New Year, New Semester, New Job!

First off, I want to say congratulations to everyone admitted into the 2014 class!! Receiving the good news about getting into LGO is one of my most memorable moments and I'm so excited for everyone who got to experience that this past week. 

It's been a while since I've posted so I'll try to recap what's been going on since my last entry.

Internship Wrap Up and Job Update:

My final internship presentations were well received by the working groups I was a part of at Intel.    Overall, the experience was a great one due to the topics previously mentioned in a few of my blog posts (networking and Shanghai) as well as having such a supportive manager and supervisor and learning so much from my working groups and everyone else I had the chance to talk to.

It ended on an especially good note because I was invited to return to Intel as a part of the ALP Rotation Program.  After learning about the program and talking to several people in ALP, I knew it was a great fit for me and would be a wonderful career growth opportunity.  I wanted to do Product Management post grad school, and through this program I will not only have a chance to try out a PM role but will also get to explore other functions and groups before deciding where I want to be placed at the end of the two years.  I started interviewing for a couple of positions at other companies and at a certain point decided to forego additional interviews because even though the opportunities elsewhere would have also been great ones, I knew ALP not only was a good fit but was also in the ideal location for me as well as a place I had already started building a network.  Because I am changing industries, I liked the flexibility of trying out a few rotations before my final placement.  I also liked the idea of going through the program with a cohort of MBAs from other schools who I could also learn from and get to know.

In addition to being excited about the program itself, it was also really great to accept this offer because when I first got into LGO, I was presented with a very generous fellowship sponsored by Intel called the Robert Noyce Scholarship.  This scholarship wasn't binding so it's a great feeling knowing that I wanted to work for Intel anyway and that I'll have the opportunity to give back to a company that has helped me out in so many ways.      

Spring Semester So Far:   

Spring semester has been a lot of fun!  I somehow ended up with only having classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the first half of the semester and have been taking advantage of my remaining time in the northeast by traveling almost every weekend.  Our last big milestone in LGO is the thesis we have to write based on our internship projects so I've been largely devoting my Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to thesis writing.  Aside from that, I've been catching up with friends and attending as many school events as possible.

Mediterranean Penguins Dinner!

Leo, me, and Limor at the Israeli C-Function, Purim Carnival

I've also been doing a lot of baking this semester and had some fun with leftover chocolate chip cookie batter I had. :)

Upcoming Events:

The semester is almost half way over but there's plenty to look forward to in the second half.  I'm going on the Korea Trek during Spring Break with sixty other Sloanies for a little over a week.  I studied abroad in Korea in 2005 and haven't been back since.  I was a bit torn on deciding to go because b-school provides so many opportunities to travel to new places but since I haven't visited for so long and the roster included a lot of friends, I knew it would be a great time.  I'm also looking forward to Sloan's annual British Virgin Islands trip at the end of May.  It's a trip where all of the second years sail around BVI for a week and celebrate the end of school.  In addition to those two trips, I'm also in the process of planning a trip over Patriot's Day Weekend (a 4 day weekend in mid-April).  The rest of the semester should be a lot of fun and I'll be sure to write about my experiences rounding out my time as an LGO.   

Shanghai

A few weeks ago, Pamela (LGO '12) and I got a chance to go to Shanghai to visit Intel customers.  The local Intel team did a wonderful job hosting us.  One of our customer visits included a line tour, and it was fascinating to see the manufacturing of notebooks.  Visiting all those plants during 1st year of LGO trained us well in making observations and asking the right questions relevant to our project topics.  Not only did the local team help set up our visits and meetings with customers but they also showed us around the city.  Throughout the week, we had dinners and got to sight see in areas including Hong Mei Road, Tian Zi Fang, Yuyuan Garden, and the Bund.  Pamela and I extended our trip through the weekend and also visited Xintiandi.  The combination of academia, industry, and leisure made this trip a great way to visit China for the first time.

