Georgia Tech Scheller MBA students with an engineering background bring unique perspectives to the classroom, and eventually, the wider business landscape. After graduation, they pair an innovative outlook with finely tuned business skills to navigate the interconnected spaces between industries.
There are a lot of great benefits to pursuing an MBA while working fulltime: continued income, continued career growth, and having a work environment where you can immediately apply and solidify MBA learnings. All those benefits were true for me, but the true reason was being pregnant with my daughter, and I thought I better do this now or I won’t want to do this for years.
To be fair, there were many brave souls in my class who went through the program with children of all ages, but I knew for me it would only be harder and harder. I needed income for my daughter and my family, so the ability to pursue an MBA while working full-time was the perfect opportunity for me. It was great to grow in my career as I grew as a student.
There are the obvious challenges: sleep and stress. Working full time and being a student also require two very different head spaces. However, professors are aware of this and work intentionally to support students. There are many opportunities to bring real work challenges into the classroom, and your peers are navigating similar demands and opportunities. As a result, the Executive MBA program and full-time work truly complement each other.
I’m an industrial engineer so I must admit that I approach just about everything with probability and statistics. What is the probability this strategy works out? What is the risk that it doesn’t? What is the upside potential? Industrial engineering lends itself very well to business decisions and MBA course work.
I completed my Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma while going through the Executive MBA program. It was hard to take this on, on top of work and MBA coursework, but I am so glad I did. It was difficult and time consuming, but it made me apply my MBA learnings to work in a very tangible way.
All the above, and math! It was so helpful to have plenty of practice in probability, statistics, and regression models, so I didn’t have to spend extra hours staying up late and learning those things. Instead, I had the opportunity to learn new ways to apply those skills that have been very helpful to me in my work.
I think the MBA is the best place to build your finance, leadership, and marketing knowledge. We took the Highland Ability Battery at the beginning of the program, which was a great way to learn some of my learning and leadership preferences. Using that tool was a good way to see where I was and where I was going to need the most work. The programs and professors were good at meeting us where we’re at and helping us build on our skills until we reached the level we needed to be at.
My MBA classmates were absolutely fabulous. We still have an active WhatsApp group, and I think a message comes through at least every day. All those people have huge networks, not to mention they are fun people to talk to. If someone knows someone looking for a job, they will often send that resume to the group. If someone in our group is looking for a job they let us know, and we reach out to our networks.
We have built a great community; many will be friends for life. My husband and I commuted 3.5 hours to attend the program, so these are not friends of convenience. They are just good friends!
I have always been drawn to manufacturing and leadership, and the growing role of AI in this space makes it especially exciting. Combining an engineering background with an MBA allows me to operate at the intersection of technology, operations, and strategy — where these disciplines reinforce one another.
Bringing multiple perspectives to complex problems makes the work more engaging and effective. It enables me to understand technical details while also considering business implications, stakeholder needs, and long-term risks. This broader viewpoint helps me communicate across functions, anticipate challenges, and identify opportunities that might be missed with a single-discipline background.
It is often viewed as an engineering degree with polish. You retain deep technical expertise but gain the ability to apply it over time through strategic thinking. You can evaluate its impact through an economic lens and lead teams with strong leadership skills. As a result, you are respected for your engineering background and trusted because of the MBA.
Get through it. It is incredibly difficult to juggle everything, and when you are in the middle of it, that can feel like all you think about. In the end, though, you will come away with more friendships, richer insights, and deeper knowledge than you ever expected going into the program. Make it through, and you will be incredibly proud. You will continue to grow and build on the foundation you set during the program throughout your career and your lifetime.
AI. Surprise, surprise. But it’s true. It may be trendy, but some of it is sticking, and it is changing the way we work and learn faster than anything that has come before.
My engineering background has trained me to break complex problems into their underlying components and to understand the “why” behind how systems function. While this analytical mindset is often associated with technical work, it is equally valuable in business leadership.
Rather than applying leadership principles at face value, I tend to examine why specific approaches work and the conditions under which they are most effective. This deeper understanding allows me to adapt my leadership style to different situations, evaluate trade-offs, and design solutions that are both practical and sustainable.
By approaching leadership as a system to be understood—not simply a set of rules to follow—I can consider multiple pathways to the same goal. This flexibility enables me to lead diverse teams, navigate complex organizational challenges, and drive consistent results even as conditions change.