Rupal Patel
BBA ’06, MBA ’12 | Marketing Manager of Healthcare, Deloitte
Hometown: Downingtown, Pa.
Fox honors: In 2006, Patel received the Musser Award for Excellence in Student Leadership from the Fox School of Business.
Beleaguered by the college-search process, Rupal Patel found Temple and the Fox School, thrived here, and is now giving back as a proud alumna.
When she was in high school, Rupal Patel had no desire to attend Temple University. But after her father had been dragged to college visits up and down the East Coast, he coerced Patel during spring break of her senior year to make one last visit.
Reluctantly, she agreed to check out Temple.
“And then when we got there, there was this overwhelming feeling that this feels so right, this is the place I need to be,” she recalled. “I had never gotten that feeling when I visited any other school.”
Patel enjoyed the Fox School of Business throughout her four years as an undergraduate, thriving amidst the diverse student body, honing strong relationships with her professors, and taking advantage of career-developing extracurricular activities like Fox’s renowned student professional organizations. In fact, she liked Fox so much that she decided to return for graduate school, largely due to the flexibility of its Online MBA program, which she likes to brag is ranked No. 1 in the country by U.S. News & World Report.
“It was the perfect program for me,” said Patel, who earned her MBA while working fulltime at her marketing job at Communications Media Inc. “I had such a great experience with the professors, I almost felt like I’d be cheating on them if I went somewhere else.”
That degree helped Patel land what she calls her “dream job” at Deloitte’s Philadelphia office, where she helps execute marketing campaigns to promote the company’s services to its healthcare clients. She is passionate about her work at Deloitte and loves that she’s part of an organization that cares about the community and encourages its employees to volunteer their time with various nonprofit organizations such as the AmeriCorps program, City Year, which Patel has been involved with for the last two years.
She spends much of the rest of her free time giving back to Temple. She’s currently the secretary of the Fox Alumni Association, and also donates both money and time to her alma mater while serving as a mentor to current students.
“They’ve done so much for me,” she said. “And I want other students to have that same opportunity.”