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Summer Internship Series: Kalypso

Lanesha is an MBA2 specializing in digital strategy and marketing.  Prior to Stern, she worked within Accenture’s federal practice as a technology consulting analyst, helping different government agencies implement and maintain technology systems.  At Stern, she serves as the VP of Treks for the Association of Hispanic and Black Business Students. Lanesha graduated from Howard University in 2015 with a B.B.A. in Supply Chain Management.

NYU Stern’s “Summer Internship Series” sheds lights into Sternies’ internships. Posts are written by rising MBA2s who are currently working at their summer internship.

This summer I’m interning at Kalypso, a boutique consulting firm that specializes in digital projects.  I had a unique recruiting experience; I recruited at the Consortium conference last summer and received a couple of offers before starting school.  Prior to signing for my internship, I made it crystal clear what type of work I did and did not want to do.  Pre-Stern I worked for Accenture in their federal practice as a software implementation analyst.  My roles were very tech-heavy and I was intent on trying something different for my internship.  I expressed to the recruiter that I wanted to work on a strategy focused project within the retail sector and they delivered exactly what I asked for.

My client for the summer is a 60-billion-dollar department store and we are helping them launch their digital product creation program.  Instead of having physical clothing samples that are shipped around the world, everything will be created digitally.  It’s actually pretty cool to see a designer’s sketch of a hoodie turned into a 3D creation that looks realistic.

The hardest part of my summer has been to integrate with teams that I haven’t met in person.  My team is close knit and they have built strong relationships with our clients.  It took me a little bit of time to figure out how to best communicate with my team and what unspoken standards existed for deliverables.  I looked at these obstacles as a learning opportunity.  I pushed myself out of my comfort zone to speak up when I was confused, set up virtual one-on-ones to ask questions, and attend zoom happy hours to network with my colleagues.

I’ve been given several different parts of our project to own and have had considerable face to face time with our clients.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the amount of trust my team has in me to execute different tasks – I feel like a full-time employee on our team.  I’ve also been able to be involved in different internal initiatives such as the launch of a new Employee Resource Group and the creation of a recruiting strategy for diverse candidates.

Working remotely was not the vision I had for my summer, but I consider myself blessed to have still had a full 12-week internship experience.  Since I am at home all day long, I’ve had to develop new routines to keep myself focused such as having a dedicated workout schedule, an organized workspace, and a planned-out to-do list for the day.  Although I was looking forward to traveling this summer and racking up the loyalty points, working virtually gives me a glimpse into potential post-COVID changes in the consulting industry.  I think the future consultant lifestyle will still include a significant amount of travel, but there will definitely be more opportunities to work virtually.

I am excited to get back to Stern this fall and hear about the experiences my classmates have had at other consulting firms.  This summer is not what we were expecting, but I know my fellow Sternies have done their best to make lemonade out of lemons.  This summer has given me more perspective as to what I want to do post-MBA and I plan to spend my last year at Stern taking advantage of every opportunity that comes my way.

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Summer Internship Series: Acumen

Rizwana Iqbal is a rising MBA2. Prior to Stern, she was working with the Government of India to develop the national healthcare innovation commercialization ecosystem. She is a technology enthusiast by profession and singer by heart. Bookworm, fitness freak, self-confessed foodie (and cook!). An explorer and an incurable dreamer!

NYU Stern’s “Summer Internship Series” sheds lights into Sternies’ internships. Posts are written by rising MBA2s who are currently working at their summer internship.

Despite the impact of coronavirus, I got the opportunity to pursue my summer internship in the company I had my heart set on – Acumen, a global nonprofit that is changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in sustainable businesses, leaders, and ideas. Given my background in technology and finance, I felt like impact investing was the best articulation of my skills, a platform which would enable me to create impact, while harnessing my strengths. Thanks to SternWorks and Yassin Choye from Acumen, I secured my internship with the Office of the Chief Investment Officer at Acumen. This global team supports Acumen’s portfolio across regions. Acumen focuses heavily on post-investment support for portfolio companies, which the company calls “accompaniment.” As part of my summer internship, I focused on how to refine Acumen’s value proposition for accompaniment across Africa, India, Latin America, and the United States.

