Maryland Smith’s Bill Morton and Vigneshwaran Ilango Among Poets&Quants’ MBAs to Watch

Poets&Quants has selected and profiled Maryland Smith Full-Time MBA students Bill Morton and Vigneshwaran Ilango as among the world’s “100 MBAs To Watch in the Class of 2019,” for their “unique backgrounds, innate talent, and long-term goals make them business leaders to watch in the coming years.”

The news website devoted to the global coverage of business schools pointed to Morton for his “non-traditional path to business school” as he “carved out a sustainable surf resort in Nicaragua – one that snapped up Trip Advisor’s Award of Excellence for four straight years.”

Morton is joining Dell Technologies as a senior merchandising advisor after completing dual master’s degrees (MBA and Marketing Analytics). “Dell is a great fit for Bill, as he will be able to combine his passions for technology, analytics, and customer-first marketing,” said Associate Dean of Masters Programs Wendy Moe. “Bill has taken his unique experience as a dual graduate student and merged his MBA and MS in Marketing Analytics academic experiences to be able to translate high-level analyses to practical marketing efforts.”

Ilango, joining Citi FinTech as a senior program analyst, said his Smith experience revealed the MBA pursuit is not a race: “Being from India, where MBA classrooms are so competitive, I was ready to sprint from the word go…In fact, I did such for a couple of months, as I attended every possible event, seminar, and social gathering. But in a couple of months, I realized the importance of prioritizing and focusing on what I wanted. All of a sudden, I had all the time in the world. This helped me reduce the stress, gain a lot more time, and at the same time, make memories with the wonderful set of people around me.”

Moe said Ilango consistently looked for ways to help classmates socially, academically and with their career search. “For example, Vignesh has held interview prep sessions for first- and second-year students, and he worked closely with the Office of Career Services to set up international alumni webinars for current international students to connect with alumni and learn from their experiences.”

“Vignesh furthermore capitalized on his Operations and Data Analytics focus in his MBA studies to launch the next chapter of his career,” Moe said. “He interned with Citi as a Risk Management Intern where he streamlined and integrated the FinTech governance process into a project management tool and optimized the existing governance process by leveraging historic data.”

For more, read the full profiles of Bill Morton and Vigneshwaran Ilango at Poets&Quants.