Mom, Opera Singer, and Future CEO

Rachelle Roesler, MBA 2008

Career Specialization: Corporate Finance and Investment Banking
Employment: Consulting for Italian companies

Pasta fagioli is a traditional Italian peasant dish. It combines cannellini or borlotti beans and some type of small pasta with a base of olive oil, garlic, onion, and spices. Simple ingredients, but taken together, the combination is magical. Rachelle Roesler is taking a similar approach to building a life. She’s a mother (her daughter was born during her first year as an MBA student) and an avid musician. She recently moved to Italy with her family after graduation to pursue a position
in corporate finance.

“Before graduate school I did a lot of things. I went to Italy as a nanny, then I taught English, and then I started teaching music. I did some singing as well. I met my husband, and eventually we came back to the States. I ended up getting a job at Madison Opera in administration, and came to realize that I wanted to go deeper. My long-term goal is to run a company, or a division of a large multinational company. But I felt that I needed to develop specialized expertise as part of building
a strong foundation.

“As soon as I walked in the door at Wisconsin and met with some people I thought, ‘This is what
I want.’ When deciding among the specializations, I was a little nervous about finance because I hadn’t taken calculus or anything analytical for several years. Once I walked out of the Nicholas Center for Corporate Finance and Investment Banking, after talking with the staff and faculty about their specialization, I knew: This is what I want to do.

It hit me that day: Without finance a business will absolutely fail. It’s not just about numbers. You have to have the right focus and direction. Finance is the heart of the business. As with opera, you have to have heart underneath it. That did it for me.

“The Nicholas Center curriculum is set up so that we work as teams on several consulting projects. This is key, because we are getting real-world experience from day one. The first project was marketing-based—how much should a company spend to market a new product? The second was pure finance, all about the cost of capital and looking at target acquisitions. I worked on an analysis for a company on whether a potential acquisition target was actually a good fit, financially and otherwise. My final project involved analyzing effects of negative press on a prescription drug’s royalty stream.

“My goal is to work in Italy. I have been working with four different Nicholas Center board members, all of whom have contacts in Europe. They’ve been very receptive and responsive, very helpful to me in my desire to connect with a firm there.”