Aly Merritt earned an MBA in marketing from Robinson a little over a decade ago. The vast network she built during those three years of night classes is still paying dividends.
Merritt is now president of Atlanta Tech Village, a coworking space that supports startups with mentoring and a sense of community. When she sees someone familiar at an event, both parties ask, “Do we know each other from the [MBA program]?”
“I received not only a really great education but also, by extension, a fantastic network of motivated, smart, savvy people in the metro Atlanta area,” she said.
During her first career for local newspapers, Merritt traveled all over the country. She never planned to leave her life as a journalist behind, but the 2008 recession forced her to rethink her path. After moving to Atlanta for her husband’s job, Aly found a temp position—data entry for Angelica, a medical industry linen management company—that changed her course.
While at Angelica, Merritt got trained as a Salesforce administrator, supported sales representatives, and worked her way up to marketing manager. Along the way, she learned how to manage enterprise-level executives and how corporate budgets worked. Eventually, she made use of Angelica’s tuition reimbursement program, enrolling at Robinson in 2010.
“Getting my MBA from Robinson has been one of the most beneficial things,” Merritt said. “I realized from my undergraduate studies in graphic design and journalism that I knew how to decorate a cake, and I knew how to sell a cake. But I didn't know how to make the cake.”
The program was highly ranked, comprehensive, and affordable. Merritt also liked that most of her professors were adjuncts.
“They were actually practitioners who were executing every day on the topics they were teaching, as opposed to professors who understood the theories behind concepts but had never actually applied them in real life,” she said.
After graduating in 2013, Merritt assumed she’d find a corporate job. But after attending one event at the newly founded Atlanta Tech Village, she envisioned a different future for herself.
“People were interacting and excited about projects they were working on. They were supportive, and there was a sense of community and camaraderie—that’s the vibe I loved from newspaper jobs,” Merritt remembered. “So basically, I just showed up at Atlanta Tech Village events until somebody hired me.”
Merritt speaks at an Atlanta Tech Village event.
That somebody was Salesloft, where she became an early-stage employee at what would become a billion-dollar company. She stayed more than seven years, until the Atlanta Tech Village co-founders invited her to take on the role of managing director. Last December, she was named president.
The work is exhausting and consuming, but also fulfilling, and no two days are the same. For Merritt, nothing can replace journalism, but by finding her place in the tech world, she has come pretty close.