While I have always enjoyed solving business problems, two classes at Stern really helped me perform well during my internship. Prof Marcinao’s strategy class taught me to think through problems in small steps and build towards an eventual solution. Her “high weight high variance” strategy is the mantra of my life. The implementation of my summer project needed behavioral change within the organization. This is where Prof Joe Magee’s leadership lectures helped me. I spent the ten weeks trying to understand the employees and the problems they faced and, hence, was able to eventually suggest a solution that could have the requisite results with minimal input, while shifting the organization towards a more data-driven culture. The skills of listening, negotiating and securing buy-in for new ideas, all of which we had touched upon in lectures, helped me turn my summer into a successful one.

The Acumen team that I worked with over summer provided me with an incomparable experience. The internship delivered on all the promises that I expected from an organization like Acumen. Acumen has strong, powerful women in most of the leadership positions and the culture is one of empathy, a place where you can bring your true self and your truth to work. My mentor ensured that although I was working remotely, I felt like I was an important part of the team. He introduced me to my team, the global teams and the leadership. Every Friday, we would have water-cooler meetings, where we would answer questions from a chat pack, discuss Jacqueline Novogratz’s book “Manifesto for  a Moral Revolution” and talk about current issues. These meetings allowed me to know the team and allowed them to understand me. We all shared our life stories and it created a beautiful bond of trust within the team. My direct manager was brilliant. She was confident and secure in her work. She allowed me to be creative, helped me when I needed guidance, and always made me feel heard.

While I am sad that the summer is over, I am also grateful that even amidst the challenges posed by coronavirus and remote working, my team made the effort to ensure that I always felt included and got the most out of my experience.

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Summer Internship Series: Facebook

Michael Graf is a rising MBA2. Prior to Stern, he worked at J.P. Morgan Chase as a Reputation Risk Associate. This fall, he will be serve as the Co-President of OutClass, an Orientation Leader, a Leadership Fellow, and a Graduate Ambassador. Michael is working towards specializations in Strategy and Leadership & Change Management, and enjoys crossword puzzles, snowboarding, and reading historical fiction. 

NYU Stern’s “Summer Internship Series” sheds lights into Sternies’ internships. Posts are written by rising MBA2s who are currently working at their summer internship.

Today is my last day as an Integrity Program Manager at Facebook. While you might expect that I would be focused only on off-boarding and saying goodbyes, I am actually spending my last few hours in this role working closely with a data scientist to implement my summer project into our team’s product review process. 

My three months at Facebook have been rewarding because of the responsibilities my manager and team have entrusted me with. I was tasked with defining what Integrity ‘success’ looks like for product launches: essentially, asking how Facebook can measure the likelihood that a new product will allow for problematic content like spam, fake accounts, or abuse. More importantly, I was asked to define the effectiveness of our Integrity teams at reducing or mitigating the prevalence and effect of bad content. 

I was initially overwhelmed by the ambiguity of my project and the challenge of tackling something so huge while navigating a new industry and company. Facebook defines success as having impact, and without a background in tech, I wondered how I could present and execute innovative solutions in a few short weeks. I spent my first week furiously googling engineering and coding jargon to simply understand my coworkers. I also questioned my ability to design a solution that would be applicable to the variety of spaces that Facebook works in. How could I create a process that worked for Groups, Dating, Fundraisers, and Gaming? Facebook is a vast platform and risk presents itself in so many different ways.

While these dynamics were obstacles, I came to view them more as opportunities. The wide scope of my project gave me a foot in the door with integrity teams across Facebook. I met with and learned the pain points of teams tasked with protecting the user’s experience with ads, News Feed, and Stories, among many others. I turned these diverse relationships into a working group to receive weekly feedback on my idea for a comprehensive risk assessment for teams across the company. Additionally, I leveraged my background in risk management to recommend additional use cases for the risk assessment, including identifying integrity gaps, surfacing high risk product launches, and tracking risk reduction. This framing helped my project land with leadership and connected my work to our team level efficiency goal for the year.

