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This story is published in cooperation with Willamette Week and Oregon Executive MBA, Portland.
Regardless of whether you plan to pursue a business degree anytime soon, it’s worth knowing a bit about the University of Oregon’s Executive MBA program in Portland. Why? Well, due to its extensive network of professionals in the region, there’s a good chance that you might just encounter one of the program’s students or grads out in the wild someday.
Students in the Portland-based MBA program work at organizations all around the region. Some of these companies are global giants: think Nike, Adidas, and Intel. Others operate on a national scale. Alongside these are businesses and non-profits grown right here in Oregon, with cultures that match the state’s values: local, small scale, community driven, crafty, organic, sustainable and equitable. When blended with core MBA knowledge, these principles make for a business education with a distinctively Oregonian flair.
Two UO Executive MBA students currently pursuing their degrees are Marisa Kraft and Rachel Minikes. As far as career paths go, theirs are drastically different from one another’s; what they do have in common, though, is that they are both working for companies that are very “Oregon”. Here’s how they got there.
Marisa Kraft, MBA ‘23
Director of Business Development at Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative
“I always knew I wanted to pursue additional education, but I was inspired to take action and apply for the Executive MBA program when thinking about my father, his impact on me, and how much he valued education,” says Marisa Kraft, MBA ‘23.
Kraft says her father, who himself got an advanced degree later in life, inspired her to get her own MBA. He passed away days before the pandemic outbreak. This difficult time in Kraft’s life motivated her to pursue impactful work that aligned more with her values.
She came into the Executive MBA program with years of experience working at well-known Portland food companies, including Killer Burger and Salt & Straw. And while she enjoyed her time in the food industry, it wasn’t exactly her passion.
Kraft was an environmental studies major in undergrad, and she had always wanted to return to work that was more directly connected to her passion for resource conservation. And where better to pursue such a career than at the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative?
Oregon has long championed sustainability efforts in the U.S.—we were even the first state to adopt a bottle bill, way back in 1971. The bill laid the foundation for OBRC, which organized the beverage industry to work together as stewards of their packaging, revolutionizing Oregon’s recycling practices, dramatically improving environmental outcomes, and delivering convenient redemption options for consumers. Kraft now works as OBRC’s Director of Business Development.
“In my role at OBRC, I get to help show other systems around the country, and even internationally, how we do it, and see if the know-how we’ve developed over the past 52 years in Oregon can help their systems thrive as well,” says Kraft.
For Kraft, a key takeaway from her Executive MBA experience was the program’s emphasis on collaborative problem-solving. She says that sharing creative ideas and working toward shared outcomes within the UO classroom elevated her confidence and allowed her to see herself as an impactful leader.
Going forward, Kraft hopes to be able to grow Oregon’s one-of-a-kind Refillable Bottle program and help struggling systems elsewhere replicate Oregon’s success—by further developing and implementing OBRC’s container processing technology.
Rachel Minikes, MBA ‘23
Co-owner and operations manager at Kaprikorn
Rachel Minikes entered the UO Executive MBA program hoping to become an expert within her industry. And what important-to-Oregon industry is that, you ask? That’s right: the cannabis industry.
Minikes fell into the cannabis industry primarily by chance, she says. In 2017, her partner’s family started Kaprikorn, a wholesale cannabis clone nursery, and offered her a position. Within a year, Minikes became the office manager, serving as the office’s main salesperson. Since 2020, she has served as the operations manager, and today is a co-owner.
“It has always been important [to me] to see Kaprikorn succeed. I watched my partner and his family pour their hearts (not to mention life savings) into the company to get it started, so I wanted to support them to make sure the company succeeded,” says Minikes.
For a small, local, family-owned, no-outside-investors operation, Kaprikorn has gotten pretty big. It has two locations: a nursery in Lowell, and a massive indoor flower facility in Eugene. Their nursery was the first farm to become OLCC licensed to sell direct to Oregon Medical Marijuana Program (OMMP) patients—who make up almost half of Kaprikorn’s clientele.
And now that Kaprikorn has such a large group of farms, medical patients and dispensaries that they work with, Minikes says she wants Kaprikorn to succeed for them, so that they can continue to provide them with the products they love and trust.
“I hoped that by building my business acumen I could have a greater positive impact on my company and the cannabis industry as a whole,” says Minikes.
“The executive MBA program has provided me a fast track to learn essential business skills that would have otherwise taken years of experience to learn. I’ve already been able to regularly apply what I’ve learned in class at Kaprikorn.”