In 2004, Lyndie Siff was chosen by the New York City Olympic Bid Committee to spend the summer helping the organization prepare for the final phase of New York’s bid for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. She brought to the internship a mix of skills learned in commercial marketing in the banking industry, a lifelong love of sports, experience in analyzing how people think and make decisions, and some particularly critical skills she had only recently learned at Simon.
It was at Simon, Lyndie says, that she was taught to approach problems or situations in an analytical way—rather than to address issues as isolated problems—and where she also gained an ability to work on diverse teams with an international perspective. During her summer internship, she developed an extensive strategic marketing plan for the youth sports development component of the bid, and hired a third of the Olympic Bid Committee’s workforce. “I was thrilled to be able to bring in such talented individuals to work on this meaningful mission,” she says.
It is Simon’s small size that really creates an environment where students learn they can make an impact, Lyndie says. As chair of Simon Volunteers, for example, she directed the School’s annual Secret Santa fundraiser to assist needy families, raising $26,000 and setting an all-time school record; developed a Simon-run mentoring program for students at a Rochester inner-city middle school; and managed a literacy tutoring program for inner-city youth to reach their appropriate reading level. Simon awarded her the Graduate Women in Business Leadership Scholarship for 2004-05 in recognition of her “exceptional leadership and advancement of the Simon community.”
Choosing where to go to earn her M.B.A., Lyndie says, was not a difficult decision. As an undergraduate at the University of Rochester, she had made it a point to take classes at Simon. Impressed with the “faculty, facilities and material I learned,” she was inspired to pursue a business career after college, and to return as a graduate student. |