Yuyuan Garden

Networking at Intel

In some ways, I think I've done more networking while on my internship than during my entire first year.  It's been incredible being plugged into the LGO network within Intel.  As soon as internship started, we (me and the 2 other 2012 LGO interns) were encouraged to reach out to as many LGO alums as possible to learn more about their respective Intel roles and experiences and their individual career paths since graduating from the program.  I've learned far more than I thought I would have because of the accessibility to so many alums.  In some cases, some of them have provided additional contacts who have helped me with my project and others have connected me with strong leaders at the company who have shared very interesting career and life perspectives.  I've been really impressed with how receptive everyone has been to my 1:1 requests and how open they have been to telling their stories and addressing any questions I've had.  As I've started thinking more and more about recruiting and exploring what options I may have after graduation, the responsiveness of the LGO alum community in the Silicon Valley has far exceeded my expectations as well. 

Another great network the LGO interns have been plugged into is the Accelerated Leadership Program (ALP), which is a two-year rotational MBA program.  This past year was the first time the LGO interns were integrated with the summer MBA ALP interns.  Through the ALP network, we've had the opportunity to talk to several members from previous classes and to learn about the different rotations and experiences they've had at Intel. 

Between the LGO alum network, the ALP network, and the people I've worked with for my project, I've had a great introduction to Intel and look forward to the remainder of my time here for internship and any future connections I may have with the company. 

Rounding Out 1st Year

I have officially (well, as of last month) survived my 1st year of LGO!  I wanted to post about my internship but before I wrote about that, I wanted to share about my experience in one particular class I took this past Spring semester.  

Thermal packaging system on right

For our ESD.941 Operations Lab course, we worked on a logistics project for Cold Chain Technologies, a thermal packaging company located in Holliston, MA.  More specifically, we looked into whether or not refurbishment would be viable for one of their passive refrigeration systems.  After our team had several discussions with Cold Chain's Larry Gordon, President, and Bob Bohne, VP and GM, and a few others in operations and sales, we gathered the data they had shared and came up with a pricing model, logistics model, and process flow for them.   The project ended up being really interesting.  I enjoyed working with the second years on my team and learning more about logistics and how to build an optimization model based on the inputs.  I would say overall, the project was a success--the scope was manageable, the people we worked with were very responsive, and our final recommendations were well received.  Below is the LGO Cold Chain team with the President and VP of Cold Chain.

Left to right: Mike Donahue (LGO '11), Me, Steve Wessels (LGO'11), Kacey Fetcho-Phillips (LGO '11),
Bob Bohne (VP, GM), Larry Gordon (President)

I am now living out in Mountain View, CA and commuting to Santa Clara for my internship with Intel.  My experience so far has been great.  My manager, an LGO 93' alum, and my supervisor have been very supportive in teaching me as much about the group and company as possible, and working with me to determine what project I will be working on over the next six months.  I've felt a lot of support beyond my group as well.  There are several LGO alums at Intel who have been very resourceful and have helped immensely with the transition.  

It feels wonderful to be back in California.  Outside of work, I've gotten the chance to reconnect with old high school and college friends, and spend more time with Sloanies who I didn't get to spend as much time with throughout the busy school year.  Should be a great summer out here and 6 months with Intel.  :)

  

Spring Forward

Daylight savings time starts this Sunday.  Hooray for longer (and hopefully warmer!) days.

Congratulations to the admitted class of 2013!  I look forward to meeting all of you at your Open House and hope everyone can make it.  I had a lot of fun getting to know my classmates last year and given how soon after admittance the program starts, it's a great way to make the transition to moving here a lot smoother.  I would say some of the highlights to look forward to are:

* meeting the admitted class
* getting to know the graduating class and the year above you
* figuring out housing
* dance parties (there always seems to be one when there are a group of LGOs around)

Picture taken during our apartment search at Open House.  View of Cambridge City Hall from our balcony.

Finding out about the new incoming class as well as finding out about our internships have definitely been the notable LGO events of the semester so far.  I'll be at Intel working for the Customer Manufacturing Enabling group in Santa Clara, CA.  I just had my initial conversation with my supervisor the other day, and he gave me an overview of the group and what potential projects I could focus on.  Although the project I'll be working on is still TBD, I'm definitely looking forward to my experience at Intel and the exposure I'll get in this industry.  I'm also excited to be back in California. :)

