Christina Muhlestein Bates had a track record for going for what she wanted, until a bad experience working in business left her unsure of her next step. Feeling a little stuck, she decided to earn an MBA from the BYU Marriott School of Business, where she discovered she had gained the skills, network, and knowledge to do and become anything she wanted.
Bates grew up in Bountiful, Utah, as the seventh of 11 children. Her high school job at a beauty supply store inspired her to start her own makeup line and led Bates to start her undergraduate education at Brigham Young University by studying theater, because the program offered a makeup emphasis. However, after taking her first makeup design class, she discovered that chemical engineers were the ones who actually created the cosmetics—so she switched her major.
“I had never taken a chemistry class, and I had no idea what I was doing,” Bates laughs. But her determination took her through the rigorous program—even when the focus of her chemical engineering classes was on the oil and gas industry and Bates’s interest in an engineering career began to wane.
Upon reading a description of private equity, Bates was hooked. She was too far into the chemical engineering program to switch majors, so she pursued opportunities and landed a few private equity internships before she graduated.
The internships paid off, and after graduating, Bates accepted a job in New York City at a growth stage investment firm. She loved the job, but managing a long-distance relationship with her husband felt hectic. So over a few years and a few extra moves, Bates and her husband landed in Texas, where Bates worked remotely for a private equity firm.
“I had what I thought was my dream job,” Bates explains. “I was one of the only people on the investing team, and so I got to handle sourcing deals, closing the deals, and then implementing the strategy.” But her perfect job was disrupted by a few of the people she dealt with. “I ran into some pretty nasty characters, and so a year into the job, I quit.”
And the timing couldn’t have been worse. A week after Bates left her position, the world seemed to shut down because of the pandemic. “We were in a little town in Texas along the Gulf Coast, where my husband worked at a refinery, and there was nothing for me to do, and people weren’t hiring.”
At first Bates remained optimistic. “I tried a few entrepreneurial things,” she explains, but a year passed before she found another opportunity she was passionate about—working for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on a strategy consulting team. The new job gave her a sense of career direction, and she felt motivated to apply to MBA programs across the US to pursue strategy consulting.
When she had settled on enrolling in classes at a graduate program in Texas, her husband’s job shifted out of Texas and into California. Suddenly doing an MBA in Texas didn’t make sense. “BYU was the closest MBA program to California that I applied to,” Bates explains. She quickly pivoted and accepted the BYU Marriott admission, determined to make it work.
“It was a little wild, but it turned out fantastic,” she explains. She stayed in Provo during the week for classes and then flew to California over the weekends.
While her living arrangements were settled, starting the program presented its own challenges, including a self-deprecating mindset. “I didn’t work for a year during COVID,” Bates says, “and when you’re by yourself not working, your mind tells you all sorts of nonsense: I’ve failed, my time is up, I’m too old to do anything now.”
Fortunately, her first few days in the program dispelled all her self-doubt, even while being surrounded by “cool and impressive” peers in the program, explains Bates. “People at BYU Marriott are exceptionally kind and inclusive.” She recalls how her classmates went out of their way to invite her to sit by them or participate in case competitions.
The inclusivity wasn’t the only benefit she found unique at BYU Marriott. “Coming into the MBA program, I thought I knew what I wanted. But once I got into the program, it was like this whole world opened up to me—there were so many different opportunities and jobs and people. I realized the world was my oyster,” Bates says. “And there’s enough of a network here at BYU Marriott that I felt I could do whatever I wanted.”
Bates went through the core schedule—taking a variety of business classes. “The professors all have different backgrounds, and they’re all very passionate about their fields. I didn’t have a business background, but I experienced and learned just how much more there is out there.”
Part of Bates’s learning revolved around Cougar Capital. Initially, Bates was disenchanted with private equity because of her negative experiences and didn’t register for any relevant classes. But last minute, she signed up for Gary Williams’s private equity venture capital class and found she loved it. “Without that class, I wouldn’t have touched private equity with a 20-foot pole, because I didn’t think there were good people in that space. But there are, and it turns out I was very wrong.”
Her revived passion for private equity led her to intern at Rothschild in New York City following her first year in the program. “Rothschild was an amazing opportunity and I loved my experience,” Bates explains.
She considered an offer to return to the company full-time at the completion of the MBA program, until Williams introduced her to Sorenson Capital. “I had done tech investing before, so I knew about it, and I loved what Sorenson was—it really was just like serendipity,” she explains.
“Before the MBA, I didn’t have a formal education in business and finance, but the program gave me the confidence to be at a higher level than I thought before.” Now two years into her post-graduate career, Bates embraces the day-to-day of her job alongside raising a little girl with her husband, and staying connected to the friends she made in the program.
Even with a pattern of following her passions, Bates credits the MBA program for helping her become her best self. “Coming into the MBA program, I had crazy imposter syndrome, but I realized that all of us students came into the MBA program because something wasn’t going as we wanted. And it’s really special to be part of a group of people who are all in it together, and we all get to kind of start over, and then we have this network going forward.”
_____
Written by Stephanie Bentley
