For Jorge Escalante (’18 Marketing), success comes from continents, Carey, and commerce

Jorge Escalante could be seen as a world traveler. He’s fluent in two languages, has a working knowledge of a third, and has lived in nine countries. But it was his time at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School that changed the course of his career as senior marketing manager at Amazon. 

Getting to this point in his life reads like a novel. As the son of a Hispanic diplomat, he grew up in Mexico and the African nation of Namibia. Fast-forward to “hugging it out” during a self-imposed comfort challenge in Switzerland. It’s no wonder he was an immediate candidate for Amazon. Plus, he has an inherent understanding of the businesses behind the one of the biggest companies in the world.

“If you're shopping online you know, there are businesses selling,” Escalante says. “We’re helping sellers improve their business and ultimately affecting the way customers perceive Amazon and ecommerce in general.”

Escalante joined Amazon near Seattle in 2021 after working in Houston for a wholesale building materials corporation. He’s leading a team that launches digital features for sellers to improve their ecommerce, and then devises marketing strategies to convince sellers to try out these new features. His team helps businesses of all sizes, from mom-and-pops up to large companies, to try out new tools that will help optimize their business online and grow their sales.

Why Carey

Escalante has a passion for marketing, and for inclusivity, in part because of his upbringing and his approach to others. He was born in California to Hispanic parents. His family moved around the world, including several intervals in Mexico. “My dad was so passionate about Mexico and it was his job to represent Mexico abroad,” Escalante says. “I grew up with this profound passion and love for the country with all its good and bad, and so that kind of followed me.”

The process of a selecting a school for a master’s degree was not easy. He already had his bachelor’s degree in business administration and was uncertain he needed a Master of Business Administration, which is why he was looking for a specialized master’s in marketing when he discovered Carey. He quickly learned that unwavering humanity is one of the school’s values.

“I think that was totally different from where everyone else was,” says Escalante.

In Carey’s Master of Science in Marketing (full-time) program in Baltimore, Escalante used skills he never knew he had, and learned marketing theory he could put in practice. He says his experience in the program allowed him to learn not only marketing strategy but also the analytics and data science behind it.

“[At Carey] You're going to get data analytics, you're really going to learn the core engine of marketing in a company and why marketing is the glue to tie multiple teams with your sales,” he adds.

The science aspect of the MS full-time Marketing degree caught Escalante’s attention. Part of the program includes providing a space for students to run experiments in a controlled setting. But he also found the university to be a big draw.

“I obviously chose Carey in particular because of the specialization in marketing supported by the reputation of Johns Hopkins University,” says Escalante. “I would tell any perspective student that Carey Business School is toe-to-toe with any institution, particularly in the space of marketing.”

Escalante says two courses provided significant insight to the science of marketing he uses for Amazon: marketing analytics, which teaches students theories for how to segment your audiences and how to quantify the impact of marketing campaigns, and field experiments, which he uses daily when discussing projects with his tech teams and data science team.

Comfort zone challenge

When Escalante was 22, he wanted to challenge himself beyond his comfort zone. He decided to go on a 36-month quest to complete as many activities as possible that made him nervous or uncomfortable. He went bungee jumping and skydiving, swam with sharks, and became vegetarian for a month, just for example. And worked on some interpersonal relationships, too.

“Challenging ourselves to say, ‘Hey, let me stretch my wings to go further [is important],’” Escalante explains. “Let's talk to people we have no common background with culturally.”

Those three years and his other life experiences helped him overcome some of his fears and refocus his attention at Carey Business School. He says that, for many students, it can be intimidating to reach out to others, particularly if they’re from another country.

“I think one of the things I would tell students is, you know, you're going to be presented with a lot of opportunities to live within your comfort zone with your friends that are from your background,” Escalante says. “The challenge is to go beyond your comfort. But what's going to help you grow more is meeting people, going, doing things you never thought.”