Jeffery To, EMTM’04

Building Entrepreneurial Skills for Retail EBO

Jeffery completed his undergraduate degree in business at the University of Toronto in 1997. His coursework there was highly quantitative, emphasizing analytics through courses in applied statistics, corporate finance, accounting and market research. Immediately following college, he worked for a small consulting practice in business process improvement, before joining PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting (eventually acquired by IBM in 2002), where he transitioned to a technical consulting role in applied design architecture. Jeffery wanted to enhance his skill set and acquire more credibility within the technical arena, so he started looking at graduate programs. He knew he wanted to attend a top tier school, but did not want to replicate the strong business foundation he had acquired from his undergraduate program. When he discovered EMTM, Jeffery felt that he had found a program that was made for him, given the involvement of both Wharton and Penn Engineering. He attended full-time (Fridays and Saturdays), completing his degree in two years.

Benefits of EMTM

"I was able to build on my quantitative background and solidify it through the use of case studies that had a very practical orientation. We were encouraged to look at our day-to-day problems from the workplace and put the concepts learned into practice." Jeffery received some financial support from IBM and funded the balance of the costs himself. "If I look at this from an ROI perspective, the program payback exceeded my expectations financially, educationally, and career-wise. I have moved into a strategic role — which is what I've always wanted to be doing — looking at things from both a business and technical perspective. The scope and responsibilities of my role in IBM has grown significantly."

Jeffery took full advantage of the EMTM experience. During the summer recess after his first year, Jeffery volunteered for a part-time position within IBM's Market Intelligence team. (A fellow EMTM classmate from IBM had introduced Jeffery to his boss.) Jeffery used this "spare time" between academic years to conduct market analytics for the 'Headlights' team, which analyzed opportunities and gathered competitive intelligence for new EBO's (Emerging Business Opportunity). He expanded on this work during the end of his second year at EMTM, when with a team of classmates, he initiated and led a field application project focusing on retail strategy for IBM. His team also engaged in a second project to explore new market segments for IBM's On-Demand Innovation Services (ODIS), a cross-team collaboration between IBM Research and IBM Business Consulting Services.

Career Impact

"The work I did at EMTM really led directly to my new position within the Retail EBO (Emerging Business Opportunity)," Jeffery says, "a 'start-up' within IBM that focuses on developing the go-to-market strategy for IBM's next-generation retail solutions and products." Jeffery says he consistently leveraged his education, making a point of "finding a way to make every class I took apply to the job." In addition to the field application project, Jeffery submitted a business plan to the 2003 Wharton Business Plan Competition which eventually made it to the semi-finals. Jeffery continues to use his entrepreneurial skills in the Retail EBO.

"I loved being able to apply my learning in near real time. EMTM helped me maximize what I could learn from my job, and my job helped me to get the most out of my education. It was a life-changing experience."