Mexico City has been a trade and finance capital in Latin America for more than a century, but in the last two decades, it has earned a new reputation as a burgeoning tech hub.
That collision of legacy industries and start-up energy made it a perfect place for University of Georgia Terry College of Business students to learn about the global economy and their role in it.
“What I saw there — how corporate life was managed, the expectations, the culture that comes along with just being in the city itself — it felt like a revelation,” said Miguel Martinez, a sophomore from Habersham County studying risk management and insurance and international business. “The city is constantly moving, and truthfully, it’s somewhere I would like to put myself.”
Martinez was one of 21 students spending spring break in Mexico City for a special topics in international business course.
This year’s trip featured historical city tours, pyramids, and national museums and a networking visit with Mexico City-based Terry alumni organized by John Hyatt, CEO of Southward Advisors, and Terry alumnus Andrew Guenthner (BBA ’89, MBA ’91). Students visited CNN’s Latin American Headquarters, international FinTech juggernaut Clip, and Ford’s 8,700-employee manufacturing and assembly center.
One high point was visiting with American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico General Director Pedro Casas to discuss the trade and regulatory climate in the U.S. and Mexico.
The class’s chamber visit was the same day the United States announced tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Martinez said the class saw the chamber and CNN journalists shift into high gear to cover and manage the situation.
The reaction to the news across the city and at their tour stops underscored the importance of the trade relationship, said Neha Eloore, a sophomore studying marketing and management information systems.
The trip’s culmination was a consulting project meeting with representatives of Aeromexico, arranged by Guenther, who serves as an Aeromexico vice president.
Students used the knowledge learned while in Mexico City, the background shared by Aeromexico, and what they learned at Terry to build a strategy for a proposed expansion at one of the airline’s hubs.
The project — much like the trip — was a chance for students to step out of their comfort zone, Eloore said.
“Going to Mexico and experiencing the culture before we dove into this project was definitely helpful,” Eloore said. “When you take on a consulting project, you have to consider the business environment the company is working in. I don’t think we would have been able to understand the market Aeromexico is serving or their consumers without experiencing the culture.”
Neither Eloore nor Martinez planned to work in consulting before the trip, but the experience exposed them to new career possibilities. They plan to explore those possibilities this summer. Eloore will intern with Deloitte’s consulting branch outside of Washington, D.C., and Martinez will intern with a firm in Madrid, Spain.