I also drew from my coursework at Stern to drive home my initiative and the quality of my work product. I recall hearing Professor Pettit’s voice in my head during a team-wide meeting my first week, “Don’t wait to lead,” as I built up the confidence to share my opinion on the value of risk quantification. I knew from his class, Leadership in Organizations, that leadership can be achieved at any level. By highlighting the value of risk quantification in comparison to the team’s status quo (even in my first week!), I built credibility and inspired my teammates to believe in the value of my project. I am grateful to Stern for equipping me with a toolkit to approach a challenging project in a new industry with confidence.

With the incredible support of my team and engagement from cross-functional partners, I designed a quantifiable risk assessment for all new end-user products on Facebook. My team of seventeen committed to adopting my plan, and I had the opportunity to pitch my solution to integrity teams across Instagram, Oculus, and Messenger. 

The combination of my coursework at Stern, my background in risk management, and my willingness to assert my ideas and ask for feedback enabled me to execute my ambitious project plan. I am thankful to my colleagues for giving me runway to explore a huge challenge for the company and believing in my ability to make an impact.

 

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Summer Internship Series: Boston Consulting Group

Emily Glaser is a rising MBA2. Prior to Stern, she spent four years at Restaurant Brands International in communications and marketing for the Burger King brand. At Stern, Emily serves on Student Government and the Graduate Marketing Association. She loves dogs, musical theater, and hiking.

NYU Stern’s “Summer Internship Series” sheds lights into Sternies’ internships. Posts are written by rising MBA2s who are currently working at their summer internship.

This summer, I’m interning at BCG as a Summer Consultant. And that is a sentence I never expected for myself.

When I came to Stern, I was intending to recruit for brand management at a traditional CPG company. My background was in marketing at a fast food chain, and I was interested in continuing to grow my skillset as a marketer. But throughout the fall semester at Stern, I learned about the mysterious world of consulting and found work that truly interested me. I decided to challenge myself and took a leap of faith into a completely new career path!

But what do consultants do? What do YOU do, Emily? Great questions, Mom.

At the base level, consultants find opportunities for improvement at companies across the world and build them a path forward. We help when clients are too close to an issue to see things clearly or too busy driving the bus to fix the exhaust and carburetor at the same time. We’re problem solvers, guiding our clients hand-in-hand toward success.

And as for me specifically, this summer I’m staffed on an end-to-end transformation for a global personal care company. We want to help them listen to their customers better, interpret their needs, and efficiently deliver products that will improve their lives.

My portion of the case has been to analyze and improve the process they use to launch new products across their vast portfolio. I was incredibly nervous to come in as a new summer consultant and be given a topic to own from the first week – how should I know how they should launch personal care products? I only know about burgers and chicken nuggets! But the team has been incredibly helpful in guiding me through my research and analysis, and in only 5 weeks (so far) I’ve already learned an incredible amount. I’ve learned how to frame a high-level ambiguous problem and break it up into digestible questions that can be tackled individually. I’ve developed insights that spurred meaningful discussions with the client about strategic change. And I’ve learned the humility to always ask questions when you feel unsure.

The advice I’d give to MBA1s or those applying for business school is to always be open to learning. You may come to Stern knowing exactly what you want to be, but that can be upended in a moment. And that’s a good thing. There may end up being several different career paths to help you achieve your goals. You may even find new paths and opportunities that excite you! Being open to new paths led me to BCG, which has been one of my greatest learning experiences thus far. I’ll be returning full-time after graduation, and my goal throughout my career here is to always be open to listening and learning.

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Summer Internship Series: Amazon

Asad Farooqi is a rising MBA2 and is interning over the summer as a Product Manager at Amazon. He serves as Co-President of the South Asian Business Association at Stern (SABAS), and holds leadership positions in the Arts, Culture, Cuisine (ACC) and CannaBusiness clubs. He is specializing in Strategy and Product Management and hopes to continue working in tech after Stern.

