Attending high school in Mexico City, René Couttolenc (BBA ’11) never thought he would end up at the University of Georgia.
A surprise announcement that his father was being transferred to Texas his senior year set his path in motion.
“He told us on a Monday we were moving to the U.S.,” Couttolenc said. “Tuesday the following week, I was taking my first class at the University of Texas-El Paso.”
The change was jarring. He arrived in the U.S. after most universities closed their applications for the following fall. Then, his father’s company moved his family a second time from El Paso to Atlanta. However, he persisted and eventually majored in management at UGA. He got to know friends and build networks through the UGA Public Service and Outreach Scholars program and the Hispanic Student Association.
“I didn’t know it back then, but I was building my resilience — moving here, having to apply to Georgia three times and coming in as a second-year sophomore,” said Couttolenc, now a senior director of Publicis Sapient’s Consumer Management Consulting group. “At that point, I was like, ‘You know what? I need to make the most out of it. I need to not waste any moment.’ And I got involved.”
This March, as part of the Terry College International Business Week, Couttolenc returned to campus to discuss how his early international experiences — feeling out of place and finding a way to thrive — prepared him for a career in international business consulting.
International Business Week, organized by the Terry College Office of International Business Programs, is an annual celebration bringing international alumni to the Business Learning Community to talk about career paths and growing opportunities for working in the U.S. and abroad.
Couttolenc spent more than a decade in international consulting with firms such as Deloitte and Accenture. During his International Business Week keynote, he told students his career path and success weren’t predestined. He credits his success to leaning into experiences that built resilience and discipline and actively cultivating a global and multicultural mindset.
Starting in international consulting meant spending 250 nights a year in hotels and flying more than 1 million miles in the first eight years of work. He knew he wanted to travel, but he also recognized the tradeoffs.
“It all sounded great, but it also meant I was missing parties with friends and the soccer league with my college buddies here in Atlanta. I was missing going out on dates. Probably, I was missing some things, but even then, I knew I needed to put my career first and build my toolkit.”
Having the discipline to work toward a goal means volunteering for assignments that require travel even if a work trip falls on your birthday or during a friend’s bachelor party, he told students.
Taking those assignments early in your career proves you can get the job done and develops the global perspective needed to be successful, he said. Every uncomfortable experience and risk helped Couttolenc assemble a multicultural mindset.
“It enabled me to build a global mindset,” Couttolenc said. “Early enough in my career, I got the opportunity to start traveling the world for work. I got a chance to work in places like Spain, Germany, Latin America and the UK. I understood how important being multicultural was and started building the multicultural muscle … So now I can talk to someone from the other side of the world and feel we have a connection.”
His advice to students was to pursue experiences that help build resilience, discipline and a multicultural mindset whether they want careers in international business or succeed stateside.
“Businesses are looking for the next generation of people who have that multicultural, global mindset,” Couttolenc concluded. “There’s a lot of talk about trade these days, but the world is not getting flatter. It’s not getting smaller. It’s only going to get increasingly bigger because of globalization. That’s not going to change. Companies are looking for people that have that perspective and mindset”