Engineering an MBA Career Shift

Natnapin “Nat” Tangpipith emerged quickly as a civil engineer. She worked with several public agencies around New York City, specializing in bridge rehabilitation. But as she moved up the ladder, her career interests evolved.

“I was sent out to public events to represent the company as well as interface with clients, and I enjoyed that more than pure technical aspect,” she says.

Tangpipith decided she wanted to focus more on strategic portion of consulting work, so she enrolled in the full-time MBA program at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. She found that learning non-science concepts that didn’t have a definitive answer, such as marketing, was a challenge and interesting

“Marketing is a subject where it is not based on hard science,” she stated. “But at the same time, there is an analytical part to marketing where based on trends and pattern, you can make an interpretation” 

She enjoyed it so much, that she considered a hybrid career of marketing and consulting. Rather than working for a traditional consulting firm, she wants to be an internal consultant, doing strategic work for a specific company. In summer 2018, she interned at PepsiCo in national sales strategy department.

Although Tangpipith grew up in New York, she spent her early childhood in Thailand. The international experience helped her connect to the diverse group of students she found at Maryland Smith.

“People comes from all over the world with such diverse professional background,” she says. “Because I had the opportunity to live on different sides of the world and grew up in New York City, one of the most diverse places, I was able to connect to the diverse student body and communicate effectively and collaboratively.”