Full-time MBA Blog

Yesterday the International Committee at Stern hosted Stern Passport Day, an occasion for Stern students to get together and share their traditional cuisines, costumes and performances with each other.  While sitting in the student lounge I overheard an MBA1 student say, ‘’Passport day has already made my Business School experience worth it”. I could not agree more. The mouth-watering assortment of cuisines, the vibrant costumes and the charged up performances lived up to all the hype. A bunch of South Asians, including me, danced to some Bollywood tunes. The Stern community showed up in large numbers and embraced all the different cultures.

Someone suggested that instead of organizing passport day annually we should try and have it every semester. The Stern administration encourages students to take leadership on matters concerning the Stern community. Last semester, another Sternie felt that Stern needs a ‘Stern Cultures club’.  Four months on and she is in the process of finalizing the board for the club. I am really looking forward to some of the events the club is planning to organize.

I cannot end this post without a mention of my Spring break. I had mentioned in my previous post that I was organizing the India Trek this year. We visited five cities across India. We landed in New Delhi, the capital of India. We went on to visit the magnificent Taj Mahal as well as the forts of Rajasthan. We got to soak some sun on the beaches of Goa. Eight days of non-stop shenanigans ended with an alumni reception at Mumbai. It was hard to come back to reality after the trip. All of us got along so well that we have already had our first get-together in New York. Great memories and good friends for life.

Until next time,

Ashrae

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the Women in the World Summit, which was presented by my former employer, Newsweek Daily Beast. The experience is unlike anything that I can put into words. At the Summit, moderators who include people like Hillary Clinton, Diane Von Furstenberg, Angela Jolie, Barbara Walters, Meryl Streep, and more, help women from countries near and far testify to some of the atrocities they have experienced or witnessed in their lives. Atrocities that I could never imagine – honor killings and beatings, genital mutilation, rape, not being allowed to work or leave the home, being denied education, and the list goes on. A former Stern part-time student/former coworker of mine provided tickets for myself and another classmate. Knowing my interest in women’s issues, he was happy to extend the invitation to the Summit. Much like Stern, this gathering is a transformative experience. It brings perspective to my MBA as I stress over a quiz that is worth 10% of my grade in one course. Moreover, to see a media company create such a forum for women’s issues reminds me that corporate America can participate in meaningful corporate social responsibility (CSR) beyond the purpose of branding or the bottom line.

My friend who accompanied me has a particular interest in CSR, whereas I am simply a person who was inspired by the conference last year and as  a woman, finds these issues fascinating and engaging. As I sat at the conference this year, I found that I was looking at it through a different lens since attending Stern. I thought about the ways that pressure could be placed upon companies to improve not only women’s rights, but also human rights. I considered some of the management techniques we have discussed in my Leadership in Organizations (LiO) course that could be applicable to some of the organizations represented at the Summit. I further considered the role that celebrity played in branding the conference and how it was leveraged for good rather than to simply sell tickets to an event. I considered the way that macroeconomic conditions colored the lives of many of the women presenters and how the decisions made in the US could have far reaching effects that often go unseen globally. These are all things that hardly crossed my mind last year when I was simply awestruck by the conference.

Again, I was thrilled to share this experience with fellow Sternies. In fact, next I might suggest partnering with Stern Women in Business to have a greater presence at the conference. I feel that Women in the World presents a great fusion of EQ and IQ. You can check it out for yourself here.

If you’ve been expecting me to write about my spring break, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you. As I have already mentioned, I was in New York over the break, so I don’t have any glamorous or exciting stories like a lot of my friends. I spent most of last week in a state of jealousy, looking at photos my friends have taken over the break, marveling at their adventures (white shark diving, among them!), and admiring their suntans.
Do not take that to mean that I did not enjoy the break though! It was relaxing; and of course, I was not the only Sternie “on the New York trek” as we called it, so I still had the opportunity to hang out with my friends and have fun!

