Tatyana Lyalina wants to help her family's business – a bread factory in Vladimir, Russia – grow. But he had to learn how to make a company thrive in international markets.
She says she's been inspired by her father's work running and modernizing the business over the years, but after working at the company as an intern in college and for two years after graduation, Lialina recognized she needed to broaden her business acumen to help the company expand outside of Russia—specifically how to launch new products and make its brand more recognizable. Although the company sells products in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Syria and Canada, the majority of its operations are domestic.
Lialina wanted a flexible business program where she could learn how companies outside of Russia operate and compete in the global economy, as well as how to create marketing campaigns. She found what she was looking for at the D'Amore-McKim School of Business, where she completed her BA and is now finishing her MBA.
“It's really helpful that I can now share this knowledge with our staff,” says Lialina, who is following in her father's footsteps by earning her MBA.
Lialina says that when looking at colleges and universities in the United States, specifically in the Boston area, D'Amore-McKim stood out from the pack because of its strong reputation and flexible programs through which she could chart her course and immerse herself. to herself. in various fields.
“I learned more about different countries and their approaches to business and problem solving. It was useful to understand how people around the world think about business.”
– Tatiana Lialina, Bachelor of Business Administration'18, and MBA'19
She enrolled for fall 2017 and began earning her Graduate Certificate in Business Administration, a program designed for working professionals and international students to gain knowledge and skills they can use immediately on the job.
Upon completing her degree, Lialina was accepted into D'Amore-McKim's part-time MBA. She applied the credits she earned in the graduate certificate program to her MBA.
“It was very adaptable,” Lialina says of her MBA program. “I didn't want to have just a marketing background. I really enjoyed many courses in supply chain, marketing, finance and human resources.”
Classes at night allowed her to consult remotely for the family business during the day on various projects, including rebranding and the company's website. He says he has already started developing a new logo.
He says that through the MBA program he learned how companies build their brands, develop marketing campaigns, create new products from the ground up and protect against the latest cyber security threats. A project in her marketing class, for example, asked her to analyze how to bring a product from Peru to the United States and how to adapt branding and marketing to a new market.
“I could see how everything works in practice and how I can combine theory and practice,” he says.
Another skill she picked up in both her degree and MBA classes: teamwork. She says the emphasis on group projects taught her how to collaborate and learn from her classmates. As a result, she became more confident working in teams and gained insight into how people from other countries think about business.
“I'm really excited to be able to work with both international and American students,” she says. “I learned more about different countries and their approaches to business and problem solving. It was very useful to understand how people around the world think about business.”
After completing her MBA at Northeastern, Lialina plans to work for a year or two in the United States before bringing what she learned back to Russia to work for the family business. She is completing her studies this summer and expects to graduate in August.
All this while her family is growing. She and her husband Levan Mandzhgaladze, whom she met in Russia and who is also earning his MBA at Northeastern, welcomed their first child this spring.
