An online MBA for women business leaders and innovators

Description of the video:

0:02 Okay it looks like we've got some folks on the call so we'll go ahead and get started. Welcome everyone, thanks for

0:09 joining our webinar today. We'll start by introducing ourselves and sharing a little information about our program. 

0:15 If this is your first time learning about Kelley Direct, we would encourage you to also reach out to us to learn more and or visit our website

0:21 as the majority of our webinar will feature five outstanding students and alumni and we'll introduce them shortly. 

0:28 So to start out I just want to introduce myself. I'm Julia Ailes. I'm our senior associate director of enrollment

0:33 management which means I get to work with our great admissions team. I'll have one of my colleagues Abigail introduce

0:39 herself as well. Awesome, welcome everyone to our women in business webinar. My name is Abigail

0:45 Harris and I am one of our associate directors of admission here in Kelley Direct so I'm one of our admissions

0:52 counselors. I also do a lot of work with our external partners like the Forté Foundation which we will hear more about

0:58 in a second. Great, thank you, Abigail, and before we

1:04 get into our panelists, we just want to share a little bit about what we think makes Kelley Direct so special, what makes Kelley Direct #1?

1:10 So we're thrilled to share that we've recently ranked number one for online MBA across all three major ranking

1:17 organizations and while it feels really good to be acknowledges the best what is really better is to understand the

1:22 elements that set our program apart. So in Kelley Direct you'll learn from the best with the best

1:28 and so our signature curriculum has three integrated core sequences and 50

1:33 percent electives which has this lovely balance of structure and customization including

1:39 seven different majors that you can choose from. And these courses are taught by full-time Kelley School of Business

1:45 faculty and we are blessed to have over 125 of them working with our students

1:50 so you'll not only learn from experts but also with a diverse group of peers who bring a variety of personal and

1:56 professional experiences into the classroom. Our classes are also taught live and so you're getting a chance to

2:02 interact with faculty and those peers real time twice a week in your courses

2:07 and then speaking of networking really the opportunity to network is what sets our program apart from others. Not

2:14 only do we have the largest living global alumni network from the Kelley School of Business, we offer two required

2:22 residencies called Kelley On Campus and Kelley On Location as well as optional global and domestic immersions where you

2:29 can build that network and apply what you're learning in the classroom in real time in a variety of settings all over

2:34 the world and so we think our program is pretty great and we're excited that it's been recognized

2:40 formally for that as well. So again if you want to learn more feel free to visit our website or

2:47 contact us we'd love to talk more about the details about what makes our program special but I do want to turn it to

2:52 Abigail to share a little bit about some of the ways in which we are supporting

2:57 women in our program. Thank you, Julia. Yeah I'd love to share how to learn about Forté benefits that are available to KD students

3:03 a little bit more about the Forté Foundation with you all today some of you may have heard of Forté before but

3:09 if not Forté is a non-profit foundation. Their whole mission is to support women in business and to increase the number

3:16 of women in leadership positions and companies all around the world so they've partnered up with a bunch of

3:21 different business schools and corporate partners and here at Kelley Direct we are one of their MBA school partners which

3:28 basically means that all of the students in our online MBA program have access to

3:34 a free professional membership with Forté. So that gives you access to lots of different professional development

3:40 and networking opportunities. Specifically Forté hosts every year

3:45 several different conferences and events. Every summer they have their in-person

3:50 Women's Leadership Conference. Last year it was in LA and I think you'll hear later from one of our panelists she actually

3:56 was able to attend that conference with me but that's a great opportunity to go to different breakout sessions

4:02 connect with employers and grow your network of women in business. They also have a good number of other virtual

4:09 conferences and career fairs. Some of them are free some of them have a small fee so lots of great opportunities there. 

