You may be here because of our #1 online MBA rankings, but we have so much more to show you. At Kelley Direct, you’re not just getting the best accredited online MBA program out there—you’re also getting real-world value and ROI.
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What you’ll learn in Kelley Direct courses doesn’t just further your own knowledge and professional development. It can also positively impact your company’s bottom line.
“With my new understanding of innovation from the Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation course, I was able to improve several operational processes and reduced the average time returns sat in a warehouse by 66%. In my first year in the role, my account registered 18% growth.”
Dwayne Parris, MBA’23Principal Account Manager, GE Appliances, a Haier Company
Description of the video:
Hi, my name is Dwayne Parris, and I'm a principal account manager at GE Appliances, a Haier Company. I took C526, Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation with Professor Susan Loucks. If you had asked me what my definition of innovation was prior to the course, I would have said something only reserved for geniuses. Professor Loucks completely dispelled this line of thinking. She explained that innovation does not have to be something incredible or unique, such as the iPhone. It can also mean a better way of doing something. She broke down the three frontiers of innovation: services, products, and processes. I was most interested in the processes segment because I took the course a few months after I changed roles within my company. I knew that if I could nail this concept, and brought innovation to my new role, I could immediately start making an impact on my new account. With my new understanding of innovation, I sought to improve several operational processes that would allow me to complete tasks faster and focus my energy on more revenue-generating activities. With buy-in from my new account and support from corporate headquarters, I was able to reduce the average time returns sat in the warehouse by 66%. The success of the warehouse returns improvement process led to other ones with my account. my first year in the role, my account registered 18% growth, and this year, we are projected to finish up 15%, well above the national averages. These are all examples of how changing your mindset and identifying gaps for improvement can lead to innovation and value creation for your company.
average post-graduation salary
Kelley Direct courses empower you to work smarter and be more effective in your role now, not just after you earn your degree. Our thoughtful, rigorous curriculum is designed by—and taught by—full-time faculty who care about delivering the quality you expect from the Kelley School of Business in our online MBA program.
“One of my favorite things about the Leadership and People Management course was the ability to take what I learned and use it almost immediately in my actual job.”
Morgan Thome, MBA’23Customer Success Manager, Cariloop
Description of the video:
Hi, my name is Morgan Thome, and I currently work as a customer success manager at Cariloop. I took U728 Leadership and People Management with Professor Ernest O'Boyle earlier this year. One of my favorite things about this course was the ability to take what I learn and use it almost immediately in my actual job. One of the concepts that we learned about was job crafting. This concept is all about identifying the most meaningful and enjoyable aspects of your work and then crafting your current role to make more of those aspects possible. It's essentially changing your job, within reason, to make it more engaging. I work for a startup company, and our team is currently building out what a lot of our internal processes look like that are going to deliver the most value for our customers. My manager is extremely supportive of having our team continue to learn, develop, and evolve, and she was open to the idea of us going through this job crafting exercise as a team. As a result, we've not only been able to share best practices across the team as we work with different customers but we were also able to learn more about what our teammates wanted in terms of what their 'doing the dishes' tasks were, what their personal goals, values, strengths, and passions were and most importantly, we also began working to reorganize how we complete specific tasks across the team based on the things that we're learning and because of this exercise. It's been great to see the real-world impact of this exercise in our day-to-day activities and work.
of Kelley Direct Online MBA students started a new job
or reported receiving a promotion or raise while enrolled
The return on your investment in your online MBA from Kelley Direct never stops growing. Whatever your career goals, the online MBA experience is your first step onto a bigger, brighter path. That’s because the people at Kelley take a true interest in supporting you in reaching your goals.
“Combining the concepts of several different courses, I put together an extensive strategic implementation plan for my firm, and I received a raise and was given a promotion to the senior leadership team. None of this would have been possible without all the synergies that I’ve experienced between my courses in the Kelley Direct Program.”
Richard Trietley, MBA’23Director of Client Strategy Advancement, Corporate Care
Description of the video:
Hi, my name is Richard Trietley. I'm currently the director of client strategy at a small firm in Houston, Texas called Corporate Care. Corporate Care is a commercial real estate firm that specializes in asset maintenance and restoration. I began this role at the same time I entered the Kelley Direct program after seven years in the banking and commercial procurement industries. I'm obtaining both my MBA and a master's in finance, and I plan to graduate in May of 2023. The course at Kelley that's been the most impactful to me was J596 Strategic Management taught by Professor Will Geoghegan. The course takes you through the several stages of developing and implementing a corporate strategy, ranging from conducting market research to a SWOT analysis to implementation challenges and how to overcome them, all while using high-profile cases to demonstrate effective use of the course materials. Combining these concepts with finance and economics courses like F596 Financial Management, taught by Professor Tod Perry, and F745 Valuation and Capital investments, taught by Professor Steve Jones, I put together an extensive strategic implementation plan for my firm, that included MPV and EVA calculations to justify my company undertaking a new project. This project would allow Corporate Care to diversify horizontally and adopt an aggregator model that my research showed was becoming more and more common in the commercial real estate industry. What I discovered was that this was an adapter pairs situation, and if Corporate Care wasn't willing to undertake this project, we were going to be in trouble in the next few years. I presented the plan to my senior leadership, and I received a raise and was moved from Washington, D.C. to Houston, Texas, and was given a promotion to the senior leadership team to oversee the implementation of my strategy. None of this would have been possible without the incredible course taught by Professor Geoghegan and all of the synergies that I’ve experienced between my courses in the Kelley Direct program. I used this academic moment to gain career momentum, and attending Kelley has been the greatest professional decision that I've ever made.
