At Missouri S&T, Jay Modi, MBA’10, combined his interest in business and enterprise resource planning to become one of the university’s first MBA graduates.

Today he is director of finance and administration at Peninsula Clean Energy, a start-up company that gives its customers in San Mateo County, Calif., the option of having one-half to all of their electricity supplied from renewable resources.

Modi does everything from setting up methods to strengthen internal controls to identifying tools to improve staff efficiency and forecasting a five-year financial plan that considers price volatility.

“I have a very supportive team who is always willing to assist,” Modi says. “My manager gives me the opportunity to work on exciting projects, and the best reward is I love what I do.”

When Modi was looking at universities to pursue an MBA, he knew he wanted to focus
on enterprise resource planning — software packages that coordinate a company’s entire operation — and saw Missouri S&T as a natural fit.

“Business and enterprise resource planning, or ERP, is a perfect match for candidates with a bachelor’s degree in finance and accounting,” Modi says. “That’s because at least 90 percent of the job openings in accounting and finance require a candidate to have knowledge of an ERP system. And if you can attest that your MBA major was in enterprise resource planning, it gives you an extra point in the selection process over other candidates.”

Modi began his career as a fund accountant at Fotowatio Renewable Ventures in San Francisco. While there, he implemented SAP as its accounting system. It was his first ERP implementation since taking SAP courses at S&T.

“I can proudly say that implementing SAP was one of the best projects of my career,” he says.

Modi helped implement Oracle EBS across SunEdison’s global business units in 2012 before implementing Intacct System for ForeFront Power, a spin-off of SunEdison’s North America division.

“I am thankful to Missouri S&T for offering a great MBA program,” he says. “I was not only able to get my first job, but also apply the key business and technical skills on the job.”