Samantha ChanJob before MMM: Business Strategy & Operations, Adobe
Hometown
Los Angeles, CA | San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Undergrad
UC Berkeley – Consumer Behavior & Psychology and Media Studies
Job Before Kellogg
Business Strategy & Operations, Creative Cloud Product Marketing, Adobe
Summer Internship
Product Marketing Manager, Apple Watch, Apple
Activities at Kellogg
Wellness Club – VP, Events and Partnerships; Daybreak – Contributing Writer and Partnerships Manager
Affiliated Programs
Why did you choose MMM?
Two factors made choosing MMM the best (and easy) choice for both my professional and personal goals.
Coming from a liberal arts background, I was seeking an MBA program that would equip me with a strong business foundation with a creative flair. I knew MMM would provide opportunities to combine those two disciplines and allow me to further explore my interest in consumer behavior. Through structured courses and experiential design thinking projects, I have learned to approach problems with an empathetic and analytical lens.
Being a part of the strong MMM community, aka the faMMM, reassured me that I made the right choice. I am blown away by my classmates' drive, curiosity, and humbleness. We all come from such diverse backgrounds and this richness of thought shines through group projects, classroom discussions, and thoughtful conversations.
What is life like as a MMM student?
As a cohort, we are both intellectually and culturally diverse and love sharing these unique parts of ourselves with the broader community. One of my favorite cultural celebrations was an Indian Cooking Night, where some of my classmates cooked, from scratch, traditional Indian dishes for the entire 60-person MMM class! But beyond the delicious butter chicken and homemade naan, I loved hearing their stories of why the dishes were significant to them and their culture.
And as the year has progressed, so have our strong ties. The friendships we built during the summer term are solidified through various small groups and larger Kellogg events. This past Halloween, both MMM classes dressed up as Waldos from Where's Waldo? and marched through downtown Evanston together to head to the Evanston Rocks celebration. I'm guessing it wasn't terribly hard to spot Waldo that night!
How did MMM help you during your summer internship?
As a Product Manager intern at Apple, my time was spent between launching the newest generation of the Apple Watch and developing product feature recommendations for next year's product roadmap. My role was a hybrid of product marketing – product management, a setup that is unique to Apple and a setup that allowed me to truly flex both left and right brain. Whether it was crafting product messaging for Apple's sales teams or interviewing users to understand pain points, I leveraged the design thinking principles I learned through MMM to ensure the user was always at the heart of any product decision.
What was most impactful, however, was sharing user insight derived from interviews and research. Through storytelling and data, I reminded my team of the why behind every feature recommendation. My team and senior leadership appreciated this user-driven approach as it humanized the user we were designing for.
MMM gave me the confidence to advocate for the user and integrate elements of design thinking into the organization's current processes.