Marrying the Art and
Science of Marketing

Jake Abel, MBA 2009

Career Specialization: Brand and Product Management
Internship: Nestlé, Glendale, Calif.

Jake Abel grew up in a small Iowa town and attended a liberal arts college near Des Moines. A successful marketer with broad experience on both the creative and management sides, he wanted to add an understanding of the science of marketing to his skill set in order to move up to the “big leagues” — larger corporations, bigger projects, more leadership opportunities. He wanted to know more about the science behind marketing, as he describes it: “the technical,
really hard-core, nitty-gritty stuff.”

“Everyone in the Wisconsin MBA program is all about taking what we have now to the next level and making it even better. I think that community-based passion is what’s really attractive to people.

“From the materials I had seen, I knew Wisconsin had something different, but I didn’t fully understand what that meant, until I came for a visit. The feel was starkly different from the feel I got when visiting other business schools. I saw that I was going to have people as resources to help me. In general, something just clicked. It felt like home.

“When interviewing for my summer internship, I really found out the value of what we’re doing here. I was talking to other MBAs from lots of top schools. I said I was nervous because at Wisconsin we were only half way through our interview training. The other students told me, ‘That’s halfway through more than we’ve done.’ That really drove home the point to me: Not everyone gets the focused attention that we get at Wisconsin. Plus, I had two marketing classes under my belt before interviewing began, whereas other candidates still hadn’t taken a marketing class—and it showed.

One other thing—the seal on the deal for me was 100% placement among graduates of the Center for Brand and Product Management.…It takes out all the risk.”