Cynthia Maletz had two reasons for pursuing the Bentley MBA: Her career and her daughter. The two may seem separate, but for Maletz, they’re very much connected.
“I not only want to tell my very young daughter about powerful, capable and smart women in the workplace, I want to provide a direct role model and example for her,” Maletz says.
That example meant developing on an already successful design career at Adidas in Germany, to focus on how to achieve a more strategic role within an organization. Instead of remaining in an executional role, she wanted to develop her strengths in problem solving, planning, and strategy, targeting a management role—but admits she didn’t yet have the concrete knowledge or experience to get there.
“I always had an intuitive knowledge of business centric issues, but I lacked the vocabulary to integrate this into problems or opportunities I was facing at work. I also was constantly pigeonholed: since I had a design degree, no one thought I could understand a financial rollup, or a margin challenge or nuances in regional marketing tactics. As someone who has multiple strengths in various divergent areas, this was a continual frustration.”
She knew that an MBA would get her there, and chose Bentley because the program approached business in a way that reflected her own career: fusing the creativity of a studio with the practicality and strategy of management.
A large part of her experience was the travel component. She recalls a study trip to Greece to learn how companies were navigating complete uncertainty with the Greek debt crisis. “The people we spoke with were dealing with incredibly stressful, uncertain, painful, difficult situations, and they had the grace and openness to spend time discussing their challenges with us in an incredibly humble way.”
In South Africa, students worked first-hand with micro businesses navigating the unique cultural landscape of the country. She says that local professors revealed particularities of operating a business in a very different context from what she was familiar with (multinational corporations based out of the U.S. or Western Europe).
Maletz shares the top three skills she gained through the program:
Understanding of financial realities. “Although I innately understood money before the MBA, I can now concretely capture the repercussions of missing a margin, or weakening sales, or the value of a home run product.”
Fluent vocabulary. “Previously, I could talk confidently about product development. Post-MBA, I can extend that conversation to multiple parts of the business.”
Understanding of complexity. “This isn’t a very tangible “skill”, per se, but I can more easily approach a problem from multiple points of view, leading to a more thorough conclusion or solution.”
Maletz also adds that Bentley’s career services team was integral to her success post-degree. “They worked with our cohort throughout the year making sure we were making the most of networking and interviewing opportunities along the way. I learned so much about the interviewing, hiring, and search process through the career services team that I’ll continue to use in the future.”
New Directions
Today, Maletz is the technology and innovation merchandising manager at New Balance, working hand in hand with the footwear product management team. She says that her role “brings strategy to New Balance’s technology and platform rollout. It’s a link between the innovation teams, who work several years out from product launch, and seasonal product teams, who are working much closer to market.”
Her day is a balance of talking about high-level direction with product and innovation leadership; crunching through PowerPoint and Excel to make strategic sense of what the company wants to push for in future launch seasons; and working with individual product teams to align tech application and execution.
“I also touch various disciplines within the organization to ensure that the footwear innovation direction we’re laying out aligns with how we’re talking to the consumer through marketing, supports how we’re assorting the range to our customers, and drives viable product claims that the research teams and legal teams can support,” she adds.
Maletz points back to the MBA as helping her “have a seat at the strategy table”—leveraging her knowledge and experience in the footwear industry and shifting disciplines away from design. “This is obvious,” she adds, “but I also saw a salary increase to a degree that would not have been possible without the additional credential.”
As for her professional growth post MBA: “I have increased empathy for upper management,” she says. “Coming from the lower ranks, upper management can seem like a mystery that never does anything right. The Bentley MBA shed light on the challenges of being in charge, what can get sacrificed and why, and the opportunities this affords to people who might not yet be in charge.”
And for those considering an MBA to develop their own management style: “Reflect on what you want to do post-MBA, as this will affect which type of program is right for you. If you’re considering the Bentley MBA, be sure you’re willing to continually work through the collaborative nature of the program. You can’t just sit back and be complacent and expect to learn a lot. You should be ready to do some digging on your own.”