NYU Stern’s “Summer Internship Series” sheds lights into Sternies’ internships. Posts are written by rising MBA2s who are currently working at their summer internship.

After a busy but extremely fun and memorable first year at Stern, this was supposed to be the dream summer in Seattle. Instead, I am writing to you from my apartment in NY, out of which I have been rolling out of bed and onto my desk to ‘dive deep’ at Amazon over the last five weeks. Even with a remote start to the internship experience, this has been one of the most educational and fascinating work experiences I have had to date. After slowly adjusting to a completely new way of work vis-à-vis COVID-19, it has been interesting to spend most of the day having unfettered focus for my assigned projects. It gives me a lot of time to really reflect and apply all the little nuggets of wisdom that I have gathered from Stern and my previous work experiences and leverage them in the work I do on a daily basis.

As a PM working with the Amazon Renewed team (refurbished items), it is my responsibility to evaluate performance metrics that measure the quality of products, and determine composite metrics that can capture a wider extent of the customer experience. This involves getting into the details of what constitutes an ideal customer experience and working backwards to determine how much of that experience can be quantified and captured to uncover ways to drive improvements in quality. Working through such a project requires interacting with multiple stakeholders across Amazon, as well as learning how to leverage data analytic tools and business processes to answer questions more effectively.

My experience at Stern has given me a more robust understanding of fundamental business concepts like statistics and strategy and has also taught me to become a better leader and take ownership of my work. The project scope was the only thing communicated to me at the beginning of the internship, along with a note that “we’re looking forward to your leadership over the summer.” Having taken some invaluable courses over the last two semesters, I felt fully prepared to work through the uncertainty and uncover interesting insights along the way. Some days are long, and some are longer. I did not realize how quickly day turns to night when you’re sitting in your room and working away, but that is also a testament to the engaging nature of the work itself. There is always that ‘a-ha!’ moment during the week, when you’ve figured out a particularly challenging roadblock, and that usually serves as motivation to keep on thinking about the work for the rest of the day.

There is still time left in the summer for a bit of rest and relaxation before the semester begins again. With NY having gone through the worst of the crisis (fingers crossed), we are all looking forward to being able to convene in-person soon. The sense of community has not diminished during all this time. All of us are constantly in touch, sharing our summer experiences and joking around as much as we can since we are all excited about returning to campus in any capacity in the Fall. We hope to see you all here soon, and please do feel free to reach out with any questions that you might have about Amazon, recruitment, Stern, NY, or anything about business school in general.

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Summer Internship Series: Apple

 Najma Yakob is a rising MBA2 and is an Operations Product Development Intern at Apple. Najma serves as the Co-President of Stern Women in Business and as an Orientation Leader and Career Mentor. She is specializing in Business Analytics, Strategy, and Sustainable Business and Innovation.

NYU Stern’s “Summer Internship Series” sheds lights into Sternies’ internships. Posts are written by rising MBA2s who are currently working at their summer internship.

I’m halfway into my virtual summer internship with Apple and I can confidently say that I did not expect to be here a year ago. I’m on the Operations Product Development team and my focus for the summer is on scaling Apple’s current efforts to transition its manufacturing supply chain to 100% renewable energy.

Prior to Stern, I worked at a small tech company focused on renewable energy, and then in consulting helping electric utilities buy and sell renewable energy. I knew early on that I wanted to go back to the tech industry because I loved the culture and I enjoyed working on dynamic teams with flat reporting structures. As a result, I was lucky to secure a role that capitalized on my prior experience as most tech companies prefer to recruit individuals who can quickly contribute to their role.

