I See The Benefits of my MBA in Everything I Do feat. Tracy and John Dennis, FTMBA ’00 and ’93

We’re so excited to bring you another conversation from this year’s alumni reunion! 

Tracy Dennis `00 and John Dennis `93 met the first week of freshman year as undergrads at Harvard and have been together ever since, even both eventually coming to Rice Business for their MBAs! 

Tracy is a lecturer of management at Rice Business, teaching Principles of Survey Design. She started two research and insight agencies and is currently a lead UX researcher for Globalization Partners. John has been a principal, managing director, and managing partner of WoodRock & Co. since he founded the firm in 1998. 

Tracy and John join host Maya Pomroy '22 to talk about their lives together, what brought them to Houston and to Rice, post-Partio Lamaze classes, and why they continue to give back to the Rice community.

Owl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

How an MBA transforms lives and inspires people to give back

8:54: [Tracy Dennis] I see the benefits of my MBA in everything that I do every single day. I see it at work, I see it at home, I see it with our daughters, who are in their early careers. You know, I feel like I have benefited immensely from my MBA, and I'm grateful. I really want to give back because of it, and I want to just continue to be a part of it just because it played such a big role in my life, and it's an exciting place to be right now. There's lots of great things going on.

On giving back to the Rice community

14:00: [Tracy Dennis] I don't think of what I do with Rice Business as volunteering. I do it because I feel strongly about Rice Business, and I personally get so much out of it, and I want to give back to the school because it's given me so much.

On what made John choose Houston

04:47: [John Dennis] While I enjoyed growing up here, I never thought I would come back. But I think seeing Houston through Tracy's eyes gave me the opportunity to kind of look at it with an open mind, and it's been very, very good to us.

Learning more through business school

02:13: [Tracy Dennis] I had a short career as a bond trader but had always wanted to go to business school to connect a bunch of dots. You know, there were a lot of things that I was exposed to that I wanted to learn more about but just never had the time to do. And so, for me, business school was the opportunity to do that.

Show Links: 

Globalization PartnersWoodRock & Co.Transcript

Guest Profile:

Tracy Dennis | LinkedIn John Dennis | LinkedIn

Check out this episode featuring Professor Anastasia Zavyalova here: https://business.rice.edu/owlhaveyouknow/season-3-episode-10