Todd Smith (IMC05)

Partner of CoreLife Eatery and chief concept officer at Cafe Rio Mexican Grill

How did Medill IMC help prepare you for your career?

Medill IMC prepared me in every way to be a 21st century marketer. It gave me the perfect mix of traditional marketing tools and skills combined with new tools and thought processes to excel in consumer marketing. IMC is a focused program that creates focused marketers who aren’t afraid to take some chances, push the boundaries and try new things. This is exactly what the marketing world desperately needs more of: fearless marketers.

What do you wish you had known on your first day at IMC?

Graduate school is unique because it is the only time in your life where you can take huge chances and risks without any consequences. I wish I had internalized that more and then taken much bigger risks with my thinking. There is no need to play it safe in graduate school.

What’s the top reason to go to IMC?

Medill IMC is one of the few marketing programs in the country that is training marketers for the current paradigm in the marketing world. Medill IMC was ahead of its time in integrating data-driven decisions into every aspect of marketing. IMC teaches students how to manage the extraordinarily difficult task of being data-driven, while trusting and developing your intuition. Marketers who do that will be miles ahead of their peers.