Bringing MMM Experience Back to Campus
Alexandra Buccilli (MMM '23) returned to Northwestern to demonstrate how the lessons she learned from Northwestern's MBA + MS Design Innovation (MMM) program now apply to her work as a senior innovation strategist at Jump Associates.
Alexandra Buccilli (MMM '23) stood before students from Northwestern’s Segal Design Institute, seeing her past in front of her.
Two years ago, she was a student in Northwestern's MBA + MS Design Innovation (MMM) program — a dual-degree program between Northwestern Engineering and the Kellogg School of Management. Now, she's a senior strategist at Jump Associates, a strategy firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
At Jump, she and her colleagues take a future-focused approach that integrates strategy, culture, and leadership to help companies like Google, Nike, and Samsung grow through change.
Buccilli was back on campus to help lead a “Future-Focused Workshop, Strategy and Career Insights” session for a mix of graduate and undergraduate students from various Segal programs, including MMM, Northwestern's Master of Science in Engineering Design Innovation program, and Northwestern Engineering's Master of Science in Product Design and Development Management program.
“My work at Jump is the most MMM job you can have,” Buccilli said. “The MMM program taught me to combine analytical business thinking with design problem-solving. That capability has proven essential at Jump, where I'm helping companies glean customer insights and design strategies for the future. It’s about connecting insight to foresight, and the MMM program truly helped me build that skillset.”
The workshop was designed to give students a taste of what Jump Associates does and how the lessons they're learning at school apply to the company's work. Students engaged in hands-on activities, simulating strategic foresight projects and exploring forces that could shape industries in the coming years. One exercise involved the company’s “fracking list,” a tool used to identify disruptive forces in various sectors.
Watching the students in action was a full-circle moment for Buccilli, whose path to Jump Associates was paved by her MMM experiences.
“What I liked was that it was a fully immersive dual degree program,” she said. “It’s the only program of its kind that links design innovation strategy with a top-tier MBA.”
The program's emphasis on design thinking and business strategy prepared Buccilli for what she calls the complex problems she tackles at Jump Associates.
Her work spans from consumer insights to strategic foresight and strategy activation projects, often dealing with sensitive topics. In one project, Buccilli conducted in-home interviews to understand younger demographics’ relationships with financial services.
“You’re not going to be a good interviewer just reading a discussion guide,” Buccilli said. “You have to go practice and see how you word questions, how you get rid of your implicit bias.”
The MMM program’s diverse cohort played a crucial role in her development. Buccilli grew up in Asia and found a sense of belonging among the international and varied backgrounds of her classmates. That diversity honed her ability to navigate different cultures and perspectives, a skill she leverages daily at work.
Her objective for the workshop was to demonstrate how that skillset, along with countless lessons learned during her time in MMM, helped prepare her for where she is today.
“We're hopeful to keep doing workshops like this,” she said. “What's important for us is that it wasn't just an info session where we were talking at the students, but rather a small taste of what it would be like for them to work in one of our project rooms.”