From Classroom to Career: Developing and Articulating Personal Brands Through Storytelling in Graduate Marketing Education

Personal branding has become an important career skill, yet graduate business curricula rarely teach students how to develop a professional identity that feels both authentic and communicable. We introduce and evaluate a storytelling-based pedagogy designed to help MBA students construct and articulate their personal brands. Drawing on narrative identity theory, we conceptualize personal brand development as involving two related challenges: reflective integration, through which students make sense of their experiences, values, and aspirations; and discursive construction, through which they shape those experiences into audience-facing professional narratives. We implemented this pedagogy in a graduate marketing course and used mixed methods to examine both students’ personal brand stories and changes in key learning outcomes. Qualitative findings suggest that storytelling helped students connect past experiences to future goals, reinterpret formative events, and craft coherent narratives that conveyed values, credibility, and professional direction. Quantitative findings indicate gains in personal brand appeal, differentiation, and professional identity clarity. Together, the results suggest that storytelling pedagogy can move students beyond formulaic self-presentation toward more coherent, credible, and adaptable professional identities. The study contributes a theory-informed and practically actionable approach for marketing educators seeking to strengthen career preparation in the classroom.