![\"Vanderbilt](\"https:\/\/blogs.owen.prd.vanderbilt.edu\/executive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2018\/03\/ErinTomlinson-209x300.png\")
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Name: Erin Tomlinson<\/p>\n
Graduation Year: 2011<\/p>\n
Track: Executive Edge<\/p>\n
Company: Eventbrite<\/p>\n
Title: Nashville Site GM and Global Head of Revenue Enablement<\/p>\n
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Erin Tomlinson is a 2011 alumnus of the Vanderbilt Executive MBA program. After spending a large portion of her career in Sales for the technology industry, Erin wanted to deepen her financial and business acumen to gain the confidence to drive initiatives cross-functionally. During and after the program, she began utilizing her new skills to lead higher profile projects which landed her a promotion and more responsibility for global initiatives.<\/p>\n
What convinced you that you could or should the Vanderbilt Executive MBA program?<\/strong><\/p>\n I started my career in Sales and spent 10 years climbing the ladder at Dell into a Sr. Management position. At that point in time, I remember having a particularly tough VP who challenged the Sales Leaders to start driving cross-departmental decisions.\u00a0 For the first time in my career, I lacked confidence in my abilities to influence due to my need for business and financial acumen outside of sales.<\/p>\n What was the greatest hurdle you overcame to start or finish the program?<\/strong><\/p>\n When I started the program, I was leading a team of about 100 sales reps and managers in a call center environment. It was tough to juggle working and going to school full-time with this level of responsibility and workload. After a year in the program, I had the confidence to pursue a new role as an individual contributor leading global projects – which couldn’t have worked out better. I was actually able to implement more concepts from school than I would have in my prior role. In addition, I was able to work remotely for a much more manageable work\/life balance.<\/p>\n What advice would you give to someone considering Vanderbilt\u2019s Executive MBA program?<\/strong><\/p>\n Embrace every opportunity. Take advantage of the networking opportunities, both within your class and in the broader Vanderbilt network. In terms of balancing the school and professional work – find a rhythm that works for you. Some people study a little bit every day and others like to minimize studying during the work week and do marathon sessions on the weekend. Also, even though you will be assigned a C-Team group, I found it helpful to meet with folks outside of my C-Team for regular study sessions as well. Finally, be sure to leverage the career management services Vanderbilt offers.<\/p>\n How has your approach to business changed as a result of being part of the Executive MBA program?<\/strong><\/p>\n The biggest change has been my confidence due to increased business and financial acumen. I am now more confident in my leadership skills, the decisions I am making, and my ability to have strategic conversations with executive-level leaders. In addition, I feel more equipped to interact and drive influence cross-functionally with departments like finance and marketing.<\/p>\n How has your career been enhanced as a result of your Vanderbilt Executive MBA Experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s hard to quantify the impact that Vanderbilt has had on my career, but I would argue that it is significant. On a daily basis, I continue to leverage the concepts I learned in school with my teams as part of their development. The networking component has also had a big impact on my career. I make an effort to have lunch with Vanderbilt colleagues on a quarterly basis and attend as many networking events sponsored by the school as my schedule allows. I would not have the position I have now if it wasn’t for the network I gained by participating in this program. Finally, I have continued to take on increased scope and responsibilities in my roles which has translated to salary growth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Name: Erin Tomlinson Graduation Year: 2011 Track: Executive Edge Company: Eventbrite Title: Nashville Site GM and Global Head of Revenue Enablement Erin Tomlinson is a 2011 alumnus of the Vanderbilt Executive MBA program. After spending a large portion of her career in Sales for the technology industry, Erin wanted to deepen her financial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":692,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,36,25,29,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni-stories","category-edge","category-emba","category-news","category-prospective-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/executive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/executive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/executive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/executive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/executive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/executive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/executive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/executive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/executive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/executive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}