Imagine yourself at your Kellogg graduation. What career will you be preparing to enter,and how have the MBA and Kellogg helped you get there?

As I eagerly wait for Dean Blount to begin addressing the auditorium, I find my parents’ proud faces in the crowd and wave. I’m flanked by friends, some of whom will be joining me at Yahoo next month. The last two years have flown by and it’s hard to accept that tonight will be the last time I meet up with my section-mates at The Keg! As I think back to everything I’ve experienced here, I couldn’t feel more excited about the next chapter of my life.

Soon, I’ll be returning to the hub of tech innovation in Silicon Valley. My dedicated mentors in the Marketing Club well-prepared me for fall recruiting and I was accepted for a Product Marketing Management position at Yahoo.emergingmarkets.com. Here I will manage marketing products that leverage mobile usage in emerging markets to address local challenges around education, health, and basic humanitarian services that states have been incapable of addressing. Eventually, I’d like to remain in the social sector but move to Product Management at a small startup where I’d manage a product end-to-end, coordinating cross-functionally to determine the overall strategy for moving our product to market.

Following my experiences in Brazil and at Princeton, I’ve been eager to apply my passion to improve the human condition. At Kellogg, I was immersed in a community of like-minded classmates who were passionate about extending the scope of their influence to have a lasting local and global impact. One of my most memorable experiences was my Kellogg Corps trip to Asia, where I collaborated with classmates to help a non-profit bring natural energy solutions to rural communities. My on-campus experiences also provided opportunities to explore my professional interests. Kellogg’s Innovating Social Change Conference and the Kellogg Innovation Network’s Social Innovation Summit provided valuable insight into the landscape of technology as a catalyst for positive social change in emerging markets. Through my GIM experiential learning course in South Africa, I saw how technology could be utilized in Sub Saharan African nations firsthand. This experience will prove supremely valuable at Yahoo as I consider how to bring technological solutions to this region.

At its core, my new job is marketing strategy and I couldn’t feel more excited and prepared to tackle this challenge. At the Annual Kellogg Marketing Competition I received hands-on experience segmenting, targeting and positioning products—activities that translate directly to my new responsibilities leveraging communication channels to deliver a cohesive and targeted product message. I’ll also use the quantitative analysis methodologies taught in Strategic Data-Driven Marketing to evaluate the success of my marketing decisions. Later as a product manager, I’ll leverage learnings from courses like Technology and Innovation Strategy and Technology Marketing, to formulate a holistic product strategy.

Kellogg’s emphasis on collaboration and “thinking bravely” have shaped me into the leader I am today and I’m excited to re-enter the business world with a renewed sense of direction and a community of Kellogg grads who I’ll remain connected to for the rest of my life.