UMN Carlson School of Management

Guest speakers (like Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota) and venues (like The Historic Klamath, a renovated 1924 ferryboat) make Carlson alumni events special. In the past year, gatherings brought together pockets of alumni domestically and internationally. Whether in Vienna, Warsaw, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Chicago, Naples, or New York City, the Carlson community offers global connections to students, alumni, and friends of the school.

For three sisters, grad school was a family affair. Annah, Marissa, and Samantha Mellum each graduated from the Master of Human Resources & Industrial Relations program. 💛

Long before navigating their degrees together, the sisters were already used to sharing experiences — from growing up on a farm to working at the same Applebee’s.

“The Carlson alumni network is such a huge sell,” said Samantha, '22 MHRIR. “The networking that you can do and the people that want to reach out to you and truly want to see you do better because we all came from the same place is just something that I haven't seen before.”

Following their time in the program, each sister works in an HR role, for U.S. Bank (Samantha), Land O'Lakes (Marissa), and Indian Motorcycle (Annah).

Local university students helping a local brewery help local nonprofits — how community-oriented can it get! 🍻

Dual Citizen Brewing Company in St. Paul partners with 150 nonprofits each year, which includes hosting a different nonprofit in the taproom each month. These partnerships allow Dual Citizen to donate ~$500,000 annually to local organizations. However, that work isn’t always apparent to the casual customer.

To make that work clearer to customers, undergraduate students in the Impact Lab course found ways to boost awareness of the brewery’s dual-purpose mission and draw more customers to the taproom. They had updated table signage and a banner printed in time for the kickoff of a live music event series at the end of the semester.

“I really enjoyed my Impact Lab experience,” says Brooke Adamek, '28 BSB. “You really get to make an impact in the real world, and it feels powerful. You really can do that stuff even as a student.”

The Czech Republic welcomes a new group of Carlson students for a life-changing semester each year.

Through the Carlson Global Institute (CGI), students can enroll in I-Core Abroad: Gold Block in Prague, a cohort-based study abroad program where Carlson students take required business courses, fulfill liberal education requirements, and complete their required international experience.

In Spring 2026, 23 undergraduate students went through the program. While in Prague, they studied business within a Czech context, learned from the country's rich history and thriving economy, and expanded their global perspective through two traveling seminars and immersive cultural experiences, or "Czechtivities."

"This program has run for 2 years. We've learned that students are choosing this program because it allows them to stay on track for graduation, but also affords them a close cohort group of friends while abroad," says Alex Hamel, senior program manager for CGI. "Last semester, 87% of student participating said this program helped them with their cultural agility and learning more about Central European business in a hands-on way. We're looking forward to continuing to offer this unique study abroad model to Carlson students!"

Heard of pro golfer Bubba Watson? He wears gear from Swannies Golf, an apparel company founded by UMN alums! ⛳️👕

Ten years after Matt Stang, '13 BSB, and Adam Iversen, '13 BS, created their first product (a failed golf sandal), Swannies employs 75 people and sells apparel in 2,500 golf clubs across the U.S., Canada and Europe — including iconic venues such as Pebble Beach, Pinehurst, and St. Andrews in Scotland. As part of a three-year partnership, Bubba Watson has worn Swannies gear during the Masters Tournament.

Matt says he used lessons from his business degree at Minnesota Carlson during the early years of the startup. He recalls taking Entrepreneurship in Action, a yearlong course in which students create and launch a startup. He met Adam while taking classes that challenged students across sectors to address social and environmental issues. Nord, who taught Design for Sustainable Development, says Stang and Iversen’s complementary backgrounds — entrepreneurship and environmental engineering — were a perfect match.

“That’s part of their partnership, too, that they come from different disciplines,” says Nord. “They have just a broader set of knowledge than if they had the same background. They both wanted to incorporate sustainability, but because of their varying skillsets, they figured out how to execute it, which is easier said than done.”

Today, sustainability is evident across Swannies’ operations. The company is dedicated to reducing its carbon footprint by using sustainable packaging, incorporating recycled materials into its products, working with responsible factory partners and supporting carbon offset projects. Swannies recently hit a milestone of having used more than 15 million discarded water bottles in its products.

Show us YOUR mug! 🫵📸 (details below)

To celebrate the 60,000+ alumni in the Carlson community, we're creating a new highlight in the alumni magazine! We want to showcase how our alumni exist across all industries, at every level of experience, in diverse business environments around the globe.

To make this happen, here's what we need from you before Friday, July 24:
📲 1. Send us a message with 1–3 photos of you and your alumni mug.
📍 2. Tell us your name, graduation year, program, and where you're currently based.
💼 3. Write a quote about what work you're doing or what being a Carlson alum means to you.

