Megan Brunick
Class of 2022
Hometown: Virginia Beach, VA
Undergraduate University: William & Mary
Class Year: 2021
Major/Minor: Business Analytics/History
Employer: Red Ventures
Position: Digital Marketing Analyst
How has the Mason School broadened your exposure to research, innovation, and new technologies?
Last fall, I took a one-credit exploratory class on robotic process automation. The school partnered with UI Path, who generously donated free access to their software for the students. We talked with people from the company and learned the basic ways the software works. The culminated with a presentation about how we could apply this technology to our personal lives or how it could be used on a larger scale. It was a different experience, and it was cool to be a part of.
How did the MSBA program align with your personal and academic goals?
Early on in my freshman year at William & Mary, I learned about the MSBA program through my pre-major advisor. It sounded like a good mixture of creative thinking with a strategic element but also based in mathematics and quantitative research. I had a lot of AP credits and finished my undergrad in three years. I wanted to have a full, four-year college experience, so thought it would be a good idea to earn the MSBA in my fourth year and develop my technical skills further.
How did the school support your professional goals?
I got a product marketing internship the summer between undergrad and grad school at a company called Synopsys. That experience piqued my interest in how data and analytics can be applied to marketing. Many students who come into this program are focused on careers in finance, consulting, and data science at large tech companies, so I was unique in that I knew I wanted to go down a marketing path. My advisor from the Graduate Career Management Center (GCMC) was helpful as I explored a different route than my peers, and as a result, I got a full-time offer this past fall in that field.
What makes William & Mary's program unique?
William & Mary expects a lot out of you. You will be pushed and challenged through assignments and presentations as you develop your hard and soft skills. The MSBA really exposes students to programs like R, Python, and in my case, popular marketing tools like Tableau, SQL, and Alteryx, which will be very applicable to the work I do in my career.