What I really want to talk about though is our trip to the BuzzFeed office last Friday! It was organized by the EMTA, and we had the chance to hear from several people: including the CEO and co-founder Jonah Peretti.

I assume a lot of you are familiar with BuzzFeed, and how unique it is in the sense that the website uses 3 different types of content on the same platform: entertainment/humor (what they started out with), branded content, and reported news. Apparently it gets 40 million unique visitors each month, which is quite impressive.

Jonah Peretti is also a co-founder of The Huffington Post, and he talked to us about how he got involved with these projects. He said he had always been interested in why and how people shared content: evolving from email forwards back in the day, to organized sharing through social portals such as Facebook and twitter.

What prompted him to start BuzzFeed was that he noticed a shift from search engines to social: in the past, most online content was based on what people searched for, but now it’s becoming a much more “human” space, and they’re making content for people, rather than search algorithms. He chatted with us for an hour, and then we also had the chance to hear from Aswini Anburajan (Director of Partnership Development), Jonathan Perelman (VP of Agency Strategy & Industry Development), and David Spiegel (Executive Director of Sales). David is actually a part-time MBA student at Stern, and he was the one who had the idea for the trek; another demonstration of how Sternies like to help each other out. I thought it was an amazing trek—I have always loved BuzzFeed, it was great to see their office, and hear about the work that they do.

Hello Friends!

Now that we are in the homestretch until graduation, all of us MBA2s are trying to pack in as much Stern as possible over these next 6 weeks. The end of this week is jam packed with some pretty cool events that I have definitely been looking forward to for a while now. Especially since they combine two of my favorite things – food and cover bands!

This afternoon is the annual Stern Passport Day one of my favorite events. Celebrating the rich cultural heritage of NYU Stern’s student body, hundreds of current students, prospective students, faculty and staff gather each year for the NYU Stern International Passport Day. The event serves as an opportunity to experience Stern’s diversity firsthand, as students get to share their country’s unique heritage by showcasing traditional cuisine, costumes, music and/or performances.  It is an awesome event, with tons of delicious food and really great dance performances.

Later on tonight is the spring performance of Beauty School Dropouts, Stern’s very own MBA cover band. The band is performing at Sullivan Hall just around the corner and it is sure to be a super fun night!

Bright and early tomorrow morning I’ll be attending the EEX Club’s Entrepreneurship Summit. The club has decided to change up the traditional way of doing conferences and has planned a day full of mini treks to different start-ups all around the city including FourSquare, Warby Parker, Fab.com and so many more. Can’t wait to check out these awesome companies first hand!

Happy weekend!

Kristin

Greetings friends,

Since last we spoke, I have been around the world and back again. I spent 10 days in South Africa with 48 Sternies and had an amazing time! We started our journey in Johannesburg where we toured the city and visited the Apartheid museum, then went to the Mabula Game Lodge for a two-day safari adventure, and ended up in Cape Town where we explored Cape Point and Table Mountain. My favorite part of the visit was when we visited Velokhaya/The Life Cycling Academy in Khayelitsha in Cape Town. Velokhaya is a non-profit that works “to give underprivileged children in South Africa the skills and the opportunities they need to make a success of their lives“ through cycling. We met the children currently in the program, heard from the founder and alums who have gone on to have very successful lives both on and off the bike, and had a chance to ride around the township of Khayelitsha. You can see pictures from our visit on Velokhaya’s Facebook page.

Until next time,
Jennie

Hello friends,

As my classmates and friends returned from their spring break trips in Costa Rica, South Africa and many other amazing places with great stories and even better tans I’ll admit I was definitely a tiny bit jealous. I spent most of spring break in the empty study rooms here at Stern working diligently with my business partner on our start-up [you can read more about that here]. At the end of the week we headed off to exotic Dallas, Texas for Dallas market week to attend some fashion trade shows and to meet with brands and suppliers to begin developing relationships and figuring out how the wholesale buying process works.

