School of Business

Thomas Walker ’08 recalls convincing his mom to take him to Blockbuster to buy a copy of “Titanic” at midnight, the moment it was released on VHS. When he studied business at UCR, he was a regular at the Multimedia Library, where he watched old movies, including every winner of the Academy Award for best picture from 1927 onward. Today, Blockbuster has gone the way of VHS tapes. UCR’s Multimedia Library collection has relocated to the Tomás Rivera Library. And the 2022 best picture winner was the first to be produced and released by a streaming service. But some things have not changed: Walker

Maria Anguelova ’03 made a bold move right at the beginning, when she decided to leave Bulgaria in pursuit of a strong education. She found it in the MBA program at UCR. “The UC Riverside program was very diverse and catered really well to international students,” says Anguelova, who is currently an executive vice president at Sony Pictures Entertainment. “Just the fact that there was so much diversity really helped, because you didn’t feel like you were singled out or the only person who had an accent.” Anguelova worked as a teaching assistant and connected with alumni to secure an internship

For every student wondering how they are going to find their place in the world, Tyson Avery ’96 wants them to know they have a superpower available to them as they pursue their degrees. “The one power you have that you don't know you have—or at least most don't think you have—is the power to ask,” said Avery, senior vice president, deputy general counsel and chief ethics and compliance officer at Starbucks. Urging students to reach out to professionals to learn about career paths, Avery said: “While you are still in school, use every opportunity to ask someone innocently, naively, and

In 2012, the labor market was grim, says Diana Almendarez Colgrove ’10, MBA ’12. Toward the end of her last year of graduate school, she attended a campus career fair and stopped by the Esri technology company’s booth and asked the recruiters to share her résumé with their marketing department, even though she knew they were looking for engineers and developers and not marketing professionals. However, that leap of faith resulted in a 12-week internship for Colgrove with the marketing department at Esri, a Redlands-based geographic information systems (GIS) firm. “It was a tough choice to make

When the U.S. Army launched a career field in enterprise marketing and behavioral economics, it was designed to attract top-performing officers. Competition was high: Almost 500 applied for the first cohort, which had only 30 openings. In announcing the opportunity, the Army said soldiers applying needed to “exhibit a history of excellence” and have “either private-sector experience in marketing or an MBA or marketing-related graduate degree from a top-tier program that demonstrates a similar academic foundation.” It turns out that was right on the money for Maurice Kenner ’16. Since earning

Having succeeded within a far-reaching global career, Will Chu ’98 currently leads the marketing efforts for the “Star Wars” brand in countries including Russia, Korea, Japan, and Brazil. He recently shared the details of his odyssey with students and members of the business school community.

Elia Quintana MBA ’11 is the Director of International Corporate Operations at the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility where she manages and strengthens key relationships with Fortune 500 corporate partners to advance HACR’s mission. Prior to joining HACR, Elia worked at LULAC National Educational Service Centers where she worked closely with corporations, federal agencies and community partners in providing educational programs to young Latino students in underserved communities. Elia has over 10 years of experience in sales and marketing with companies like Time Warner Cable