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Spring Break in Chile!



By Jessie Dugan Barrett, MBA '19

Over Spring Break, twenty-six fellow MBA students and I traveled to Santiago, Chile with three faculty members. Six student groups consulted with one of five Chilean companies on projects addressing a variety of business needs. My team developed a business and marketing plan for a start-up that had recently patented a product to preserve glaciers. While there was plenty of challenging work to be done, MBA’s live by a strict code: “work hard, play hard”. We found plenty of time for both during our week in Chile.


Day 1: We arrived in Chile around 10 AM local time. After making it through customs, we had a brief orientation with Austral Group (our coordinators for the week) and settled into our hotel rooms. Later, we met our clients for the first time over dinner at La Mision!

Day 2: We started our first full day in Santiago with a walking tour of the city. We visited places such as the Plaza de la Constitucion, Santa Lucia Hill, and the Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago. The Cathedral (pictured below) is the main house of worship for Chile’s Catholic Church and is the base for the country’s Archdiocese.

Day 3: We traveled roughly 90 minutes outside of the city to Lodge Andino, where we had the opportunity to hike or ride horseback before sitting down to a traditional Chilean barbecue.

Day 4: In the morning we met with InvestChile, a government body responsible for foreign investment recruiting. That afternoon we met with Indimin and CoreDevX to learn more about data analytics in the mining industry.

Days 5 and 6: We had two fully dedicated project work days. My group had a unique opportunity to hike the Andes to see a glacier in order to put our company’s product into context. We picked up an additional team member, “Andi” the dog, along the way (far right).

Day 7: We traveled to the city of Valparaiso where we learned about their ports in the morning and did a walking tour of their famous street art in the afternoon.



Day 8: Our last full day in Chile! We started the morning by presenting our final projects to our clients. We spent our final evening at Kingston Family Vineyards in Casablanca. We reviewed a case study about the vineyard with owner Courtney Kingston and celebrated a successful week over dinner.

I’ve found it hard putting into words how impactful this trip was to me not just as an MBA student, but as a person. The country itself was beautiful: everyone we met was warm and welcoming. Hiking El Morado to see a glacier in person is an experience my team and I will cherish for the rest our lives. We all wanted to provide our clients with something that would support and grow their businesses. My group signed a rock we collected from our glacier hike and gave it to our client in appreciation of their time and trust. I left Chile feeling honored to have been a part of this trip.

Day 9: This was a free day to grab some last-minute things before returning home. We all loaded onto the plane with souvenirs, work experience, new friends, memories, and (in my case) a bunch of rocks. But hey, guess that’s just a day in the life of an MBA.

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