20 Years of Impact & Innovation from Technology Management MBA Alumni: Part 2

For 20 years, the Technology Management MBA (TMMBA) program has fueled disruption, producing talented innovators who have lead the transformation of technology in Seattle and across the globe.

Before “disruption” was the name of the game, before billion-dollar unicorns, before IoT, blockchain and meme stocks, the Technology Management MBA program (TMMBA) was ready to build what’s next — fostering business leaders equipped to take on an ever-changing technological landscape.

To properly celebrate this milestone, we caught up with a Foster TMMBA alumni, one from each graduating class, to learn how the program and the UW Foster community transformed their careers. We look forward to sharing their stories with you over the year.

We are proud to introduce you to our featured alumni. Here is a preview of these conversations.

Doreen Bingo
TMMBA Class of 2010

Now: Engineering Director, Test and Evaluation Engineering, Boeing

Then: Product Test Manager, The Boeing Corporation

I feel so fortunate to have studied in the midst of the banking crisis and recovery. Karma Hadjimichalakis changed our content nearly every week to try to keep up with the latest money policy changes. I don’t think I would understand the world money system nearly as well as I do had I not studied through this lens.

How has the TMMBA curriculum helped advance your career at Boeing?
TMMBA coursework in accounting, finance, and economics have the most direct impact with regards to my career development. Understanding the fundamentals of financial forecasting and market impacts has provided meaningful context for me and it informs my strategies around business investments.

What was it like to learn in a cohort-based program?
Studying and learning in a cohort was a great experience. The cohort design allowed for deep discussion and debate through the program. The diversity of thought in these discussions and leaning into differing views helped me become more open minded. I believe this made me a better teammate and leader. We also built lasting relationships which I leverage often.

Prashant Iyer
TMMBA Class of 2015

Now: Senior Manager, Financial Products, Tesla

Then: Software Developer, Amazon

I work at Tesla and our mission here is “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” and I do — one financial product at a time. The leadership lessons from TMMBA have definitely influenced a long term view of the world, and I look to inspire my team everyday to feel good about themselves and their work.

In what meaningful ways has the TMMBA program helped guide your career?
TMMBA gave me a breadth of business knowledge that helps me better understand how my business functions fit as a part of a whole, and how the different organizations need to come together to deliver concurrent growth.

The benefits often come to me in snapshots. While solving a problem at work, I often realize that I had been exposed to that particular type of problem in one of my classes, which allows me to reflect back and dig into the various possible solutions and approaches.

Finance, accounting and marketing classes were definitely beneficial early on, but organizational structure, leadership and powerful presentations have had recurring benefits.

Is there something you learned during the program that has really stayed with you?
“Tradeoffs — it’s only a tradeoff if you consciously optimize for one choice while consciously being suboptimal for the other choice.”

This stayed with me as I am often required to make decisions. It’s easy to take the middle ground but that leads to suboptimal outcomes for both choices. Optimizing for one choice, especially if you are right, is more rewarding!

Jim Berg
TMMBA Class of 2020

Director, Scientific Operations, Allen Institute

Then: Sr. Manager Allen Institute

The program in general focuses on teamwork, empathy, and communication. It has made me a better team member in my family and community. When you multiply that by all of the TMMBA graduates, it has a measurable impact.

The Dean of the Foster School, Frank Hodge, has centered our school purpose around our ability to “Better Humanity.” How has what you learned in the program helped you improve the human experience?
The TMMBA program gave me the tools to be a strong leader in my current position as a director at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a non-profit research institute focused on understanding the mechanisms in the brain that underly complex decision-making. Our work will directly lead to improved therapeutics for psychiatric diseases.

How has the TMMBA community enriched your career?
In my role now I’m lucky enough to have a TMMBA alum from 2005 as a mentor in the adjacent Institute of Immunology. It is great to have TMMBA in common and it really helped in forming our professional relationship. Plus, I have met so many great people, now friends, from my TMMBA experience. I have people to turn to when I have a problem to solve – it is fantastic!

Kayode Dada
TMMBA Class of 2006

Now: Vice President, Product Experience, Bloomberg Industry Group

Then: Lead Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Decoding FOMC meetings minutes, I was fascinated by the Fed meeting minutes prior to the program and what I learned as really helped me to continue to independently access what the Feds are signaling in their meetings.

