This post is a part of the Student Blogger series – each post is written by a current UCLA Anderson student, and provides first-hand perspectives and experiences about being an MBA student at UCLA Anderson.

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Student Blogger:
Lucerna Huayanay ’17

Pre-MBA: 
Head of Sales & Marketing –
Prima Eximport SAC

Summer Internship: 
Summer Associate – Beckman Coulter (Danaher Corp.)

Hi everyone! My name is Lucerna Huayanay and I am originally from Peru. I am now in my second year of MBA at Anderson, and I am happy to share my experience with you. UCLA Anderson has provided me with resources to navigate academics, social and recruiting, which has made my entire MBA experience very enjoyable. For this post, I wanted to focus on the social and recruiting aspects and dive deeper into how I, and my fellow classmate Guilherme Aboud, leveraged those resources to make the most out of our first year at Anderson and land the internships we were looking for.

Socially, Anderson has over 40 clubs which have given me the opportunity to make new friends, explore LA, and have a great time. One of these clubs is the Latin American Business Association, which gathers people from all over Latin America and people interested in Latin America, and promotes cultural exchange via educational events (the Latin American Business Conference), and social events for all (LABA BBQs). My first year at Anderson, I was one of the directors for the LABA Conference. This gave me access to the extensive Anderson alumni network to get speakers, and once selected, it gave me great networking opportunities with them. Among some of the speakers that we had last year are Joseph Barragan, former Managing Director at JP Morgan Chase, Karla Berman, Lead Ad Sales at Google Inc Mexico, and Bryan Stockton, Former Chairman and CEO of Mattel. For more information on this annual conference, click here and take a look at the conference photos here!

This year, the LABA Board is expanding its functions and wants to provide even more support to Latin American students in terms of recruiting. LABA is working to promote opportunities for 2nd year Latin American students to discuss recruiting strategies in both the U.S. and Latin America with the 1rst year class, and share best practices for landing the internship they are looking for. In my experience, a combination of the Parker Career Management Center training, and talking to 2nd years helped me get in great shape for the interview season.

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Student Blogger:
Guilherme Aboud ’17

Pre-MBA: 
Investment Banking –
Barclays

Summer Internship:
Advisors Summer Associate –  MasterCard (São Paulo)

Hi everyone! My name is Guilherme Aboud and I am from Brazil. I had a priceless experience during 13-weeks at MasterCard Advisors as an MBA Summer Associate Intern. MasterCard is a global payment technology company with large operations in Latin America and a culture where they strive to make payments safer and easier every day. I spent my first week in Miami, where 7 MBA interns went through an on-boarding process into MasterCard Advisors and the payment technology industry. During the following 12 weeks, I was in São Paulo, Brazil, working with a team of experienced consultants from whom I learned valuable best practices in consulting and I was assigned to a strategic planning project, where the client was a FinTech. To make my experience even more amazing, MasterCard took me for a breakfast by the statue of Christ the Redeemer to appreciate the sunrise in Rio de Janeiro!

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