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A Conversation with Northwestern MSC Student Holly Jones

Holly Jones is the Director of Alumni & Parent Relations at Iowa Wesleyan University, where she is responsible for engagement, development, and communication. She received her undergraduate degree in history from the University of Iowa in 2010 and just completed her second quarter in the MSC program.

Why the MSC program at Northwestern, and why at this point in your career?

Immediately after completing my undergraduate degree, I started working on a university campus, which introduced me to the field of higher education. Flash forward several years later and I found myself working in the university advancement office, focusing on fundraising and alumni and donor relations. A little over a year ago I felt like it was time to advance my career by advancing my studies. I always knew I wanted to get a master’s degree, but at the time I hadn’t decided on the best route to get there. I considered studying nonprofit management, going to law school, or getting a degree in higher education, but eventually I decided on communication because it encompassed all the things I loved about my professional work up to that point. A communication program was the right choice not only for me but also the work that I was doing in higher education philanthropy.

I did a lot of research on the programs that I was looking at and when it came to the MSC program, I remember reading through the blog and interviews of current and past students and they captured my attention. The MSC program stood out to me because of it’s theory-based and practical application approach to learning. As a working professional, it was important to me to enter a program that was rooted in communication theory but also fostered learning through discussions with classmates and the opportunity to immediately apply knowledge.

Also, the program was broad yet specific. It was broad in that it wasn’t just focused on digital communication or something narrow in the field, like many communication programs. The program offered a true taste of different elements of communication, which is what I was looking for. However, the specific learning themes of the program, managing complexity, collaborative leadership, and elegant communication, informed me what I could expect to learn as a student in the program.

What is something you’ve learned so far that you’ve been able to apply in the “real world”?

In Professor Leslie DeChurch’s class, Leading Collaboration, we studied teams. Every week I was able to go back to my team at Iowa Wesleyan and think about lessons I had learned in class, how they applied to me and how I could be a better team member. The class pushed me to reexamine leadership skills and strengths in myself and in my team members. I find myself pausing and reflecting more about the broader context in a situation and how I communicate with my teammates, and as a result, strive to be a more thoughtful leader.

What is your favorite aspect of MSC at Northwestern?

The relationships I’ve formed, both with classmates and professors. I’ve had so many a-ha moments in class and enjoy discussing those moments with professors. We had a lecture on rhetoric one week in Professor Randy Iden’s class, Foundations of Strategic Communication Management, and I realized my interest in studying rhetoric. After class, he recommended books on rhetoric as well as future classes in the MSC program that I would enjoy. All the professors are approachable and are eager to support you in taking your learning as far as possible.

As for my classmates, we have a fantastic cohort. I find, both inside and outside of the classroom, that we have meaningful and engaging conversations that I really value. They’re so much fun and I look forward to seeing them every week. The relationships that I have formed have defined and positively shaped my experience in the MSC program.  

Can you speak to the importance of diversity in your cohort?

The diversity of the cohort truly gives us depth. We all come from different professional backgrounds, regions, and positions. Every person has a distinct quality that they bring to the cohort and it’s really amazing to see how all those qualities come together. But, we have the common thread that we’re all learning and going through an experience together. The way our classes are set up, we have the opportunity to interact with all of our classmates, which only highlights further the diverse strengths of our cohort.

What advice would you have for anyone considering the MSC program?

In deciding to do this I knew it would be a commitment, especially as I’m commuting 4.5 hours one way from Iowa every weekend, but I am that passionate about advancing my career and my knowledge. I knew it would be one very intense but rewarding year and it’s been so worth it. I don’t even mind the commute because I know that I’m going to learn something interesting every week.

Go into the MSC program with excitement and mindful preparation for the year ahead, because it goes by really fast! I can’t believe we’re already through our second quarter. The program has been really transformational for me. It came to me at the right time in my life, and the impact of the learning and relationships are truly invaluable.

Prof. Leslie DeChurch’s Reading List

Leslie DeChurch’s research investigates teamwork and leadership in organizations. She is Professor of Communication Studies, and holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences. She is President and Chairperson of the Board of INGRoup, the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research. She teaches the Leading Collaboratively course for the MSC program. Learn More.

