Gregg Forsberg knew when he was seventeen that he wanted to get his MBA. With a strong interest in international business and an undergraduate degree in International Relations and Political Economics from the College of Liberal Arts at University of Minnesota, Forsberg accepted a job in China right out of college working for Dong Feng, a Chinese State Owned Enterprise (SOE) in Shiyan, Hubei, China. This was followed by a decade of working between North America, Asia, and Europe in new business creation, product development, marketing, and sales.

“The stars aligned,” said Forsberg on choosing the Carlson School of Management for his advanced degree. It was a natural choice for him and his family to move to Minneapolis as they had relatives in the metro area, owned a house in Minneapolis as an investment and his wife was able to transition her job as a consultant to the Twin Cities.

Forsberg was attracted to the Carlson School’s Full-Time MBA program because of the Carlson Ventures Enterprise. He liked the entrepreneurial spirit that surrounded it, the opportunity to have direct access to real money deals, and real customer propositions to be validated. Forsberg says, “One key concept the Carlson Ventures Enterprise taught me was the role of the devil’s advocate – and I still use this everyday.” Accustomed to doing more established business-to-business transactions, he saw the Enterprise as a chance for new opportunities and a way to gain understanding about how the venture capital world operates.

After graduation, with an MBA in hand, Forsberg accepted a job with Best Buy and now is the director of global sourcing in Shanghai. He was looking for a career internationally, specifically in the market of consumer electronics. “Best Buy was a great fit,” he said.

One of Forsberg’s Best Buy projects was leading a team to create a new private label brand. The team started from a simple “customer pain” point, tested the concept, worked intimately with the Best Buy “Blue Shirts”, or Retail Associates as they are known, and launched what is now a multi-million dollar private label for Best Buy called Rocketfish. The new brand is a collective effort across multiple geographies and functional teams in the United States, Canada, and China.

Forsberg attributes his success in the Best Buy culture to his colleagues who have mentored, coached, challenged, and collaborated with him along the way. But he also says his experience living and working internationally over the past decade and being open to new cultures, new concepts, and new ideas has given him opportunities not available to most people. “Understanding how Western and Eastern cultures work differently and yet the same is one part of the international perspective that has given me an edge. It gives me a different perspective of who I am, and what we are trying to do in terms of business,” says Forsberg.