In what meaningful ways has the TMMBA program helped advance your career?
The TMMBA Program I will say has certainly helped me in making better decision. I am better equipped at looking at market conditions, competitors and other factors that will influence our companies strategies and how to take advantage of those conditions.

Kami LeMonds
TMMBA ’05, Los Altos, California

Director of Games Merchandising, Google

We were just beginning to see the changes in long term employment with one company. More employees were shifting, trying different companies & roles, and not staying put at a single place for a long period of time. A more flexible employment & longer term view on “career” was being discussed, particularly for how employers should respond.

What is your current role?
Director of Games Merchandising for Google Play. I manage the global games merchandising team at Google Play. In a nutshell, our job is to help users find the best games on Android.

Do you have another concurrent role you want to tell us about?
I also provide product consulting for the American Youth Literacy Foundation, on their app Funetix, which helps kids learn to read.

In what meaningful ways has the TMMBA program helped advance your career?
The TMMBA program helped me make better decisions, be more objective, & changed my approach to problem solving.

How has the TMMBA community helped to advance your career?
Getting my MBA led me to my next role, and really set me up for future growth. It’s so useful to get out out of your day-to-day role, and step back & discussion how to think differently about leadership and business management. I really appreciated the case studies, final project & the opportunity to learn from other great leaders.

The Dean of the Foster School, Frank Hodge, has centered our school purpose around our ability to “Better Humanity.” How has what you learned in the program helped you improve the human experience, big or small?
Hands down, the best part of my current job, and previous roles has been the opportunity to lead and develop others. The TMMBA program set me up to better understand leadership & development. Challenging your own ideas, hearing from others about how they’ve solved management challenges, and understanding more about organizational design have all benefited me throughout my career.

What is something you learned or experienced during the program that has really stayed with you and why?
One experience I had during the program has really been to challenge my own initial ideas or response. In particular, the case studies helped me to adapt my decision making framework. Initial reads of a complex situation are often not fully informed, and benefit from other opinions, data points, & a better understanding of all of the factors.

Flashback: What personal tech (phone, computer, other) were you using at the time?
Can’t recall, but I had the same phone for 7+ years, and it was amazing for what was available at that time.

Flashback: What was the hot NEW tech innovation when you were a student?
The Prius was just coming out when I was a student, and I really wanted to buy one. I waited a bit, but now drive an electric car.

Flashback: What were the hot topics of conversation in class? Tell us how it shaped class
discussions or how you view those discussions in retrospect.
We were just beginning to see the changes in long term employment with one company. More employees were shifting, trying different companies & roles, and not staying put at a single place for a long period of time. A more flexible employment & longer term view on “career” was being discussed, particularly for how employers should respond.

Chaitanya “Chaz” Bangure
TMMBA Class of 2007

Senior Director of Biomedical Platforms & Genomics, Health Futures, Technology & Research Division, Microsoft

The power of teamwork, how leveraging each person’s strengths, experiences and diverse perspectives can lead to better outcomes and important for achieving business goals.

What is your current role?
Senior Director of Biomedical Platforms & Genomics, Health Futures for the Technology & Research Division at Microsoft.

I lead the Biomedical Platforms and Genomics product incubation effort at Microsoft. My team is part of Microsoft’s Healthcare and Life Sciences organization that spans across Microsoft’s Technology & Research and Azure divisions. The charter of the team is to develop and incubate cloud-based solutions for accelerating innovations in biomedical research and precision medicine development.

In what meaningful ways has the TMMBA program helped advance your career? 
Coming from a hard scientific research discipline the TMMBA program really helped build my soft skills. It broadened my outlook, think strategically, take a big picture perspective, and provided me with tools to apply my analytical skills to business scenarios. I was able to develop a level of comfort/confidence stepping into new-ambiguous areas and adapting to changing business priorities. It provided me with a foundation to develop my leadership skills that has been key to my success in the current role as a team lead.

How has the TMMBA community helped to advance your career? 
The individual career coaching sessions were very helpful as I was looking to pivot my career direction. What was instrumental in making it happen was the support from my study team and the connections they were able to make for me.

