Why Managers At Apple, Citigroup, Disney, General Motors, & Google Are Getting Online MBAs

This year's graduating class of MBA students from online programs will likely test your assumptions about online learning. In the years when an online degree meant you got it from a for-profit provider like Phoenix or Kaplan, many people didn't take it all that seriously. After all, how could a series of videotaped lectures and bulletin board discussions compete with on-campus learning?

But advances in technology and the entrance of major universities into the online space in the past ten years have changed all that. This year's best and brightest online MBA graduates make the case. They include doctors and lawyers, engineers and entrepreneurs, sales directors, and military commanders. They hold key roles at such prestige organizations as Amazon, Apple, Cisco Systems, Citigroup, the Cleveland Clinic, Disney, General Motors. Google, Intel, Lockheed Martin, McKinsey, Merck, Microsoft, Nike, Raytheon, and State Farm. And they are getting their degrees not from Phoenix or Kaplan but from Carnegie Mellon, Indiana University, the University of Southern California, and UNC at Chapel Hill.

Some wanted to climb to the next level in their organizations. Others were making a career transition – or stepping up to bring their dreams to life. All of them didn't want to quit their jobs to get an MBA, preferring to take advantage of the flexibility of online learning to fit their classes into already demanding professional lives with significant personal responsibilities.

Chosen from among Poets&Quants' highest ranked online MBA programs, this year's best and brightest online MBA graduates are a diverse lot, hailing from locations as different as Kazakhstan, Arkansas, Ireland, and North Dakota. Their backgrounds are equally as colorful. Take the University of North Carolina’s Chris Venditti. Before business school, he was a musician who played venues like Carnegie Hall and holds a master’s degree from the Juilliard School in the trumpet. For the past eight years, he has headed field music operations at West Point, where he performed “Taps” hundreds of times. While Venditti is hanging up his bugle to start work as an investment banker, he will never forget one particular veteran’s funeral.

“I arrived at the cemetery and discovered the deceased had no family,” he remembers. “The honor guard team and I performed honors for this veteran with the same dignity and respect that would be given to a general. I was incredibly proud of this moment because we fulfilled and honored a sacred promise even though no one would ever see or know.”

Looking for smarts? This year’s Best & Brightest has it. The University of Arizona’s Samuel Speet is literally a rocket scientist, serving as a senior systems engineer at Raytheon Missile Systems. Not to be outdone, Jeremy Searer, a 2019 University of Delaware grad, oversees the control room at an atomic power station – an honor that the powers-that-be don’t confer on just anyone.

“I’m most proud of obtaining my senior reactor operator license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow me to control and operate both reactors at Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station I’m most proud of this accomplishment because after a stringent selection process, I spent two years in initial license training to learn this special and unique technology. Throughout the training process, I was continually tested and challenged, as I was required to pass a multitude of in field job performance measures, simulator scenarios, written examinations, and oral boards.”

After spending between two and four years in an online MBA program, they are strong advocates for online learning. Ethan Dollar, an Indiana Kelley MBA and Lockheed Martin manufacturing manager, has been being able to better understand the bigger picture. “My online education has enabled me to understand, at a higher level, the decisions and movements within my company that has led to deeper discussions with my colleagues and management. This knowledge has also enabled me to make more insights and to engage more with my company’s leadership regarding the future path of the business.”

Others enjoyed more tangible returns. USC Marshall’s Latanya Black made her long-sought transition from technology to apparel, landing a job at Nike in digital product creation. Kenneth Hurd, who graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology, applied the lessons he learned in negotiations to a customer pact that resulted in the best terms in their 20-year relationship. That said, it’d be hard to top Jaap Veneman, a Vice President at Bentley Systems in Ireland, for results. He rang up three promotions during his stay in the Kenan-Flagler online MBA program. “My MBA accelerated my career by at least five years, I would say.”

Not surprisingly, every 2019 Best & Brightest agreed they would do the program all over again. For the University of Arizona’s Roberto Llano, who works at Intel, the benefit was two-fold. Not only did the program help him uncover his potential, but also gave a sense of confidence and motivation – one that he hopes his family and friends pick up as they weigh their educational choices.

For many, online education – as its technical capabilities and popularity expand – is becoming the student platform of the future. That’s rooted in amplifying many of the best education practices. In fact, Spandana Lakkamraju of Cisco Systems was surprised at how similar the online format at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business was to her college years. Back then, she studied abroad, which required her to operate in different time zones virtually so she could stay in touch with her friends.

“[This] is what it feels like now,” shares the Kelley grad. “The world today is changing. Globalization is real and online is the way of the future. A lot of the in-class experiences are also leveraging online platforms for education today, as did my undergraduate program. I believe we’re all adapting to the way learning is going to be in the future. This is just the beginning.”

To read detailed profiles of all 50 of this year's best and brightest online MBA graduates, check out PoetsandQuants.com:

Best & Brightest Online MBAs: Class of 2019