The most surprising thing about my internship so far, the virtual part notwithstanding, is how much I do feel like I’m part of the team. I’d never worked with MBA interns before so I wasn’t sure whether I would own a few transactional tasks but for the most part be relegated to the background. To my pleasant surprise, I’ve been given direct ownership of some high visibility initiatives the team is working on and although this has raised the stakes for me, it’s also been gratifying to feel like I’m working on something that actually matters. I’ve been lucky to be placed in a small and somewhat specialized team which has allowed them to give me support and attention that would not be possible in a larger team. All in all, I’m really enjoying my experience and am looking forward to what the next few weeks will bring.

Regarding the virtual experience, it’s definitely easy to get caught up in what could have been and the unrealized dreams I had of a summer in the Bay Area getting to know my fellow interns and experiencing the west coast. Doing the internship from the comfort of my Brooklyn apartment has been both easier and harder than I initially anticipated. On the one hand, I’ve been more readily able to channel the confidence and experience I’ve gained in just my first year in the MBA. Certain tasks that I would have been unsure about prior to Stern feel easier and more achievable. On the other hand, it’s been more work than I would have expected to put myself out there in order to make connections and get things done. Where I would have more easily met people in passing in the hallways or during social events, it’s been a valuable learning experience to proactively invest time and effort into remotely meeting new people.

For those unsure about what next summer or even what the next year will look like, I can confidently say that I’ve developed a deeper ability to be patient and take each day as it comes this year. As a planner, it’s been frustrating and sometimes heartbreaking to let go of the big ideas I had for my time in business school. However, I’ve also learned to be grateful for the fantastic experiences I’ve had and the great connections I’ve been able to make with my classmates and my co-workers. I highly recommend keeping an open mind and being as flexible as possible. I often reflect on the fact that a career is a journey and each moment, whether positive or negative, is building towards a bigger picture that we can’t yet see. Believe in yourself and hold on to the idea that everything will work out as it should!

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Summer Internship Series: Gratitude Railroad

Kathleen Dillon is a rising MBA2 at Stern. Prior to business school, she spent six years as an officer in the Coast Guard and two years working for the New York Mets. At Stern, she serves on the board of the Military Veterans Club and  the Management Consulting Association. Her academic specializations are Global Business and Business Analytics.

NYU Stern’s “Summer Internship Series” sheds lights into Sternies’ internships. Posts are written by rising MBA2s who are currently working at their summer internship.

I’m really enjoying my internship experience so far although it was a bit of a roller coaster to get here. Back in mid-March, I accepted a strategy-focused internship offer with the Philadelphia Flyers. Unfortunately, after the NHL season was suspended due to COVID-19, the Flyers had to cancel their internship program. All that to say that as Stern’s school year came to a close, I was still looking for an internship.

In response to the devastating impacts of COVID-19 throughout the country, Stern created a summer internship program called “SternWorks”. The program was created to give students the opportunity to take on projects with companies, non-profit organizations, and government agencies negatively impacted by the coronavirus. Through SternWorks, I was accepted into a 10-week internship program with Gratitude Railroad, a venture capital and impact investing firm.

Gratitude Railroad’s venture capital arm focuses on investing in startups that are tackling some of society’s most difficult issues. I’ve had the opportunity to do due diligence for potential investments in companies focused on food waste reduction, clean energy, and childhood education. Not only has interacting with these entrepreneurs been incredibly inspiring, but it has also been deeply informative. I was in the military prior to Stern and have very little business experience, so having the opportunity to be exposed to so many different markets and industries has been a huge opportunity for me.

In addition to assisting Gratitude Railroad’s investment team, I’ve also been working with the organization’s Head of Strategic Initiatives on various strategy-focused projects including website revamping, community outreach, and multiple internal process improvements. Despite my internship being virtual, I’ve become close to the others on my team and have had a fantastic experience so far. And it’s only half over!

Please feel free to reach out to me anytime — my email is kathleen.dillon@nyu.edu. I’m happy to answer any questions you have about life at Stern!

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Inclusivity at Stern: An LGBTQ Perspective

Gage Kaefring is a current MBA2 and will be joining PwC Strategy& in their Healthcare Strategy and Operations practice upon graduation from the full-time, two-year program. At Stern, Gage serves as the co-president of OutClass, the LGBTQ student group on campus, and as the VP of Marketing for Stern Chats, the Stern podcast. He is specializing in Leadership, Strategy, and Analytics.

