Meet Killian McGinley, MTM Class of 2024

Killian arrived to UCSB from London, England, after completing his bachelor’s degree in Economics.

Q: Why did you want to join the MTM graduate program?

A: I wanted to join MTM because it’s UCSB’s graduate business degree. That was what originally attracted me to MTM. When I started doing some more digging, I thought Technology Management would be a really relevant skill set to add to my resume and professional development. I came straight from an economics undergrad background, so I thought incorporating technology along with that kind of past experience would be interesting and relevant. 

Q: What was your favorite moment of the year?

A: The final day of class when we delivered our final thesis presentations, because it was really nice to see all the work we had put in and present to everyone, including the MTM faculty. 

Q: What was something you learned that you look forward to implementing in your next job?

A: How work is changing in the future due to generative AI. I will be applying the mindset that we learned in MTM, that we should get creative with AI and use it to level up our work. Being able to bring this into the workforce will be very interesting, as will seeing how AI evolves. It will be fascinating to see whether future coworkers will be using AI in the same ways or not. 

Q: What was your favorite MTM course?

A: Digital Transformation with Professor Leonardi was very interesting, because we looked at a lot of case studies and saw the ways in which businesses have completely digitized all of their processes, some of which I didn’t really know a lot about before. 

Q: What was your field project and what skills did you use to solve this business challenge?

A: I worked at Deckers, specifically for the Ugg brand, which was amazing because it was such a well-known brand. It was really awesome to get insight into their processes and designs. We used a lot of product management skills. We were creating flow charts and Gantt charts to try and map their processes and look for efficiencies to speed up their time to market. We got a very holistic sense of different areas in which we could provide value to them. 

Q: What’s something that stands out to you about the MTM program?

A: The mix of hard skills and soft skills you develop in the program is very interesting and can really help you build out your resume. The evolution of gen AI has made it a lot easier to make the hard skills more accessible to someone who doesn't have an engineering background. 

Q: What was your favorite part about going to graduate school in Santa Barbara?

A: The social scene in Santa Barbara was one of the best things about it—it was super vibrant with all the students and the UCSB campus. The location made it very easy to socialize, and there was a really fun energy on campus. 

Q: Do you have any future career aspirations after MTM? 

A: My long-term plan is to go into venture capital. My short-term plan is to position myself in order to do that and to go into a business development role or product-facing role, to get a lot of market and product experience. 

Q: What is your favorite new technology?

A: Tableau, in which you can do data visualization, which is pretty fun. I used it briefly in undergrad and we used it this year during the MTM program, which I really enjoyed. 

Connect with Killian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/killian-mcginley/

Learn more about the Master of Technology Management graduate program: tmp.ucsb.edu/mtm