What Is Your Next Move?

THE AVERAGE AMERICAN CHANGES JOBS 12 times, and 20% — or more — make an even bigger work-life change: leaping to a new career. Not all career changes are that dramatic. But nearly all professionals, at one milestone moment or another, will make a significant career change, whether it’s a strategic move to a second job, a midcareer pivot fed by more schooling, or an experienced professional shifting outward to give back — perhaps by helping others advance in their careers. 

People engineer their careers “at any stage and at any age,” says Ellen Bartkowiak, assistant director of McCombs Alumni Career Management. “It’s continuous. You’re always thinking, ‘What is my next move?’” 

She wants McCombs alumni to know that no matter when or how they pursue a career change, their alma mater can help. Alumni Career Management has internationally certified career coaches and other free resources and services for all types of trajectories. Career coaching for students also is available across all McCombs programs.

“Having that supportive person and that objective person can save you time, money, and energy,” Bartkowiak says. “They can go back to people who know them and understand them and take advantage of free resources,” such as one-on-one coaching, webinars, and in-person events.

McCombs officially launched its alumni career management office during the COVID-19 pandemic in the summer of 2021. Since then, more than 2,000 alumni have received services. Requests are increasing, but it’s “kind of a hidden gem,” Bartkowiak says.

The No. 1 request for career management is for a coach. Some seek help with their résumés and interview preparation. Many of them attend events to learn, have fun, and network in person. McCombs Connect is an online, virtual site exclusive to the McCombs community where thousands make personal and professional ties, including gaining access to mentoring, community connections, and  alumni career resources.

“We provide a framework, a structure, a sounding board, and resources to start where you are and recognize that a change wants to happen,” Bartkowiak says.

The career management staff asks questions to see whether job seekers are truly ready to explore their next move, assess their strengths and opportunities, and set goals. “A coach helps you unlock your potential to reach your goals,” Bartkowiak says.

In that process, some alumni decide to pursue a graduate degree, says Stefani Sereboff, senior assistant dean of career management and corporate relations.

“Whether you’re moving on to a second job or 15 years postgraduation and you’re going back to get an MBA, career exploration and connection to your strengths and skills — while knowing your interests and motivators — are important to support your career journey,” Sereboff says.

Most alumni seeking career management services are career switchers or career enhancers, she says. Sometimes, they seek assistance because changing market conditions necessitate a job change. Others seek to fulfill long-held aspirations. “Our teams help them evaluate how they can make a pivot successfully throughout their careers,” Sereboff says.

The hardest move is reinvention, she says, “changing their industry, function, and location at the same time. You have to articulate how that can happen, and you’re assessing all that it takes to change all three of those.”

Reinvention may be a goal when a person enrolls in the MBA program, she says, but not always. “Every career journey is different. Everyone has their own expectations and goals for their career and their own desire for growth. We meet them where they are to support their goals,” Sereboff says.

In the following stories, four alumni whose journeys occurred at different but specific points in their career trajectories found assistance from McCombs Career Management and took a leap forward.

Younger workers often seek employers whose values match their own. That was important to McCombs graduate Annie Wang, who was early in her career but wanted a position in which she could pursue her passion to help cultivate a more sustainable world for future generations.

“That second job is important,” Sereboff says. “There are a lot of skills that develop that will help the individual be successful throughout a career. That’s starting that career trajectory.”

With help from McCombs, Wang found what she wanted in that crucial second job.

Finding a second job — and her niche 

As a McCombs undergraduate, Annie Wang, BBA ’20, considered how she might have a career that would honor her desire to create a more sustainable world “by tackling some of the largest challenges we face today,” she says, “like climate and inequality.”  

She took her time turning her passion into a new job.  

“I don’t think you need to have a clear-cut path, even if sometimes that’s what feels most comfortable,” says Wang, an investor with the growth equity team at Generation Investment Management, founded by former Vice President Al Gore. “I think just going down the rabbit holes of what you’re curious about can lead you to really interesting places.” 

