing positions.  I updated my LinkedIn profile, created my own website (https://www.mbadigitalmarketingnyc.com/), and ordered business cards for self-branding and promotional purposes. I attended marketing networking events with my business cards, marketing conferences (Advertising Week New York volunteer, Fast Company Innovation Festival) using student privileges, and joined marketing groups on MeetUp. 

Granted, at the very last minute to the close date of the internship application for Fall 2019, I found an internship position at a nonprofit organization and accepted. It's a small legal office in Staten Island, currently aiming to expand its presence digitally and physically. My role at the organization is all marketing and I am required to write a marketing strategy by the end of the internship period while I develop my marketing skills through the experience there. So far so good, and I appreciate this organization for giving me a chance to start my marketing career and letting me do the work the way I want. Every time I'm there, I learn something new, both in general and for my work with the organization, and I enjoy applying them as well as my marketing theory to the actual work to proceed. I didn't even know how nonprofits run financially but now I know all about TechSoup, Google for Nonprofits, and a bit about grant writing. Creating online ad campaigns is one of the jobs I'm excited about the most as well.

Now that I have gained marketing experience to put on my resume, it should open another door for me. This experience at my first internship as a marketing specialist is totally valuable, as well as the commute by the ferry that passes by the Statue of Liberty. Indeed, the ferry commute in the morning has created time for me to work on my class assignments, prepare for work, and contemplate my future as a digital marketer. If there is another student like myself who goes after their dreams, I'd advise them not to give up and start from anywhere.