Becoming a Brand Ambassador

Lily Bishop (MMM '25) spent her time in Northwestern's MBA + MS Design Innovation (MMM) program focused on creating content that highlighted her day-to-day experience for prospective students.

When Lily Bishop (MMM ‘25) was a prospective student considering an MBA, she craved student-created content that highlighted student life and opportunities. 

 Instead, she found a void. 

"I looked for creators who were attending top business schools so that I could see what their day-to-day lives were like, but there weren't that many out there," Bishop said. "I wanted to fill that gap." 

A recent recognition from Northwestern's MBA + MS Design Innovation (MMM) program — a dual-degree program between Northwestern Engineering and the Kellogg School of Management — proved she accomplished her mission.  

Bishop won the Kellogg Brand Ambassador Award prior to her June 2025 graduation. The award honored Bishop for her content-creation efforts on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn, and just about any other place where Kellogg and the MMM program has an online presence. Through that content, Bishop sparked conversations with would-be students to give them an even more immersive view into what it would be like to be a MMM student.  

"I've talked to dozens of applicants over the last two years who watched my videos from around the world, and it's been really meaningful to hear that my content has helped them in their MBA journey," she said. "I've also had so much fun being able to document memories with my friends in MMM and at Kellogg. I know I will look back on the videos I've made for years when I want to relive this amazing experience I got to have." 

Bishop maximized her MMM experience.  

In the classroom and through client projects, she upped her human-centered design skills. During her time in the program, she interned for the National Park Service, working at the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia to develop strategies to better use indoor spaces to help improve employee well-being. To do that, she interviewed employees from across the park and led a brainstorming session with the site’s leadership team before presenting recommendations to the park's superintendent. 

This past winter she studied in Tokyo, where she learned how Japan's culture of hospitality creates inclusion. 

"When a wheelchair user needs to board the Tokyo metro, a station attendant brings out a ramp to help them board the car, and then radios ahead to their destination station so that another attendant can wait at the right car with a ramp to help them deboard," Bishop said. "I saw this system work perfectly multiple times and it always amazed me, because this would never happen on American public transit." 

That experience reinforced one of her career aspirations — to design innovative products and experiences that are human-centered and accessible to people with different needs and abilities.  

Bishop also capitalized on non-academic opportunities in MMM, like performing in multiple bands alongside her classmates and learning about the entertainment industry. 

As an undergraduate majoring in industrial engineering at Purdue, Bishop prioritized activities that would look good on her resume, ultimately leading to high stress levels and few creative outlets. She saw MMM as a second chance to not only focus on her future but also ensure she enjoyed her present. 

"I had more fun than I ever did in undergrad with this strategy, and I learned a lot more about what career paths would really motivate me," she said. "Kellogg and MMM are full of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, but only if you take the initiative." 

That initiative led Bishop to Deloitte as a senior consultant. She's excited to put to work the lessons she learned in MMM.  

"I learned how to fully understand a user and their needs before starting to solve a problem, and a variety of techniques and strategies to do this," she said. "My toolbox now includes the skills to perform an in-context ethnographic interview in a subject's home, run an efficient brainstorming session with people from any background, and leverage AI to communicate my ideas through data visualizations or storyboards." 

She's also considering how to continue creating content about how MMM and the Kellogg experience continue to impact her. She understands that getting an MBA is often less linear than other graduate paths like medical school or law school, and her hope is to continue being a resource for future prospective students.  

"You can get an MBA with virtually any background and use it to unlock virtually any business-related career path; there's not one clearly defined way to do it," she said. "I wanted to demystify the experience and show future applicants what life at Kellogg and in MMM was really like so they could decide if it would be a good fit for them."  

If you want to connect with Lily and hear more about her Kellogg and MMM experience, you can follow her at @lilybishop on Instagram or TikTok, or @LilyWBishop on YouTube. You can find the MMM Program on Instagram by following @MMMKellogg.