2021 Best & Brightest Business Major: Jessica Lozano Schmitt, Hult International Business School

Jessica Lozano Schmitt

Hult International Business School

“Global nomad using her exposure to create a more equitable world.”

Hometown: Madrid, Spain; Herdecke, Germany

Fun fact about yourself: I fell in a whale shark’s mouth.

High School:  Stanstead College – Quebec, Canada

Major: Joint BBA in Finance & Masters in Business Analytics

Favorite Business Course: Discovering Self & Society\

Extracurricular Activities, Community Work, and Leadership Roles During College:

Extracurricular Activities:

  • Electric Potential | Co-Founder & Chair of the Board (2020-Present)
  • Terra Vista Capital | Board Member (2020- Present)
  • IdeaTreck Venture Capital | Chief Marketing Officer of Venture Capital Training Program (2020)
  • Harvard Business School | Peek Weekend (2020)
  • Harvard Extension School | Teaching Assistant, Entrepreneurship Innovation (2019)
  • Administrative Assistant | Education First (2019-2020)
  • Vietnam Service-Learning Project | Founding Member (2015-2019)

Community Work:

  • MakerGirl | Volunteer Director (2018- Present)
  • Big Sister Association of Greater Boston | Mentor & Big Sister (2019- Present)
  • Red Cross Bahamas – Nassau | Food Stamp Volunteer Coordinator (2020)
  • Boston Marathon | Translator (2019)

 Leadership Roles:

  • Lead Global Ambassador for Hult International Business School (2018-2020)
  • Women+ In Business Club | Co-President (2019-2020)
  • Hult Founders Lab | Vice Program Coordinator (2019-2020)
  • Comfort Via Discomfort | Club Vice president (2018-2019)
  • Hult Student Association | Student Council Representative for Community Service & Academics (2018-2019)

Awards:

  • Dean’s List 2018, 2019, 2020 & 2021
  • Winner of 2020 Global Citizen Award
  • Winner of Sonos HackWeek 2020 competition for Best Marketing Idea or Promotion
  • Winner of 2019 Marketing Challenge
  • Winner of 2018 Personal Pitch Competition

Where have you interned during your college career? (List Companies, Locations, and Roles)

  • Sonos | Corporate Accounting Intern, Remote (Jun – Jul 2020)
  • Accion | Risk Analytics and Loan Operations Intern, Cambridge, MA (Sep-Dec 2019)
  • Hult Founders Lab |Market Research Intern, Cambridge, MA (May-Oct 2019)

Where will you be working after graduation? Electric Potential, Chief of Growth & Expansion

What company do you admire most? I admire MakerGirl, a nonprofit founded by two college students in 2015 who took the matter of gender gap in the workplace into their own hands. MakerGirl has created a double-tiered pipeline to increase females’ presence in both leadership and STEM. It showed its resilience last year when it took the in-person 3D-printing workshops completely online and improved the number of attendees despite the pandemic.

I am honored to have volunteered with this nonprofit for over two years now, and it feels surreal that I am able to be around so many accomplished women on a day-to-day basis. MakerGirl gives me hope that the world will be a better place and achieve that gender equality.

What is the biggest lesson you gained from studying business? Always be the “dumbest” person in the room. If you find yourself to be the smartest, find a better room and surround yourself with people you look up to as they will become a catalyst for growth and improvement.

What advice would you give to a student looking to major in a business-related field? Study something you are not already good at. Take classes and major in those skills where you need extra support as that is what the college environment is for. Improve the ones you’ve already mastered outside the classroom as you will gravitate towards them either way

What has surprised you most about majoring in business? I’ve been happily surprised by the focus on ethics, sustainability, and social impact at Hult International Business School. I’ve enjoyed working in the middle ground of the nonprofit and corporate space, and it’s been amazing to be able to unlock the potential within it.

Looking back over your experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently in business school and why? I would have taken more time to enjoy myself and find a healthier balance between work and play. As I discovered the hard way, hustling 24/7 is unsustainable in the long term.

Which academic, extracurricular, or personal achievement are you most proud of? Being able to contact and have a couple of conversations with the president of SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell, about the gender gap within STEM was a highlight. After hearing Gwynne speak at the Harvard Women in Business conference, I took the initiative to reach out to her on my own, and she kindly responded. This led me to the conviction that often, all we need to do is ask.

Which classmate do you most admire? Alessandra Hernandez Pulido is an incredibly tenacious and strong businesswoman. She is astonishingly dedicated, self-aware, and a person who can achieve anything she puts her mind to. This approach to life lets her shine in whatever situation she is put in. She has incredibly high social intelligence, which will prepare her immensely for when she enters the job market within the management space. It has been a gift to have been able to see her grow into herself over the past three years.

Who would you most want to thank for your success? My mother, Andrea Schmitt, is the main reason for my success today. I’ve been able to have the best possible role model a daughter could ask for by having a resilient, powerful, and dedicated person in my life who’s always pushed me to be completely myself and who walks the talk herself. The way she tackles new ventures and adventures head-on should be a lesson for all. It’s been amazing to be in undergrad at the same time as her. I know she will be an amazing psychologist and can’t wait for us to both get master’s degrees simultaneously.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list?

  • Create 1 million dollars in revenue by 2030
  • Be a Fortune 500 CEO by 2045

What are your hobbies? CrossFit, hiking, dancing, circling (aka InterSubjective Meditation), and eating great food with people I love.

What made Jessica such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2021?

“Jessica is an invaluable addition to the Class of 2021 because she is a catalyst for academic excellence, student engagement, and a strong community. Hult’s Boston undergraduate program is a new school: we started in 2018. Jessica helped to infuse this nascent institution with a fire for learning, kindled from the bottom up with frequent and challenging class questions, consistently excellent course presentations, and high academic standards. The first essay she wrote for me was a heart-stopping description of personal peril in a distant country that presented a profound philosophical and business point with the verve of a novel. Outside class, she is a dynamo of ambition and entrepreneurial creativity, from her work with educational innovators Electric Potential and MakerGirl to her TEDx talk “The Power of Misspelling Your Name” about how dyslexia has empowered her. “Invaluable,” i.e., “valuable beyond estimation,” perfectly describes Jessica’s contribution to Hult.”

Robert Neer
Associate Professor

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