4:17 Forté also has a job center where you can connect with employers and job

4:22 postings from the 70 different corporate partners that Forté has and with your

4:28 professional membership you also have access to lots of different online trainings and webinars such as their

4:34 Women Lead webinars and Conquer your Career webinars and lastly we now offer

4:41 Forté Fellowships here with Kelley Direct so this is a new offering that we're really excited to have for our

4:47 applicants and this is one of our scholarships that you can apply for whenever you are in the interview stage

4:54 of our process. So I think then go ahead and go to the next slide we have more learn about the five scholarships available to incoming KD students

4:59 information on our scholarships that we have there are currently five different

5:04 merit-based awards that we offer. Again the first of those is the Forté

5:10 Fellowship which is open to any women applicants to apply for we also now offer the ROMBA Fellowship which stands

5:17 for Reaching Out MBA. This is another partner scholarship that we have and this is open to students who identify as

5:24 LGBTQ+. We also have a more general scholarship that's open to any applicants called Kelley Direct Momentum

5:30 Scholarship. we have our inclusion and belonging scholarship for students from marginalized groups and then lastly our

5:37 military service scholarship. The maximum award amount that we typically offer is

5:43 twenty five thousand dollars and that is awarded equally over the time of your entire program and again the application

5:51 process is pretty easy. We just ask for a short essay and if you decide to apply you'll be told more about that process

5:58 in your admissions interview and I think back to Julia. 

6:04 Great that's it. Thanks, Abigail. I'm now excited to get into um the highlights of our webinar. 

6:11 I also just want to mention too that any participants can feel free to use the Q and A function if you have a question

6:16 that you'd like to ask. We'll monitor that Q and A if it's something really quick we might be able

6:23 to answer it via the Q and A but if it's something that is uh more for the panelists then

6:30 we'll see if we have time to pause and check with them as we move through

6:35 the webinar. So as we get started, we'll ask each panelist to introduce

6:41 themselves and tell you a little bit about um what they're currently doing as well as perhaps why they chose Kelley Direct

6:48 to pursue their online MBA. So I'll just uh kind of call on folks as I see them on my screen

6:54 um so we can go uh maybe Samantha, Lauren, Priya, and Katie so if you guys want

7:00 to just kind of popcorn to each other. We'll start with Samantha Choy so thanks again for joining us Learn about each panelist and why they chose the Kelley Direct program

7:06 um I'm currently as is on the screen a pricing strategy senior associate at JPMorgan Chase I live in the tri-state

7:12 area. We're currently in Manhattan and I decided to go with Kelley Direct MBA

7:19 because I just needed that flexibility with my work schedule and also

7:25 you know as I was looking around at different MBA programs um they really came highly recommended

7:31 by their alums like I connected with a lot of alums on LinkedIn and everyone had wonderful things to say about the

7:37 program and that really drove me you know to select Kelley Direct

7:46 Hi everyone I'm Lauren Radin and I'm from Los Angeles, California which is very far away from Bloomington. I am

7:53 currently a GRC senior analyst at Salesforce and I am more on the program

7:59 management team I chose Kelley Direct because I wanted a

8:04 top-tier program and when I decided to do online it was a no-brainer that I would choose Kelley

8:10 um and also being from the other coast I knew there was a lot of opportunities to be in person and connect with students

8:16 so I'll talk about that more in a little bit but all of those combined really influenced me to choose this program. 

8:24 Hi everyone, I'm Anna Ruiz. I'm currently a senior product marketing manager at Splunk and just to add you know some of

8:32 the reasons that I chose Kelley similar to Samantha and Lauren but I also wanted something that offered small class sizes

8:39 and that we could meet you know through Zoom and have those very important

8:44 discussions during class time and I also wanted something that offered in-person immersion programs where we could

8:51 actually all connect together as a class so those were some of the reasons I choose Kelley and I'm based in Dallas

8:57 Texas hi everyone my name is Priya I'm

9:03 currently based out of south Florida. I am a consultant with Deloitte one of the main reasons

9:12 why I chose Kelley Direct was the flexibility and being able to connect

9:18 with my classmates in a meaningful way with the on in-person experiences

9:28 hi everyone I'm Katie Zinski I am in Pittsburgh, and kind of like Priya I also work

9:34 for Deloitte. I'm an advisory manager I think for me I chose to go with Kelley

9:40 Direct for a lot of reasons but really in working for Deloitte there's a lot of

9:45 alumni there and everybody that I talked to had nothing but positives to say uh

9:51 both about their experience with other students with professors and just the

9:56 program in general and that just to me really speaks volumes that anything I

10:02 asked never once was I told anything negative and so for me I I just felt like I had to experience that for myself. 