How We’ll Live on Mars, by Stephen Petranek (Simon & Schuster)

In a barren landscape, a little red planet, a third the size of Earth and much colder, orbits the Sun. How We’ll Live on Mars is a fascinating, approachable book that gets down to the basics. How will we breathe on Mars? Turns out we can change the atmosphere, or “terraform” the planet to be more like Earth! How will we avoid dangerous space radiation on Mars? Voila, we can build houses in the lava tubes of inactive volcanoes!

Petranek explains just how close humans really are to becoming an inter-planetary species. Millions of people move between countries every year – seeking jobs or education, or escaping war, poverty, or unrest – Petranek makes a compelling case for just how feasible it is, that in the next few decades, millions of people may be moving between planets for some of these very same reasons.

I picked up Petranek’s book after watching the National Geographic  “Mars” miniseries which references it. You don’t need an interest in science fiction or rockets to love this book. One thing that struck me about this book, that I bet every MSC student can appreciate, is the elegant communication – Petranek takes some very complex science and communicates it in a way that everyone can understand and get excited about.

War in Val d’Orcia: An Italian War Diary 1943-1944, by Iris Origo (Pushkin Press)

Could I interest you in a journey to Tuscany?

Halfway between Rome and Florence, in an estate called La Foce, lived a remarkable woman named Iris Origo. Iris lived during interesting times, born in England in 1902, to an American father and an Irish-Anglican mother. She lived in Europe through both World Wars witnessing the social transformation in between. Origo’s father died of tuberculosis when she was 8, his last wish that Iris be raised somewhere foreign, preferably Italy. Iris’ mother complied, and so young Iris grew up in the Villa Medici in a virtual British colony consorting with Anglo-intellectuals living just outside Florence.

But this book is not about intellectuals and their dinner conversations about art and literature, it is about what life was like on a Tuscan farm as Italy was “switching sides” in the Unnecessary War. War in Val d’Orcia is Iris’ diary, her first-hand account, about the day to day experience of living in the Italian countryside during the war. She was a well-connected insider (her godfather was the American ambassador to Italy), and an outsider (a woman living in a patriarchal Latin society lacking Italian heritage or even the ability to properly roll her “r”). And yet her everyday acts of leadership were extraordinary in their effect.

This is a beautiful book on many levels. One comes away feeling a call to lead (and an aversion to war!). Iris rises to the challenge of her time. She works for the Red Cross in Rome, takes in dozens of children bombed out of their homes, gives secret shelter to escaped war prisoners and soldiers, and provides maps, directions, food rations, and clothing to everyone who turns up on her estate. Italy is under German occupation, witnessing the deportation of its Jewish population; sons and fathers are first called up by the Italian fascist regime, and later sent to German concentration camps. Iris’s estate is just outside the medieval hill town of Montepulciano. This is a sobering yet inspiring story of perseverance, integrity, and especially leadership. It will leave you wanting to know more (much more!) about this remarkable woman and how she came to live on a Tuscan farm.

If after reading it, you are not yet ready to leave the Tuscan journey behind, then you can learn much more about the personal character of Iris in her beautifully written autobiography, Images and Shadows: Part of a Life (Iris Origo, Nonpareil Books).

 

A Conversation with MSC Alumnus, Jacob Goldstein

Jacob currently works as the Leadership and Organizational Development Consultant for  Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, where he supports a population of 5,000+ individuals, providing one-on-one coaching and group workshop facilitation to clinical and non-clinical leaders.  Jacob leverages his experiences in education, the performing arts, and corporate learning and development to his work.  As a performer, Jacob has sung as a backup vocalist for musical artists such as Josh Groban and Patti LuPone, at venues including The United Center, The Chicago Theater, and Chicago Symphony Center, and as a recording artist on Netflix’s Sense8.  In the education space, Jacob has served as an educator and guest lecturer for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students throughout the Midwest. As a Learning and Leadership Development Consultant, Jacob has worked with organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies in the technology, healthcare, non-profit, and fashion/apparel industries.  

Why was MSC the right program for you?

