Meet a Business Husker: Aakriti Agrawal, Actuarial Science and MBA Alum

College of Business Author

01/25/2024 Added

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Aakriti Agrawal, ‘16 actuarial science & ‘22 MBA@Nebraska alum, talks with Associate Dean Laurie Miller about her experience at the College of Business at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Originally from Pune, India, she took advantage of many opportunities at Nebraska that helped launch her career as a manager of data governance at American Express, a Fortune 100 company.

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[00:00:00.720]Hi, I'm Laurie Miller,
[00:00:02.340]Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs and Curriculum
[00:00:05.040]here in the College of Business.
[00:00:06.420]And today we have Actuarial Science and Finance alum,
[00:00:10.080]Aakriti Agrawal here,
[00:00:11.670]as our honored alumni guest for homecoming.
[00:00:15.900]Thank you so much for having me, Laurie.
[00:00:17.370]I'm so glad to be back and back here at the university.
[00:00:20.310]We are so happy to have you here,
[00:00:22.050]and we know you've done so much with your time in Lincoln.
[00:00:24.870]And so what I'd love to do to start this
[00:00:27.450]is to ask you, how did you get here?
[00:00:29.850]How did you pick Lincoln, Nebraska?
[00:00:32.220]I get this question constantly.
[00:00:34.290]So I lived in Lincoln for 10 years,
[00:00:35.730]and every time I met anybody
[00:00:38.220]they would ask me why I chose Lincoln.
[00:00:40.140]So I was an actuarial science student.
[00:00:41.640]This was one of the top actuarial science schools
[00:00:43.560]in the country.
[00:00:44.760]So that was an easy choice.
[00:00:46.080]But when I was engaging with the university,
[00:00:49.650]I found that
[00:00:50.700]the University of Nebraska-Lincoln admission staff
[00:00:53.940]were just the most responsive.
[00:00:55.890]And I was 17 when I came to college,
[00:00:57.870]and my parents were sending me from India alone,
[00:01:00.900]halfway across the world.
[00:01:02.370]And so safety was really big,
[00:01:03.870]and they felt like if the university employees
[00:01:07.290]were responding really well
[00:01:08.640]and were answering all of my mom's million questions,
[00:01:12.180]that I would be safe.
[00:01:13.440]And so we found that everybody
[00:01:15.300]was very helpful and friendly.
[00:01:17.460]It was nice to get more of a mentor
[00:01:19.260]rather than just somebody who was trying to recruit me.
[00:01:21.510]So that's why I came here.
[00:01:22.410]That's amazing.
[00:01:23.243]So you just mentioned you're in data governance
[00:01:26.100]at American Express,
[00:01:27.360]a Fortune 100 company.
[00:01:29.100]Can you explain what you do and how you got into it?
[00:01:31.830]Yes, so the term we like to use in my field
[00:01:35.340]is I got voluntold.
[00:01:37.260]And so somebody in a job interview
[00:01:39.360]for a data-analytics position
[00:01:41.160]actually identified
[00:01:42.990]that I would be good at data governance.
[00:01:44.820]And I think,
[00:01:46.140]we talk about getting involved on campus
[00:01:47.820]or we talk about getting involved while you're abroad,
[00:01:50.490]that is key,
[00:01:51.690]because so many of the opportunities presented to me
[00:01:54.120]I would've never chosen for myself.
[00:01:56.280]And I would've never chosen data governance.
[00:01:58.230]And I absolutely love it.
[00:01:59.550]I'm actually keynoting
[00:02:00.750]the data governance conference in December.
[00:02:03.060]So I've gotten to the point
[00:02:04.320]where I'm able to share
[00:02:05.153]my love of data governance with people
[00:02:07.710]in a really unique, special way.
[00:02:09.630]But data governance is essentially
[00:02:11.700]how companies look at their data internally.
[00:02:13.680]So what does the data that American Express has
[00:02:16.620]mean to other American Express employees?
[00:02:19.080]How do they know that they know what it means,
[00:02:21.360]and then how do they know that it's good data?
[00:02:23.400]So you're hearing a lot of data.
[00:02:24.990]That's where my actuarial science background comes in.
[00:02:27.840]My first job after college,
[00:02:29.070]I actually learned how to computer program.
[00:02:30.630]So I self-taught.
[00:02:32.610]Because I needed to access my databases,
[00:02:34.770]and I hadn't taken a lot of computer-science courses
[00:02:38.070]through my degree.
[00:02:39.600]And so I decided to teach myself.
[00:02:43.350]And that was scary,
[00:02:44.370]but really interesting and fun.
[00:02:46.140]And I found that I had a really good skillset there.
[00:02:49.200]So data governance also combines that.
[00:02:50.790]So I do a little bit of code.
[00:02:52.080]I sit in the technology side of the organization sometimes,
[00:02:55.440]sometimes in the business side.
[00:02:56.670]So I'm kind of in between.
[00:02:58.320]So I get to use that business degree
[00:02:59.700]and the math side.
[00:03:01.200]I do a lot of coaching and training
[00:03:02.670]with other American Express employees.
[00:03:05.010]Lots of learning about what problems they have
[00:03:06.930]with their data,
[00:03:07.980]which uses my extroversion personality, which I love.
[00:03:11.430]And so it's a really good meld of my skillset,
[00:03:14.460]but it's also something
[00:03:15.300]that I would've never personally found on my own.
[00:03:18.030]So you talked a little bit
[00:03:18.960]about the actuarial science background
[00:03:21.360]and a little bit about the coding that you had to do.
[00:03:23.490]But in terms of Nebraska Business,
[00:03:25.800]how do you think Nebraska Business
[00:03:27.750]prepared you for this particular role?