A double major with degrees in international relations and global studies, as well as finance from the Canfield Business Honors Program, Wang began preparing when she entered college for a career that would merge her passion for sustainability with her fields of study. As a student, she got involved in McCombs programs. In her first job after graduation, she again tapped McCombs resources to make a critical leap to what came next. 

Wang read extensively about sustainability and scoured LinkedIn for McCombs alumni in the field, cold-messaging them for advice. All the while, she was learning traditional financial investment — first during her time at McCombs and later in her first job, with global investment bank PJT Partners Inc. 

Wang traces her interest in sustainability in part to growing up in Chengdu, China, and traveling back often after immigrating with her family to the United States. She witnessed China’s meteoric economic growth that brought many people out of poverty and saw how broader change could transform lives. 

“There are a lot of things you can’t do if you have to worry about feeding yourself and finding shelter and making sure you’re healthy,” she says. “I became curious, how can you leverage the vast resources of the financial markets to help people build a better life?”  

Wang credits McCombs and the Canfield Business Honors Program career services office with putting in place the educational building blocks to begin her career in finance and transition to a sustainability-related role. She worked with the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema on its sustainability initiatives as part of the Longhorn Impact Fellowship program, which helped cement her interest while still in school.  

She also gained valuable experience through her four years on the Texas Undergraduate Investment Team, a student-run investment organization, supported by alumni involvement. “I got to invest actual money through incredibly interesting and intense debates with other students. This was a great, tangible way to learn about finance and investing versus more theoretical case studies that you might find in the classroom,” Wang says.   

Next, with help from the leadership program Wall Street for McCombs, Wang earned an internship at PJT Partners. After the firm hired her, Wang says she gained the skills to become a good investor. 

In 2021, Wang married her skills with her passion when she joined Generation. She works with a portfolio of mission-driven companies and researches sustainability issues. Recently, she was part of a team that led a $100 million investment in Spring Health, a mental health company serving more than 10 million people worldwide.  

Wang says she enjoys “working with companies that care a lot about what they do and do it really well. They are making a dent on the world — and that, to me, is always the most exciting thing.”

– Alice Popovici

For some professionals, the moment comes when they realize they are ready to advance to a new role, but they can be stuck or pigeon-holed by their employer. These people push on in a variety of ways: with help from a mentor, professional development training, or an advanced degree. 

Sebastian Gomez made that jump by leaving his job and earning a McCombs MBA. Along the way, he says, he received crucial support from McCombs, including help refining his résumé, and career counseling.

Filling a Gap With an MBA

Sebastian Gomez, MBA ’22, earned a bachelor’s degree in history and literature from Harvard University a decade ago. He was the first in his family to go to college, having moved to the U.S. at age 3 from Colombia. He grew up in New York City. 

Now, Gomez is across the country in Seattle, working for Amazon as a senior product marketing manager. But to get the position he’s held for the past two years, Gomez followed a career path aided by an MBA from Texas McCombs.  

Gomez’s first job after earning his undergraduate degree was managing an after-school academic program for middle schoolers at the Steppingstone Foundation. He then moved to the American Institutes for Research, where he worked on large-scale research projects for state and federal education agencies. While working with EdTech companies at the nonprofits, Gomez wanted to expand his career into the technology world but was hitting a wall. 

“I thought with EdTech companies, I could leverage my education background and get into some new function―whether it be marketing or product management,” he says. “What ended up happening is I would reach the final round of interviews and hear, ‘You have the educational experience, just not the marketing acumen or the product management experience.’” 

Gomez says hearing that his gap in marketing experience was holding him back, he realized he needed an MBA. 

“I felt I had put myself in a corner in how people would perceive me with my résumé,” Gomez says. “An MBA would be a better tool and open up more opportunities.” 

Gomez got his career-change jump-start through a friend from Harvard who was from Texas and had earned a McCombs MBA. Gomez applied during Fall 2019 and was accepted for Fall 2020. He moved to Austin a month before classes began and discovered the business school already was offering support services that he could immediately access. 