One of the reasons I decided to go with the MSC program was that I liked the diversity of thought that was in the room. I loved that my cohort was such a diverse group of people, from early careerists to seasoned professionals. The program provides you the opportunity to gain perspectives from individuals in many different industries with varying years of experience, which really challenges you to think differently and try to grow as individuals. As a leadership development professional, I work with people in sales. I work with physicians. I work with marketers. And to hear, in my classes, the perspectives of individuals who are coming from these different industries and different stages of life was fascinating for me and helped me learn how to articulate particular leadership development messages to these different types of audiences.

Did you have a favorite class?

Professor Michelle Shumate’s class on non-profit leadership is the one I consistently use the most. In fact, I just recently taught a class about influence and motivation, and the majority of my research came from that class.

I decided to take the class because at the time I was consulting with a lot of startups. I found that startups and nonprofits are actually pretty similar — they’re both externally funded, and both types of organizations are very cause-driven. Individuals at startups are there because they truly care about their mission and they truly care about what they’re creating, and typically are focused on maximizing their resources and funding for that purpose.

One of the things I found so impressive about Professor Shumate was that on the first day of class, she told us, “I have a syllabus prepared, but I want to hear from everyone about what they are looking to get out of the class.” After that, she ended up changing over 60-70% of the curriculum to focus on things that we were really interested in learning about, even building brand new topics. That was so transformational — I have never had a professor so invested in their students’ development and learning goals that they would create a class so highly tailored to what we were looking for.

What is something you’ve learned from the class that has made an impact on your professional life?

One of the things from the non-profit leadership course I remember being most impactful — it was like a lightbulb went off in my head — was a great exercise about motivating and empowering our employees. There was a case study and the questions were, what can we do to really make an impact on people we work with as leaders and managers? When there’s a situation where certain individuals are acting out of line, what do we do? Everyone came up with great ideas on how to handle the situation. Professor Shumate said to us, “Did you come up with this idea because that’s the best idea for them, or because that’s what you would want your manager to do to you?”

That was an eye-opening moment for me. So often, we want to become the types of managers that we would want to have ourselves — for example, I don’t want someone who micromanages me, so I would give my direct reports a lot of autonomy. But in reality, your direct reports might want to check in with you, or prefer additional details, etc., I realized that managing is all about tailoring your style to the specific individuals that you’re leading and getting to know those individuals to figure out how you can better support and nurture them. Even now, a few years later, I’m still seeing the impact that that class has made on me.

What advice would you have for anyone considering the MSC program?

Once you’re in the program, encourage yourself to step outside your comfort zone. Take a class that you maybe might not have gravitated towards originally — it might push you and make a major impact. MSC is a safe-to-fail environment. This is your place to take risks and try something new. Because we only met once a week 40 times a year, which was such a finite period of time, when we were together we were all incredibly focused on learning and growing as much as possible. No one was checking emails from work or addressing other commitments and responsibilities. For me, those Saturdays were really my time to be selfish and focus on learning, growing, and expanding my boundaries.

Meet us in Evanston: Winter Quarter MSC Meet Up

Shruti Pillai, Morgan Searle, Jill Smith, Elaina Kritikos, and Naomi Shay are all current MSC students who made it to the winter quarter meet up. Photo: Matt Peyton.

Current students in the MSC Program enjoy a suite of co-curricular programming throughout the year. Co-curricular programs are optional events, gatherings, discussions, workshops or talks that offer students a chance to dive deeper into a popular topic or a learning theme. One of these programs is the MSC Meet Up. MSC Meet Ups are informal, social happy hours for current students, faculty, staff and alumni. Meet ups are fantastic opportunities for students to connect and hang out outside of class, as well as network with alumni.

The winter quarter MSC Meet Up was held at Smylie Brother’s Brewing Co. in Evanston. The meet up was a convenient location for alumni and students who work in Evanston, and it was great to see so many people from this community outside of the classroom and work place.

At meet ups, alumni friend groups come together and catch up, like the crew from the

Jackie Moss, Jerry Culver, Joanne Detch, Dom Merritt, Penelope Johnson, from MSC Class of 2013 at the Winter Quarter 2018 MSC Meet Up. Photo: Matt Peyton.

