\u201cMy personal mantra, \u201cLiving Legacy & Leadership,\u201d describes my passion for family, learning, and leadership.\u201d <\/p>\n
Fun fact about yourself: I grew up in New Jersey, then moved in high school to the Chicago suburbs.<\/p>\n
Hometown: Barrington, Illinois<\/p>\n
High School: Barrington High School<\/p>\n
Major: Marketing<\/p>\n
Minor: N\/A<\/p>\n
Favorite Business Course: ESP 252 with Jim Friedman<\/p>\n
Extracurricular Activities, Community Work and Leadership Roles During College:<\/p>\n
Business Honors Cohort<\/p>\n
ESP 103 Undergraduate Assistant<\/p>\n
VP of External Relations (Business Student Advisory Council)<\/p>\n
VP of Philanthropy (AKPsi Business Fraternity)<\/p>\n
Director of Recruitment (AKPsi Business Fraternity)<\/p>\n
Founding Executive Vice President (The Levant Group)<\/p>\n
President (The Levant Group)<\/p>\n
FSB Careers Ambassador<\/p>\n
Dean\u2019s List (All semesters)<\/p>\n
Startup Weekend 1st Place
\nHonors Senior Marketing Capstone Winner<\/p>\n
Where have you interned during your college career? (List Companies, Locations and Roles) Giordano Dance Chicago, Development Intern (Summer 2023) hand2mind, Marketing Intern (Summer 2024)<\/p>\n
Procter & Gamble, Sales Intern (Summer 2025)<\/p>\n
Local Style Chips, Intern (Winter 2025\/2026)<\/p>\n
Where will you be working after graduation? (Include company and title) <\/p>\n
Procter & Gamble, Full-Time Sales Role<\/p>\n
Who is your favorite business professor? My favorite professor is Jan Taylor. She stands out as the most influential professor in my college career because she gave me the confidence to chase the most ambitious goals and opportunities. She has a way of making every student feel seen and special. For me, that\u2019s influenced how I view myself and my future for the better.<\/p>\n
What is the biggest lesson you gained from studying business? At my P&G Internship, I was told that the #1 thing I needed to do was \u201cknow your business\u201d. At the time, I took this to mean understanding the data and trends of my isolated job. As I\u2019ve grown over this past year, I\u2019ve realised it has a much greater meaning. \u201cKnow your business\u201d means understanding the living system your work operates within, the individual goals and relationships within the system, and how your personality and workstyle can fit in to maximize the team goal. This lesson is all about context, ownership, and self-awareness.<\/p>\n
What advice would you give to a student looking to major in a business-related field? \u00a0Build your network! Chasing a business career is competitive, and you can make it easier on yourself by leaning into the mentorship of professionals with more experience and wisdom. Don\u2019t procrastinate asking for help; it won\u2019t get you to your goal any sooner.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Looking back over your experience, what is the one thing you\u2019d do differently in business school and why? If I could do anything differently, it\u2019s I would\u2019ve allowed myself to be more explorative with my career as a freshman. I originally limited myself to consulting and finance because I thought that was the only way I could find a successful career. But I realized during late sophomore year that I just needed to chase a career I\u2019m good at and happy with.<\/p>\n
What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What is one insight you gained from using AI? In my marketing classes, we are encouraged to use AI for visualizing and polishing. We are taught to never go with the first response AI gives you, and instead work with AI as a tool to bounce ideas around and tighten up messaging. I\u2019ve primarily used AI for generating images used to visualize marketing campaigns or packaging changes.<\/p>\n
Which academic, extracurricular or personal achievement are you most proud of? I\u2019m most proud of the work I\u2019ve done in The Levant Group. After numerous campus leadership roles and professional internships, I\u2019ve put all my learnings into building Levant\u2019s operational structure. From designing systems, like recruitment and team onboarding, to leading teams through challenges in their client projects, I\u2019ve been able to leave a mark that has a legacy. In just one semester, I\u2019ve seen Levant change the lives of our people. We\u2019ve helped secure internships, facilitate new mentor-connections, and curate a space where the most talented marketing students can share their knowledge and skills.<\/p>\n
Which classmate do you most admire? By far, Jacob Didea is a classmate I most admire. He has always been so dedicated to excellence and has partnered with me in many of my major college accomplishments. Together, we won 2024 Startup Weekend, built The Levant Group, and won our Honors Senior Marketing Capstone. Every student who works with Jacob learns something after being on a team with him. He\u2019s a natural leader and creative. As accomplished as he is, he\u2019s also humble, kind, and always eager to jump at any opportunity to help his peers. Jacob Didea is the gold standard among FSB students.<\/p>\n
Who would you most want to thank for your success? I\u2019d like to thank Mark Lacker for encouraging me to choose Miami. He sold me on the FSB experience because of Miami\u2019s tight-knit community and exceptional undergraduate professors.<\/p>\n
He was absolutely right. I don\u2019t think I\u2019d be able to make as large an impact anywhere else.<\/p>\n
What are the top two items on your professional bucket list?\u00a0<\/p>\n
1. Teach in a college classroom<\/p>\n
2. Become an entrepreneur<\/p>\n
What made Nikki such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?<\/p>\n
\u201cNikki White has had a profound impact on the Farmer School of Business. She is a Marketing major who is a member of Honors College and the Business Honors Cohort. She also serves as a Careers Ambassador in FSB and is an Entrepreneurship Teaching Assistant. Nikki is a member of the Business Student Advisory Council, which serves as a liaison between the Dean\u2019s suite and the student body. As the Vice President of External Relations, she raised $20,000 in corporate sponsorships to fund \u201cFarmer Week,\u201d an annual event attended by FSB students and faculty during the spring semester.<\/p>\n
Nikki is also a member of Alpha Kappa Psi where she serves as the Vice President of Philanthropy and Diversity. She has raised money for philanthropic events as well as increasing member participation at these events. Additionally, she served as Director of Recruitment for AKPsi, which attracted over 100 potential members. Nikki organized the interview and evaluation process for these candidates which resulted in a successful Spring 2024 Pledge Class.<\/p>\n
Also, as part of AKPsi, Nikki founded a new organization, The Levant Group, which is a marketing agency within the larger organization. She recognized the desire of some AKPsi members to work on marketing projects, so she created this agency. Currently, she serves as President of The Levant group and has developed training workshops for members and has acquired five clients for the 2025-2026 academic year. During the fall semester, Nikki was a member of the Honors Capstone in FSB where her team worked for Local Style Chips, a Chicago-based startup. Her team successfully created a market expansion plan in Chicago and designed an omni channel strategy to maximize distribution. Her team was chosen as one of the winning teams for this capstone class. Last summer, Nikki worked as a sales intern for Procter & Gamble where she successfully identified a $15M opportunity across P&G categories for multicultural consumers and presented her findings to the Walmart team. Nikki will return to P&G upon graduation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zhiyong Yang, Ph.D.
Chair & Professor Department of Marketing
Miami University Farmer School of Business<\/p>\n
DON\u2019T MISS: 100 BEST & BRIGHTEST UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS MAJORS OF 2026<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a9 Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMy personal mantra, \u201cLiving Legacy & Leadership,\u201d describes my passion for family, learning, and leadership.\u201d Fun fact about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[99172,99173,99174,99175,99176,123,125,124,20476,99177,25160],"class_list":["post-218356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-2026-best-brightest-business-majors","tag-business-major","tag-business-school","tag-class-of-2026","tag-farmer-school-of-business","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-miami-university","tag-nikki-white","tag-undergraduate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}