About Matt: Matt Roberts grew up in Chicago before heading to the nation’s capital for college at George Washington University where he studied Business Administration with a concentration in marketing. After graduation, Matt went back to his hometown where he spent 6 years working in advertising account management. Matt chose UCLA Anderson for its community first focus, mantra of shared success, proximity to a plethora of ski mountains, and for the resources to allow Matt to pursue a move into brand management at a CPG firm.

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This summer, I interned as an MBA Marketing Intern on the Global Brand Team (GBT) at Mattel. I worked on the Action Figures portfolio, specifically the WWE Action Figures brand. I was very excited about this role as it has given me valuable experience to work on an existing brand that is on fire right now and getting to help build strategies to leverage the increased popularity of WWE to elevate the Action Figures side of the business.

The purpose of the GBT is to own the product. This means that we get final say on which products we build, where we put our promotional support, and suggesting retail prices to our customers (in the CPG business customers are retailers – like Walmart or Target, and consumers are the people purchasing the products). GBT truly is the center of the hub of all the different teams that work on a Mattel Brand. 

This summer, I worked on two projects. The first was a group project with 5 other MBA interns (including a fellow Anderson intern) focused on elevating the Mattel digital gaming portfolio.  All teams this year were focused on finding opportunities for Mattel’s digital gaming business to enter and I was on the team focusing on opportunities for the Barbie brand.  It was exciting working on something that I wouldn’t otherwise work with on my day-to-day role and get to collaborate with my MBA peers from different teams: finance, supply chain, consumer insights, and other GBT interns.  We presented our final recommendations to senior leadership and the digital gaming team.

Individually, my project was identifying whitespace and recommending a strategy for WWE’s kids toy line in 2027. This project was particularly challenging because the action figures business in general, and WWE especially, play more in the adult collector space, which is different from most Mattel brands.  I needed to leverage data and connect with my cross functional team members to identify what a successful kids toy line looked like, audit whether our current line qualifies as successful under the criteria I defined, and develop a marketing strategy to either elevate or replace the current line. The open-ended nature of this project was both daunting and exciting.  I wanted to pivot to an internal marketing role when I decided to pursue my MBA because I was interested in developing marketing strategy, which is what this project was all about. This project was challenging due to the various inputs I had to pull from, which included conflicting information. I needed to audit this conflicting information, leverage the members on my team to gut check, and utilize that information to drive my project forward. 

Overall, I really enjoyed my experience this past summer. It may be cliche, but the people were my favorite part of working at Mattel. Everyone really focuses on collaboration, considering diverse opinions, and driving to success as a team. The work can certainly be a lot at times, but the diverse nature of the work, from my individual project to group project, to day-to-day WWE work, means that the work is diverse enough where you don’t get overwhelmed.

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Student Blogger: Matt Roberts, ‘26

Undergrad: Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing at George Washington University, ‘18

Pre-MBA: Account Manager at Davis Harrison Dion

Leadership@Anderson: VP of Interview Development, Marketing Association; VP of Ski, Outdoor Adventure Club