Swetha Tupelly is a senior product manager for online fashion service Le Tote, a big leap from a previous role as a technical lead and engineer at Qualcomm. The key tool to making that leap: A Berkeley Haas MBA in the Evening & Weekend program.
Swetha worked at the San Diego semiconductor firm for eight years building connectivity in consumer devices. She began working on her career move while still in school and began her product management career with ServiceMax, a SaaS division of GE Digital, landing the role before she completed her MBA.
Raised in Hyderabad, India, Swetha received her bachelor’s degree in electronics and communications engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University and her master’s in electrical engineering from Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Her technical training enabled her to move from independent designer to integration lead to managing entire projects. But she was always interested seeing the bigger picture, she says, “and how a product would affect the end user.”
“I wanted to be more outwardly focused, to define how the product is designed according to the market,” she remembers. “I was still at the back end of things, not making the big calls.” She began to investigate the role of product manager, with its combination of leadership, business acumen, and technical expertise and to explore different paths toward a product management role.
Choosing a part-time program and a strong MBA brand
Why business school? “Many people said I didn’t need an MBA,” Swetha says, “but in the end I decided it would be very helpful. It would be a way of differentiating myself, opening some doors, and competing with those who had more PM experience.” She also wanted to move from the semiconductor industry to software, where she felt the opportunities would be greater. She researched business schools’ recruiting resources, career services, and professional support to see if they would make such a transition possible.
Once she decided to pursue an MBA, however, there were a few obstacles. She evaluated full-time programs, but that option would mean postponing the family she and her husband wanted to start. “I also didn’t want to begin school and then have a baby right after taking a new job,” she says. “After I had my daughter, it became clear that a part-time MBA program would be a better fit.” Swetha already knew she wanted to attend a branded school like Berkeley Haas, but she lived in Southern California. By then she also had an 18-month-old baby. She negotiated with her employer to transfer both her and her husband – who also worked for Qualcomm – to the San Jose office.
Learning business model innovation, marketing analytics, and more
The Evening & Weekend Berkeley HMBA curriculum taught Swetha about skills and functions she had been previously unaware of, including sales channel strategies, business model innovations, effective negotiations, and more. “A lot of industry professionals came and spoke, offering so many new perspectives that we could apply to different industries,” she says. She found her marketing analytics course especially helpful: it offered new insights on how to build a business case for analytics, how to think about data, and technical knowledge – from machine-learning algorithms to enterprise software.
Now, Swetha is exactly where she’d hoped she’d be. “The past few years have been filled with hard work, difficult decisions, and a fair amount of stress”, she concedes, but she says it’s all been worth it to achieve her goal. “You need to step back and really examine your priorities,” she advises. “Berkeley’s part-time MBA allowed me to make it all work.”
Want more? Read more blog posts about product managers, learn about our Evening & Weekend Berkeley Haas MBA program, or download our free ebook on breaking into product management.
