"I started at my company with a staff who had been there a long time. I'm a big believer in Lean Six Sigma principles and I saw a ton of waste in our process. I took some time to get to know the people and learn the current process fully, but then I suggested new ways to streamline our operations such as consolidation vendor agreements, leveraging some of the global contracts we have and have people 'own' more of their own process instead of handing it off to others. Because I had built relationships with the people in the department first, they were more open to the change. Within the first year, we were able to produce 30% more revenue with no added staff because of the changes I recommended."

"As a new grad, I was on a lot of project teams. There was an assignment in one of my marketing classes where we had to think about new solutions to generate leads for a real small business in our community. I did my homework on the company and researched the competitors and main demographic of the customers. I recommended doing a targeted re-targeting campaign on the largest competitor's website. They liked my idea and decided to give me a small budget to try out this campaign. I was able to increase traffic to their website and the number of people who subscribed, so they were really pleased."