Cooper Wrona, MM '21
Curiosity has always been a quality that marked Cooper Wrona’s academic career. From his experiences in undergrad as a psychology student to leading his team at Marketing-ish as a graduate business student, Cooper’s curiosity and eagerness to implement positive change have opened up a world of possibilities for him.
As an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, Cooper recognized that his interest in fostering relationships went much deeper than general social interactions with his peers. Invested in maximizing the quality of individual well-being and company structures, he decided to pursue a psychology degree with a focus in positive and organizational psychology, which he supplemented with an entrepreneurship minor. Both degrees gave him insight into company structure in terms of how, why, and what companies did to ensure employees flourished individually while maintaining positive relationships.
But Cooper realized something as his undergraduate experience came to an end: his degrees gave him the know-how to analyze how people work, but he didn't feel prepared to put those ideas into practice.
I finished up undergrad and felt a bit like a construction worker who went to the job site with his blueprint but left his tools at home,” he said. “I knew what it was I wanted to do; I just didn't know exactly how to do that. And I didn’t feel like I had the hard skills to be able to jump into an organization and make things happen.
Cooper wanted to bridge the gap between what he'd learned in undergrad and the working world. He decided the Michigan Ross Master of Management Program would be the best graduate degree program to help him apply what he had learned to real-life scenarios. Cooper valued that the program dedicated itself to students from non-business backgrounds interested in strengthening their business knowledge. Already familiar with the welcoming culture of U-M, Cooper pointed to the highly hands-on curriculum at Michigan Ross as a critical aspect that drew him to the program.
Finding His Voice as a Leader
After his acceptance to the program, things started moving quickly. In Cooper’s words, in the summer semester he “hit the ground running.” Core classes kicked off the curriculum, which allowed students to build up their business knowledge across a variety of disciplines. “You get to touch on all of the different departments within an organization and the different ways these organizations interact, and at first, it seems disparate or not connected,” he said. “But when you come out on the other side, it’s amazing how everything begins to overlap.”
Marketing became an immediate interest of Cooper’s as the semester pushed on, and he opted to take electives that bridged his interests in behavioral sciences and marketing.
Through a social media marketing course, Cooper became involved with the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross, which explores how industries re-imagine themselves in digital environments. Led by Professor Marcus Collins and Professor John Branch, Yaffe prepares students to operate in digital economies through guest speaker seminars and digital projects.
I had such a mic drop moment — I spent four years of undergrad learning to understand how people move, and behave and interact, and suddenly all of that directly applied to what I was implementing at Yaffe and learning in my classes at Ross.
His experience with Yaffe also led him into a leadership role. Cooper led a team of about 15 students as the editor-in-chief of Marketing-ish, a digital newsletter dedicated to providing thought-provoking marketing content for its readers.
His role as editor-in-chief at Marketing-ish challenged him to reflect on his previous decisions, something that isn’t always easy. “At times, I would try to take on too many things, and I learned through that, okay, I need to trust these people around me because they’ve proven themselves time and time again that they can come through with deliverables and complete a project,” he said. Working together to reach a common goal and lifting each other up is what Cooper says did wonders for his team, especially during times of stress. Jumping on Zoom calls to help with problems, delegating tasks, and building up a content schedule allowed the team to grow and flourish together. “I had a busy schedule, and so did everyone else — but seeing people get involved on their own volition showed me that people cared and had as much stake in things as I did.”
Cooper says that through Marketing-ish, he and his team were able to create an accessible, approachable marketing newsletter, one through which they actively interacted with subscribers and built authentic subscriber relationships, a goal he set out to accomplish from the start of his time at Michigan Ross. “Throughout this process, it became clear that marketing isn’t just the 32nd floor of a Fortune 500 company: it's the Girl Scouts that you walk by who are selling cookies. It's your friend on Facebook, who's trying to promote their art,” he said. “It's all of these little things, and there are commonalities, and frameworks, and models, and theories that you can apply to these nuanced little situations to begin to understand how they work in congruence with one another.”
So What Next?
Through his work with Yaffe and Professor Marcus Collins, Cooper says he has set out to continue making disruptive, positive change in any role he enters. “Finding a company to work for, one that understands people from an ideological level and reflects their beliefs, is somewhere I want to be. I think it’s a compelling strategy that the marketing industry as a whole is just now becoming privy to.”
Cooper believes that students interested in promoting new conversation and creativity should highlight their individuality when applying to the Master of Management program.
Don't be afraid to show how you're unique and how you have a different perspective that maybe hasn't been heard before.
“It’s a trait that's highly valued in the Master of Management [program], and it's made clear that it's appreciated throughout the program. So don’t be afraid to show who you are and where your passions lie. It will pay off.”