Exploring every opportunity at Iowa
When Noah Tarantello arrived at the University of Iowa as a new undergraduate student, he was at square one in terms of networking.
“I was excited to come back to the Midwest, since I originally grew up in the region, but I didn’t know anybody in the state of Iowa when I got dropped off my first year,” Tarantello says.
During his early days on campus, the Tippie College of Business student from Texas received some advice from a professor: When you’re a student, everybody wants to help you. Get involved, and stay involved.
That advice set the tempo for the rest of his college career. Tarantello, who will receive a degree in management in December 2022, became part of a close-knit community in the Tippie College of Business, completed multiple internships that took him across the country, and has secured the job of his choice immediately after graduation.
Hometown: Dallas, Texas
Degree: BBA, management
Future plans: Start work as an implementation associate at alliantgroup in Houston
Tarantello joined seven organizations his first semester at Iowa (“I took that advice to heart,” he says) but didn’t have enough time to devote to all of them. He eventually narrowed down his commitments to Alpha Kappa Psi, which is Iowa’s business fraternity, and the Clothing Closet, whose mission is to provide Iowa undergraduate and graduate students with access to quality new or used professional clothing at no cost.
“These organizations were great,” Tarantello says. “It helped my career development to have a lot of like-minded individuals around me.”
As his support network grew, Tarantello’s career interest shifted. Originally a finance major, he began to think another field might be a better fit. His experience as a manager at Catlett Market Place sparked a conversation with his advisor about transitioning his area of focus toward management and entrepreneurship.
“Lindsey Aldrich suggested a couple of classes to try out the following semester, and I loved them. It put me on the right path,” Tarantello says. “Tippie is awesome in that way. You are encouraged to try a little bit of everything. That approach really worked for me—it got me very excited about my career.”
Happy with this new career path, Tarantello started an internship at an Amazon warehouse in Dallas, where he learned to manage people from all walks of life and innovate upon existing structures.
“The first summer, I worked at a delivery station and managed a team of more than 50 people,” Tarantello says. “I learned how to manage people very differently. I spent half the time working in my role and the other half working on a project.”
“Tippie is awesome… You are encouraged to try a little bit of everything. That approach really worked for me—it got me very excited about my career.”
Managing people is one of the most rewarding (and challenging) parts of doing business. But there’s more to it than being a “born leader.” Skilled management requires careful study of current research-based best practices.
The Tippie BBA in management will provide you with the communication, strategy, and leadership tools you need to run teams, divisions, even entire businesses. Know what else it provides? Plenty of room for career growth and upward mobility.
His project involved optimizing space within the Amazon delivery trucks. Tarantello developed a lightweight divider that would allow envelopes to stand upright (rather than being placed in a bag) and created more usable space for more packages to be transported. “It increased our space utilization by 80%, which saved up to $250,000 a year in payroll,” he says.
During his second summer at Amazon, Tarantello was tasked with fixing scanning errors at the sorting centers. He discovered the errors were made by a small portion of the workforce.
“We had issues where people were scanning packages and either not reading the package completely or not understanding where its destination was, so I did some analytical work and realized that about 90% of these shipping errors were coming from 10% of the workforce,” Tarantello says. “I re-implemented some training practices and rewrote procedures for our managers, which led to additional savings.”
Amazon offered Tarantello a job, but he decided to try something new after his graduation in December.
“I signed my offer several weeks ago,” Tarantello says. “I’ll be going to a midsize consulting firm called alliantgroup in Houston, Texas. I’ll be an implementation associate. I am excited to start my career following some cool internships.”
Even with bright days ahead, Tarantello will miss the community he found at the Tippie College of Business.
“It’s talked about a lot on our tours of the college, but it’s real: When you walk through the halls, you get this small-college feel and you see the same people every day from previous classes, organizations, and groups,” Tarantello says. “That’s what makes the college feel most comfortable, and it’s something that you really appreciate when you go work other places.”