alumni in the Kelley network
Jack Power, MBA’24, Greater Washington DC area
Description of the video:
Hi, I'm Jack Power. I currently work as tech product slash program manager at KPMG. Prior to enrolling in the Kelley Direct program, I had nine years of experience in healthcare IT on the business sides of projects and large-scale programs. I took C520, a quantitative analysis course, in spring 2022, with Professor Aaron Perry. In the structure of his course, along with the rigor of homework problems, enabled me to almost immediately apply the knowledge and newly acquired hard skills to my work projects. The timing of the course overlapped with the solution design phase of my client project centered around data strategy and analytics. I was able to incorporate what Professor Perry taught us about modeling simulation and optimization problems, including leverage one- and two-way data tables and using the Solver add-on for linear programming to design a reporting output which analyzes thousands of records, in this case work items for my client. It quickly determines the items of highest priority with which my client can take action on. I then worked with my engineers to take the Excel framework and build it out as stored procedure for us to use in our database. The final structured output was delivered via SQL Server Reporting Service and it enabled on-demand analysis of hundreds of thousands to several million records within three and a half minutes. As a result, not only does the client now have actual steps to take with our solution's primary output but the possibility is opened by using models and analysis techniques from C520 where at the core of our client's desire to award us an additional year of follow-on work.
Mackie Beck, MBA’23, Los Angeles area
Description of the video:
Hi, my name is Mackie Beck, and I currently work as an assistant brand manager at Reckitt, a CPG company. I've worked there for the last six months after pivoting my career from a collegiate water polo coach to brand marketing in the CPG world. So the KD program has been extremely instrumental into this career pivot and has really been a catalyst in launching my career. I've taken many classes that have helped me in this career pivot but most recently I took a class called Applied Marketing Research, it's C572, with Professor Raymond Burke. I took this class right after getting hired on full time at Reckitt, and it could not have come at a better place. So in this marketing, applied marketing research class, Professor Burke teaches you on how to one, conduct marketing research and then how to think critically about interpreting the data and in many instances you can hire a firm, but what I really enjoyed about this class is he talked about both, one, doing it yourself and, two, when you use an outside firm, how to think critically on the information that they give you. And this could not come at a better time. So when I took this class, I was doing work also with our marketing insights team at Reckitt about what data we needed to be ready to launch something new, a new development in our company. So what's great is I was able to work with them and kind of speak their language and understand what they wanted as a marketing research insights team because I had the background in marketing research. And another reason that I thought this class was extremely helpful in my career is because I have a ton of data that I can look through but this class helped me think about it in a more critical way. So instead of just taking what someone's given me and calling it good is how to question it and really understand what the data is telling me because I feel like the data can always be misconstrued, everyone knows that, just the way you spin it, it can sound like exactly what you want so how can I challenge what I'm being told and really get to the bottom line and then use that data to make decisions in the future. I think it's really easy to say like "I think this what we should do," and, in another class with Professor Rockney (Walters), you don't see need to say "I think" especially in marketing. There's data that will tell you the right answer, and you can look through the data and say "I know that this is the right way to proceed" because of the analysis that we've done. So, I guess a combination of Professor Burke's Applied Market Research class and then Rockney Walters' Introduction to Marketing class. They've both been instrumental in my marketing career. But truly, every class I've taken at Kelley has helped me in my past career as a college water polo coach, especially the leadership and development classes, but so many of the marketing classes have helped me kind of pivot my career and set me up for success in the marketing world.
Nick Marek, MBA’23, Chicago, IL
Description of the video:
Hi, I'm Nick Marek, and I'm currently working at a full-service media agency in Chicago as director of investment integration. I've been in the media industry for the past eight years, but have always had this itch to continue my education through an MBA program. So in my current role, I lead a team responsible for performance media strategy and execution, improving operational efficiencies, and creating positive, meaningful change for about a dozen clients. Most recently I leveraged my knowledge of regression models taught by Professor Bretthauer in his quant analysis class during a media planning brainstorm for a well-known QSR brand. Prior to that meeting, I compiled thousands of rows of data in Excel to produce a clean dataset of weekly performance by digital channel and market from the past two years. I recognized I could take that report a step further by running a few regession analyses to help explain the types of changes in media spend to store visitation, to ultimately forecast the most effective level of budget that would lead to the strongest return for each individual market. Professor Bretthauer's course was designed to provide really a foundation to provide his quantitative date methods in managerial decision making. His class appealed to my creative and innovate nature as it broke the mold of traditional media planning and taught me how to leverage large, complex datasets that lead to really simple recommendations. This ultimately has served and will continue to serve as a valuable tactic in helping clients and a lesson that allowed my professional growth to prosper within my company.
