Will Caudle, MBA Candidate 2008

The chalk exploded against the blackboard. Professor of Finance John Strong was making a point, and his passion got the best of his writing implement. Mason School MBA candidate, Will Caudle, will never forget how the professor combined brilliance with passion, and could make a great story out of anything financial. Will worked eleven and a half years before deciding to get his MBA -- he started a new career and needed to bridge the gap between technology and finance. After a careful evaluation of the top programs, he opted for the Mason School at William & Mary and has been smiling ever since.

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Julia Christenson, MBA Candidate 2008

2004 – “Crisis communications” was a term that Julia Christenson heard in school as an undergrad, but she had no idea what it really meant until she was the Midwest Marketing Specialist for Marsh, the biggest insurance brokerage firm in the country. In 2004, when Marsh was charged with fraud by the New York Attorney General’s office, the company lost hundreds of customers, fired over 8,000 employees and had its stock plummet over 50 percent. Left to pick up the pieces and repair the brand on a local and regional level, Julia came to the conclusion that nothing in her undergraduate school experience could prepare her for the challenges she was facing. She needed more. She needed an MBA.

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Enrique Sanchez-Rivera, MBA 2007

2004, Year One. The front page of the Virginia Gazette read -- “Business Student Has a Hot Line of Swim Suits.”  A picture of Enrique Sanchez-Rivera and a swimsuit model accompanied the headline. Three years before he entered the MBA program at the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary, Enrique and his sister founded La Isla Couture, a swimsuit and apparel manufacturing business in Cali, Colombia. Business was good from the start, but Enrique knew he could grow it only if he learned the subtleties of marketing and financial analysis.

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Benjamin Story, MBA Candidate 2008

Iraq, 2005 – The epiphany came to Lieutenant Benjamin Story as he sat on the hood of his Humvee. Through the smoke and fire of 800 missions, there was always the haunting vision of extreme poverty. In this world, he thought, economics seemed to determine just about everything life could throw at you. And he was determined to find out the how and the why of it. “I’m getting an MBA.”

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