Anette Eilertsen Dillon ’24
MBA
Having done a couple of early stints in marketing jobs, Anette Eilertsen-Dillon wanted to up her game.
“I’ve always been a person that loves school. I love learning and sharpening my skills,” she says. In the long term, she says, “I would love to be in leadership. I’m building myself up to that, and an MBA definitely gives you that edge.”
After initially starting an MBA while living in Texas and finding the program wasn’t the right fit, her husband drew her attention to LeBow, and things clicked.
“The curriculum and the professors have a very good reputation,” she says.
Having come to the U.S. from Norway, Eilertsen-Dillon was studying on an F1 visa and was attracted to LeBow’s strong support for international students. As a bonus, LeBow’s location in the Northeast meant proximity to New York City, where she had hoped to live and work one day.
She completed her MBA in 2024, and by mid-2025 she’d checked her biggest boxes: earning both a Permanent Resident Card and a job in the Big Apple. She’s now creative account manager at WITHIN, a performance-branding company that supports big-name brands like Ben and Jerry’s, The North Face and Timberland.
“I work on the creative side, and I also have that account-manager part of it,” she said. “We do all of their strategy, all of their creative planning. We look at their ad spend, how they can maximize the money that they’re using. I feel like I do a little of everything.”
It’s the kind of job that keeps you on your toes. “Marketing as an industry is constantly changing,” she says. “And every client wants different things. They have certain brand guidelines they want to focus on. I’m constantly learning something new, literally every single day.”
Eilertsen-Dillon said her LeBow experience gave her the skills she needs to navigate in this complex environment. One class in particular, Negotiations for Leadership, made a deep impression.
“That class taught me so much, not only about how to negotiate in a professional setting, like a big contract for a client, but also had to negotiate personally. If you’re just starting out in your career, that could be negotiating your salary or your PTO days. That class really changed my outlook.”
Another course, in business law, has benefited her in her career as well, and while business law wouldn’t seem to be directly related to marketing, “it’s always in there,” she says.
“In the role that I am in right now, we always have deliverables, and there is always a contract involved somehow, somewhere. As the creative account manager, everything is tied back to contractual agreements.”
Her work has proven fun and fulfilling and, best of all, she gets to live out her NYC dreams.
“I remember coming to New York for the first time, when I first moved to the United States seven years ago,” she says. “The fact that I’m walking down the streets of New York every single day, walking to work — it’s still a major ‘pinch me’ moment!”