 

When I was applying to business schools nearly two years ago, I knew it was going to be nearly impossible not to be out in my application. I had served on the board of an LGBTQ advocacy group in Minneapolis for several years and at the time was one of the lead volunteer coordinators for an LGBTQ youth center in Seattle. I was also the head of my office’s LGBTQ Employee Resource Group and you really just had to take a cursory look at my Instagram to see a plethora of rainbow flags. Going back into the closet simply wasn’t an option.

It was because of this position that I thoroughly evaluated the prevalence of the LGBTQ student communities for each of my potential schools. Of all the schools I applied to, Stern’s was easily the most engaged. They called me before my on-campus interview and I was able to meet with a current student immediately after the interview concluded to get her perspective. The then-presidents of the organization fielded my questions and made it clear that they would be thrilled should I gain acceptance. 

Through a stroke of incredible fortune I did manage to gain admittance to Stern and the notion of a tight-knit, queer family turned out to be far more than I had ever hoped. In business school, recruiting starts early. Like, really early, almost as soon as you set foot on campus. For the LGBTQ students it starts even earlier. The national Reaching Out MBA (ROMBA) organization hosts a conference before most on-campus recruiting starts and queer students are tossed immediately overboard into the sea of corporate presentations, networking, and even interviews before their peers. Luckily, the second year MBAs (MBA 2s) at Stern are right beside you, treading water and helping you stay afloat. Their enthusiasm for your success is at the same time endearing and empowering. You feel like you have a genuine cheerleader, or, to beat this metaphor to death, a lifeguard.

This past year, it was my turn to shepherd the MBA 1s through their ROMBA experience. Having been thrown in just last year I knew how exciting, energizing and overwhelming the conference is. More than 30 schools are represented and nearly 100 companies, each bringing their best, most accomplished, most well-dressed queer representatives to network and hear lectures on different industries. This past year the conference took place in Atlanta and I approached my role as the facilitator MBA 1s with an enthusiasm that, looking back on it, probably unnerved them just a bit. Each year Stern turns out one of the largest contingents to this conference and this year was no different. A cadre of MBA2s helped our younger classmates network, get into the right events and, most importantly, truly enjoy the conference. Obviously in Atlanta, this last piece means visiting the Coca-Cola Museum (it was also Atlanta Pride, so I was sporting my best rainbow bandana).

While OutClass may be a powerful example of the communities Stern is capable of building, it is only one piece of the broader community. On the LGBTQ front I have seen some incredible support from my classmates, both straight and otherwise. Everyone on campus gives you license to truly be yourself and not fear any judgement. They celebrate your identities with you and are genuinely interested. There’s no better example of the ally community showing up for OutClass than our end-of-year party. Appropriately named School is Out and So Are We, it is the final celebration of the school year and an absolutely joyous occasion for the entire Stern community to come together. It also helps that there is a wildly entertaining student drag show midway through the evening.

The level of commitment that Stern students show to their community has been easily the best feature of business school for me and I am so grateful to be surrounded by such caring people, gay, straight, and otherwise.

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Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone in Business School

Sami Abdisubhan is an MBA2 who spent his summer internship at Anheuser-Busch. Sami serves as VP of Marketing & Operations for Stern in Africa (SiA), VP of Training for Stern FC, and Co-President of the Association of Hispanic and Black Business Students (AHBBS). He is specializing in Marketing and Business Analytics.

 

 

One of the values of earning an MBA is exploration. Whether it’s exploring a new industry, function, city, or experience, there lies opportunity in an unusually supported manner when at business school. A subset of this value proposition is something NYU Stern’s Dean, Dean Raghu Sundaram, said to us on our first day of LAUNCH, Stern’s orientation: business school is the best time in your careers to fail. Despite the irony that I’m paraphrasing, this was a moment that I’ve cherished from orientation. There is no safer environment to professionally experiment than business school. The stakes will not be lower! This line from our Dean helped me get through an experiential learning class I took in my first year called Consulting Lab: Branding and Innovation.

