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Johnny Fambro had faced and overcome challenges before. After all, he was a twice-deployed Marine Corps veteran who, after completing his service, simultaneously spent six years working full-time and attending school.

He was driven to advance in his career. Between 2012 and 2016, while he was a retirement plan specialist at the financial services firm Capital Group, he applied to product management roles several times, but he was unable to secure the promotion. He didn’t have the right skills.

“My toolkit wasn’t as diverse as others’ when it came to solving business problems,” Fambro says. “Previously, I viewed education as a check in the box, but I started to view education as an enlightenment process — an intellectual development process where I could acquire skills and apply what I learned to problems on a day-to-day basis.”

Acquiring the education and skills he needed would prove a challenge, especially as life piled on a series of major events: purchasing a home, moving out of state for a new job and adding a baby to the family.

But Fambro was never the type to shy away from a challenge. He had chosen the Marines, after all.

Becoming a leader

When he was in high school in Macon, Georgia, recruiters from all branches of the armed forces contacted him, but it was the Marine recruiter who caught his attention by posing a test: Do 15 pull-ups, and the recruiter would buy him lunch. Though, he was uncertain he could do it, Fambro accepted the challenge.

In the Marines, Fambro discovered that his outspokenness and tendency to ask questions were not weaknesses, but in fact positive traits that he could develop into initiative. “I was encouraged to take initiative, but the Marine Corps also showed me when and how to use my authentic voice effectively.”

When the terrorist attacks struck on Sept. 11, 2001, Fambro had just completed bootcamp and was turning 19. Over the next five years, Fambro would deploy to Iraq twice. He soon found that real-world challenges weren’t always like the ones he trained for.

“Real-world challenges are unique and you need diverse perspectives to overcome them,” Fambro says. “In the Marine Corps, I gained the understanding that you have zero probability of accomplishing certain objectives without a team. I learned how to lead a team, how to participate on a team, and how to influence positive outcomes without direct authority.”

Fambro finished his service with significant leadership skills and self-confidence, but he was unsure of how to translate those skills to the civilian job market, and he lacked a professional network outside of the military.

He worked for six years seeking his dream job, while attending community college and Cal State Fullerton. But he was unable to secure the product management roles he was seeking at Capital Group.

He needed an MBA.

Tooling up

A part-time MBA program in Southern California would enable Fambro to continue working at Capital Group while supporting his young family and earning his degree. And the UCI Paul Merage School of Business stood out.

“The Merage School had a personal touch that I hadn’t experienced at any other business school in Southern California,” Fambro says. “When I visited the campus, they knew about me and I was treated as a person and not a number going through the process. It felt great to walk into a well-known business school and have people know my name.”

Once he locked in on UCI, Fambro started setting goals to ensure he got the most value out of his experience.

“My advice to other students is don’t treat the MBA as an isolated academic experience. Have a very specific business or career outcome that you are trying to achieve, and set deadlines for yourself,” Fambro says. “If you treat your MBA as a check in the box, I think you’re selling yourself short.”

His education paid immediate dividends. Within one month of starting the FEMBA program, Fambro landed his long sought-after promotion to product specialist. Right away, Fambro says he applied what he was learning in class to his job.

“I have zero doubt about what ROI the MBA program provided,” Fambro says. “I started realizing the MBA ROI from day one.”

Fambro’s dedication to applying academic lessons to the workplace caught the attention of his professors.

“Johnny is really good at asking the right questions,” says John Turner, professor of operations and decisions technologies, who teaches a class on revenue management and pricing. “I think this is because Johnny thinks about the subject outside of class, connects new concepts to what he already knows, and quickly incorporates new terminology into his vocabulary so that he can ask pointed questions about the subject matter.”

Coming full circle

During his final year of the Fully Employed MBA program, Fambro accepted a job as product manager on the Pricing Strategy and Analytics team for USAA in San Antonio, Texas — beating his own deadline for a second promotion.

USAA, a Fortune 100 company, provides financial services to military veterans just like Fambro. “I am able to take the investment I’ve made in my education and apply it to solve business problems that result in adding value to the lives of men and women who have served the same way I have,” he says.

The Merage School and USAA both granted the flexibility Fambro needed to finish the program and start his new role. He flew into LAX on Saturdays, commuted to Irvine for classes, and returned home that night — all while waiting for his wife to give birth to their first child.

“The Merage School was very supportive, very flexible — and I needed every ounce of that flexibility,” says Fambro, a FEMBA ‘18, who took classes in every format the school offered, including online classes.

When Fambro started at USAA, he noticed that sitting on his director’s desk was the very same textbook used in John Turner’s pricing class at the Merage School — a sign that what he learned was going to immediately be relevant on the job.

“Johnny is a key member of our team and we value his perspective,” says David Spriegel, Director of Pricing Strategy and Analytics at USAA. “Utilizing what he has learned through his education helps Johnny and our entire team fulfill our mission to serve our members.”

At USAA, Fambro works with and leads cross-functional teams, relying on his foundational knowledge of data analytics, financial analysis and credit risk to pull together and leverage data that makes a difference in the financial well-being of military families.  

“When I started the MBA, I viewed it as accelerating my career. But post-MBA, I view it as a lot more than that,” Fambro says. “You use the concepts from the MBA in your personal life — like negotiating when you buy a house or understanding your family through principles of organizational behavior. The MBA is a toolkit I will use for the rest of my life.”