“As you fill out enrollment paperwork, you also get contacted by one of the career counselors who lead the sections of that class, a strategic career planning course. There are milestones throughout the summer — first-round edits to your résumé get uploaded and you get feedback. Also, they have students go through career exploration exercises,” he says.  

Aside from coursework, Gomez credits the McCombs MBA Marketing Fellows Program as particularly beneficial because of hands-on, specialized experiences. He and his peers collaborated in small groups to solve real cases submitted weekly from local companies.

And, he says career counselors checked in with him on job postings and recruiting, which helped him land the Amazon role. Now, Gomez says it’s up to him to increase his expertise on the job. 

“The first two years I’ve been exposed to a lot of new projects and ways of thinking,” he says. “The next part of the career is how do I take the skills I’m developing and apply them to bigger challenges.” 

– Sharon Jayson

Not everyone ready for a career switch and wanting an MBA can leave their jobs for full-time schooling. Dimitri Hughes, a mechanical engineer in Houston, wanted a career switch but could not quit his job and move to Austin to pursue an MBA. McCombs offered a solution.

Bringing an MBA to where students live

Dimitri Hughes, MBA ’17, grew up wanting to be an engineer. The Connecticut native earned a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and doctorate — all in mechanical engineering. 

But after six years in his chosen field, Hughes says he realized he wanted to “shift from detail design to something that afforded me the opportunity to drive value for the broader business.” 

Fast forward to now. The McCombs MBA alumnus—yet another degree for Hughes—is a partner in the Dallas office of Boston Consulting Group (BCG). While his work is highly technical, he is only peripherally involved in engineering. He joined the global consulting firm in 2017 in its operations practice, where he focuses on improving operations for clients’ companies by directing strategy, cost efficiency, and management. 

His was a career switch of major proportion. But he was drawn to make the change because he believed that working as a consultant, he’d have a greater impact on strategic decision-making than working as a mechanical engineer.

Hughes’ pivot demonstrates that many careers, even successful ones, are nonlinear. Hughes’ first position after graduate school was with GE (General Electric) Aviation in Cincinnati. After about four years, he moved between divisions.

His job with the company’s power business took him to Houston. It was there he considered changing course.

“I reached out to some of the leaders in my business unit — engineering and HR leaders —  and communicated my interest in changing the trajectory of my career,” Hughes says.

Their response suggested he would have to remain in his role for several more years, and that’s when “I took my career into my own hands,” Hughes says.

That conversation at GE was early in 2015. Because he says he had an interest in business school, Hughes looked at his options. 

“Given my family situation, being married with one child, I knew I couldn’t stop working and go full time,” he says. Now, he and his wife have three children.

Hughes’ online research took him to the Texas McCombs Weekend MBA at Houston for working professionals. He was accepted for Fall 2015. Professors traveled to Houston every other weekend for classes Friday afternoon/evening and all day Saturday. Hughes worked full time at GE and spent 12 hours every other weekend in class to complete the program in two years, just as full-time MBA students do.

He credits Texas McCombs for helping him achieve his pivot. He says all the services provided to full-time MBA students were afforded to those in the weekend program.

“BCG did recruit at UT, but it was a limited presence,” he says. “They held a few events on campus that I attended. I also proactively reached out to UT alums at BCG, and that’s what opened up the opportunity.”

In addition to his current role as a BCG partner, Hughes leads his firm’s Diverse Talent Accelerator for North America, a program designed to increase diversity at his company’s North American Operations Practice.

Hughes says the career services support during his MBA studies was the most tangible example of how McCombs helped him make his move. UT personnel were on-site when classes were held, and he made the most of those opportunities.

“I signed up every time there was a slot open to review résumés in detail, strategize approaches with all the consulting firms of interest, and I even discussed how to supplement or augment the standard recruiting access,” Hughes says. “They had sessions where the firms come to the schools and you got to meet people. We would talk about what we could do beyond that—reaching out via LinkedIn or any other alumni I could be connected to.”

Hughes realized the nuances of being effective as a consultant were not the same skills he developed as an engineer.

“The way that you need to communicate and engage is just different. … It took a lot of practice,” he says. He did more than 100 practice case interviews to prepare for his job interviews.

