Meet Joon Shin

Joon received a BS in mechanical engineering and has worked at Boeing for eight years, six with the company's Lean Enterprise manufacturing initiative. "With the Lean initiative, we look for entrepreneurial innovations in the use of technology to improve the ways we do business." After a few years, Joon was looking for increased responsibility and greater visibility within the corporation, and further along the road, the opportunity to work with international customers. "I realized I lacked business savvy. I did have a strong tech bent and I knew I was going to take a lead in many projects. But I had a strong sense that there was other information out there that I would need." During the EMTM program Joon was promoted to enterprise auditor, where he now offers seasoned technological leadership and business insights to the company's internal clients both in the U.S. and around the world.

Why EMTM?

Joon looked at several MBA programs and a few joint business and technology programs but he ultimately chose Penn for the broad scope of technologies covered in EMTM. "Other programs I looked at seemed more focused in terms of their application, for instance, in manufacturing. With EMTM the appeal was the choice to delve deeper in one area or get a wide breadth of knowledge." At an orientation session, Joon was impressed with the students he met. "A program is not just content and curriculum, but the people who participate in it. I could see the enthusiasm from current students about EMTM and I think that helped me make my decision right then and there." Joon has since become an active participant in the EMTM community, serving as a member of the steering committee for the Executive Education Society, EMTM's student organization.

Career Impact

From a tactical and strategic point of view, EMTM has helped Joon prepare for his new role addressing the problems of internal clients. "EMTM offers a suite of tools I can leverage in my daily routine. I can now visit any Boeing site around the world and quickly assess its environment and advise clients on process control. In the past, whenever I dealt with internal customers I'd always ask for requirements up front and then jump in and develop new technology. I'm no longer trying to come in with a solution in advance. EMTM has helped me extract a bottom line understanding of a business before I try to apply the technology."

Being exposed to students from different industries has also helped Joon rethink his methods for problem solving. "At EMTM I've met a lot of people from biopharma and learned more about the R&D pipeline. It's made me realize there's not one solution out there for any given business problem. I'm now trying to come up with many ideas for a given problem and then filtering them as we move ahead to come up with the most robust end product. I've learned best practices through classes and my classmates as opposed to trying to figure everything out on my own."

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