Chief Operating Officer, Season’s Pizza
Current City: Wilmington, DE
Citizenship: United States
Executive MBA Student Profile John Mazarakis
John Mazarakis: 00:07
We all share a common denominator and that is Chicago Booth. The network is very extensive. At any given point in time, I can pick up the phone and call Cynthia in South Africa, or called Tim in Berlin, and get an answer to a problem from a perspective that I never would have had. I wanted a school that was not a country club. I wanted a school that was academically focused, rigorous, one of the best in the world, but at the same time, a school that was down to earth and all about business. Studying in three cities is extremely unique. It's the future. If you want to be a leader of the future, you have to study at a global environment. You have to understand how business is conducted in Asia, how business is conducted in Europe, how business is conducted here in the United States, and compare and contrast.
“Studying in three cities is extremely unique. It’s the future. If you want to be a leader of the future, you have to study at a global environment. You have to understand how business is conducted in Asia, how business is conducted in Europe, how business is conducted here in the United States and compare and contrast and eventually find the best methodology that fits a business.”
— John Mazarakis
John Mazarakis: 00:06
I'm the chief operating officer of Seasons Pizza. I was born in Delaware and moved to Greece at the age of one. Lived there for 14 years and then returned back to the United States. I'm in love with food. I really enjoy cooking and I love ingredients so I was very passionate from day one. It's myself and three other partners. We partnered early on, started out a pizza restaurant, and 20 years later we have quite a few.
John Mazarakis: 00:35
Seasons Pizza has a little over 1,000 employees, 27 locations. We're very close to our people. We understand that people make you who you are. So, our community is extremely important, and it starts with the people that we work closely with every day.
John Mazarakis: 00:52
We found ourselves at a crossroads and we asked ourselves, "Do we want to just pursue a life of sustainability and just maintain what we've created and share it and enjoy it with our people, or do we want to grow, double the business again and again?" We felt that in order to propel the company into a new realm of opportunity, we needed a more scientific approach to running a business. We needed a methodology, a methodology that would organize the base of our business and help everybody solve the problems in a uniform way. That was my main reason for choosing to get an MBA, to help our business get to the next level.