The Dean of the Foster School, Frank Hodge, has centered our school purpose around our ability to “Better Humanity.” How has what you learned in the program helped you improve the human experience, big or small?  
It is elevating to be part of an organization, Microsoft, whose stated mission is to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” 

Being a team and product lead in and organization where diversity and inclusion, and corporate social responsibility are considered as important as business outcomes provides you an environment to be the best leader you can be and have a positive impact on the team and the communities they are part of. The leadership philosophies I learned during my time in the program and the skills that I developed through observations and practice during my career journey at Microsoft have helped develop my individual leadership style that puts people front and center.

What is something you learned or experienced during the program that has really stayed with you and why?
The power of teamwork, how leveraging each person’s strengths, experiences and diverse perspectives can lead to better outcomes and important for achieving business goals.

Flashback: What was the hot NEW tech innovation when you were a student? 
Amazon formed AWS and launched the first generation of cloud services, Apple released the first iPhone and Tesla announced the prototype of their first all-electric car, the Roadster. It was definitely an exciting time and pivotal point for technology.

Do you have a compelling story to tell about your career that your work history or this survey doesn’t cover? 
It has been quite a professional journey from the time I joined the TMMBA program in 2006 to now. I was a biomedical researcher hoping an MBA would help me make a transition to the business side of the biopharma industry and now lead a product team building a cloud-based platform to enable biomedical researchers at one of the largest technology companies in the world. I would not have written this script any better. 

The TMMBA program opened my outlook to want is possible and gave me the confidence to make a pivot quite late in my professional life. I was able to convince my first team at Microsoft to bring in someone with no technology or business background and stayed with that team for 9+ years learning, growing, and working on products/projects that were seminal to the transformation of the company from a software to a cloud company. About 4 years ago I had the opportunity to join the Healthcare and Life Science group and take on leading a product incubation effort to develop cloud-based solutions for accelerating biomedical research, which has given me the opportunity to connect my two orthogonal careers.

Cortney Jacobsen
TMMBA ’08, Seattle, Washington

Senior Director of Product Management at Aduro

My classmates at TMMBA are trusted colleagues that I feel comfortable reaching out to at any time, no matter how long it has been since we last spoke. We have a shared understanding of each others’ background, knowledge, and passions to excel.

In what meaningful ways has the TMMBA program helped advance your career?
The TMMBA broadened my perspective about business management and leadership. It is difficult to grow and achieve in anything when a vision is lacking, and being exposed to the TMMBA curriculum and experiences provided context to create a bigger vision for my career that I could grow into.

How has the TMMBA community helped to advance your career?
My classmates at TMMBA are trusted colleagues that I feel comfortable reaching out to at any time, no matter how long it has been since we last spoke. We have a shared understanding of each others’ background, knowledge, and passions to excel.

The Dean of the Foster School, Frank Hodge, has centered our school purpose around our ability to “Better Humanity.” How has what you learned in the program helped you improve the human experience, big or small?
My TMMBA leadership course was one of the most impactful courses I took, throughout all of my formal education. The mantra of “people, structure, culture” has always stuck with me, guiding me to always evaluate the bigger picture when it comes to helping an individual or a team succeed – if you don’t have that triad, then your people are not set up for success. I also often recall the decision-making trifecta of the head, the heart, and the gut, which reminds me that making big decisions is not always about data, or what you know, or your past experiences; it is about all of these things, and learning how to balance them in order to make decisions that benefit yourself, your team, your company, and your community.

What is something you learned or experienced during the program that has really stayed with you and why?  
The international trip to Eastern Europe was a wonderful and unique experience. It was a privilege to be exposed to industries and cultures that I never would have otherwise encountered. Observing and learning from other cultures, I’ve found, is one of the best ways to open your mind to possibilities. 

Flashback: What were the hot topics of conversation in class? Tell us how it shaped class discussions or how you view those discussions in retrospect.
I was fortunate to study in the TMMBA program during the real estate market crash, when the Fed was continually raising the interest rates. Having every Economics class discussion focus on real-world current events was a unique way to learn a subject that could otherwise feel nebulous and theoretical.

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Hear from more Foster Technology Management MBA alum in
20 Years of the Foster TMMBA: A Look Back with Our Alumni, Part 2 and Part 3

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