Finally, just wait to see yourself in the fall issue of the magazine! Swipe through some wonderful examples below!👇

A collaborative course bridging engineering and business helped improve surgical maintenance by creating a new medical device. 🏥

"Working with a real client makes you feel like you're actually having a real impact," said Rani Shrivastava, a current Part-Time MBA student who works at Boston Scientific in research and development. "This is an actual device that can help people. Having an impact on patients is so valuable.”

Minnesota Carlson and the College of Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota (CSE) co-deliver the New Product Design & Business Development (NPDBD) course. Last spring, MBA and Mechanical Engineering graduate students worked with Clarus Medical, LLC., a family-owned company founded by Scott Sundet, ’78 BSB. The team designed a new product to complement Clarus’s line of medical-grade borescopes — the thin, flexible scopes used to inspect and clean medical instruments after procedures.

“We always talk about neurosurgeons,” says Kristin Sundet Pavek, '23 MBA, Clarus president and the team's client contact. “But really, just as important are the sterile processing staff who are in the basement working on cleaning devices. Without the devices, surgeons can’t do their jobs.”

Unlike traditional case studies, students appreciated how alive the hands-on project felt.

“I love the hands-on prototyping, getting down and dirty with the product," said Abigail Johnson, '23 CSE.

Over two semesters, students conducted customer research with hospital staff, going into hospitals to observe workflows and record conversations with the people who would use the tool. They considered three go-to-market models and recommended a path forward to Clarus, complete with risk analysis and next steps. Throughout the process, cross-functional conversations were invaluable.

“The business folks can understand better from the engineering folks — I need to be thinking with my engineers as we’re developing,” said Prasad Achanta, a current Part-Time MBA student who joined the program after 15 years in IT. “Likewise, the engineers can ask better questions about value propositions. Everybody comes out better educated on a holistic level.”

to share Minnesota ranks #1 in the U.S. for quality of life, according to the State of the Nation project funded by The Murphy Institute at Tulane University, an economic and political research center.

This bipartisan report was authored by leaders in seven of the nation’s leading think tanks and senior officials and advisors to the past five presidential administrations, who assessed the country's progress for its 250th anniversary.

Data was collected and analyzed from all 50 states across 15 measures: children and families, citizenship and democracy, civil liberties, economy, education, environment, inequality, life satisfaction, mental health, national security, physical health, social capital, trust in institutions, violence, and work and labor force. Minnesota had the highest average rank across all available measures.

Lisa Erickson, ’97 MBA, the president and CEO of Medica, rose through the ranks of Twin Cities-based companies like Pillsbury, General Mills, Best Buy, and Optum before landing her current role. Through this journey, she says, she has learned to be resilient and adapt her skills to different industries while continuously striving to lead with impact. Erickson recently shared her insights with Minnesota Carlson:

[What leadership principles do you live by?]

What’s incredibly important for me, and I think for other leaders, is staying curious, really focusing on how you’re enabling or empowering your team to be successful, and demonstrating a high level of accountability and ownership.

[What did you learn at Carlson that you still use at work today?]

The willingness to jump in, to stay curious and to have the confidence to ask questions. People often say there are no dumb questions. Honestly, that’s true. Most of the time, when you ask questions, everybody else has the same question. There’s also the teamwork and collaboration that were a critical part of all the coursework at Carlson. My experience there, along with my experience at different companies, gave me the confidence that I can walk into any situation and be successful.

[What advice would you give to current Carlson students?]

I would never have laid out the path that I’ve had in my career, nor would I have ever thought it was possible. So, the advice I would give is to get started. You might not absolutely love your first job, but every experience is valuable, and some of the best experiences I had were in jobs that seemed the least likely. When I went to Best Buy, I went into kind of an off-the-beaten-track corporate finance role ... but I got opportunities in that role that I would never have gotten anywhere else.

Sometimes, you can’t anticipate what you’re going to learn, but just take opportunities and ask yourself: Will you be challenged? Can you contribute and add value, and will you continue to learn? And if you answer yes to those things, I would say embrace change, embrace opportunities and lean in.

Students found sweet solutions to a small business's sticky problems this spring, through an experiential learning project. 🍯

In the undergraduate Impact Lab course, students take on clients, examine their business challenges, and develop recommendations. Last semester, teams worked with Humboldt Honey MPLS , a local beekeeping business based out of a neighborhood garden in north Minneapolis. They wanted to increase brand awareness in the community and build a more efficient financial tracking system.

“Our goal for the semester was to create a central hub for them in an Excel spreadsheet where they could see their metrics, KPIs, revenue, expenses, and margins on specific apiaries to try and make it easier for them to make smarter financial decisions,” said Rocco Ramirez, '28 BSB

Humboldt Honey's leadership says the students gave them exactly what they were looking for, and gave them the opportunity to redefine who they are.

"We have these tools and can put them into practice right now," says Danielle Tietjen, a Humboldt Honey co-owner. "That is deeply helpful for small businesses, when there are so many things to do."