“My goal in life is to make the biggest social contribution I can.  The Merage School of Business helped me identify that the best place for me to do that was Google.”

Vital Statistics
	Graduating Year: 2007
	Hometown: Hunter, New York
	Undergraduate and Previous Work Experience: Cornell University, Manager, Acceleration Studies Foundation
	Major: International Business/Organizational Behavior
	Internship while in the Program: Consulting Associate, Sibson Consulting
	Position upon Graduation: Compensation Analyst, Google, Mountain View, CA
	Extracurricular Activities: Merage Student Association (helped implement the first school-wide satisfaction survey), HROB Club
	Just for Fun: Hiking, throwing vegetarian dinner parties, traveling, running, organizing an annual goal-setting and hiking retreat for futurists
	OC Favorite Places: San Clemente State Park – an absolutely gorgeous and peaceful beach

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I Wanted To Be On the Tech Coast I’m originally from upstate New York. And I while I know there are great schools on the East Coast, I really wanted to be in California. The opportunities here are endless. In Orange County alone, there are so many amazing companies in biotech, healthcare and wealth management. It’s such a vibrant business community. When I moved here and began the program, I just couldn’t believe that there hasn’t been a thriving business school in this area before. CEOs from dynamic organizations are within a five-minute drive and we have constant opportunities to meet and interact with them.

My Best Hands-On Experience At the Merage School, the professors make sure that you get very hands-on. They emphasize the importance of teamwork, planning and flexibility. One of the most memorable experiences I had was consulting with the marketing department of a large format printer company. We did a social network analysis of their department. In order to do this, we had to thoroughly examine their organizational chart. It’s one thing to look at an org chart in a textbook – it’s entirely another to see its function at a real company and further, to be able to make recommendations on how to improve the structure of a department. The best part was they said that we really helped them out and adopted some of our ideas.

"CEOs from dynamic organizations are within a five-minute drive and we have constant opportunities to meet and interact with them." Iveta Brigis

Google, Mountain View, CA

A Choice for My Future The internship opportunity made available to me by the Merage School directly helped me obtain my full-time position at Google. However, because of my association with the school, I also had other job offers and options. It gave me a choice for my future – what’s more, I got my top choice.