When Christopher Ramirez (MBA ’26) decided it was time to pursue an MBA, he had options. To make his decision, he took into consideration his career goals, as well as the benefits each school offered. In the end, one option stood out: ASU’s W. P. Carey School of Business.
When Christopher Ramirez (MBA ’26) decided it was time to pursue an MBA, he had options. He applied to and was admitted to three different universities: the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, and Arizona State University.
To make his decision, he took into consideration his career goals — joining a large company’s financial leadership rotation program — as well as the benefits each school offered. In the end, one option stood out.
“ASU had the best value for what I was looking for,” says Ramirez. “It gave me everything I wanted in an MBA degree: Travel abroad options, an applied curriculum, and brand recognition that was going to get me where I wanted to go.”
Ramirez is now in his second year of the MBA program at ASU’s W. P. Carey School of Business. He continues to lean into the many ways artificial intelligence is incorporated into the curriculum and student experience, from selecting an MBA concentration in AI to serving as a co-president of the AI in Business Club.
W. P. Carey News spoke with Ramirez about his experiences as an ASU MBA student, including the impact of working closely with fellow students in and outside of the classroom.
Why W. P. Carey?
Being able to collaborate and have discussions with classmates and faculty, as well as building a community, have been the most meaningful aspects of Ramirez’s W. P. Carey journey. One highlight he shared was his managerial accounting course, in which students were given case studies to analyze then discuss in class.
“Through this, we got to see different people’s perspectives,” he says. “Some people are good at marketing, some people are good at finance or accounting, some people are good at leading teams, and others are subject matter experts within engineering fields.”
He adds, “In the different experiences all blended together in this class, we would work through the case side-by-side along with the professor and eventually deduce through different reasoning and the way he extracted information from us, and we’d come up with a solution.”
One particular group of classmates, whom Ramirez referred to as the “Dream Team,” exemplified the unique backgrounds of W. P. Carey MBA students with members representing industries like legal, aerospace, finance, and engineering.
“The difference in our backgrounds and experiences, and our common shared goal of intense work ethic to get the best out of each other, has pushed me in my MBA to do more for myself and for my peers than I could have ever imagined,” says Ramirez. “I will carry these relationships I have into my future, and I can’t thank them enough for what they’ve been to me in my professional development truly.”
Why an MBA?
Ramirez majored in finance during his undergraduate studies at the University of Arizona. After graduation, he started off working in mergers and acquisitions for private equity firms before moving on to a business development role at Oracle.
He knew he eventually wanted to move into a leadership role at a large company, particularly working within finance strategy or corporate development. Earning his MBA at W. P. Carey was the perfect opportunity for Ramirez to develop the necessary leadership skills to advance to such a position.
“This is something that’s been a goal of mine for a long time, and I really feel like I’m at the beginning phase of this part of my career, and now I have the tools I need to succeed; it’s about going and executing long term,” he says.
W. P. Carey has also given Ramirez more exposure to booming fields such as artificial intelligence. Wanting to build on his prior experience in technology consulting, he chose to add a concentration in AI to his ASU MBA degree. He also joined the school’s AI in Business Club and now serves as its co-president alongside a fellow MBA student.
“It’s been one of the most fruitful and energizing experiences I’ve had to date,” Ramirez says of leading the club. “We’ve had a lot of success bringing in big companies such as Microsoft, AWS, and ServiceNow, leaders in the space, chiefs of staff, and directors of artificial intelligence to come and speak to our club and our students.”
What’s next?
The W. P. Carey School’s vast and strong network of students and alumni has proven to be incredibly beneficial for Ramirez. Through connections from the AI in Business Club, he landed a summer internship with ServiceNow, where he got to work with various teams within the finance department. Because of the success of this internship, he’ll be returning to the company in a full-time position after graduation.
“I realized that this network we’ve been given is so vast that I looked at all the companies that I wanted to work at, and basically every single company that you can imagine has an ASU graduate there,” he says. “All the way out to Belgium, I was able to land coffee chats, and from that experience, it gave me the confidence that the W. P. Carey MBA can get me where I want to go.”
On top of networking, Ramirez’s main advice to future students is to simply put themselves out there and take advantage of opportunities as they come. He says, “If you have that grit and are willing to go the extra mile, ASU can get you where you want to go.”
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