UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A shared passion for international communications has served as the basis for the tight-knit mentoring relationship between Nancy Mahon, Penn State Smeal College of Business clinical professor, and Kärin Strom, a Penn State Smeal MBA student.
Before attending Penn State, Strom was an undergraduate student at Whitworth University with a degree in speech communications. With this background, Strom dove into various international experiences and opportunities around development and education.
Strom worked with the Japanese Exchange and Teaching Program where she taught English in Japan for five years. From there, she joined the Peace Corps, volunteering in a remote town in South America for two years working on education and a broad range of development projects.
“I loved the international experience,” Strom said. “I became really passionate about teaching and cultural exchange in general.”
Once back in the United States, Strom found herself at Penn State in 2020 during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
“My husband was joining the MBA program here, and I also got a job working with Penn State as it set up its quarantine and isolation programs,” said Strom
In working with the University’s COVID-19 quarantine and isolation division, Strom explained how interesting it was to work with such cross-functional teams across the University.
“From the health department to contact tracing, housing, medical services, and of course residence life,” Strom said, “I loved the decision-making process and the strategy behind it because a lot went into trying to navigate how we coordinate the services that students need when they are isolated.”
While working at Penn State and watching her husband work toward his MBA, Strom said she had “a front-row seat” to Penn State Smeal's graduate program. By meeting his classmates, specifically some of the women in the program, Strom began to see how she could begin her corporate career.
“Learning from their experience, I saw a path where I could use some of my passion for community development as well as working strategically with cross-functional teams, and I could move that into a business position,” Strom said. “I was really interested in moving from grassroots work to the corporate side of things, taking all of the experience and knowledge from that and bringing it to corporate.”