Marketing professor Moumita Das is an extremely vibrant, organized, and thorough professor who has been with the Freeman School of Business for the past two and a half years. Das completed her Ph.D. degree in Management at HEC, a university in Paris. At HEC, she got the special opportunity to teach in her second year. It was then that she fell in love with teaching and with the recommendation of her advisors, decided she wanted to go on to become a professor at Tulane.
What makes Das such an incredible Marketing professor is her extensive background in the field. After graduating college in 2003, Das was chosen from a large pool of applicants to be an intern at L’Oréal. She started as a sales intern, which allowed her to worked her way up to various positions within the marketing department. Das did everything from crunching numbers and planning campaigns to developing creative ads and dealing with difficult product models.
It was in these first few jobs with L’Oréal that Das learned how to constantly juggle different tasks while working with all types of people and helping them with their issues, no matter how burdensome. Das thanks L’Oréal for the success she now has as a teacher, as multi-tasking and effective communication are two skills she carries over to her work with students and outside research projects.
When I sat down with Das, she offered great advice, saying that first, you must be diligent in your basics; there are some foundations that you must have. Once those foundations are set, you have to be creative and think outside the box. Das shared with me the story of how she got this first internship at L’Oréal: she was put into a group for debate discussion and the topic was 9/11. She knew if she wanted to get the position that she had to speak about something different than anyone else in the group. Every time she had the chance to talk, rather than talking about the understandable depression that came with 9/11, she said that the event changed the rules of US counting. She said that 9/11 marked the death of the number 10. Everyone argued with her point and said it wasn’t relevant, but she kept it up and ended up being the candidate chosen for the position.
She also advises students who want a career in marketing to start in sales. She later realized that this was one of the most important steps in making her career such a success. Even though her first task may have been tedious (going door-to-door selling L’Oréal products to salons), she said the interaction with the company’s consumers helped to develop all of her future marketing strategies.
Das’ extensive experience and willingness to engage with and aid students makes her an incredible professor. Ever since she was young, she has always had a tendency to get bored easily and needs to be constantly updated with new information and learning opportunities. She thinks this quality is what helps her to connect with people and what ultimately attracted her to her profession.
COVER PHOTO: Tulane University-Freeman School of Business
