My personal statement begins with my American journey. A journey of faith and courage in the face of adversity that has taken me to where I am today. And it remains still a work in progress. And an MBA will surely help accelerate that. I was sixteen years old when my family left the Philippines, my birthplace and migrated to the United States to pursue the American dream that many in the world aspire for. Like all beginnings, I struggled with my first few steps and had mixed feelings about my new home.
I was excited over the great promise of an American dream. But I felt unsure if I could adapt to a new culture and be truly accepted by new friends I made. Driven by a consuming desire to succeed, I cast these doubts aside, opened my mind, and embraced the new challenges. I entered Glendora High School as a junior. I learned English in the Philippines at the age of five, but did not feel confident enough to communicate orally because while I could speak the language I sounded different. To overcome the language and cultural challenges, I participated in sports, varsity swimming among them.
I would wake up every morning in the break of dawn during winter for my swimming practices. Enduring the bone chilling weather provided the strength to build my character. I enrolled in swimming camps during the off-season, which helped me to transition to the Varsity team during my senior year, and won the “Most Improved Swimmer” award. My swimming experience helped me to become goal driven, strengthen my competitive spirit, develop a healthy lifestyle, improve my social skills, and become self-confident. After graduation, I went to Cal Poly Pomona for my bachelor’s degree in marketing management.
My professional career started during my junior year in college. I carried a full workload of sixteen units based on a quarter system, while working two different jobs. With my passion for fitness and fashion, I greatly enjoyed my early work at Vitamin World and American Eagle Outfitters as it suited my strengths to a T. Shortly thereafter; I became involved in the General Motors marketing internship at Cal Poly while working full time at Bally Total Fitness as a sales counselor. Going to school as a working student was tough.
But it was a blessing that helped to expand my reservoir of strength that I would later draw from in the course of building my career in professional sales. With enough perseverance and determination I managed to graduate in four years with a bachelor’s degree and in that time was promoted at Bally’s to assistant manager in just ten months. With my high pressure sales experience at Bally’s and the marketing learning acquired from GM’s internship, I landed a job at Enterprise-Rent-A-Car. Enterprise-Rent-A-Car presented strong business-to-business opportunities where I felt I could best leverage my strengths i. . , strong people skills to produce maximum results, (also reinforced through the Jungian Personality self-assessment).
I started as a management trainee and while training on the job, won a record six MVP titles. This feat prompted the company to promote me to account executive within twelve months. The decision to work for my current employer, AstraZeneca, was driven by my passion and interest in their specialties around disease states, such as the cardiac and respiratory systems. I found the training process tough given my lack of a science background.
Hard work and dogged determination has always been my one of my strong suits, which helped me to overcome the limitation. I worked diligently to acquire broad clinical knowledge and apply it effectively in the actual sales process. This paid off as the company recognized my performance with the “Leader Among Peers” award during my training class among fifty other employees. Now, I find my job not just rewarding but socially fulfilling cognizant of the fact that I am playing a role in presenting solutions that will help people improve their quality of life.
With the ongoing changes in my industry, I believe that acquiring an MBA will greatly enhance my skills as a pharmaceutical sales representative by learning advanced theory and application. With an MBA, I hope to accomplish two goals:
- career advancement within my company with the end in view to taking on specialty sales or new leadership roles;
- Open new opportunities within the medical field sales.
With these goals in mind, I am well focused on building a solid and successful career in health care management.
I believe my considerable work experience and the life’s challenges I have had to grapple with has provided the maturity and stability I need to be able to appreciate and fulfill the requirements of an MBA program. And since I am performing consistently well on my present job, now is the best time to pursue an MBA that I feel I am ready for and will find manageable. After doing my research on graduate schools, I found your university’s mission and program best suited for me. The school’s reputation, faculty, location, and great value are the main reasons why I decided to attend University of Phoenix.
With my diverse background and inherently strong people skills, I can share my experience in global marketing classes and knowledge in how business is conducted in the Asian culture. I will be more than happy to contribute and share my sales knowledge, hard work and proven success with my class members. In summary, I have a proven track record, am able to multi task while ensuring a work/life balance, and with an MBA I know my journey towards my American dream will be an even smoother ride as I build a successful career in pharmaceutical sales.
