Toasting to San Francisco

[Post by Ana Cruz, MBA Class of 2010]

As rigorous as our first year of business school was, one of the hardest things for me was saying goodbye to most of my classmates for the summer. We’re scattered all over the country, all over the world, actually. There are classmates in Europe, Central America, South America, India, Asia and beyond, with some globe-trotting between these locales. A number are centered in or around Boston and I’m jealous of their weekend trips to the Cape and all the fun stuff that New England holds in store for summer residents. Then, there are those of us on the West Coast. We’re spread from Seattle down to Los Angeles, with a sizeable cluster of us enjoying life in the San Francisco Bay Area this summer.

I may be a bit biased, but I consider the Bay Area crew to be the lucky ones. As a native of Northern California, I knew that when I moved to Boston I wanted to be able to come back to California. Which is one of the reasons why I jumped at the opportunity to be a marketing intern this summer at a winery in California.

My unofficial title is marketing intern extraordinaire for Crushpad, Inc., a state-of-the-art urban winery in San Francisco. The responsibilities are real, which is both exciting and a little daunting, as I help make decisions for the marketing directives of this unique start-up. It’s my first job in cubicle-land, but far from the “Office Space”-style corporate graveyard that one usually associates with cubes. We’re in a converted warehouse space in one of San Francisco’s more industrial neighborhoods and things are far from ‘corporate’. Recent highlights have included a spur of the moment basketball game down on the winery floor, a major event pouring wine for almost 1,500 guests (some of whom were fellow BU MBAs coming to support me!), and regular barrel tastings to help familiarize me and another intern with our products.

Soon enough, I’ll be back in Boston with my far-flung classmates again, sharing our summer experiences and gearing up for another year of finance, and strategy, and marketing classes. In the meantime, though, I’m toasting a great summer in San Francisco.