Class of 2013 who attended last week. Not only do alumni get to network with current students and reconnect as friends, but they are also able to learn what’s currently going on in the program, and how they can stay involved with the Northwestern MSC community.

 

MSC Student Rebecca Selby Wins Telly Award

Rebecca Selby, a current Master of Science in Communication student, recently won a Telly Award for the Epicor Software corporate brand launch video in the Commercials/Marketing: Craft – Visual Effects category in cooperation with Binary Pulse.

About Rebecca

Rebecca Selby’s creative career began in elementary school when she won a small-town poster contest, and with it the esteemed title “Pork Princess.” Since then, Selby’s expertise in visual communication, public relations, and branding has driven corporate identity excellence for dozens of Fortune 500 and non-profit clients. Currently, Selby is the global Brand and Creative Director at Epicor Software where she leads an international team of talented artists and writers, brand research and development initiatives, and creative agency relationships. She still loves pork tacos.

MSC Alumni News | 2/2/17

Emma Crnkovich, MSC ’17

New Position: Sr. Analyst, Enablement – Communications & Operations at Salesforce

“I transitioned from a client facing role to an internal communications role to help enable the sales team tackle any problems they may face in the marketplace. My desire to pursue internal communications was founded in Professor Randy Iden’s Foundations of Strategic Communications during Fall Quarter. In that class, I was introduced to the intricacies of corporate commitment to employees and realized I’d love to put my skillset to that particular use.”

If you’re an MSC alumni with news to share, share it here!

First Company Trek to PCI, Career Exploration for MSC Students

One reason many students have in common for getting their MSC is the desire to make a career move. Whether they want to change industries, gain a promotion, or pick up a new skill to bring back to the workplace, career development is never far from an MSC student’s mind. In an effort to answer this call from students and alumni, the MSC Program introduced a new series of events this past fall: Company Treks. Lead by MSC’s Associate Director of EPICS (Experiential Programs, Internships, and Career Services), Pat Messina, Company Treks offer a firsthand look at local organizations with careers for communications professionals. Company Treks consist of office tours, presentations from employees, and the chance to network and ask questions of people in a new industry or field.

The first Company Trek took place in November 2017 when students and alumni were invited to visit Public Communications Inc. (PCI) in downtown Chicago. PCI is a global, independent public relations and marketing agency that focuses on communication strategy, crisis management, digital strategy, and media relations. For many students, the visit to PCI was an exciting opportunity to learn more about the field and learn about the history of this more than 50 year old company.

The MSC Program is lucky to include the President of PCI, Craig Pugh, among our alumni. Pugh completed the MSC Program in 1990 and was excited to share his experiences in the world of PR by hosting current students and alumni at PCI. Messina and Pugh planned an afternoon that included a tour of the offices where students got to chat informally with PCI employees at their desk, and two interactive presentations. Pugh also introduced the 17 student attendees to PCI’s CEO, Jill Allread. Allread gave an overview of PCI’s work with community partners and shared a bit of her background and career path, helping students make connections between their studies in MSC and the world of PR.

Throughout each portion of the visit, PCI employees shared what they do at the company as well as the career advice and steps that lead them to the world of public relations, marketing and digital strategy. Overwhelmingly, the students heard about the importance of telling stories, and creating easy to understand messages for the general public. Writing skills, creativity, and a willingness to learn new skill sets are key for a successful career in public relations.

To commemorate the visit, the design team at PCI created a snapchat filter for the students to use. Thank you, everyone at PCI for putting on such a fantastic visit and sharing your office culture, career advice and PR expertise with MSC.

A Conversation with MSC Alumnus, Jeffrey Walker

Jeff is the CEO of CIMC Capital, the finance partner for China International Marine Containers, headquartered in Shenzhen, China. CIMC, the largest container and trailer manufacturer in the world, has 200 subsidiaries worldwide. Jeff was recently invited to the join the Wall Street Journal CEO Council as its 143rd member.

Why was MSC the right program for you?

I had spent 10 years in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as a trader and I wanted to transition out of that, so I was looking for something to help differentiate myself. That’s when I heard an ad for the MSC. I had always wanted an advanced degree but I didn’t see how it would be a possibility for me. I never wanted to go away to school somewhere else for 2 years, stop my career, drop everything, and start over.

