Max Major '05 can read your mind. It's a passion he parlayed into the only career he ever really considered. While at Maryland Smith, he honed his entrepreneurial skills to build a business as a renowned mentalist. Major, who describes his craft as combining "the showmanship of a magician mixed with some cool psychology and hypnosis," now performs at more than 200 events each year for top organizations like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Each of the seven global mindset competencies is integral to Mark Lenhart’s MBA ’00 work as executive director of study abroad organization CET Academic Programs. As a manager and leader, he finds self-awareness and humility to be a particularly important competency. Lenhart explains, “the leaders I admire most are the ones who approach their world with humility. If you don’t approach a conversation with a certain amount of humility, you manage to create barriers instead of creating learning opportunities.”

Erika Hall ’07, assistant professor of organization and management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, studied finance at Maryland Smith while maintaining an interest in entrepreneurship. The path to her professional journey and the development of global mindset competencies began with an influential summer research assistantship with former Smith professor Ian Williamson. She witnessed the global nature of his work as his research took him to conferences and presentations across the world. Hall explains, “I just kept thinking, this is such an awesome job!

For Andy Kim, MBA ’20, the desire to make banking a better experience for Korean speakers runs deep. Kim, vice president and business banking relationship manager at M&T Bank, made the list of the Baltimore Business Journal’s 2020 Leaders in Diversity Award for his efforts in building a Korean-speaking banking team within his branch.

Approaching cultural differences with curiosity and openness is fundamental to leading with a global mindset. Scott Samels '92, global delivery lead within the global enablement team at McCormick & Company, Inc., oversees approximately two hundred people halved between North America and Europe, specifically in Poland. So for Samels, understanding the cultural differences in the countries that his company operates in and how that impacts the employee workforce is an important factor in developing his global mindset and leading a global team.

People with a global mindset have spent time understanding, accepting and leveraging similarities and differences among cultures and business practices. For Ernst & Young Managing Director, and Global Service Coordinating Partner, Ellen Polansky ’87, developing this mindset starts with breaking down stereotypes and barriers and for some, fear. No one’s success equations should be based on fear. As a Maryland Smith graduate, success comes from being “Fearless” exclaims Polansky.

A global mindset is essential for success in an increasingly interconnected world. For Kristin Fallon '11, that means developing boundaryless thinking, with no set geographical reference. “It is about thinking outside of your immediate world and really accounting for the world at large. We are in the U.S. and so we are thinking about the world from the perspective of the U.S. – as someone from Europe looks at the world from a European perspective. However, trying not to have a fixed perspective is key,” says Fallon, the director of content and storytelling at GE Healthcare.

Heather Maier, MBA ’91, has always had a creative and business-oriented mind. Her interests in design and art were balanced with her skills in math and finance. And now, her year-old business, Hedy’s Gems, combines all of these. Maier was born and raised in the DC area and earned her bachelor’s degree in math & business from Wake Forest University. After college, Maier moved back to DC and worked in retail banking with the goal of making a career in the world of finance.

When Charlotte Cullen graduated from Maryland Smith in December 2019, she did so at the perfect moment – the prelude to tax season.

When students enroll in the Advanced R Workshop, they will be taught by someone who stood in their shoes before them. Ravi Pandey, a 2016 Smith graduate of the Master of Science in Information Systems program, leads the class. He knows what it takes to succeed professionally, and he teaches graduate student weekend workshops on R, machine learning and Python.