10:12 Awesome thanks all of you for sharing a little bit about yourselves um we'll go into some more detailed

10:17 questions here but again feel free to use the chat too um or the Q and A function to ask some

10:23 questions so first I'd like to hear from our alumni I'm Katie Zinski and if you could share with our

10:29 participants what did the road back to getting your degree look like so how long did it take you to graduate

10:36 um job changes or advancement family work-life balance, etc um either of you can go first alums Katie and Priya talk about their KD roadmap

10:44 sure I'll start um so for me I actually the the process was kind of interesting I had originally

10:51 applied uh probably back in 2016 or so uh and

10:57 then life happened and I elected myself to kind of step back and I just didn't

11:02 have time and so then in 2018 I applied again uh ultimately starting in 2019 uh

11:09 and I completed the program just this past December so it took me about three years uh and in that three years. A lot

11:17 happened you know life does happen um especially you know

11:22 jobs um I found out probably three weeks prior to my first class that I was

11:29 pregnant with my second child uh which was kind of unexpected uh so it

11:35 kind of threw things for a loop a little bit um It ultimately made me take that three

11:40 years versus trying to do it shorter like I'd originally planned um but that was the great part about the

11:46 program and being a mom is I was able to take some time off because I you know had a new child at home uh and be able

11:54 to go through that so there was from my family life a lot changed and the program was really supportive throughout

12:00 all of that uh from a job perspective I joined when I first started the program

12:05 I was already an advisory manager so throughout the program you know thankfully for me I stayed in the same

12:12 position the entire time because I had a team that was really supportive uh and understood what I was going through and

12:18 and was willing to kind of work with me as I as I got through the program through my family life and and through

12:25 the crazy times as a manager at Deloitte um so it's everything was positive but

12:31 it was quite the journey great

12:37 so for me it was a little bit different I um started applying to MBA programs

12:44 February of 2020 and thinking that we were going to have in-person part-time

12:50 programs and then of course you know everything that happened at the beginning of March

12:56 um kind of switched gears I realized that even if I chose a part-time program there was a chance that throughout my

13:03 MBA program we would never be able to meet in person and so at that point started exploring other programs and

13:10 that's when I discovered uh Kelley Direct as an MBA program so I started August of

13:18 2020 and I did the expedited path so I

13:23 wrapped up my um whole course load in about 24 months so I graduated August of

13:30 the past year um I also did a little bit of a jump

13:35 where I was switching jobs so I switched from industry to consultancy

13:43 um and it was it was a lot but I um both with my classmates and with my

13:49 co-workers and my teams had a really supportive environment so all of our

13:55 professors are very very aware that life can come at you very unexpectedly and so

14:02 they're very understanding when it when sometimes you know work comes up or family comes up and so

14:10 that was kind of my experience with with the program

14:16 right thanks to both of you for those. Switching gears a little bit, we want

14:22 to hear from our current students a little bit about their experiences networking and the program so I'll start

14:29 by asking Ana and Samantha to share a little bit about your experience of Kelley On

14:34 Campus since it's more fresh for the both of you um and how that maybe uh impacted your

14:41 retirement program and set a foundation for the rest of your time it's either one is welcome to go first yeah I can current students, Ana and Samantha, talk about their Kelley On Campus experience

14:47 start um so I started my MBA program in the spring of last year so I know it's

14:53 different depending on if you start in the spring or in the fall so I took my first course classes and then I was able

15:00 to go to Bloomington last uh spring and it was honestly like the best four days

15:06 ever like it was a time to disconnect from work get to meet the people that I

15:12 had already been excuse me in classes with for an entire semester and had gotten to know through Zoom so like

15:19 connect with them connect with professors really set a foundation for meeting a lot of students that I was

15:24 going to be in classes in the following semesters and it has been one of my

15:30 favorite parts of the program I got to go back to Bloomington in a couple weeks and I'm super looking forward to it