“I had a session with career services every Friday they were there,” he says. “My view is:  I’m betting on myself, and I can’t afford to lose.”

Hughes says his switch was the right move. 

“The biggest driver of the strategy behind navigating my career is my family,” he says. “A lot of responsibilities come with being a husband and father. I can’t predict how the needs of those roles will change, but they will be the primary driver in my career decisions.”

– Sharon Jayson

Much of the career work professionals do is focused on the steps they must take to advance themselves. But some senior executives, especially ones interested in sharing the knowledge and skills they’ve amassed over decades, often look outward.

“Our MBA students have a strong desire to join boards and help the community at large,” Sereboff says. “We definitely stay very engaged with our students as they become alumni and look forward to them coming back to campus to support our students in a variety of ways.”

Marissa Jarratt has found ways to share her expertise, not only with nonprofits but with the school where she earned her MBA, McCombs. She discovered she not only helped others; she helped herself.

McCOMBS creates lifelong ties as executive-level alumni return to help

Marissa Jarratt leads the marketing, communications, and sustainability teams at 7-Eleven Inc., the world’s largest convenience retailer. As executive vice president and chief marketing and sustainability officer, she says she never envisioned that career path until Texas McCombs changed the course of her life. 

“MBA school was a launch pad,” says Jarratt, BBA ’99, B.A. ’99, MBA ’04. 

And ever since, she has wanted “to make sure I pay it forward.” Jarratt is all in as an alumni volunteer for the school, helping students and graduates advance their careers based on wisdom she has gleaned from her experiences.

The Houston native who moved to Dallas at age 10 and never left (except to attend UT) started out with bachelor’s degrees in finance and Spanish and went to work in the telecom industry. But after a few years, Jarratt sought a change. 

“I wanted to figure out how to best utilize my talents in a way that I enjoyed and could find professional success and make an impact,” she says. 

While her finance degree allowed her analytical skills to shine, Jarratt also wanted to nourish her creative side. She is an arts lover and since 2020 has volunteered with the Dallas Museum of Art. As a UT undergrad, she was a DJ at KVRX, UT’s student-run radio station.

When Jarratt decided to make a change, she thought, “What am I good at? What do I enjoy? And, what’s needed in a business? I felt I could do more if I merge the analytical and creative sides of my brain,” she says. 

Jarratt decided an MBA would help her gain the knowledge and skills to re-engineer her career. She dove into the business school graduate experience, and that involvement led to her decadeslong devotion to Texas McCombs.

“While I was an MBA, I met many alumni who were actively engaged with us students. That got me thinking about what it means to be an alum, and it’s about contributing back to the school,” she says. “Upon graduation, I joined the MBA alumni advisory group. I’ve been involved ever since.”

During the past 20 years, she has supported McCombs in many ways, from serving on various councils (Dean’s Advisory Council, Master of Marketing Advisory Council, MBA Alumni Advisory Council) to guest lecturing to serving as a mentor to students. She has helped with mock interviews, hired students as interns and full-time employees, and hosted capstone consulting projects.

After all, she says, it was a McCombs graduate — working at Frito-Lay Inc. — who inspired her to consider marketing and branding “as a wonderful career for someone with an analytical and creative mind.” That led Jarratt to a Frito-Lay internship.

“That changed my life,” Jarratt says. “I found my lane.”

Jarratt worked there for 14 years and at its parent company, PepsiCo, as well as at Dean Foods. She started at 7-Eleven in 2019.

Her many career recognitions include being named to Forbes magazine’s World’s 50 Most Influential CMOs for three consecutive years, including 2024.

Being an engaged alumna not only helps others; it helps her personally and professionally because Jarratt can engage with alumni peers, McCombs faculty and staff members, and students who provide new perspectives.

Jarratt was named a McCombs Hall of Fame Rising Star in 2017. Since then, she has not only helped her alma mater, but also served on nonprofit boards.

“I want to be able to positively impact others—both in my company and in the wider world. McCombs is definitely part of that,” she says.

— Sharon Jayson