Simeon Teopaco, MBA'15: The Creative Thinker

We sat down with Simeon Teopaco, MBA'15, to talk about his transition from cartography, to information technology, to the Consumer Marketing Academy at the Kelley School.

Name: Simeon Teopaco
Hometown: Washington, D.C.
BS’06, Geography, James Madison University
MBA’15, Consumer Marketing Academy, Kelley School of Business

Born, raised, educated, and employed in Washington, D.C., I love my hometown, but after spending not only the majority of my life but also the majority of my professional life there, I started to want more. After graduating from college I was working as a cartographer for Booz Allen Hamilton and most recently was working as an iT strategy consultant. At some point money stopped being a motivation and i yearned for a quality of life where i could explore my creativity and interest in marketing.

The variety of experiences that students bring to their respective Academy is incredible, and it’s what makes the Academy experience so valuable. We unite under a common interest yet we bring such diverse perspectives to the conversation—perspectives that span any industry that you could think of. In the Consumer Marketing Academy I found myself leading in a completely different way—I hadn’t realized how versatile my skill set was until I was able to explore it within the Academy. 

I went home for winter break and was going back and forth with friends over dinner; I chimed in on one subject or another and they all stopped and stared at me. That was it—I was conversing in a totally new way, on a level I didn’t know I was capable of. I was explaining current events, the context of business news, and general topics in a way that I had only heard from professors. It was in that moment that I felt I had arrived. In such a short time, Kelley had had a major effect on me.