Meet Centennial Scholar Kyle Balancio Lee
November 9, 2021

Kyle Balancio Lee is one of the inaugural recipients of the Centennial Scholarship at the University's Carlson School of Management. Created in part by support from 3M, the Centennial Scholars Program is helping future business leaders achieve their dreams.

Q&A with Kyle Balancio Lee

Undergraduate degree: Bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering, University of Michigan, 2015 Career history: Medtronic positions in manufacturing engineering and design assurance

 

How has your experience at the Carlson School been so far? Carlson has done a fantastic job of preparing me to meet my career objectives. My program has exposed me to a wide variety of services and products within health care as well as various functional roles. I’ve been challenged in so many different ways to get out of my comfort zone and think in new, creative ways in industries, sectors, and arenas that I wasn’t familiar with but needed to learn. In particular, the valuation lab was a transformative experience for me—not just in the new skills that I learned, but also in how I approach business problems in health care. And Carlson has connected me with some of the most diverse and interesting professionals and classmates, from whom I’ve learned so much.

What accomplishment are you proudest of?
The scholarly accomplishment that I’m most proud of is the white paper that my team and I authored for our Ventures Enterprise project. The project was filled with ambiguity and prompted stressful conversations among our team. We all came from diverse backgrounds and had different ideas of how to come up with a solution. But our differences ultimately produced excellent conversation and spirited debate that brought us to a well thought out solution. In the end, we managed to pull together all the information we collected and wrote a thorough, nuanced report that impressed the clients and our instructors.

What are you most excited about this year? This year, I’m excited about the work I can do as President of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute Student Association (MILIsa). In this role, I’ll be organizing events where classmates will continue to learn outside of the classroom or connect with professionals in their field. I’ve worked to build up digital resources that classes can work on and accumulate so subsequent classes have increased access to organized knowledge (the most notable example being our lunch-and-learn presentations). I’m also striving to organize an inter-school networking event where health care professionals from Carlson, the medical school, pharmacy school, biomedical engineering programs, health administration programs, and more can come together and establish strong connections from which we can learn throughout our careers.

What does it mean to you to receive Centennial Scholarship support?
I am unendingly thankful to the benefactors who have so generously donated to fund my education. This scholarship has allowed me to focus on my studies, on building up the community at Carlson, and on finding my place in the health care industry supported by the great state of Minnesota. Every opportunity and success that I find after graduation can be directly linked to the extraordinary generosity behind my award. I hope that one day I may be able to pass this kindness on to a future class of inquisitive, creative, and hopeful minds.

.subhead { text-transform: none; font-family: neutra-2-text, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; font-style: normal; }