Once I heard the name Northwestern and I came to the open house, I didn’t need to hear anything else. I couldn’t pass up the pride of having a Northwestern master’s degree. To me that’s like having gold. And most importantly, the classes were very interesting to me. I’m in finance but I’m not an analyst. I don’t need to crunch numbers, so the relationship, communication, and management side was much more valuable than advanced math that I might have learned in other programs.

What is something you’ve learned that has made an impact on your professional and/or personal life?

During the program I got promoted in the workplace so I could see tangibly how harnessing the information I was learning was helping me. The MSC was especially helpful because in class we constantly discussed ways to use information we were learning in the workplace. I learned a lot about communication and persuasion, and that you have to frame how you write. Framing your writing and understanding who you’re writing or talking to is key, because everyone has a different mentality. I saw a huge difference in the way I was writing and how I was communicating with my customers, my managers, and my teammates, because I was actively trying to understand where they came from.

At CIMC Capital we have a very global team, meaning we have a staff in China and an American staff here in Oakbrook. The cultures between them are very different, so in shaping their communications with each other, I try to stress empathy for each other and try to encourage them to have informal conversations. I also took a class called Managing Global Teams where we learned about clashes of culture. It really made you realize how cultural differences can harm a company, which is something I always try and think of today in my current position. I actually took a couple things I learned from that class when I interviewed for my position in China – for example, the proper way of holding a business card (with two hands), the way you sit down in order of rank, just some nuances that I would have never known. These things might seem like small things, but they were all so impressed that I knew how to do them.

In the end, one of main things I learned is credibility. Things can come back to you way down the road. Every single thing you say or do affects your credibility. I have to have credibility in mind with every decision I make and every communication I have, no matter how small, because everything affects your brand. The formal training I received from the seasoned professionals that were my professors at MSC really solidified that for me and sharpened my skills.

What was the most challenging part of the program?

There’s always a little bit of intimidation when you start a program, especially at a school like Northwestern, after being out of school for 13 years. You ask yourself, can I do this? I remember when I wrote my first MSC paper it took forever. But in the end, I loved being back at school. In undergrad, I had a double major and a minor, played football, was involved in extracurricular activities, but I didn’t have the same level of focus and care that I put into this program. I mean, I found this program, I volunteered time to come to this program, and took money out for this program. If I had done an MBA, there would have been so many required classes that I knew I would just have to get through to get the degree. But with the MSC, every one of these classes was of high interest to me, and spurred lots of thought based on my years of work.

Can you talk about the value of the MSC network?

Coming into it I knew that getting to know my classmates and professors was going to be as important as the classes in the MSC. In this world, networking is the most important thing as far as getting a job goes. So the better you got to know people, the more value was added to the MSC program in general. I actually used to organize an outing for all the classmates after every class, and a lot of the professors would actually come with us too! For example, Professor Roloff, who is wonderful, is a beer brewer and so he would come out and we would drink beer. We had fun, we consistently had 30 to 40 of us who went all over Evanston, to places like Prairie Moon and Bat 17.

In fact, we still have lots of get togethers now. I travel much more now and have a family, which is great, but it means getting together is harder, and it’s kind of a regret of mine that I can’t see my old MSC classmates as much as I used to. But we put together Facebook and LinkedIn pages for our class and always keep in touch, and to this day there are always people from my class in HR or management positions who are posting and informing people about open positions. There’s people all throughout the world from Brunei to Peru, and there’s always ongoing events, from meetings to Northwestern tailgates. We all maintain very close relationships.

A Conversation with Northwestern MSC Alumnus, Bob Rowley

Bob Rowley is often introduced as “This is Bob Rowley, who spent a life in communication.” Bob Rowley is the Northwestern Assistant Vice President of Media Relations and a Medill School of Journalism lecturer. He spent 30 years working for the Chicago Tribune, was a White House correspondent, Pentagon correspondent, national correspondent based in Dallas, lived in Mexico covering Latin America, where his daughters were born, and in Toronto and Jerusalem, going back and forth covering a dozen wars and different kinds of stories. He has worked in higher education for about eight years, first at Elmhurst College and now Northwestern University. After graduating from the Northwestern MSC program at age 59 in 2013, he became the first president of the MSC Alumni Association.

