March 28, 2025 | Evan Williams
The first University of Florida MBA Summit took place in Orlando last November. Twenty-five students, their colleagues, UF alumni and guest speakers coalesced at a hotel for a weekend of networking and self-exploration. Future summits beginning in the spring will occur in different cities — including Houston, Atlanta and Jacksonville — where UF has high concentrations of students, whether in person or online.
“‘We’re meeting you all in your neighborhoods’ is the phrase we like to use,” says Joyner Atiles-Lopez, who leads the summit program as assistant director of signature events for MBAs. He adds that about 96% of students are not on campus in Gainesville and work full time. “We need to go meet them where they are and create some engagement opportunities closer to home for them.”
Each summit is open to the first 25 students who apply and features guests from a select company and a prevailing theme for the weekend. At the first one, speakers from the Walt Disney Co. lectured on personal and corporate branding. Future guest companies (and topics) will include representatives from Exxon Mobile talking about managing energy and sustainable practices, representatives from Delta Airlines on innovating in a competitive market and speakers from Fidelity Information Services addressing financial management and technology.
Kiana Polanin, a 24-year-old Tampa resident who attended last November’s summit, says it provided key networking opportunities and also taught her “how much you can grow in and after the program.”
That weekend, leaders from Disney reflected on their careers and that weekend’s theme of “finding your strengths, kind of finding the essence of who you are and how you present yourself to the world,” as Polanin put it. In one workshop, she and other participants analyzed their personal qualities through the lens of the CliftonStrengths framework, which assesses an individual’s talents. The test indicated that adaptability is one of her strengths.
Polanin is more than halfway through her two-year online MBA with UF. Upon graduation, she plans to work for her family’s business consulting company, the Alaka’i Leadership Group.