#MBAMama Where Are They Now: Valerie Angelkos

By: Divinity Matovu

· Where are they now

We featured Valerie back in 2016 when she wrote an op-ed style guest blog about perseverance and support for MBA mamas in business school. At the time, Valerie was a full-time MBA student at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and her darling daughter, Emma, was only 2 years old. Now, Emma is 7 years old and Valerie is the Product Marketing Lead at YouTube Shorts. 

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Originally from Panama, Valerie began her career at Procter & Gamble as a Customer Finance Manager at Procter & Gamble and later transitioned to the beauty industry taking a job as a Product Manager at L’Oreal. Hoping to pursue a more impactful and broader perspective of business through an MBA, rather than just continuing a traditional path of a CPG marketer, Valerie decided to pursue an MBA in the United States. Midway through the competitive application process, Valerie and her husband, Jorge, discovered that Emma was on the way. 

I wrote my application essays when Emma was a couple of months old, while breastfeeding at 2AM in the morning when she was (finally) half-asleep. I was accepted to University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and when Emma turned 1 we moved to Illinois. I started my MBA that Fall, and Jorge joined Founders Institute and created his own start-up.

Before Valerie was promoted to lead Product Marketing for YouTube Shorts, she sharpened her skills in various roles at Google. She even dipped her toe in the entrepreneurship pool by co-founding and managing Hopstime, a company that taught kids and parents about social and emotional skills via online classes, webinars, and products aimed to teach activities at home. 

MBA Mama Founder, Divinity Matovu, will be going live on Instagram with Valerie on Saturday October 30 @ 11:30 am EST so tune in to get some insights into Valerie's MBA Mama journey.