Rachel Rivera
Year Graduated: 
2011
Compensation & Benefits Specialist
Amadeus IT Group

Job description

I handle Rewards (compensation, health and other benefits) for the largest entity of the travel technology company Amadeus. Our office in the region of Nice, France has roughly 4,000 employees from all over the world. As a company with locations in over 170 countries, the People & Culture department (Human Resources) is tasked with developing coherent Rewards strategies that are adapted to each location's unique market conditions and culture.

Why did you choose this program?

I wanted a well-rounded, interdisciplinary program that would allow me to explore world cultures, languages, and histories across a variety of specialties.

How did this program prepare you for your job?

My job requires daily cross-cultural and multilingual interactions, as well as the use of both quantitative and qualitative skills. This program helped shape my understanding of such 'soft' skills like listening, negotiation, and strategic analysis across different cultural perspectives. The program's flexibility also enabled me to pursue more quantitative skills through my emphasis in Psychology and statistics, which paved the way for the daily calculations and analyses I use for compensation benchmarks and proposals. Finally, the emphasis on languages (I chose Spanish) made it easy for me to pick up our working language of French, which I must understand on both a conversational/relational and professional level, because in France most Comp&Ben topics operate within a heavy legal and labor relations framework that is constantly evolving.

What did you enjoy most about the program?

I most enjoyed the diversity of students and professors. I'm someone who enjoys exploring many topics, but with such an approach I could have easily ended up only having a superficial understanding of different subjects. Because the program enables you to take classes with professors that are experts in their field and students who are concentrating on the subject, so you can really dive deep into a diversity of topics.

What would you say to prospective students who are thinking about applying to this program?

Keep an open mind, focus on your language skills, and have fun! You're unlikely to have a block of time to explore academically like this again in your life, so make the most of it.

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