Growing up the child of a single parent, Justin Urso saw his mother work three jobs just to put a roof over his head and food on the table. College wasn’t a family tradition, but Justin says his mother instilled in him that it needed to be. “Two key things I learned as a child were the importance of hard work and to always continue learning,” Justin says.
The journey to where he is now – a National Account Manager at Merisant, which manufactures tabletop sweeteners – was a little winding. “I never knew exactly my career path, but I give a lot of credit to the University of Arkansas for putting me on the right track,” he says.
Now, with a college degree, real-world experience and a master’s on the way, he says he wants to share with others what he has discovered: there are great opportunities for those with a background in economics and, more specifically, in Northwest Arkansas.
Following high school, Justin earned a scholarship and left his hometown of Van Buren to attend college in Conway, with plans of becoming a medical doctor. Yet, as a student, he says the business section of the daily newspaper got most of his attention.
In Justin’s sophomore year he relinquished his scholarship and moved to Fayetteville to enroll at the Sam M. Walton College of Business. He said it was the first time he felt he was on the right path. “I just realized my passion – business and economics,” he says.
Justin says the highlight of his collegiate experience was a “life-changing” study abroad program in Japan led by Robert Stapp, a Walton College economics clinical professor. “Meeting business professionals outside the United States and interacting with Japanese people on a daily basis made me realize I wanted to work in global business one day,” he says.
By his senior year, Justin was applying what he was learning by interning as an international analyst for Tyson Foods, Inc. He worked for Mary Bryant, who was director of global accounts at the time. “Having this opportunity and strong mentors was instrumental in putting me on a path to success,” he says. “I always tell students today to take advantage of the internship opportunities.” After graduating, he returned to Japan through an exchange program where he taught English to students for a year in a remote village, while improving his Japanese fluency.
He returned to the United States and moved to Chicago to accept a job with Wilson Sporting Goods Co. as a retail analyst for its Walmart account. There, he figured out a way to use his economics degree to build effective plans – much of which was at the height of the global financial crisis.
“When you sit in class and study supply and demand, you never think about how it relates to a product in a retail space,” he says. “I was fascinated by all the moving parts of the business and how the study of economics touched every part of it.”
By 2009, he was working for Merisant as a demand manager, where he led the company to three consecutive years of forecast improvements using his experience and economics background as key drivers. Justin eventually relocated to Northwest Arkansas to be closer to family and to work on the Walmart/Sam’s Club account for Merisant. In 2012, he married his longtime girlfriend, Mailena, who is director of marketing and communications for Collective Bias, a social content marketing company in Bentonville, and also a University of Arkansas adjunct journalism instructor.
Now, Justin is enrolled in the Walton College Master of Business Administration program, where students can earn a master’s degree in two years by attending class one Saturday a month and doing the rest through distance learning. He admits to being an entrepreneur at heart but says he hopes to continue his track of success in his current career. He says he eventually would like to be a business professor – one who can share real world experiences. He says he feels the Executive M.B.A. program and the “great community” of Northwest Arkansas will continue to open those doors.