[00:03:29.940]Yeah, I think that my college experience
[00:03:33.900]was really underlined with the diversity of experiences.
[00:03:36.570]So I was involved on campus in the College of Business.
[00:03:39.480]I actually worked in the college
[00:03:40.770]and took actuarial science classes,
[00:03:43.080]which were a lot of math and statistics,
[00:03:44.820]but also took a lot of economics and finance
[00:03:46.980]and a variety of other things.
[00:03:49.560]I was really involved with student leadership on campus,
[00:03:52.830]and so I was learning a lot
[00:03:53.790]about the psychology of people and students
[00:03:56.820]and how to get involved on campus.
[00:03:58.860]I was really involved with international students
[00:04:02.160]and student government.
[00:04:03.180]So I was learning about the politics side of it.
[00:04:05.820]And I think what that did for me
[00:04:07.140]is it made me a really whole human.
[00:04:10.290]When we think of careers,
[00:04:12.390]I think in college we very often think of,
[00:04:14.377]"This is the thing I wanna do,"
[00:04:16.200]but then when you enter the job field,
[00:04:18.330]you have to be a full person
[00:04:19.920]who can have a full conversation
[00:04:21.360]with everybody around you
[00:04:23.370]and can talk about a variety of things.
[00:04:25.800]And I think that really helped me in this job.
[00:04:27.660]But before that, before I got this job,
[00:04:31.290]I actually was running a nonprofit here in Lincoln
[00:04:33.720]that taught girls to code.
[00:04:35.310]And it was a nonprofit that I founded.
[00:04:37.290]And my College of Business experiences
[00:04:39.000]taught me how to start something
[00:04:40.980]and how to build it up
[00:04:42.840]and how to grow this organization
[00:04:44.610]that I kind of ran on the side of my career.
[00:04:47.580]And when I was interviewing for this job,
[00:04:49.980]that was a large part of my interview
[00:04:52.740]because I could show that I had management skill
[00:04:54.690]without actually having management role at my previous job.
[00:04:57.900]So all of these other things that I was doing,
[00:05:00.480]I kind of continued doing
[00:05:01.560]after being so involved on campus.
[00:05:03.300]I needed that involvement outside of campus.
[00:05:05.940]And I think that really helped me
[00:05:08.670]secure a job that was interesting and unique,
[00:05:12.000]but also really well suited for me.
[00:05:13.830]Oh, definitely.
[00:05:14.880]So I don't know if you know this,
[00:05:16.920]but I think you do.
[00:05:18.450]The actuarial science program is STEM-designated.
[00:05:22.650]Yes.
[00:05:23.483]But did you know that the economics program
[00:05:25.350]is now STEM-designated?
[00:05:26.400]I just heard about that.
[00:05:27.587]That's huge.
[00:05:29.220]It is huge.
[00:05:30.768]And I know I don't probably need to tell you,
[00:05:31.601]but being STEM-designated
[00:05:33.630]supports international students
[00:05:35.130]in obtaining a two-year
[00:05:36.690]optional practical training extension, or OPT,
[00:05:40.350]that we call it around here, extension.
[00:05:42.120]So that allows you to gain more work experience
[00:05:45.150]in the United States.
[00:05:46.680]So my question.
[00:05:48.450]Did you always see yourself
[00:05:50.010]working in the United States after graduation?
[00:05:52.920]Yes, absolutely.
[00:05:55.110]That was an easy one.
[00:05:56.351]I thought that was a hard one.
[00:05:57.390]I chose actuarial science because I knew that.
[00:06:00.150]And so getting your visa in that first year
[00:06:02.640]is sometimes challenging.
[00:06:04.770]I was fortunate,
[00:06:05.603]I had a really great job pretty soon after graduating,
[00:06:08.340]and they went through the process for me.
[00:06:10.590]But I actually got my visa on that two-year extension.
[00:06:13.350]So if I didn't have that two-year extension,
[00:06:15.510]I personally would not be here anymore.
[00:06:18.060]And I've been fortunate to be, what,
[00:06:20.190]in a seven-year career now here in the U.S.
[00:06:23.700]where I've been fortunate to have employers
[00:06:25.470]that have sponsored my visa.
[00:06:27.390]And so that's huge.
[00:06:29.640]It's amazing that international students
[00:06:31.530]will have more options for what they wanna major in,
[00:06:34.470]but also that they get to be an economics major
[00:06:37.920]and they get to combine that with other things.
[00:06:39.390]So like econ and marketing now is an option
[00:06:42.330]for an international student to enable that extra visa.
[00:06:46.020]Yeah, those different pathways for them
[00:06:47.700]to figure out exactly what they want to do
[00:06:49.530]and create things just like you've created.
[00:06:52.290]And we are so blessed.
[00:06:53.580]We know that our international students
[00:06:56.100]and our domestic students,
[00:06:57.390]being able to have access to you,
[00:06:59.310]which you give us so much access
[00:07:00.930]and we super, super appreciate it.
[00:07:02.700]And we know that for years to come,
[00:07:04.380]our students will benefit so much
[00:07:06.690]from your interactions and experiences with them.
[00:07:09.810]Thank you so much.
[00:07:10.643]I had so many rich experiences here as a student,
[00:07:14.580]and alums came back and spoke to me,
[00:07:16.920]and that's what made my experience so rich.
[00:07:19.200]And so I'm really glad I get to do that again
[00:07:20.940]for other students.
[00:07:22.020]Exactly.
[00:07:22.853]Well, thank you so much for being here
[00:07:24.060]and thank you so much your time.
[00:07:26.070]Thanks, Laurie.

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Meet a Business Husker: Aakriti Agrawal, Actuarial Science and MBA Alum

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