Kristin Chacko, MBA’23, Little Rock, AR
Description of the video:
Hi, my name is Kristin Chacko, and I am the VP of Operations at Lapero, a small web design agency in Little Rock, Arkansas. My most significant moment within a Kelley Direct course was in X596, The Future of Your Work, taught by Professors Trent Williams and Ernest O'Boyle last November. The course was taught as an intensive weekend workshop and its outcomes and goals were simple and effective. Internalized feedback from peers during breakout sessions developed processes to achieve future career goals as well as understand life-crafting models to get there and generate a realistic roadmap to my own success. X596 caught me at a pivotal time in my career. My department within our advertising agency had grown exponentially in the previous two years to the point where we'd been discussing and planning to roll our department out into its own LLC in order to reposition ourselves for new industry partners and expand our SAS offerings to existing and new clients alike. This meant that while I was a year and a half into my dual degree MBA/MS programs, I was simultaneously working on a business plan, organizing our financials and forecasts, and preparing to launch a company I would co-lead. Our launch date was January 1, roughly six weeks after the weekend workshop. The course allowed me to think critically about our company plans and my own goals in relation to the work we had already done to prepare for launch but also look at things from that 10,000 foot view. The tangible moment where I knew I'd achieved what I set out to do from that life-crafting exercise in X596 was this past June. Six months after I launched our company, we hit our first month of profitability. I achieved one of my career goals in a time period that is unheard of for most fledgling companies, particularly in this economic environment. I knew this was the momentum to success I’d hoped to gain from taking a course specifically on planning the future of my work. Thank you.
Steven Jensen, MBA’23, Greater Boston area
Description of the video:
Hi, my name is Steve Jensen. I currently work as the director of strategy implementation at CVS Health. I have a finance background but I moved into strategy implementation just after I started the Kelley Direct Program. I took Ernest O'Boyle's Leadership and People Management class, U728, initially to fill a requirement for the KD Program. However, this turned into an extremely valuable class, which should not have been such as surprise given Professor O'Boyle's passion, expertise, and data-driven approach. One specific assignment stands out, a job-crafting exercise, which has made a huge impact on my job duties at CVS. We were tasked with aligning our values, strengths, and passions with a view of the daily tasks that we do at work to figure out the roles we play. The goal was to use those perspectives to craft my own job to spend more time on what I enjoy and do well, and enable a path toward greater success and change the way I work. The exercise provided an awareness of exactly how I can add value by focusing on collaboration and equipping me with the tools to drive our team forward and M&A due diligence execution. It enabled a junior staffer, like myself, within one of the largest corporations in the world, to make a direct impact on a multi-billion dollar M&A due diligence process, cutting the time it takes for us to do that in half. I have the Kelley Direct Program to thank for making me a better employee, a true collaborator, and a difference maker at CVS. And credit is due obviously to Professor O'Boyle, who took HR-related content that I wasn't necessarily excited about and made it compelling and essential. This job crafting exercise has been a game-changer for me and a true Kelley Direct moment that had an immediate real-life business impact, and hopefully that's for the greater good of all the patients in the healthcare system for years to come.
Jamie Eichten, MBA’23, St. Paul, MN
Description of the video:
Hi, I'm Jamie Eichten, and I work as a senior materials supervisor at Boston Scientific. Prior to this role, I worked as a manufacturing engineer on one of our balloon catheter divisions. I took P596 with Professor Russell Clark in the spring of 2021. This course focused on process analysis, capacity management, and inventory management, and supply chain contracting and pooling. I especially connected with the process analysis content as at the time I supported several manufacturing processes. This class also taught us about how to use lead methodology to make improvements to operational functions, including manufacturing. That is why when my manager came to me and challenged me to improve the throughput cycle time and quality of the products on my line, I decided to use the methodology from operational management to approach the problem. Through this methodology, I improved the capacity of the line, and we were able to produce five more units an hour, which leads to an annual revenue increase of $196,923. This change also helped with overall productivity, as employees at the bottleneck were less stressed. Through this, I was able to impact the lives of patients around the world by helping to produce more of our life-saving medical devices. I am very proud to have contributed to the savings for my business and look forward to using my process analysis skills from operations management to continue making an impact on the lives of those today.
“The Future of Your Work course caught me at a pivotal time in my career and I achieved one of my career goals in a time period that is unheard of. I knew this was the momentum to success I’d hoped to gain.”
Kristin Chacko, MBA’23Vice President of Operations, Lapero