Iain Turnbull
Duke University, Fuqua School of Business
Age: 36
“Curious, competitive, compassionate, outgoing, playful, motivated, executioner, leader, resilient, empathetic, proactive.”
Hometown: St. Simons Island, Georgia
Family Members: Katie (wife), Aubrie (2-year-old daughter), and a baby boy due in June.
Fun fact about yourself: I have tattoos from 5 different continents. My name is in an iPad commercial.
Undergraduate School and Degree: University of Georgia, Philosophy
Where are you currently working? Google, Program Manager
Extracurricular Activities, Community Work and Leadership Roles: (Include school awards and honors) I started and hosted a program called “The Edge” which was focused on learning from our classmates about what made them great—their edge in life that we could all learn from to adopt into our own lives. I also actively engaged with veterans as they navigate their exit from military service, helping with their resumes and networking strategies.
Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I received a Superior Pass in our Accounting Management class. I was incredibly nervous about taking this class as I remember not doing well in my undergraduate accounting. Thus, I approached my Executive MBA class as an opportunity to vindicate my younger self.
I am also extremely proud of the “Edge” program I started, as I was able to facilitate an environment to show off my classmate’s unique strengths. This in turn helped others adopt those lessons in their own lives.
What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? Leaving a traditional career path to earn my Green Beret in the US Army’s Special Forces and the amazing journey it took me on—getting to meet so many interesting people and learning more than I could have imagined. I have never felt more challenged and uncomfortable, but I grew so much as a leader and teammate during my time in Special Forces.
Who was your favorite MBA professor? Entrepreneurial Execution – Professor Jamie N. Jones. It was the perfect culmination class for everything I had learned during my program with each discipline (leadership, management, accounting, finance, economics, marketing, strategy, statistics, and operations) all being utilized in a creative and dynamic manner. Professor Jones’s class made each of those other classes more vibrant in my mind when thinking of how I was going to come up with the next ‘unicorn’ business.
Why did you choose this school’s executive MBA program? Duke had a strong reputation for a collaborative, team learning environment (“Team Fuqua”). Coming from the special operations community, I was immediately pulled towards wanting to be part of a program that embraced the ‘team’ ethos and was innately curious to see how the corporate idea of a team compared to what I had experienced in the Army.
What is the biggest lesson you gained during your MBA and how did you apply it at work? No single lesson stands out, rather the culmination of seeing how the many unique perspectives and lessons have added to my professional growth.
However, one idea from my management class, that “your network is only as strong as when you use it,” has helped my mindset in my current role. As a program manager, the issues I face on any given day rely on my being able to reach into my professional network at Google to move projects forward.
Give us a story during your time as an executive MBA on how you were able to juggle work, family and education? The story goes a bit like this: be comfortable being uncomfortable. My daughter was born two weeks before I applied to Duke, and three months before the start of classes. Needless to say, I was stumbling over myself in my role as a new dad, grad student, and sleep-deprived husband, all the while exiting the Army trying to find a new career.
I was exhausted, delirious, and just trying to make it from one day to the next. I realized I was not going to get a quiet study environment, get the best 8 hours of sleep every night, or even feel confident that I knew what I was doing with my life. I had to deal with it. I remember sitting at my dining table, bottle-feeding my new baby while reading my accounting book as my wife cooked dinner. I also remember waking up at 5 a.m. to finish my homework on a Saturday morning before meeting my team at 7 a.m. to go over our team project.
The stress of trying to do well in school and provide for my family while being “present” to my wife and kid was at a level I have seldom experienced in my life. Yet, once I accepted the reality of my situation, it made waking up early to get in the extra studying I needed that much easier. It also forced me to realize that those ‘quiet’ moments of driving to the grocery store with my family, going on a family walk with the dogs, or taking our baby to her pediatrician were incredibly valuable and rare. In those moments, I prioritized reconnecting with my wife and the life we were building together.
What advice would you give to a student looking to enter an executive MBA program? Give a damn—you’re investing your most rare and valuable commodity (time). Make sure you truly see purpose in stressing yourself and your loved ones. With that being said, when you are at residency make sure you give it your all in getting to know your classmates, learning and taking it all in. Don’t half-ass it because you are sacrificing so much to be part of something bigger than yourself, but it will also make you feel incredibly connected if you give it your all.
What was your biggest regret in business school? This question assumes I have regrets. Yes, I wish I could have had all As, stayed up longer on late-night excursions with classmates during residency, or gotten to know all of my classmates better. Yet, I know I did everything to the best of my ability given the environment and other constraints.
I’ll admit that knowing what I know now, I wish I would have communicated better with my wife as we were learning how to be new parents together and I was going through a career transition while being a student in grad school. With any significant change in life, there is a learning curve to figure out how to adapt. I wish I could have known just how much strain was going to be put on my family because of my choice to pursue an Executive MBA and how much over-communicating could have alleviated some of that strain.
Which MBA classmate do you most admire? This is a tough question as I was blown away by the depth of personal and professional experiences my class had. However, Lori Chmura embodies many characteristics of what I believe are essential in being a business leader as well as what it means to be a good human being. My first interaction with Lori was during a management class in which she and I were paired off in a role-playing scenario. I had to negotiate with her to lease a shopping center for my fictional business. Long story short, she absolutely crushed me in the negotiations. Lori was professional and kindhearted, and even though I didn’t ‘win,’ I walked away from the deal feeling like I had a business partner that wanted to see my business succeed as it would ultimately make her succeed. The biggest takeaway from our first interaction sums up to: it’s how you treat people that matters as much as the bottom line—a cornerstone value of Duke that having a high decency quota matters as much (if not more) as a high EQ and IQ.
When I got to learn more about Lori’s life story, I was impressed in how she rose through the ranks, starting her career out as a front-line nurse (a position which is incredibly important but also terribly undervalued), had a family, and rose through up to be CEO of medical company to starting her own medical device business. Her story is amazing, but more importantly, she contributed so much to our class discussions, offering her invaluable wisdom to students and professors alike, with each interaction revealing her humility, tenacity and zeal for life.
What was the main reason you chose an executive MBA program over part-time or online alternatives? Being around peers with a wealth of life experiences, both personal and professional, was the main factor that drove me to pursue an Executive MBA versus alternative full-time MBA programs. I was 34 when I started the program, having had an advertising career before joining the Army, and then having served 7 years in Special Forces. Needless to say, my life experience lends itself well to connecting with my peers and professors as they were well into their professional careers. I specifically chose the Global Executive MBA program because I knew that those willing to travel the world and immerse themselves in new cultures were going to be people I wanted to surround myself with—curious, adventurous, and open-minded individuals.
What is your ultimate long-term professional goal? To be at the intersection of senior decision-making in strategic planning and execution for technology that is having societal or environmental impacts. My personal desire to ensure the world is a better place for my children greatly influences my professional drive to be mission-oriented.
Part of this is knowing I cannot change the world alone. One of the core tenants of Special Forces is being able to operate in the human terrain— working “by, with and through people.” I take personal responsibility for understanding any person’s ups and downs that affect them in their job, and I love seeing people grow, gain confidence and reach their own goals. At the end of the day, it’s all about having the most significant impact I can in the world, whether that’s making sure my teammates are being the best version they can be of themselves, or coming up with the next business to tackle global warming.
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