Coming into Stern, I wanted to pivot my career into consumer marketing with a focus on brand management. While brand management is effectively a general management function, there is a responsibility to own how a brand is portrayed and understood and that has always been my interest and passion in marketing. When available, I jumped at the opportunity to register for Consulting Lab, knowing it was an experiential learning class; experiential learning, as it sounds, is a format of learning obtained through real-life projects and business challenges. I saw this class as a way to train myself before my summer internship, brand management at Anheuser-Busch, in that fail-safe environment that Dean Sundaram mentioned.

When I started the class, I was very excited to hear from the client about the challenge they brought to us. There was a thrill to it: a large financial services firm was coming to us, graduate students, to support a project with which they genuinely needed help! A slight problem arose: I didn’t understand the challenge. The prompt was clear to me and I understood the need for the project from the client’s side – I just didn’t know where to start. For the most part, my project team was in the same boat and as the solutions-oriented people we are, our minds immediately went to products/changes the client could implement to fix the problem. However, we were quickly reminded that we didn’t understand the problem fundamentally and hadn’t gone through the right analysis to get there.

This start was not what I had hoped. Not just because of the slight project-related hiccup, but also because this is my aspired career. I’ve planned for this since I started writing business school essays. Was I wrong? Will my summer internship be a nightmare? These thoughts and questions had me considering dropping the class as some others – not on my team – had done. However, one of my goals before starting at Stern was to create a different experience than my undergraduate experience. In college, I wasn’t really involved in extracurriculars and didn’t challenge myself, both of which I regretted. The 20-year-old me would’ve dropped this class after the second session for no other reason than to avoid difficulty. Not this time. Again, harkening back to the idea of a failing to learn, I made sure to embrace being out of the comfort zone.

This does have a happy ending: in one of our group project meetings, as my team members were brainstorming, all of it clicked. I literally let out a big “Ohhhhhhhhh. I got it. ” From then on, we went to do very well in the class, presented a viable solution to the client’s executives and, after impressing, earned a good mark overall. Coincidentally, my summer project at Anheuser-Busch was incredibly creative in nature, focusing on advertising. My experience doing branding-related work in Consulting Lab was by far the most influential to my success over the summer and converting my internship into a full-time offer of all the classes I had taken first year. For that, I’m thankful I was able to reflect in the moment to think back to my MBA goals prior to starting and we were reminded during orientation that there is no other time to try and fail and to not run away from failure than business school.

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My Path to Business School: Reflections from an MBA1

 Lee Axelrod is an MBA1 who will be interning in brand management at Bazooka Candy Brands this summer. Lee serves as the co-president of Stern Cellar and the VP of Knowledge Management for the Gradate Marketing Association. She is specializing in Marketing and Strategy. 

 

 

 

As my first year at Stern is coming to a close, it feels like a good time to reflect on my experience and how I got here. During my initial weeks on campus, I would often pause in astonishment as I realized that I was actually in an MBA program. Until a few years ago, it had never occurred to me that I could go to business school, so occasionally I would be amazed that I’m really here. However, as the weeks passed and I got more accustomed to my new lifestyle, I acclimated to the experience of being an MBA student and started taking for granted all of the incredible opportunities that I have at Stern. So now I want to take a step back and focus on why I’m here and how grateful I am that I ended up in business school.

Growing up, I was always passionate about reading and art, so it’s not surprising that I chose to major in English and Studio Art in college. I went to Stanford for undergrad and while I valued the opportunity to take classes in a variety of disciplines, I mostly stuck to the arts and humanities during my time there. I became so enthralled with literature that I even decided to apply for a master’s program in English at Stanford, which I completed in one year after finishing my bachelor’s degree. At the time, I was considering getting a Ph.D and going into academia, so pursuing a master’s seemed like a good way to determine if a Ph.D would actually be the right fit for me. I quickly realized that academia was not where I belonged. While I still loved reading, analyzing texts, and writing papers, I hated sitting alone in my apartment all day. I craved human interaction and I really wanted to be part of something bigger than myself. After I finished my degree, I eagerly left academia and sought real-world employment.