15:37 um I have two little ones and a very supportive husband so it's also nice sometimes to get away as a mom and just

15:42 have alone time which you usually don't have um for anyone listening who has little ones at home so it has been my favorite

15:50 part of the program it really has a foundation for meeting students for them building groups and building friendships

15:56 like it's crazy and it's going to sound crazy but in those four days I've made friendships that I know will last a

16:02 lifetime and I won't echo that sentiment right

16:07 Ana um you do start with your online classes for core one and then you get

16:12 invited to on campus and then later in your program you get invited to on location right and it's always nice to

16:19 meet someone in person and go to happy hour with them and network and um it's also

16:26 um you know really important I think to develop those relationships some of the people I met on Kelley On Campus are now

16:33 very close friends um in fact like you know I'm looking at going to some weddings and it's just

16:39 really nice to connect in person um and I'll speak on this a little bit later but as part of women in business

16:47 um you know we're looking to do some more in-person meetups around these dates right so whenever we all get

16:52 together as cohorts in on location or on campus we're trying to do either happy

16:58 hour or a networking session to kind of connect and build a bigger Network um and it's always nice like Ana so to

17:05 kind of get away from the hustle and bustle of work and home and um really disconnect from that part of

17:12 life and really um you know immerse yourself in what Kelley has to offer

17:22 great thanks to both of you for sharing that about um KOC um I wanted to top Lauren to talk a

17:29 little bit more about some of the other in-person experiences I know she's taken a full advantage of those throughout her

17:35 time in the program so Lauren can you share a little bit about um some of your experiences on immersions

17:40 um and maybe Kelley On Location as well and even the Forte conference that you attended yes and this is my favorite. Current student, Lauren, talks about her in-person experiences through her MBA journey

17:46 part of the program um like I mentioned earlier main reasons why I did the program and

17:52 I'm really lucky that I started the program when they started spitting up a lot of these programs again

17:57 um so I've been um International to Thailand with the global business class which was amazing

18:05 um also with one of the domestic classes I got to go to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with my class and that

18:12 was really unique because most of the class was in Las Vegas seeing all the entrepreneurs and the Venture

18:17 capitalists and doing assignments within that so that was unique very Hands-On like mentioned I also got to go to

18:25 Bloomington to start my program for Kelley On Campus which is where I met most of my really great friends that

18:31 I've been friends with throughout the entirety of this program and then at the exact one year mark I got to go to

18:37 Chicago for Kelley On Location which was amazing and got really really windy the

18:43 second to last day so I got to experience what the windy city really is um and then my upcoming or my last

18:50 semester this upcoming summer I'm going to go do the public policy residency in

18:56 Washington DC so I'm not sure how that will be yet but I've heard it's great so I definitely wanted to take advantage of

19:01 all the classes that had in-person components especially because I also work remotely for school and work

19:08 so I don't get a lot of human interaction during the day so these pro these items during the program are what

19:14 I really look forward to um and then some things that I've done that are kind of outside the classroom realm is uh Global

19:22 Connect night which is hosted through kdsla which is the student leadership association

19:29 um so every quarter someone hosts a in-person happy hour or dinner or brunch

19:34 in each City so you get to meet local Kelley alumni and current students so I've hosted and attended

19:42 um also being on the KDSLA board we get a few in-person opportunities to come

19:49 back to Bloomington to talk to new students about the great things about this program just like this type of

19:55 moment and I hold VP of Communications on that so if you're ever interested in

20:00 getting more involved um definitely recommend being a part of the board if you get to work with really

20:06 great people like Abigail and help make change um and then I got to attend the Forte

20:12 conference with Abigail so I got the Abigail in person luckily I live in LA in the Forte conference for last year

20:18 was in LA so I got to drive in and um it was a two-day event really

20:25 focusing on career path and values of being a woman in business so it was

20:31 really cool meeting different professionals from different companies and listening to speaker series and

20:36 again another great opportunity to just have that human interaction and be in person and meet faculty so overall it's

20:45 completely changed my experience and because of it I do have a network that I'm walking away from that I have

