Marsha Bertrand, Freelance Writer, Self-Employed, Lake Forest MBA Class of 1982
If you want proof that an MBA can advance your career, look no further than Marsha Bertrand, who graduated from our Lake Forest campus. Push her hard enough and you might even get her to calculate the ROI on an MBA, which would be perfectly appropriate for the author of A Woman's Guide to Savvy Investing, published this year by the AMACOM Books division of the American Management Association.
"The ROI on my MBA must be at least five thousand percent," she said. "But you really can't put a price tag on it. It's totally changed my life and how can you put a price tag on that?"
Bertrand held an administrative position with Coopers and Lybrand when she decided that an MBA would help her realize her goal of doing something more. A co-worker recommended LFGSM and Bertrand found the School to be a perfect fit.
"The best part was that I could continue to work and go to school," she said. Being able to work full-time was particularly important as Bertrand financed her education herself, but she also appreciated the opportunity to interact with other professionals. "It was nice to go to school with people who weren't eighteen. Agewise and professionally, it was nice to be with people who were my peers."
Bertrand completed the program in two years, graduating with honors. Almost immediately, she was transferred within Coopers & Lybrand and promoted to director of training and development. After approximately two years, she left to pursue a career in investor relations, a field she worked in for more than five years.
Today, Bertrand works as an independent writer focusing on financial and investment issues. If you read Barron's, you may well have read her work, including a humorous piece on amusing ticker symbols. She also writes for the Robb Report, inflight magazines, military magazines, investing and trade publications, and others. She's become so successful that she no longer needs to focus most of her effort on sales. Now, the editors call her. She credits the discipline and knowledge she gained in graduate school with helping her to succeed as an entrepreneur.
"Through the different classes you get a broad overview that helps no matter what field you're in, but is particularly helpful when you're on your own," she said. "If you're an entrepreneur, you're handling everything yourself and you need to learn everything. The LFGSM program had a really well-rounded curriculum that gave me everything I needed to succeed."
Succeed she has. A Woman's Guide to Savvy Investing is Bertrand's second book. Her first, The Consumer Guide to the Stock Market, was published in 1993 by a smaller publishing firm. This time around, AMACOM supported the book with a promotional campaign that took Bertrand on media tours of Boca Raton, FL, Washington DC, and New York.
Bertrand notes that while many women are quite investment savvy, research shows that most women tend to be security driven in their investments. "Independent studies indicate that many women don't want to risk losing whatever money they have and therefore tend to make conservative investments like passbook savings accounts and certificates of deposit," she said. "Those are the kind of investments that aren't going to make a nest egg for retirement. My book is intended to give women the confidence and knowledge they need to start investing in stocks and bonds."
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