 

At what point did you enter the program and why was this the right time for you?

After I came back from living abroad in 1998 and was working in Chicago, Elmhurst and Evanston for more than a dozen years, it was time for me to do something I always wanted to do: get a Master’s degree to learn and in order to be able to teach.

Communications, specifically, came up in a couple of ways. When I left the Chicago Tribune, I had a wife and family to support and two daughters in college. So, I needed to find something that wasn’t unstable like print journalism. I found my skills were valuable in other fields, such as higher education. My journalism skills were valuable in a field I used to believe was very different from journalism.

I came to Northwestern with a plan: to swim in a bigger pond working at a larger research university, to do things I hadn’t done yet in journalism, to get my masters, and to teach at Medill School of Journalism. I originally thought, “Am I too old to do this?” While younger people in my cohort  were quicker with technology I brought much more practical experience, and we were able to learn a lot from each other that way. I learned as much from my cohort, in some ways, as I did from my professors.

 

Why was Northwestern MSC the right program for you?

Out of all the programs I looked at, the MSC degree stood out, because it had so many interesting courses. I shopped around for programs, but I realized everything I was looking at had something to do with communication. The MSC program was a way to look at the best that was known and thought in the world about communication.

In the 33 years I was working in print journalism, technology changed everything.

It’s common to learn about communication only from the little perch of one’s career, but my professors looked at it in an academic context and most importantly, a global context, and kept up with the changing world. I was so enamored with this degree, my cohort, and professors, that I was so excited to go back to school at age 58. The program made me a better teacher now at Medill.

 

What is something you’ve learned that has made an impact on your professional and/or personal life?

I took a course about managing information for innovation, which became extremely valuable to the work I do. Our final project was to apply this to somewhere in our lives. An MSC colleague and I interviewed everyone at my Northwestern office and did a report on how to bring more innovation to the office and make people completely open to new ideas. We learned how to best nurture new ideas, be more creative, and encourage our employees. I applied some things we learned in class into our report on how we do things in this office. I found now that I’m a better manager because of this class and others. Instead of being closed to new ideas, I’ve learned to say “yes, and?,” not simply “no.” I also observed how my professors taught, to learn effective teaching strategies for current Medill classes I teach.

 

What was your favorite aspect of MSC at Northwestern?

It made me understand the big picture of communications, the business world, and my own profession and job here at the Northwestern. They teach you the best that is known and thought in the world, the latest cutting edge technology, why communication is important, how to communicate well, the best practices, how to think strategically, and how to lead. It’s not just communicating one on one, but it’s also how to gather all those ideas and knowledge you take in, keep them in mind, and think about what message you want to take out there on the road.

 

What advice would you have for anyone considering the MSC program?

If you’re interested in communication, leadership and strategic thinking, and want to understand a very complex media world that is changing every nanosecond and how to navigate in that world, this is the program for you. If you’re strictly interested in business school, this is not the program for you. The difference between the MSC and an MBA is that the MSC is more broad and will teach you those necessary skills about leadership, but also more broadly about the communication landscape in 21st century. You can get bits of many other programs through the MSC, but it’s much more than that.

We are in an age where communication is all the more important. We live in an era of fake news and alternative facts, which makes it even more important to understand the tools of communication and how to use them effectively to cut through all of the noise and get your strategy and message out there. It’s a great program for that — thinking and navigating in a complex communication world.

Can you talk about the value of the MSC network and whether you’ve been able to keep in touch?

The class of 2013 was a very tight cohort, and the idea for an alumni association came about after we graduated. We wanted to create an alumni association to create the same cooperative, collaborative affinity as we had with our cohort. In March 2015, I became the first president of MSC Alumni Association, and now am co-chair of mentoring panel for the MSC Alumni Association. I have had a number of meetings with current students or fellow alumni who are interested in getting involved in networking for future career purposes.

We host a lot of events. We just had MSC Professor Jason DeSanto speak to us in an extraordinary two hour lecture. No one wanted to take a lunch break, but instead we all wanted to keep asking questions. That’s just one example of how much the program energized me and the different cohorts, to the point that some of us would’ve gone into a PhD program if they offered one.

