Jose Roca-Leon traveled to Cuba along with other USC Marshall students, as a member of USC Marshall’s EXCEL PROGRAM (International Experiential Corporate Learning).

Roca-Leon, an MBA.PM student and an Ernst and Young consultant, journeyed to the island country with 36 fellow Marshall students, accompanied by CARL VOIGT, academic director for international business education and research, and SEAN O’CONNELL, director of undergraduate international programs.

ExCEL is an immersive 10-day program, in which participants meet with national leaders and industry insiders while developing an appreciation and understanding for the economic realities and cultural differences of the country. In the past, ExCEL has journeyed to Barcelona, Spain, Milan and Florence, Italy, and Dubai and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Voigt shared that this Cuba trip represented a special opportunity for students to experience the country’s unique culture and economy.

“The extreme contrasts in political and economic models in Cuba make it a great learning laboratory for students to ‘test’ the assumptions about how economies and political systems should and do work,” Voigt said. “It brings about natural discussions that never happen, or rarely happen, among our business students about the good and the bad of our own economic and political model.”

Roca-Leon, who is well-traveled, shared that the ExCEL trip extended far beyond tourism. The group’s hands-on learning opportunities at companies provided an invaluable experience to take part in Cuba’s businesses and daily life.

“What I really wanted to experience — as opposed to just taking a tourism trip — was to understand how things are done and why things are done differently, and getting access to people that have a wildly different viewpoint on life,” Roca-Leon said.

For Roca-Leon, the ten-day journey was a once-in-a-lifetime immersive opportunity he wasn’t going to miss. It allowed him and his classmates to experience Cuba like few ever have.

“I probably won’t have a chance to do this ever again,” Roca-Leon said. “This is an opportunity that’s not afforded to everybody, not even everybody in every MBA program.”

Upon arrival, students explored the island’s economic infrastructure. They toured multiple Cuban companies, including a clothing store for dignitaries, a national tobacco distributor, and a sugar mill that doubles as a power plant by generating heat that is then recaptured to generate electricity.

While visiting the mill, a reporter from the nationally owned television network Cubavision INTERVIEWED Roca-Leon and a classmate about their impression of the plant. Roca-Leon was impressed by the plant’s upkeep, which still uses machinery that’s nearly a century old.