On another note, Spring semester has been pretty different from the Fall.  I'm not as involved in as many extracurriculars this semester so I've been able to focus a lot more time on my classes, which is a good thing because I am taking two time consuming engineering classes.  The two I'm taking are 6.555 Biomedical Signal and Image Processing and 6.541 Speech Communication.  The first class, which fulfills my design requirement, is a good mix between theory and application.  So far in labs one and two, we've learned how to process ECG signals and speech signals.  The 2nd lab ties in really well with my other engineering class where we are learning about how speech is produced and the different sources that affect it.  If you're wondering how that is related to EE, we are studying the frequency/amplitude/time variant characteristics that result from varying speech pressures, constrictions, and velocities, which can also be expressed through equivalent circuit models.  The other classes I'm taking this semester include:

15.900 Competitive Strategy (this is an H1 class so it just ended today)
15.910 Innovation Strategy (H2 class starts after Spring Break)
15.401 Finance I (can't speak for the remaining of the semester, but I think they've been a lot easier on us this semester than they were to the finance sections last semester)
15.846 Branding (H2 class)
15.792 LGO Prosem
ESD.941 Tiger Teams (working on a logistics project for a thermal packaging company)

Next week is SIP week.  I'm signed up for ES.513 Design Inspired Innovation.  We don't have any Sloan classes during SIP, which is really nice because I have two midterms and a lab due for my engineering classes.  Should be a busy week before we're off for Spring Break!

MediaTech Trek: Silicon Valley

A few others have already blogged about our LGO Domestic Plant Trek so I thought I'd write about another trek I went on in the first week of January - the MediaTech Trek.  Before I do though, I thought it would be worth sharing at least one picture from the Plant Trek:

Don checking out a Tesla at the Detroit Auto Show!

Outside one of the Google buildings

I was able to go on the MediaTech trek because I am a member of the Sloan MediaTech club and also because the Domestic Plant Trek started on the second week of January.  There were about 25-30 of us on the trek, and the companies we visited in Silicon Valley included: Intel, Zynga, Charles Schwab, Cisco, Google, Facebook, VMware, eBay, and LinkedIn.  It was great to get more of the Sloan perspective of a few of our partner companies, as well as learn about some companies and their cultures that were more on the startup end of their life cycle.  It was also very interesting to visit all of these companies and to hear about the opportunities available to MBA students in the tech space.  Operations roles were always presented as potential career tracks we could follow, but other positions in product management, strategy, and business development to name a few were well represented as well.

Me and Limor at Facebook

For a few of our visits, we integrated with some of the Sloan E&I folks who were also out in Silicon Valley for their E&I trek.  Also, on one of the nights, we went to an MIT Sloan alum reception that was held at the Computer History Museum (go figure) in Mountain View so we got to see the rest of the E&I group, some of the alums who spoke at the companies we visited, and other alums who were from the area.  Overall, I had a great time visiting the companies, seeing Silicon Valley for the first time, and hanging out with MediaTech people on this trek.  The Silicon Valley portion of the trek was from January 3 - 5th.  Most of the group went on to visit Seattle for the remainder of the week, but I went back to Boston to tie up loose ends for plant trek and to repack for weather ranging from 20 degrees to 85 degrees, which was definitely tricky.  After having a few weeks off in December, things ramped up pretty quickly with all of the treks, InternshipFest, and InterviewFest.

By the way, good luck to all of those who interviewed!!          

Looking Back on the Fall Semester

Even though it's already February, Happy New Year!  Actually, I guess it's appropriate to say according to the Lunar Calendar.  :)

Before posting on more recent events, I wanted to blog my two cents on the fall semester.  As you might have already read in several of the other bloggers' posts, there was a definite contrast between the summer and fall semester both socially and academically.  A lot of applicants I spoke to over the semester asked how it's possible that we earn two degrees in two years.  I will admit that it's not a walk in the park.  Although the perspectives vary from LGO to LGO, there are definitely challenges faced and certain trade-offs (both good and bad) that need to be balanced in this program.       

Time was easily my biggest constraint in the fall.  Between all of the classes I was taking and clubs and committees I was involved in, I definitely felt like I was spreading myself thin.  For the most part, although I didn't do the greatest job in branching out, I'm happy with the relationships I've built through Sloan (i.e. my core team and Marketlab team) so far.  Below is a picture of my core team.  I only ended up being in three classes with them, but overall, I had a positive experience working in such a diverse team.  Between the seven of us, we represented San Diego, NY, Boston, Washington (state), Indonesia, Korea, and Brazil!

Mediterranean Penguins: Steve, Chris, Caesar, me, Luiz, Janet, and Giuliana