20:50 interacted in person with that actually know who I am and my personality so definitely recommend taking advantage of

20:57 everything great thanks for that Lauren um does anyone else want to share anything about

21:03 um taking advantage of any of our optional sort of immersion experiences

21:09 know I got to travel to Ireland with Priya last summer she wanted to offer any insights to that experience

21:14 yeah of course so um as Lauren mentioned right you're in

21:19 these classes with your with your classmates and you know

21:25 um Kelley does kind of have a camera on um attitude when it comes to the live

21:30 sessions which is really great you get to interact with your classmates and then being able to meet up in person

21:37 intentionally so I did get to go to Dublin for a week we visited a ton of

21:44 multinational corporations so Google meta we did get to visit a couple of

21:51 whiskey distilleries as well so it's a good mix healthy mix of fun and

21:58 professional um but it was just overall really great right like I did the global immersion

22:04 towards the end of my program so I had been in some of these classes with some

22:10 of my classmates for two years and then we got to all meet and spend a week together similar to Kelley On Location

22:17 and Kelley On Campus being able to be there in in real time with with your 22:23 classmates it's hard to have kind of a substitute for that but being able to 22:30 take advantage of it was a really great part of Kelley Direct

22:36 great thanks, Priya, and I know that um you know one of the things that folks said

22:41 about why they chose a program was because of the flexibility those domestic and global immersions are optional so I don't know if anyone else

22:47 had any insight into um maybe not choosing those and the flexibility that the program gave and

22:53 how you found networking outside of that yeah I can speak to that a little bit

22:59 um as I mentioned you know I had my daughter just starting the program so

23:05 for me as much as I wanted and what I've loved to be able to travel it just wasn't the

23:11 right time um and it it had no negative impact the fact that I couldn't there were still a

23:18 lot of opportunities to interact with classmates uh virtually and through the

23:24 uh on campus options uh I came in at a time where I actually never made it to

23:29 campus for the second time because I was supposed to go and then covet hit and it was canceled and when it was rescheduled

23:37 um again with with work and things that didn't work out so I was able to select other course options to cover for that

23:43 at that point but I was still able to make connections virtually through everybody that's the

23:49 one thing I really liked about the program is even though it's virtual the classes are structured in a way that

23:55 really still allows you to get to know people and so I still have friends like everybody else that maybe I I've never

24:03 met in person uh but I still call on them when I have questions or you know

24:09 work related or not you know it still can build those relationships even without having that in-person experience

24:16 which I think is is a really good thing that the program does

24:21 great thanks for having that in cycling um again one of the things that was

24:27 touched on already was sort of getting involved on the program so can um Samantha and Anna talk a little bit

24:32 about sort of the impact of getting involved um while in the program and maybe the ways to do that

24:39 yeah I can go first so I currently um am the VP of Allyship for Women. Hear about different ways to stay involved as a KD student

24:45 Business um for our KD um chapter um and I think

24:50 for me it comes down to continuing to build that community it's very difficult sometimes when you don't get to see them

24:57 in person and you're limited to maybe the class that you're taking that quarter

25:04 um and you're interacting with those same 30-40 people in that class and it's nice to bridge across classes Bridge of 25:11 class um cohorts to work together on a committee

25:17 um so be on the win on business it's um been

25:24 um an experience um that I can really kind of point to and

25:31 say you know we're empowering each other we're putting together events that kind of highlight

25:37 um and um like highlight mentorship or highlight advocacy towards like

25:43 empowering women um in other Industries it's really interesting to highlight different

25:48 senior speakers every quarter um to talk about their experiences

25:54 throughout their own career Journeys so yeah it's just another way to build

26:00 that Community within Kelley Direct yeah I will agree while I don't hold any

26:05 leadership positions just because I juggle a lot like I mentioned I have two little ones at home so sometimes life

26:12 gets crazy and um I would have wanted to be more involved I'm a member of a lot of these 26:18 uh groups and so when I have the bandwidth and the time I will join and connect with fellow Kelley's which is

26:24 nice so um one of the things that's awesome about Kelley direct is you make of it what you want right so like it depends a

