About Sydney: A Southern girl from Houston, Texas, Sydney has called Los Angeles home for the past five years. She began her career in corporate finance and accounting within the entertainment industry at Creative Artists Agency, where she gained exposure to both business operations and creative ecosystems. At Anderson, Sydney hopes to pivot her career toward her passion: marketing and brand management within the beauty industry. She is deeply committed to inclusive excellence and diversity, believing that skincare and makeup should empower individuals to find products that fit them,  because everyone is unique. Drawn to Anderson’s diverse culture and ability to tailor the MBA curriculum to individual goals, Sydney is excited to gain the strategic, analytical, and creative toolkit necessary to thrive as a future beauty leader.

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Coming into Anderson as a first-year student, I expected to learn finance, strategy, and management frameworks. What I didn’t expect was how much the curriculum would ask me to reflect on who I am as a leader, how I work with others, and what kind of impact I want to make. That’s the part of Anderson that surprised me most and the part that feels most unique. 

The “share success” mindset at Anderson isn’t just a cultural quirk; it shapes how learning actually happens. Whether it’s studying cases together late at night or running mock interview sessions before recruiting, the program creates an environment where classmates push each other forward rather than compete for limited space. I didn’t realize how much that mattered until group projects turned into places where everyone brought different backgrounds and perspectives. It made the classroom feel less like school and more like leadership training in motion. 

During Summer Quarter I took 401A – Foundations of Inclusive Leadership, which became one of my most unexpected favorites. The class forced us to think about leadership not as charisma or authority, but as influence, empathy, and decision-making under pressure. We studied cases such as Ann Hopkins, exposing the way biases shape evaluations and career trajectories, and Nickelodeon’s Latin American expansion, where leadership is tested across cultures, values, and organizational constraints. Those stories stayed with me because they weren’t theoretical, they felt like situations we would face in our own careers, regardless of industry. Fundamentals of Inclusive Leadership adds another dimension to how we think about influence and impact. 

The course pushed us to ask harder questions:

● How do leaders create spaces where others can speak and contribute? 

● What happens when culture and performance collide? 

● What does accountability look like in diverse teams? 

It reinforced something I didn’t understand before business school: inclusive leadership isn’t just a value, it’s a skillset that can be learned, practiced, and improved. 

As the year progresses, you begin customizing your experience. Anderson gives students room to chart their own leadership path through electives, field studies, sector-focused courses, and hands-on roles in clubs and student organizations. For me, the ability to personalize my curriculum made the MBA feel less like a template and more like a toolkit. Everyone I talk to is building a slightly different version of the degree, depending on where they want to land and what kind of leader they want to become. What I’ve found most powerful is how leadership roles extend beyond academics. It is through clubs, student-run conferences, mentorship programs, and cross-school initiatives. These experiences feel like mini-organizations: you debate, decide, fail, regroup, and ultimately deliver. 

The longer I’m here, the more I realize that Anderson isn’t just preparing us to work in business; it’s preparing us to lead in business. Shared success creates community. Transformative leadership shapes identity. Curriculum flexibility creates agency. For future business leaders, that combination feels rare. It produces graduates who are analytical but also empathetic, who can read balance sheets but also read teams, and who know that leadership isn’t about winning alone, it’s about elevating others along the way.

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Student Blogger: Sydney Kyle ‘27

Undergrad: Texas State University ’19

Pre-MBA: Accounts Payable Specialist at Creative Artists Agency

Leadership@Anderson: Board Member of Philanthropy Council at Anderson; Inclusive Excellence Director, Admissions Ambassador Corps; Co-Director of Social, Black Business Student Association