Inside Notre Dame MBA Global Business Immersion in Santiago, Chile

It’s one thing to read about a company’s decisions in a case study. It is quite another to observe the challenges they face in real life. For University of Notre Dame MBA student Katie Wiggin (MBA ’26), the 2026 MBA Global Business Immersion in Santiago, Chile, really drove this point home.

Wiggin was one of 29 MBA students who participated in the project-based Global Capital Markets Course, which culminated in the weeklong immersion in Chile. By the time the students arrived in Santiago, Wiggin and her team had already spent many hours analyzing the financials of ILC, a Chilean financial services conglomerate.

The company, led by CEO Pablo Gonzalez (MBA ’06), was seeking answers to some complicated questions. They needed a sensitivity evaluation of the liabilities on their balance sheet and to sharpen their analysis of their fixed income holdings.

During a seven-week preparatory course on campus, Notre Dame MBA students examined these questions in depth while conducting a broader review of the challenges and opportunities facing the company. The project-based Global Capital Markets course prepared the students for the MBA Global Business Immersion by introducing them to the challenges faced by Chilean businesses such as ILC. Students researched the challenges, developed solutions and then traveled to Chile to present their ideas to company leadership.

The goal of the course was to mirror the consulting, corporate finance and investment banking roles that many students will have after graduation. Wiggin credited the experience with deepening her understanding of the context in which ILC operates.

“What surprised me most was how interconnected everything felt. On paper, risks like interest rates, currency exposure or sovereign credit can seem siloed. But in practice, they all feed into each other,” said Wiggin, who worked at Goldman Sachs before pursuing an MBA at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

“Seeing how quickly those layers stack in a real market context was eye-opening and made the analysis feel much more dynamic than it does in a classroom setting,” she added. “The experience made it very clear that businesses don’t operate in isolation, especially in markets like Chile where regulatory, political and economic factors are so closely intertwined.”  

Students apply classroom learning in a real-world context

The Global Capital Markets course was taught by Gianna Bern, teaching professor of finance and associate dean for the Notre Dame MBA program. Bern, who joined Mendoza’s faculty in 2014, has deep expertise in global markets, especially energy markets. For more than 25 years, she worked in corporate finance and capital markets, much of it in an international setting. 

“There is a lot of ambiguity in the challenges these businesses face, and a lot of problem solving is required,” said Bern. “You don't always have the answers, and sometimes, you don’t even have a clearly defined problem. The students had to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but they rose to the occasion. They did a lot of research and they built models that Chilean companies will be using long after the students have left Chile.”

The one-credit MBA Global Business Immersion is the second part of a two-course sequence. Students must first complete the two-credit Global Capital Markets Course in South Bend. This research-focused pre-requisite study period fosters a richer learning experience by ensuring students have knowledge of the country they will visit and the companies they will advise. On the ground, the students will draw on what they learned in Bern’s course and on the full breadth of knowledge and experience they have gained throughout a year and a half of MBA study.

“Students work on these projects in a concerted way and then they go out and deliver,’ Bern said. “They get to apply their knowledge in a real-world business setting, and it gives them a flavor of what it is like to work in an international context. Many of our graduates won’t have an international assignment until they are at a very senior level. But an immersion experience can provide the exposure and tools they will need to succeed when they are tapped on the shoulder for a global role.”  

Chile’s economic system has strong parallels with the United States

The Chile immersion exposed students to an economy that is very different from that of the United States. The Chilean economy is dominated by natural resources and agriculture. But Chile also has similarities with the United States. It is among the richest countries in Latin America and has an open-market economic system. Like the United States, Chile is looking to position itself to succeed in the economy of the future.

Stephen Habetz (MBA ’26) focused his efforts on a challenge faced by Ecoambiente Circular, a Santiago-based environmental consulting firm. The company is seeking to recycle plastic for a variety of different uses, but doesn’t have unlimited access to capital. Habetz and his student team developed a plan for a staged rollout of the facilities needed to turn polypropylene plastic into finished plastic products, such as pallets.

“We explored the plastic recycling supply chain, developing a basic understanding of the different sources and machinery required to transform raw plastic into finished products,” said Habetz. “I left with a better understanding of those processes and of Chile's core role in providing the minerals needed for the energy transition. This was a transformational experience in my understanding of renewable energy and the world economy.”  

Notre Dame’s global network makes for a stand-out international experience

During the jam-packed weeklong immersion course, the MBA students met with prominent Chileans, such as former Senator Ignacio Walker. And they learned from leading business experts at the Universidad Adolfo Ibañez (UAI), including Juan Carlos Jobet, a former Secretary of Energy, and Pablo Garcia Silva, the former vice president of the Central Bank of Chile. 

In addition to sessions with Chilean experts, students also had unique, hands-on immersion engagements such as visiting the central bank, the UAI’s school of mining, and touring a local winery. “The students’ experience in Santiago was deep immersion in the business environment in Chile,” said Garcia Silva, who has been connected to the Notre Dame MBA Chile program for a decade, but noted the experience has recently been transformed for the better.

“When I left the Central Bank and joined UAI's Business School full time, I realized that we could do a lot to further this vision. Last year’s immersion was fantastic and we hope to continue collaborating with Notre Dame.”

Mendoza’s Director of Experiential Learning Ben Wilson credited Garcia Silva and Felipe Gomez of Notre Dame Santiago with helping build an agenda full of meaningful engagement opportunities for students during the immersion.

“An immersion needs to be more than just an experience to travel,” Wilson says. “It really needs to be connected to a student's goals and career development. An opportunity like this can really expand your worldview and maybe even help you understand the United States from a different vantage point. It really helps globalize students' business education.”

Notre Dame’s global network was instrumental in bringing together the agenda for the weeklong event. Santiago is one of the 12 locations in Notre Dame Global, and the University has long-standing relationships with the Catholic University of Chile and Adolfo Ibañez University. “We talk a lot about the power of the Notre Dame network, and it is an easy selling point,” said Wilson. “But an immersion like this is where you really see that network in action. You're literally halfway around the world and you're meeting with Notre Dame alums and people whose kids go to Notre Dame. Everyone has this sense of wanting to connect because there's this shared bond to the University.”