Describe your current responsibilities and career path, including both short and long-term goals.
Since obtaining my baccalaureate degree six years ago, I have established a number of personal and professional goals. Introspection, maturity and my professional experiences have helped me determine that my professional path lies elsewhere: in the world luxury management.
Although my current position has challenged me, it does not align with my professional aspirations to excel in the luxury goods industry. Even with my gained experience from the growing responsibilities my promotions have required, I believe that directed research will prepare me for my career in the luxury goods industry. For these reasons, I have decided to pursue an MBA.
How will obtaining a graduate degree at IUM contribute to your career objectives? What do you hope to gain?
Although my under graduate education gave me access to business world and my dedication to professionalism has helped me grow professionally, I know an MBA from IUM will open doors my lack graduate credentials has prohibited me from traversing thus far. Not only will this program challenge my various cultural, national and experiential frames of reference, but it will require me to use my business acumen, attention to detail and persistence to further my career as well as my future company’s success. I wish to actualize my potential in a career rather than simply sustaining financially at a job. An MBA from IUM will certainly grant unprecedented access to greater professional success. Additionally, I can contribute my personal skills and talent for interpersonal interaction, furthering the illustrious heritage of IUM scholars. I welcome the opportunity to learn and be challenged, and I am sure that IUM will afford me these gifts.
What arguments would you use to demonstrate your capacity to perform well in the program?
My mantra for the past two years has been “I would work for Chanel for free...” It reminds me of the luxury brand industry and the resurrection of a powerhouse through a single visionary’s talent. I mouth the words to myself when my work feels undervalued and aloud when I explain my plans to study Luxury Brand Management in Monaco. Defying the gravity of doubt and professional barriers, following in Karl Lagerfeld’s example of audacious hope, I will earn my dream-job at Chanel. Sustaining my dream through economic shifts, and setbacks attests to the validity of my dream. This program, this career, these dreams are my destiny. In fact, resigning myself to my current successes feels more unnatural than fashioning my life into the stuff my dreams are made of. This “re-creation” has been a recurring motif throughout my adult life.
My hometown Hahnville, Louisiana certainly did not breed in me the desire for a career in Luxury, but instead instilled in me small town ideals and a need for more. Upon graduation from my small, private high school I opted out of the proposed path, an education at Louisiana State University. Instead I embarked on my first big journey, a college education in a bustling urban center, Newark, New Jersey. I overcame countless social obstacles, and earned my degree away from my hometown’s security. After completing my undergraduate career, I set my sights on Atlanta, Georgia. From sleeping on my cousin’s couch with barely enough money for tomorrow’s lunch, I made a life for myself. I conquered Atlanta within the first year and eventually moved westward to Los Angeles for a new challenge.
From my independence and ability to mold my current realities I realized my skill in management, imagining and achieving. After years of research and preparing for my next challenge, I am finally ready to achieve my next esteemed accomplishment: an MBA from IUM.
How do other people see you in terms of strengths and weaknesses?
My peers describe as tenacious. My appetite for perfection sustains me through adversity. However advantageous this quality may seem to some, others might also consider this one of my weaknesses. Although I temper my tenacity with a healthy dose of strategy, I rarely concede to defeat. Giving up is never an option for me. So for those who quickly defeated my tenacity can seem intimidating almost impractical.
Is there anything else you would like to share with us?
I’m motivated by one of the most profound sayings from my hometown: “if all you ever do is all you've ever done, then all you'll ever get, is all you ever gotten.” Repetition in life yields the same results; therefore, in order develop, succeed and mature; one must occasionally--or frequently--create a new path. IUM is my new path towards a brighter future. My professional maturation and self-actualization is contingent upon me successfully completing this MBA program.
Forging my new path necessitates a move thousands of miles away from anyplace or anyone familiar to me and returning (over a decade since I began my last academic journey) to college. Every step of this process is completely necessary to my “get[ting] what I’ve [n]ever gotten,” professional fulfillment. Adjustment and adversity are expectable. Despite the inevitable “growing pains” of transitions such as theses, I am sure my tenacity and my work ethic will lead me to success. I am prepared, even looking forward to all the struggles and successes of making my dreams my reality.
Describe your most important achievement and it importance to you.
