How Shanna Cruzat Is Using the Notre Dame MBA to Advance Her Marketing Career

How Shanna Cruzat Is Using the Notre Dame MBA to Advance Her Marketing Career

Before Shanna Cruzat began building a career in consumer products, she built one on the stage.

Today, the second-year Notre Dame MBA student has added brand management at The Clorox Co. and corporate partnerships with Notre Dame Athletics to a résumé that already spans professional dance and commercial sales. It’s a career trajectory that looked very different just a few years ago.

As a professional dancer in Chicago, Shanna performed with Deeply Rooted Dance Theater and worked as a freelance performer, instructor and choreographer. Her career eventually took an unexpected turn from dance to commercial sales, including a role at Bacardi, where she began thinking more seriously about where she wanted her career to go.

Shanna was drawn to roles that combined consumer insights, strategy and marketing. But she also recognized that reaching them would require strengthening the analytical and business skills she had not developed earlier in her career.

“I saw that there were types of roles that I aspired to,” Shanna says. “I felt that getting an MBA was the best route for me to get there.”

For Shanna, pursuing an MBA wasn’t about starting over. It was about building on her experience while gaining the skills and connections to move into the career she envisioned.

Finding the right MBA experience

As Shanna began researching MBA programs, she focused primarily on schools in the Midwest. Notre Dame stood out for an approach that would give her a broad understanding of business before asking her to specialize.

But academics were only part of her decision.

Having attended Catholic high school before earning her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, Shanna wanted a graduate experience where she felt known and supported. Her stepmother, Dr. Tasha Green-Cruzat, a Notre Dame Executive MBA graduate, also encouraged her to look closely at something she had experienced firsthand: the Notre Dame alumni network.

Shanna soon discovered what made that network different.

“People don’t just say, ‘Hey, I’ll take the meeting with you,’” she says. “They’re actively engaging with you, connecting you with other people, pointing you in the right direction, checking in again with you.”

It was something she had heard about before arriving at Notre Dame. During her first year in the MBA program, she began experiencing it herself.

Turning a conference conversation into a career opportunity

The path to Shanna’s summer internship didn’t begin with an application. It began with a conversation.

Through Mendoza, Shanna attended the National Black MBA Association Conference in Texas, where she stopped at The Clorox Co.’s booth and began speaking with an assistant marketing manager about the company’s brand management program.

The conversation introduced her to a company she hadn’t previously considered and prompted her to see whether there were Notre Dame alumni at Clorox.

That search led her to Bailey Doyle, a Notre Dame alumna who works in customer marketing as Brand Experience & eCommerce Lead. “She is probably the number one reason I’m at Clorox,” Shanna says.

Doyle helped Shanna better understand the organization, its culture and its brands. As the interview process progressed, she also helped Shanna prepare, talking through the company, potential questions and what Shanna could expect.

The support extended beyond one alumna. When Notre Dame alumna Paola Gonzalez, who works in Global FP&A at Clorox, visited campus, Shanna introduced herself and explained that she was pursuing marketing rather than finance. Gonzalez still offered advice on earning an internship and succeeding once she got there. It worked.

Developing a different side of her skill set at Clorox

Shanna spent the summer on Clorox’s Pine-Sol team, working on an innovation-focused project that allowed her to draw from both sides of her professional background.

While big ideas and creative campaigns may be the most visible side of marketing, Shanna learned how much brand management depends on analyzing information, understanding consumers and translating data into a clear recommendation.

The pace of Notre Dame’s MBA program had also prepared her for the experience. With new courses every eight weeks, Shanna had learned to quickly absorb information, manage competing priorities and adapt.

“I think the time management [was] a mental adjustment a little bit for me,” she says. “But I felt that it did actually very well prepare me for what I’ve been experiencing for the summer.”

At Clorox, she put those skills into practice while working across teams and seeing the product development process firsthand, including meetings with fragrance houses and visits to research and development facilities.

The experience reinforced what she had hoped an MBA could do: connect the creative instincts she developed as a dancer and marketer with the analytical skills required to lead a brand.

Continuing to expand what’s possible

Now in her second year at Notre Dame, Shanna is continuing to broaden her experience through an internship with Notre Dame Global Partnerships, supporting corporate partnerships for Notre Dame Athletics.

The opportunity grew out of her involvement with the Mendoza Sports Business Club and its speaker series. Through those connections, Shanna met professionals working in the industry and eventually connected with the VP of Partnership and Activations at Notre Dame Global Partnerships. She stayed in touch, sharing her background and interest in sports and partnership marketing, which helped lead to the internship opportunity.

In the role, Shanna supports the activation side of Notre Dame Athletics’ corporate partnerships, helping create experiences for partners during home games and events. The role connects naturally with her previous experience at Bacardi, where she worked across both partnership strategy and activation. Now, she is applying that background in a new industry while continuing to explore where her combination of creative, analytical and relationship-building skills can take her.

She also continues to teach ballet, modern dance and strengthening classes in Chicago with Praize Productions Dance Company while completing her MBA. Rather than leaving her previous career behind, Shanna is finding ways to connect her experiences: creativity from dance, consumer knowledge from sales, partnership experience from Bacardi and Notre Dame Athletics, and the analytical and strategic foundation she has developed at Mendoza.

Building the career she envisioned

Before pursuing her MBA, Shanna could see where she wanted to go. What was less clear was the path to get there. “If I really wanted to get ahead, I needed to get my MBA,” she says. “Otherwise, I was going to be just kind of creeping my way up the ladder for a decade or more.”

At Notre Dame, she has found an opportunity to accelerate that journey while broadening what she sees as possible.

Her advice to prospective students is to consider not only the degree, but the full range of support surrounding it: the education, career resources, experiential opportunities and people willing to invest in their success. “Look at all the areas that Notre Dame is truly supporting you coming into this program,” Shanna says, “and the places it will literally take you.”

For Shanna, those places have already stretched from South Bend to Galway to the Bay Area — and to a new future in business.

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