Eva Maria Pino, MM ‘18

As an undergraduate student at UCLA, Eva’s passion for music led her to another passion: business. She worked her way up from a DJ at UCLA Radio to assistant general manager — while racking up enough credits to graduate in three years.

“My last year I was in charge of 15 managers for the departments and about 250 people. It was crazy, but I liked it. It was great to get management and business experience.”

Eva also loves gaining real-world experience in the Ross Master of Management Program. “There’s a point to every class — it’s work you would actually be doing in business. For social media marketing, we did a marketing strategy project for Best Buy using the same software Professor Marcus Collins uses at Doner. In my marketing analytics class, we did statistical analysis to determine what recommendations we would give to Jet Blue to target millennials.”

It’s applicable, and it’s fun.

She looks forward to completing another hands-on challenge: the Capstone MAP course. “We are working with the Association For The Blind And Visually Impaired. They recently lost a big source of funding, so they want us to help find cost savings, determine fundraising strategies, and discover additional sources of revenue. It’s intense, but going well so far.”

The combination of real-world experience and career guidance has given Eva a lot of confidence for the recruiting process. “I’ve been interviewing with huge companies like Amazon and Anheuser-Busch. Coming into the program I never thought I’d even get even close to the door of these companies. Now I know I can do this.”