In 2011, Kate Williams was three years into a financial advising career. The problem: her heart wasn’t.

“I just didn't have a passion for it,” she says.

Fortunately, a stint in the Peace Corps microfinancing female entrepreneurs offered the spark she’d been missing. And it inspired her to get serious about honing her business acumen to help others in the developing world.

Earning an MBA with a focus on corporate social responsibility, she did just that. Kate was recruited by a tech startup after graduation and gained a front row view of how global retailers like Gap and Nike handle sourcing. It was a unique perspective she parlayed into her current role as impact manager at Fair Trade USA.

Today Kate works with the very same Nicaraguan community where she lived during her Peace Corps days. Certifying that the sugar cane used in their rum distillery is fair trade, she’s impacting countless lives throughout the region.

Ryan’s childhood unfolded in a rural Utah community — the kind where the cows outnumber the people. A few months after high school graduation, he left Utah for a much-busier and bustling South Korea where he spent two years as a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints missionary crisscrossing the country.

That international experience was eye opening. Later it inspired him to pursue his International MBA at the Darla Moore School of Business where he’d undertake an immersion in China.

“The MBA was an opportunity to learn strategic thinking, operations, marketing and all the different aspects of business an effective leader needs to understand,” he says. “That my wife and newborn child could join me and share that experience was profound.”

With graduation on the horizon, Ryan learned of a leadership development program with Bank of America from a senior cohort. By the time he donned his cap and gown, he was accepted into the program and still works for the bank today, mitigating the global complexities of information security governance.

“Business school gave me direction,” says Ryan. “I didn’t really have a career before my MBA. I had jobs.”

When Michelle started working as an audit accountant in Maine, it felt like a natural step. She enjoyed finance and knew she’d have ample opportunities to advance in the firm.

But a few years later, the work felt stale and limiting. Though she audited different industries, her work tasks rarely varied. She craved a challenging career that would expose her to new concepts. The kind of job that she knew started with a higher-caliber education. That’s when she decided to enroll at the Moore School.

“I was interested in the one year program because I wanted to get back into the workforce as quickly as possible.”

Michelle spent the next year complementing her finance expertise with advanced business skills. She was thrilled to be recruited by ExxonMobil right on campus.

Today she’s rising through the ExxonMobil ranks and works at the company’s massive Houston campus. She is currently working on a new trading project, a global effort that has taken her to India, Brussels, Argentina, Brazil and Italy in the first six months of 2018.

“Having my MBA, I feel like I came in with an advantage. Now that I’m in my third role in the company, I’m a supervisor managing cross roles, cross functional teams.”

Chris Stegmaier had already met his share of challenges when he began to consider an MBA. With more than 20 years of government service under his belt (including time in the Army and National Security Agency), Chris saw the program at South Carolina as an efficient way to turn his considerable project management experience into a thriving civilian career.

“My MBA was a 10-month tutorial in how to adjust the skills I’d learned in the service and better leverage them to meet the demands of the private sector,” he says.

As his interest in consulting sharpened, Chris added Lean Six Sigma certification to amplify his process and project management education. Just one day after graduating, he began an engagement with a southeastern pharmaceutical company and then joined Accenture, a global provider of strategy, consulting, digital, technology, operations and services.

Today, Chris moves seamlessly from a Fortune 500 boardroom to a client’s international jobsite. Just as he transformed his career, he’s solving his clients’ most vexing business challenges with innovative solutions that make them more competitive.