Signing my lease on my luxury apartment in Marina Del Rey represents the coda of my most important achievements. Shortly after my move from Atlanta, I found a job, saved my money, maintained my credit and visited apartments. I presented my salary, my credit card and was approved by myself. A short few years out of college, I had established myself without my father’s or a boyfriend’s or any other funding source outside of hard work. The apartment represents the culmination of a self-determined plan; my most important achievement is living life of my own terms.
Society does not often reward planners, savers, and hard workers with statues, or diamond tiaras, but I understand the rarity of determination and independence as strong as mine. My true reward is hanging on my wall: a reflection of confidence and ownership in the mirror, and I can celebrate this reflection every morning. Even in progressive societies, many women cannot claim their reflections in their own mirrors. Although I have never traveled to Europe, or even outside of North America, I believe many international women will venerate this accomplishment.
I was born during a recession in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Growing up, I always dreamed that I would wear perfume like the ones my mother kept in her crystal, a far reach from humble expectations of a small-town southern girl. In high school the topic of college centered around the best place to obtain a “MRS (Misses) degree” instead of your BS (Bachelor of Science degree). Among these colloquialisms, I recall one vividly; “a good southern girl gets her MRS at LSU (Louisiana State University) from a JD (juris doctorate).” I have challenged that idea with every independent footstep outside the rigid walls of my hometown.
I decided to pursue my degree not in Louisiana but 800 miles North in New Jersey. Choosing not to study the ever popular “education degree”, a prerequisite for that MRS degree. Perhaps to infuse some neutrality and equality into my hometown’s unique gender distinctions, or maybe just to learn about the world, I chose to study Diplomacy and International Relations and earned my BS degree. I wanted to know how people from other countries related social, politically, and economically.
Four years later, BS degree in hand, I had not earned the coveted MRS degree many of my high school peers had sought and acquired. I received something more powerful, however; I learned that a man doesn’t complete me, that I am enough just as I am. After college, I moved to Atlanta, Georgia where I sought a job. Realizing that college does not necessarily guaranteed a career anymore; I began looking for a job to maintain my independence. While a job pays the bills, a career feeds the soul, and although I understood the distinction, I had student loans to pay and Dior shoes to buy. A job would suffice for now.
I took a job as an Administrative Assistant. This position seemed to suit my personality; helpful and sweet. And after a couple years it turned out to be lucrative; my closet grew as did my taste for luxury brands. I started to think maybe a woman can go it alone and have the life of her dreams.
Desperate for inspiration and guidance, I read a self-help book, Coach Yourself to Success. My favorite chapter is titled, Become an Instant Millionaire--confirmation that this book had been written for me. This chapter asks the reader to list all the activities she would partake in if she became an instant millionaire. “What would you do? What would you wear? Who would your friends be? Where would you live?” My responses at the time likely resembled this
Instant Millionaire Dominique – Wish List
1. Beautiful Designer Clothes & Shoes & Accessories
2. Bentley. Porsche. A DRIVER!
3. A big beautiful house filled with flowers, a maid, a pool, and a sexy personal trainer.
4. Delicious food! Fancy dinners. Never have to cook!
5. Beautiful Hair. Like the people in the magazines.
6. Happiness
The chapter picked apart my list, challenging me to introspect, observe and re-evaluate. “How different is your list from your current life? Are the things on your list what you really want? And are those things really going to make you, happy? Once you skimmed down your list to the things that you really truly would like or that will make you happy… How can you incorporate these things into your current lifestyle?”
My top wish was, beautiful designer clothes, shoes, and accessories. With my paltry Assistant’s salary I could not afford to many designer item, but I could wait for a sale and purchase one designer item at a time, piecing together the wardrobe that would project the position I wanted for myself. “I’m already on my way to being a ‘millionaire,’ or at least looking like one,” I thought.
Of course I couldn’t afford a luxury car like the ones on my list, but I did own a current car. Its functionality fulfilled its purpose and the lower payments left allowed me time to shop for items I would spend more of my time in, like my apartment.
Just like the example of a car, a house is not what is important; shelter, however, is essential, according to Maslow.
I diluted Maslow’s hierarchy of needs with a line from a Luther Vandross song, “a chair is still a chair even if when there is no one sitting there, but a chair is not a house and house is not a home when there’s no one there to hold you tight.” Fulfilling my need for physical shelter and my goal of self-actualization by making my home a warm living environment. Without the headache and responsibility of home-ownership, I would actually eliminate stress and fulfill my need for shelter by renting in a premier community. This realization placed me one step closer to my “millionaire mind frame”.