26:31 lot on your schedule and your flexibility and what your interests are so if you want to be a board member I

26:36 have friends who are and have heard amazing things if you don't have the bandwidth and just want to participate

26:41 in some of the events you're always welcome and invited to join um the events that the different groups

26:46 host so it just gives you a lot of flexibility to connect with students based on your schedule and your availability and there's no pressure

26:53 right like I've never felt pressure like oh you need to be a board member you need to do business and this it really

26:58 is up to your schedule and what you can handle and what you want to get out of the program which is really cool

27:05 great thanks to both of you does anyone else have any insights they wanted to offer in terms of getting involved or

27:10 taking advantage of events outside of the classroom

27:19 I will say that in attending a lot of these events you end up meeting people from all across the world really but

27:26 definitely across the US and I've had a lot of people come through La for work and I've gotten to get dinner and lunch

27:33 with these classmates that I otherwise wouldn't have seen in person so it really adds another layer of connection

27:39 that a lot of people don't think you would get through an online program so that's why Katie really is unique

27:45 because I know some other friends that are in different online programs and they do not get this kind of experience or connection

27:52 great thank you Lauren um so I wanted to ask Bria and Katie to

27:58 share a little bit about as alumni um what kind of impact did completing

28:03 your MBA have on your career yeah so I'll go ahead and jump in for me Listen to Priya and Katie talk about the impact that KD had on their careers

28:12 um making that move from industry to Consulting and then also wanting to

28:18 switch what I was doing from a day to day completing the MBA and being able to

28:24 major in strategy and Leadership gave me a lot of tools that I use in my

28:30 day-to-day work I look at some of the problems that we face in a different way

28:36 than I would have pre-mba um it also was like everyone's mentioned

28:42 Kelley is such a name brand um when it comes to MBA programs that

28:49 having that on my resume when I was making that switch and you know switching companies

28:55 um was just overall very helpful for me um and you know having those connections

29:02 being able to reach out to Kelley alum at different companies while I was doing

29:08 that job search was also um how I used my MBA host

29:14 post-graduation yeah for me it's similar but also a

29:22 little different as I mentioned before uh I'm still in the same position that I was in when I started and when I first

29:29 started that first uh time on campus I had a meeting with my career coach

29:36 and it was kind of a discussion of what my plan was and at the time

29:42 my plan wasn't to look to change jobs my plan wasn't to you know try to pivot

29:48 from where I was it was more of I wanted to be better at my current position and continue to move up in the role that I'm

29:54 in right now and Katie kind of has allowed me to do that I have a greater connection with

30:02 many of my clients because I work with clients who are more of a finance background and I personally my

30:08 background my undergraduate degree is in engineering so it allowed me to get that

30:14 perspective to where I have a better understanding of what my clients need what they are thinking about some of the

30:20 things that I may not have known before that being said Kelley does have The

30:25 Graduate Career Services that like I mentioned I talked to a career coach

30:30 and there's a lot of options even afterwards like job boards so at this point you know I'm perfectly happy in my

30:37 career and hoping to continue to progress but there's still those options there that I can use should I decide to

30:44 you know just see what's out there uh you know Katie gives a lot of resources from the toolkits

30:53 that help with resume building and networking or you know your personal

30:59 branding to kind of help make sure that you have everything that you need in order to be successful whether it is in

31:05 choosing that path that you're just getting better at yourself and and moving where you are or completely

31:12 switching and trying something something really brand new great thanks to both of you for sharing

31:18 those stories um to be mindful of time we'll go ahead and start with sort of a wrap up question but if folks have things that

31:24 they want to put in the Q a you can see if we can get to them um I think we're age panelists to kind of share and maybe we can go in the same

31:31 order that we did introductions um maybe one of your um Kelley

31:36 um moments as we call them so something that sort of impacted you personally professionally in a major way that was

31:43 sort of a highlight of your experience um with Katie Hear from the panelists as they talk about their most impactful moments throughout the program

31:50 um so for me it was Kelley On Campus um pulling what was almost an all-nighter preparing

31:57 for our case competition um you know it was really nice as a team to come together work really hard we

