The people who change the path
Laura (Eisenbeis) McArthur, BSBA ’10, thought she had her future figured out.
It was her senior year at the University of Missouri, and McArthur had taken a pre-law course, sat for the LSAT and planned to attend law school. Then a hands-on project at the Robert J. Trulaske, Sr. College of Business put her in a conversation that changed the trajectory of her career.
McArthur was working on a consulting-style marketing project for Tom O’Neal and Mizzou’s Office of Advancement when O’Neal asked about her plans after graduation.
She told him she wanted to become an attorney — but only wanted to work for a corporation.
His response was simple: Had she considered an MBA?
“I hadn’t. At all,” McArthur said.
The question prompted McArthur to reconsider what she actually wanted from her career. She realized an MBA was better aligned with those ambitions but first wanted the kind of real-world experience that would prepare her to make the most of graduate school.
That realization eventually took her from Mizzou to Cerner in Kansas City, then to Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and ultimately to Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where she has spent more than a decade and today serves as managing director and partner.
Looking back, McArthur sees that pivotal conversation as part of something larger that began at Trulaske: an education that regularly pushed her beyond the classroom and connected her with people and experiences that helped her see possibilities she hadn't yet imagined.
Experience that opens doors
Two people stand out when McArthur thinks about her years at Trulaske: Mary Beth Marrs, director of the Cornell Leadership Program, and Anne Raymond, a Trulaske and Kappa Alpha Theta alumna.
Through the Cornell Leadership Program, Marrs helped McArthur navigate professional opportunities and tap into Trulaske’s alumni network. Trips took students to Dallas, Chicago and even Carthage, Missouri, where McArthur met accomplished alumni while building deeper relationships with her classmates.
Raymond offered another kind of education.
McArthur spent several holiday breaks in upstate New York with Raymond's family and her sorority sisters. They would gather around the fire as Raymond and her friends talked about their lives and careers.
“Here were women with impressive careers who were also incredibly down-to-earth and fun,” McArthur said. “Seeing that combination firsthand left a lasting impression.”
The relationships endured well beyond graduation. McArthur credits both Marrs and Raymond with helping her navigate decisions about graduate school, her career and life — mentorship she continues to value today.
Those experiences also illustrate something fundamental about the Trulaske approach: Students learn business by doing business, meeting the people who practice it and discovering firsthand the many directions a business education can take them.
“Laura’s career illustrates the lasting value of experience-centered learning,” said Balaji Rajagopalan, dean of the Trulaske College of Business. “When students have opportunities to solve real problems, build relationships with alumni and mentors and explore business beyond the classroom, they develop more than knowledge. They develop the confidence and perspective to recognize opportunities — and the ability to act on them when they appear.”
Taking the next leap
After graduating summa cum laude from Mizzou with degrees in economics and marketing, McArthur joined Cerner, where she worked with health care institutions on electronic health record implementations and eventually managed teams of consultants.
Then came another pivotal decision.
McArthur had a good job and an established career when she decided to leave both behind to pursue a full-time MBA at Duke.
“Even my grandmother thought I was crazy!” she said.
But McArthur had “an itch to do something more” — and to push herself outside her comfort zone. She earned her MBA in 2015 with a certificate in health sector management and joined BCG that same year.
She has been there ever since.
Today, McArthur partners with clients across health care, technology, media and telecommunications and consumer industries. Her work encompasses some of the most consequential issues facing businesses today, including artificial intelligence and digital transformation, data and digital platforms, product delivery, change management and operating models.
And the pace of change is only accelerating.
“What an exciting time to be in business,” McArthur said. “The questions my clients ask today are fundamentally different from the ones they asked even a year ago.”
What interests her most about AI isn't simply the technology. It's what the technology allows businesses to reconsider.
“Companies have an opportunity to rethink how work gets done: their processes, their ways of working, and how they organize around the technology to drive the most value,” she said. “That kind of transformation is challenging but also energizing.”
Her advice to students preparing for that environment echoes the curiosity and adaptability that have characterized her own career.
“Don’t outsource your critical thinking,” McArthur said. “AI is a powerful tool, but it’s still a tool.”
Students should learn to use AI to make themselves better, she said, without surrendering the human abilities businesses will continue to need: solving difficult problems, navigating ambiguity and exercising judgment.
Coming back to Trulaske
Even as McArthur’s career carried her from Missouri to North Carolina and ultimately Dallas, her connection to Mizzou remained.
Early in her career in Kansas City, she served as president of the Trulaske Recent Alumni Advisory Board and was active with the Kansas City alumni chapter. When she moved to North Carolina for graduate school, formal leadership became harder to maintain — and taught her another lesson.
“Life has a rhythm, and you can’t go full speed at everything all the time,” McArthur said.
So staying connected looked different.
She watched Mizzou football with the Triangle Tigers Alumni Chapter and once drove from Durham, North Carolina, to Atlanta to watch the Tigers play in the SEC Championship.
Now, her relationship with Trulaske is entering another chapter. McArthur recently joined the Dean’s Advisory Board and will attend her first in-person meeting during Homecoming.
“It feels great to be actively engaged with Trulaske again and to have the opportunity to give back to a place that gave me so much,” she said.
There is something fitting about the return.
As a student, McArthur benefited from alumni who made themselves available to students — people like Raymond who demonstrated what a career in business could look like and helped her navigate decisions along the way.
Now McArthur has the opportunity to do the same for the students coming behind her.
Enjoy where you are
For all the professional milestones McArthur has accumulated, her proudest achievement happened only recently.
She and her husband, Andrew, welcomed their daughter, Joan, during the last football season.
“Harder but 1000x more rewarding than any career move!” McArthur said.
Joan — Joanie — is named after the same grandmother who once questioned McArthur's decision to leave a good job for graduate school.
And she entered the world in thoroughly Mizzou fashion: McArthur had the nurse turn on the Mizzou-Alabama football game while she was in labor.
“Luckily Joanie’s arrival was a welcomed distraction to the final score,” she said.
Perhaps appropriately for someone whose career has been shaped by unexpected conversations, relationships and opportunities, McArthur's advice to today's Trulaske students isn't to construct the perfect career plan.
It's to pay attention to the people and experiences around them while they're making it.
“Work hard and take advantage of the opportunities Trulaske gives you, but don’t get so focused on what comes next that you miss what’s happening now,” McArthur said. “Invest in the people around you, enjoy the experience, and have some fun along the way.”
After all, McArthur knows better than most that sometimes the experience you don't yet recognize as important is the one that changes everything.