Impressive Itineraries
As teens in the Philippines, the Santos siblings were standout students and seasoned travelers who hopscotched through countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas.
In fact, they were vacationing in the United States when mother Belinda “Beng” proposed attending a U.S. college. The suggestion came with caveats: She and their father, Jose Ermelo Santos, wanted an academically challenging school with a strong business program.
“Bentley exhibited those characteristics we were looking for, and we weren’t disappointed,” says Beng, who has helped promote the university to others in their hometown of Manila.
Katrina ’96 and Joseph ’97, MBA ’08 supported each other as undergraduates; she remembers bringing him food during a sophomore-year bout of chicken pox. They hung out together but also had their own circle of friends. And they hosted their parents and sister, Lia, during family visits to campus.
Those visits, along with Bentley’s focus on technology, convinced her to enroll.
“I saw that they had fun, and I saw that they had successful careers after graduating,” says the Class of 2003 grad. “I saw it was a formula that worked.”
For Joseph, the formula included graduate study. Cutting-edge technology and excellent professors drew him back to Bentley.
“Doug Robertson [professor of Computer Science] helped architect what I could do to maximize my education,” he says of folding technology expertise into his marketing background. The alumnus still calls Waltham home, serving as principal consultant for data strategy at Dun & Bradstreet.
Katrina, meanwhile, works in London as director of loan syndications for a bank. And Lia lives in Hong Kong while building her career in data quality management.
They all credit their parents’ encouragement to study at Bentley — and the university itself — for launching them into professional life.
“The biggest life skill I took away from Bentley is being exposed to and learning to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds and with varying experiences,” Katrina says. “It’s almost like a test run for an international career.”