Colin Raney (T'07) was last year's William G. McGowan Scholar. (McGowan organized MCI Communications and helped to create a competitive telecommunications market.) The McGowan scholarship is awarded based on a student essay, faculty recommendation, academic performance, involvement in campus and community activities, leadership abilities, and character. Raney received an $18,000 scholarship.
How did your MBA road lead to Carnegie Mellon?
Through San Francisco. I graduated from the University of North Texas and after a short stint as a consultant, I landed at a small software company building communications software in San Francisco. I was there six years, met my wife, and eventually came here because it had a great business school. Plus, I was interested in design and knew there was a good design school right across the sidewalk from the business school. I definitely wasn't looking for a traditional MBA. I didn't apply to Cal. I didn't apply to Harvard. I didn't apply to Stanford, all those places where you get cookie-cutter MBAs.
Talk about your future plans.
I recently accepted a job with Ideo in San Francisco. They're kind of a maverick firm because they have a different approach to problem solving. They take a user-centered approach to problem solving, observing how people act and understand how those actions affect the products and services they use. Among the many things, they developed the first production mouse for Apple in the early 80s.
What responsibilities should MBA graduates remember in today's workforce?
You need to put things into a framework, even as simple as: "Would I be comfortable telling my mother I did this?"
The Tepper School has helped me become ...
A confident leader.