32:04 were running to CVS our case competition was around um posts the company so they do cereal

32:10 so we were running there grabbing actual Post Cereal putting together vision boards and putting in our slides and

32:17 pitching it um to our professors that we actually just had a class with

32:22 um so it was really um it was just a really great team moment to realize like these are the people

32:28 that I'm going to be going through the program with this is the professor that just taught my class and I just really

32:33 felt um like a sense of community like it all goes back to community and really feeling that like Kelley connection

32:39 um with my fellow students and professors

32:45 my Kelley moment was while on the global immersion in Thailand a group of us

32:50 after our day of experiencing different companies went to a cooking class and

32:56 after you cook the whole meal you get to sit down as a family and eat it and a lot of us hadn't had classes together

33:01 before together and everyone got very deep with getting to know each other and

33:07 their backgrounds and where they come from and in that moment I was like wow I'm sitting in a room with a bunch of

33:12 strangers in a foreign country that I've never been to before eating food that I can't pronounce and it was just such a

33:18 raw experience and now these are some of my closest friends so and everyone was

33:25 in completely different age ranges so it was it was a really unique experience

33:30 that I will never forget

33:35 um for me it has to be also on Kelley On Campus a little bit different from Samantha it's like what happened after

33:41 the classes and you know like you you got to go to dinner with friends and get to know people

33:47 um and similar to Lauren like you know these are people that I haven't that I hadn't met in person right and we've

33:53 come from all different backgrounds different Industries I think when you've been working for so long you're almost

33:58 like so laser focused it's like the same type-minded people if that made sense and so we had some of the best

34:04 conversations I'm telling you until like 2 a.m. in the lobby of the hotel just because we were so intrigued about like

34:10 Dei and our backgrounds and our goals and our families and it was just something that's so enriching and like

34:17 that just builds the connections um with your fellow Kelley's that really you know form those friendships and I'm

34:23 looking forward to going in a couple weeks and having some more of those uh conversations um and late nights just to connect with

34:30 the fellow Kelley's similarly mine was probably with

34:38 um our kickoff dinner in Dublin where we all you know we it was the first time a

34:45 lot of us had met in person and we all had you know traditional Irish meal and then there was also Irish

34:52 music and dancing and at one point um the band had

34:57 um classmates and professors just pulled them randomly to to the dance floor and

35:03 had them do Irish dancing and it was just a very

35:09 um unstructured start to our week in Dublin

35:14 but it kind of really helped break the ice as well and a lot of us you know we

35:20 we joke around about um you know all the volunteers but it really did help all of us kind of meet

35:27 and interact and and really build those those relationships for for that week

35:34 and then onwards

35:39 for me um it's actually a little bit different because it's really hard to decide on just one moment because there

35:45 really are so many um but for me I was really drawn to taking leadership classes just because

35:52 it's something that I really enjoyed and I learned a lot from and being able to

35:57 take truly some of the things that I was getting in those classes and then applying it to my team that I am working

36:04 working with on a day-to-day basis and they were well aware that this is stuff I'm doing in my class because I kind of

36:10 was testing the waters and kind of seeing like okay we learned about this how does it actually work you know in

36:16 real life uh and I was kind of amazed like we we really were able to transform

36:22 some of the things we were doing and I I honestly think it's because I was able to kind of take in it was there were

36:28 some leadership classes about more understanding yourself and the way that you're a leader and how you need to be a

36:34 leader to other people that do things differently and so being able to take something that I learned and really

36:39 apply it in my job and and see that impact uh was really kind of meaningful to me

36:48 awesome thank you so much for those insights into the impact that Kelley Direct on your experience

36:55 um it was lovely to have you all on the call today um again we are going to wrap up now

37:01 just for time's sake but if anyone has any questions or wants to talk more feel free to reach out to us at Kelley Direct at

37:08 indiana.edu and we can also um get some connections to these students to our

37:15 current students and alumni um if folks had specific things that were brought up that they wanted to follow up about I

37:20 imagine that they would be happy to to connect with you um as part of our great Kelley network so thanks everyone for being on the call

37:27 today um we enjoyed having you bye