MBA Program

Student Voices

Melissa Iagulli, MBA ’11

A passion for problem solving

After graduating from Brown University in 2003, I worked five years in two different financial services companies. Although I enjoyed learning about the financial markets, I realized I was more drawn to the processes relating to financial services and projects that helped those organizations run better. I have always been driven to solve problems, and I thought MIT Sloan would be helpful to me in terms of learning that broader skill set of problem solving.

One of the great things about MIT Sloan is all of the opportunities available for students to go out and get actual experience. We have a number of labs that I found really attractive. I will be participating in G-Lab this semester, helping a business in Latin America solve its problems. In addition, through MIT Sloan's partnership with New Sector Alliance, I worked with a team of my peers on a consulting project to perform a financial analysis for a sector of nonprofits in Boston. These are the kinds of real-life projects that get you out of the classroom and working on actual business problems.

I think some of the lab experiences and classes I've had have helped me approach problems holistically, by looking not only at the big picture, but also at the different facets of a problem that need to be tackled and affect each other. Real lab experience and group projects have helped me learn the reality of problem solving, not just the theoretical approach.

A positive result

I have always been a proponent of giving back to the community. MIT Sloan has given me the opportunity to connect my interest in serving the community with some real practice in business skill building. This summer, I interned for the Haas, Jr. Fund in San Francisco, where I analyzed the grant making process and designed ways to improve its efficiency. As a result of my internship, I gained consulting experience at a nonprofit, and increased the effectiveness of the Haas, Jr. Fund's grant making process, allowing the foundation to focus more energy on their grant programs to improve rights for gay, lesbian, and immigrant communities, and increase education opportunities for low-income students.

Working for a foundation was a great experience and was an unanticipated opportunity. MIT Sloan's Nonprofit Internship Fund, along with the School's broad selection of job opportunities, allowed me to pursue exactly the type of role I was looking for in an alternative industry. As a result, I definitely would consider working in a similar consulting role in the future.

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