Graduate Spotlight: Jenna Hagglund

By Judy Ashton

Little did Jenna Hagglund, MBA ’17, know that when she started her MBA at the University of Cincinnati Lindner College of Business, she would land her dream job so quickly.

Three months into her studies, the Lindner Career Services team helped her identify a career path and network with the appropriate people. By Thanksgiving, she had landed a job with Cincinnati-based consumer products giant Procter & Gamble.

“I’m ecstatic about the opportunity,” Hagglund says. “It’s an amazing starting point for my career. I give big props to Lindner Career Services for discussing different career routes with me, strategizing how to get there and connecting me with the P&G recruiter.”

Unfortunately, not all of Hagglund’s dreams have come true. The two-time All-American college volleyball standout joined the professional circuit with Team USA after earning her undergraduate degree in marketing. During the next five years Hagglund lived in five different countries and visited countless others. She played in many tournaments with Team USA and made the roster of the Pan American Games team only to fall short of reaching her Olympic goal in 2016.

Hagglund has since made peace with that shortfall, deciding not to let volleyball define her life. “I knew grad school would be a great transition before jumping into the real world,” she says of her decision to pursue a Lindner MBA. She decided on the University of Cincinnati MBA program because “everyone was invested in my success and helping me achieve my career goals.”

Despite little work experience, the Lindner MBA program allowed Hagglund to bridge her knowledge gap via real-world projects and participation in an international study program. Such experiences helped polish her business acumen and provide her with the confidence to excel in her career.

At Lindner, Hagglund studied in Prague and built a business plan for a renowned European bicycle manufacturer. Though she visited the Czech Republic several times as a volleyball player, returning as an MBA student provided her with the opportunity to “learn about new industries through the lens of another country and culture.”

Her team researched their client company prior to their visit, met with company representatives in Prague to dive deeper into specifics, then conducted a strategic analysis and ultimately provided a recommendation as to whether the company should expand into the United States or reposition its brand and pursue a more niche market.

As part of her MBA capstone project, Hagglund and her team analyzed the competitive landscape of their client firm Findlay Market, Ohio’s oldest public market. As part of the project recommendations, her team developed the “Find It At Findlay” marketing campaign to better communicate Findlay Market offerings to downtown residents and workers. “The client loved it and said they will probably implement it,” she says.

Hagglund also learned a lot from a Lean Healthcare course she took with management Professor Rajan Kamath. As part of the class, she partnered with the UC Cancer Institute Clinical Trials Organization as a consultant and developed an acuity scoring matrix to objectively track workloads and the complexities associated with clinical trial protocols.

The Lean Healthcare course experience proved a tremendous help in her MBA capstone project, Hagglund says. “It helped me understand the consultant role and how to communicate with clients and how to develop a road map of what the end goal is and how to get there,” she adds. Though volleyball will always be close to her heart, she’s excited about the future. “Volleyball will always be a big part of who I am, but when I wake up in the morning, it's the business side of things that makes me the most excited now. For me, that's confirmation that getting my MBA, especially at Lindner, was the right choice.

The trend continued this year as the University of Cincinnati Lindner College of Business graduate programs once again received national and international accolades from a variety of media outlets.

The Lindner part-time MBA program earned the highest rankings jump of any MBA program in the United States over the past four years in U.S. News & World Report.

Similarly, the Lindner full-time MBA program earned one of the five largest rankings jumps in the country over the same span of time in U.S. News & World Report.

Both the Lindner full-time and part-time MBA programs are now ranked among the nation’s Top 40 public MBA programs by both U.S. News & World Report and Bloomberg Businessweek.

The Lindner online MBA program may only be a few years old but it continues to establish itself as one of the nation’s finest programs. It was recently ranked among the Top 20 public fully online MBA programs in the United States by U.S. News & World Report and was also ranked one of the Top 20 online MBA programs in North America by CEO Magazine.

Given those credentials, it’s not surprising that enrollment in the online Lindner MBA program increased more than 40% from 2015 to 2016.

The Lindner MBA wasn’t the only online degree to be recognized this year. U.S. News & World Report also ranked Lindner’s online Master of Science in Taxation the No. 4 public graduate online tax program in the United States. Such national acclaim is almost becoming commonplace at the Lindner College of Business as its specialized master’s degrees in Accounting, Applied Economics, Business Analytics, and Finance have all also been recently ranked among the Top Ten programs in the United States.

The school’s recent accolades are being noticed by more and more employers each year as evidenced by the growing number of employers participating in graduate on-campus recruiting efforts and hiring Lindner graduate students.

Lindner graduates are benefiting from the increased employer attention as 2015-16 Lindner MBA graduates enjoyed an average starting salary almost $9,500 above the previous graduating class and a placement rate at graduation that was 2.4% higher than the previous year’s graduates.

Number 34 full-time public MBA program in the nation.
Number 1 in alumni satisfaction among Ohio and Midwest public institutions.
Number 6 in alumni satisfaction among U.S. public institutions.
—Bloomberg Businessweek

Number 34 full-time public MBA program in the nation.
—U.S. News & World Report

Largest rankings jump of any part-time MBA program in the United States over the past four years.
Number 40 part-time public MBA program in the nation.
—U.S. News & World Report

Number 22 part-time public MBA program in the nation.
—Bloomberg Businessweek

Number 1 online MBA program in Ohio.
—U.S. News & World Report

Number 1 online graduate Taxation program in Ohio and the Midwest.
Number 2 online graduate Taxation program among public universities in the nation.
—U.S. News & World Report

Number 18 Masters in Business Analytics program in the world.
Number 7 Masters in Business Analytics program in the country.
—QS World University Ranking