The JV Experience: Kellogg Culture

Since my very first Kellogg experience, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how nice everyone is to the Joint Ventures – or partners of the students. I’ve met many people willing to go out of their way to make us feel welcome and a part of the Kellogg community, including students, faculty and staff.

During KWEST, I got a very good idea of what the next two years would be like, and by CIM week, I was already in love with Kellogg. I really wanted to be more involved with the school, both to support my husband and to make the most of my time here. So with the help of a couple of people in Student Affairs (Wendy Metter and Maggie Cong-Huyen), I started to work with the students in designing their graphic materials for clubs and conferences.

Overall, I worked with over 12 different teams and dozens of students. This particular experience allowed me to meet great people, attend many different Kellogg events and expand my professional network. I was also able to gain pretty good insight on student life by attending team meetings and just being at Jacobs. Being constantly surrounded by passionate people who are so motivated to make a difference in the world is very inspiring. This has definitely been one of the highlights of my stay here.

I was also very attracted to the possibility of auditing classes. My husband and I have completely different professional backgrounds, and so I thought our academic interests would be very different as well. But as I got more engaged, we discovered that we had more things in common than we originally thought and ended up being classmates and team members. And even though a 3-hour night class is certainly not my idea of the perfect date, it is something that we had never done together in the past and a fun way to get to know each other better.

But the thing that I love most about Kellogg is the people. We have established incredible friendships with people from different backgrounds and perspectives. Even though I’ll be very sad to see everyone leave, I’m happy to think that in a couple of months from now, we’ll have many reasons to visit them (and places to stay) all around the world.

At the end of these two amazing years, I’m very happy to realize that the personal and professional development has been mutual and that even though I was not a student, Kellogg has been one of the best experiences of my life.

Ana Sofia Azcunaga is the Joint Venture of Jorge Montemayor ’13. She is originally from Monterrey, Mexico and has a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in graphic design. She currently works for a family business in construction and design.