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Chantel Adams, 2014 Edie Hunt Award Winner: Pay It Forward

chantel-adamsAt the 2014 Forté MBA Women’s Leadership Conference, Forté had the pleasure of recognizing Chantel Adams, a recent graduate of Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as one of our two Edie Hunt award winners.

Chantel received her MBA in Marketing, Sustainable Enterprise, and Nonprofit Leadership this spring. Prior to grad school, she worked in financial services in New York. When it came time for grad school, “I wanted to find a different functional interest,” she recalls.

“I wanted to challenge myself creatively. I really enjoy connecting with people and trying to understand their interests, and I fell in love with marketing and brand management.”

This fall, she starts her new job in Los Angeles at Nestle, working in marketing for the confection and snacks division. She says she was drawn to the company because of its commitment to social responsibility.

During her time at Kenan-Flagler, Chantel, a Forté Fellow, was also selected for the Dean’s Fellow Program an honor given to only 10% of the student body. She worked with the administration to help build a pipeline for women in business and helped retool a critical recruiting event, and the Carolina Women in Business annual conference for Kenan-Flagler students, resulting in a bigger-than-ever audience.

chantel-adams-awardChantel says she’s always been passionate about women in business and chose Kenan-Flagler because she wanted to align herself with a Forté school that shared her passion.

She credits Forté as an important partner in the research she and her colleagues at Kenan-Flagler undertook to understand how to draw ambitious pre-MBA women to careers in business.

“We partnered with Forté and did a program with undergraduate women who were not majoring in business, to expose them to more opportunities and help them explore whether business school might be a viable option for them,” she says.

Chantel is a three-time attendee of our annual MBA Women’s Leadership Conference and has also served as a panelist at the event. She says her commitment to mentoring pre-MBA women is part of her desire to pay it forward.

“When I was a junior in college, my mentor sought me out. She noticed that I had written essays about wanting to go to business school, and she took me to visit my first MBA program. I truly believe that when you present yourself well, people see your potential and want to help you along, and it’s my responsibility in turn to mentor someone else.”

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