As they say, time sure does fly when you are having fun. Six months back, I started work at Unilever as an associate brand manager in the Home and Personal Care business and I cannot believe it has already been nearly eight months since I graduated. The HPC business is based out of Greenwich, CT — an hour from Manhattan. The commute is easy with the Metro North lines out of New York City running every 15-20 minutes at peak hours. A long commute, but not a difficult one at all.

I work on the laundry business as an associate manager on Wisk Laundry detergent. The job has been incredible so far! Everything I thought it would be and a bit more as well. Brand management is really about running a business. Yes, the marketing is the biggest piece of it — how do we communicate to our consumers, what is the best way to reach them, what would incent them to buy my brand versus competing ones, where is the market going, understanding trends, understanding the competitive environment, and the list goes on.

But there is also the production aspect — how do we ensure that we have enough inventory to satisfy volumes, working with our supply chain colleagues to ensure we plan ahead when we plan promotions, working with our sales colleagues to ensure that we are in the loop with our customers’ plans and working with our finance colleagues to maintain our brand’s financial health. My husband challenges me to describe my job in one sentence and the best I have been able to come up with is to say, that as owners of the brand’s P&L, we have to run the brand like a mini-business within the larger environs of the HPC business. Is it challenging? Absolutely. There are always many balls up in the air at any given time and managing seven to nine different projects at one time can demand a certain organizational discipline, time management skills, and the ability to prioritize. Hmm ... exactly what they want to drive home at MIT Sloan with multiple team assignments competing for your attention!

What else about the job? The people have been exhilarating to work with as well. Everyone is smart and incredibly capable at their jobs. The door is always open if you have questions for someone. The hours are somewhat of a surprise Ð it is not the 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. most people think it is. More like a 9 a.m - 8 p.m. However, I have yet to have worked longer than a couple of hours on a weekend, if any at all. Unilever has great training programs as well. A series of three programs for new associates are conducted over the course of the first year. By spreading out the training over a year, the company ensures that an associate’s experiences reinforce the learning, thereby making the content more relevant and useful. All in all, it’s been a fabulous six months to date.

Enough about the job for now. A quick note about being an alumna: Between adjusting to a new job, a new company, and a new city, I admit I haven’t been quite as social as I would like. But I do manage to see some classmates every other week or so. A recent initiative to institute Class of 2006 happy hours once a month was off to a great start this past Friday. I have my fingers crossed that we will be able to keep the interactions going for a while.