Be careful what you wish for!

 

I came running from my first day of B-school claiming I wanted to have a career in Operations! All it took was watching a BMW video on the big screen? Or was it Amazon fulfillment center? I do not remember, it was just spectacular watching something being built and the engineer in me was howling... 

The next day was apparently consulting, and somewhere I settled on marketing or to be more specific - Brand Management... Like love, it is hard to pin point when it exactly happened :)

So this is what I wished for being Brand Manager in the food industry (being the big foodie that I was, somehow it seemed a perfect fit). I started working diligently towards it...

I started my toil from the career services, Sophia in her usual direct style told me - You are as international as it gets, this quest for getting into the CPG industry is not going to be easy... and for some reason that only strengthened my resolve to pursue brand.

I networked aggressively, reaching out to every Tepper senior who had ever worked in CPG. Managed to find a super helpful senior in Nestle and with her continuous support got an internship in Nestle. Sophia was beyond thrilled, she was elated that I was the first Tepper student to secure an internship at Nestle. I was having dreams of launching the next Maggi flavour as well ❤

Anyway, life happened (literally! Got pregnant with my son..) and decided to give up the Nestle offer for Heinz in Pittsburgh. Had a wonderful time being a Brand Management Intern which is termed as a CEO of your company for the right reasons... I enjoyed the brand positioning, awareness, sales campaigns, and even visiting the factory. Though I was glad working on the digital strategy I did not have to taste the frozen food under the TGIF umbrella, being a vegetarian...

All good things have to come to an end, and my internship did too. And along with a lot of learning, I also had a 6 month pregnant belly which ensured I could not sit for my campus placements. And hubby dear had an assignment in New Orleans (NOLA). Given a choice between Houston and NOLA, we decided to pick the latter! Clearly thinking of the food choices, and Mardi gras ... not like the new parents we were soon going to be

It was not easy to find a job in the Big Easy, thanks to my single internship in Brand Management! Again my legendary networking skills came to the rescue and I managed to get into a wonderful family food company with awesome brands under it. 

Long story short, I got into Brand Management again... And connecting the whole story back to the topic... "Be careful what you wish for!.. I would only say wish for the moon and the stars... all of them are at your arm's length if you are willing to work for it.


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