Alumni

Jennifer Wei

Senior Manager in Operations - Here
MEM ‘14

Jennifer Wei is a Senior Manager in Operations at Here, the industry leader in mapping technologies for in-dash navigation, now a subsidiary of Mercedes, BMW and Audi. Her previous position was as a Consultant at Accenture and prior to the MEM degree she was a Senior Mechanical Engineer at Motorola Solutions. Alongside her MEM degree, Jennifer also has a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University.

She quit her job at Motorola Solutions to pursue her MEM degree full-time, and she regards it as one of the best decisions of her life. The program allowed her to pursue entrepreneurial efforts such as starting up the Student Advisory Board and organizing multiple student/industry competitions. The connections she made during her time at MEM are relationships she hopes to maintain for life, which also have led to multiple job offers. Also with a working student body, she found it convenient to get insight into potential employers as most likely one of her peers was working at the firm or knew someone working at the firm.

Her fondest memory of the program was her last Negotiations class. As a joke, someone sent her a slip of paper saying she may have to negotiate for her final grade in the class. Being a goody two shoes, Jennifer left class to go to the bathroom to start prepping for the 'negotiation' only to find out that at the end of class, those that received this slip of paper were simply asked to stand for a round of applause for completing their final class in the MEM program.

Jennifer had a variety of favorite classes based off of different criteria. The most useful class was Business Process Change and Managerial Analytics. The most engaging class was Negotiations. The best content in a class was Marketing. The class she wishes she took was Leadership.

Jennifer believes students should not underestimate the power of a MEM degree. Students will most likely have to educate their audience on exactly what a 'MEM' is but the opportunity to sell it can have big payoffs! In the current world of connected devices, cars and homes, how can anyone argue against the power of not only understanding technology but having the skills to manage teams and lead within them? The enigma around a technical management degree (people still don’t believe engineers with communication skills exist) allows room for opportunity. She feels people already have a pre-conceived notion of what an MBA candidate offers. The flexibility and novelty of the MEM degree allows students to explain exactly what you bring to the table.