Despite the fact that I was not sitting on a beach somewhere, it was pretty awesome to have a week completely free of classes and other school distractions to work on my business and I am so proud of the progress we were able to make! Now that graduation is becoming more of a reality (less than two months, ahhhhh!) I have begun to think about life after NYU as an aspiring entrepreneur and I will admit it is both equally exciting and terrifying. Resources for entrepreneurs here at Stern continue to get better and better right before my very eyes and are definitely helping to make the transition a little less stressful. Aside from the annual Berkley Center$200K Entrepreneurs Challenge which you may have heard of, we have just announced a very exciting new program, the NYU Launch Pad!

The Launch Pad, NYU’s own version of a start-up incubator, is a 10 week summer program for graduating NYU and NYU-Poly student teams to accelerate their new ventures forward. Through a combination of workshops, speaker series, and mentorship sessions, startup founders will learn lean startup principles to guide the development of their business models and prototypes, have access to a co-working space at NYU-Poly’s Varick Street Incubator, establish connections with members of the NYC startup community, and Showcase their startup to potential collaborators, investors, and partners at a capstone showcase. You can read more details about this new program here. This is definitely a step in the right direction for all of NYU’s aspiring entrepreneurs and I can’t wait to see what fantastic companies emerge!

Until next time,

Kristin

We are back from spring break – and you can guess what that means…less than 2 months until this is all over. I’m so sad about it that I’m just going to go ahead and pretend it’s not happening.

Let’s see – what’s new? We just got back from Spring Break in Tulum & Playa del Carmen, Mexico. We were there for seven days with about 15-20 Sternies. It was absolutely incredible. Luckily, the weather is getting nicer here in NYC – it’s almost Spring time! Spring in NYC is beautiful, and I’m really excited to take advantage of it and see more of the city in my free time.

Tomorrow is Summer Start Interview day. I can’t believe that was me just two years ago. Summer Start is an incredible opportunity, and anyone who is invited to interview for it should definitely strongly consider. Summer Start students start in July instead of August and take six of the overall required 60 credits during the summer. This frees up a bit more time in the Fall for recruiting and other extra-curricular activities. I’m so glad I did it because it allowed me the additional time to focus on recruiting in the Fall, and for my GMA presidential responsibilities the second year. It’s also a great way to ease into the bigger class in the Fall. You come in with 60 friends that are evenly distributed across the blocks, so you meet people much more easily through your summer start friends. I honestly can’t say enough great things about it!

Ok, now off to class but will have more updates next week!

Hello friends,

Just one more day stands between me and a week off for Spring Break! It seems like this semester is literally FLYING by, how is it Spring Break already? I have some classes coming to an end in just two weeks and graduation is looming just around the corner. Two years is just not long enough!

I am pretty excited for my Spring Break plans this year. Unlike some of my other classmates who are jetting off to exotic locations like South Africa and Cost Rica, I am spending my break here in NYC working with my partner on the business we are starting-up. We are working on building an e-commerce retailer dedicated to the modern career girl, complete with styling and career advice. (You can check out the beginning of our site here www.workshopstyle.com). It will be great to have a full week of uninterrupted time for us to really make some progress and get down to business as we have quite a bit of work ahead of us before we are ready to launch! Although I will be taking a 2 day mini break to Miami, FL to get in some sunshine and hang out at Ultra Music Festival for the weekend first. Not too shabby.

One of the awesome parts about Stern is the club treks that take place over Spring Break. All of the clubs organize trips to different destinations around the world from Morocco to Brazil to Israel. Last year I joined the Emerging Markets Association(EMA) on the Peru trek which was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The trip was unbelievable from white water rafting and mountain biking in Cuzco, to hiking the rain forest to the breathtaking sites of Machu Picchu. This year the EMA is heading to Vietnam and Cambodia and I am sure everyone going is in for a fabulous adventure.

Until next time!

Kristin