I stay in touch with three quarters of all the 84 people in my cohort. Every year I hold a tailgate party for our 2013 alumni. The MSC Alumni Association has made staying in touch both among cohorts and across cohorts much more doable. We often have an event in which alumni are invited to be panelists and to network with current students, which helps connect the different generations.

A Conversation with Northwestern MSC Alumnus, Sonny Sultani

Sonny is the CEO of design communications agency SONNY+ASH in Chicago, which he co-founded in 2011 in the middle of his time in the MSC program. The company helps people communicate their ideas to the masses. His undergraduate background was also in Communication Studies at Northwestern.

Why was MSC the right program for you?

Think of a young kid who was pretty much an introvert, who wouldn’t speak in class, but at home was a chatterbox to the point that my mom would have to give me a dollar to shut up. That was me. I had to go into communication because there were two things I loved: 1) talking and 2) observing. Communication was who I was and my nature. Prior to communication I was an engineering major. I had all the grades and did what I needed, but it didn’t feel like I would get up in the morning and really like what I was going to do. After undergrad I was working in engineering and sales and it was more technical than it is sales, so I wasn’t really doing communication at my job. After about 5 years I was bored, so I went into the MSC program. It felt like a good fit for me and after studying communication as an undergraduate at Northwestern, it felt like the right thing to do.

I went into a communication graduate degree instead of business for a couple reasons. Firstly, it felt like home to me. Secondly, I didn’t see benefit of the financials part of a business degree. Thirdly, there’s enough black and white decisions in life and I wanted that insight into grey zone situations, and the soft skills to take my company to the next level.

As an entrepreneur, do you think that the program had a significant and unique value for entrepreneurs?

I think every entrepreneur should go through this, especially for small business owners. This is your gamut of classes you should take in life to run a business effectively. If I would put it in numerics, I would say it will help you learn how to best manage employee retention, the ability to see and mitigate risk through communication, the management of crises that may happen throughout your organization, and the effective introduction of products and services. All of these topics are part of any entrepreneur’s struggles, and often a typical small business owner can’t afford to always hire consultants. So, to all the entrepreneurs out there, why not spend the money and have that knowledge base for yourself. That’s something people can’t take away from you and I think that becomes an amazing part of your core to run any business.

What is something you’ve learned that has made an impact on your professional and/or personal life?

This program gives you a direct application of theories. It’s had a significant impact on way I see the world. For instance, the way I relate to people. I saw the biggest benefit in my soft skills, because I chose classes that weren’t coupled with my nature, but very challenging for me as an individual and my values.

Kathleen Galvin’s Diversity and Inclusion class is one that challenged my values. When I first started, if you asked me about my opinion about diversity and inclusiveness, I would have given you a whole spiel on how the “strongest survive” and there is no need for it, but my perspective definitely changed. When you are an executive of a company that is growing very fast, you have to start thinking about the other side of the coin. I was even eventually asked to speak about diversity and inclusiveness on a panel. I took this class, leading me to make decisions at work, leading to me to become a thought leader in the topic.

How have you grown from the program?

I had a model of the world – a very big financial model of the world about running a business. It was all about profits. The process of going through the MSC taught me that wasn’t the only model that worked, and that there’s more to profits than the dollar and cents of it and that other attributes have to be juggled and pieced together, because they all lead to the same kind of numbers.

What was your favorite aspect of MSC at Northwestern?

I really enjoyed the cohort. I got to meet a lot of interesting people and formed close relationships with them. I still have a few of them as friends and we connect from time to time. I have enlisted some of them as consultants in my company. One helped me interview potential candidates, one was a technologist who helped me create a server infrastructure. Everyone in each cohort has a different career and their own path. Very diverse interests are represented, and it’s great when you’re stuck with a question because there is always someone there who can answer it.

What advice would you have for anyone considering the MSC program?

It’s not really about a particular business path. It’s more about soft skills than it is about the career path. It’s the track of what all leaders should go through in all organizations. You’re going to use this stuff whether you like it or not. As a leader, the more tools you have, the better you can run an organization. The program gives you not just one tool, but a whole toolbox.