Ammi White (IMC17)

Director of strategic consulting for financial service institutions at Epsilon

Ammi White joined the IMC program after five years in marketing at a small company in Michigan. That job sparked her interest in learning to track her strategies’ impacts. She came to Medill to learn more about understanding consumers through data. The week she graduated from Medill, she received an invitation to join the Strategy & Insights division at Epsilon, a "people-based" global marketing company in Chicago. After a year at Epsilon, she was promoted to the role of Senior Strategic Business Consultant. Now she serves as Epsilon's director of strategic consulting for financial service institutions.

What brought you to Medill?

I was in charge of all facets of the marketing at a small local company back home in Michigan, which gave me many opportunities to learn, grow, try new things and stretch myself. After my time there I wanted to go to the next level of my career. I wanted to be able to use, analyze, and interpret data but I wasn't particularly keen on some of the other parts of a traditional M.B.A. The IMC program seemed like the best fit for me because of their customer-first and data-driven approach.

Tell me about an experience you had at Medill that stands out in your mind.

The Global Brand Communication Management course in London was by far one of my best experiences and memories from the IMC program. Ariel Goldfarb’s class was my introduction to building my own frameworks, which I use and create more and more at work, and how they are built by marketers every day to form a structure around something that initially had none.

I didn’t do study abroad in undergrad, so this was also my first extended time internationally that wasn't a vacation. Spending time in London taking Ariel’s class and exploring the world with classmates gave me a new perspective and understanding of what the world has to offer as well as how I play a part in it, as a black woman and as an American. I absolutely encourage all IMC students to take advantage of at least one of the many opportunities to learn and participate in the program outside of Chicago.

How did the IMC program prepare you for your job?

The largest takeaway from the program along with the actual IMC ideals, techniques and skills we were taught was to get comfortable with ambiguity. The ambiguity of strategy creation born out of problem-solving is something I am better at because of my experience with IMC. Ed Malthouse’s mantra of being able to "be part of the conversation" when it comes to data analytics, even if it can be challenging, prepared me for all of these conversations.