When I left school, I was determined to work in an industry that I was passionate about. After searching for a while, I finally landed a job at a small publishing company in San Francisco as a sales and marketing assistant. The publishing world seemed like a great fit for me: it was full of smart, intellectual people who also loved books. I learned a lot in my first role and wanted to broaden my publishing experience, so after a year I moved to Wiley, a large academic publishing company. I started in their San Francisco office as a Sales Support Coordinator, working with our textbook sales reps. 

While I was at Wiley, I discovered that I enjoyed corporate life a lot more than I expected. I performed well in my first job, and within a year I was promoted to manage the team as a Sales Support Supervisor. I moved from the San Francisco office to the Hoboken, New Jersey headquarters for the position. Becoming a manager introduced many new challenges, but I loved being able to make important decisions and lead my team on key projects. In my first year as a manager, it occurred to me that I might appreciate having more senior roles in the future, and that one way to advance my career would be to get an MBA.

Although MBAs are common in many industries, they are quite rare in publishing. I only knew one or two colleagues who had gone to business school, so I had very few role models to look up to when considering this new career path. However, I did have several friends from Stanford who had since gone to business school, so I reached out to them to ask about their experience. I was concerned that an MBA program wouldn’t be a good fit for me; after all, I had avoided taking math and econ classes in college and I knew nothing about finance or accounting. I also didn’t know many people who had worked in banking or consulting and I felt that I might not fit in well with hundreds of students who had a vastly different professional experience from mine. I also thought that business students would be competitive, aggressive, elitist, or just bro-y. 

However, my Stanford friends assured me that their business school classmates did not fit the stereotype that I had envisioned. In fact, they told me that MBA students were a lot like Stanford students: smart, ambitious, and eager to work hard and play hard. Above all, they emphasized that MBA students weren’t elitist—they were just regular people hoping to advance their careers. And they said that business school wasn’t as competitive as I was imagining, and that business students did look out for each other and support one another. 

After thinking over all of this for a year or so, I finally decided to take the GMAT and apply to business school. I was still pretty hesitant about whether this plan would work out. For one thing, I wasn’t sure if I would get into any business schools—maybe they wouldn’t think I was a good fit. Once I started applying to business schools, I felt better about my prospects, but several early visits to MBA programs left me questioning my choice again as I wondered about the student community. Some schools still felt too competitive for me, and while I was eager to advance my career, I questioned whether I would make any friends in the process. However, the community at Stern felt different than my other on-campus visits—students seemed really supportive of each other, and I met other students from non-traditional backgrounds who were thriving. So when I got accepted to Stern and later decided to attend, I still had a few doubts but overall was fairly confident in my choice. 

I can now say that business school has been even better than I expected in all possible ways. First, the career opportunities and recruiting process have hugely exceeded my expectations. Stern provides so much support throughout the process, both from the Office of Career Development and from the professional clubs. I feel completely guided in my recruiting journey, rather than left to fend for myself. Second, the core classes in my first semester were more interesting and relevant than I’d anticipated, and I didn’t struggle with the quantitative courses as I had feared I would. The professors and TAs are really helpful, but beyond that, my fellow classmates are unbelievably supportive. When working on a group project or just a homework assignment, they have always helped me if I didn’t understand something—which happened less often than I thought it would.

Lastly and most importantly, the community at Stern is truly amazing. My classmates aren’t competitive—they’re really collaborative, both in the classroom and in the recruiting process. Best of all, I have met many incredible people at Stern and have made real friendships here. I never thought that I would connect deeply to so many people in a business school, but I do feel that I have meaningful relationships with many Stern classmates. There are a lot of other people here from non-traditional backgrounds, but even those coming from finance or consulting are friendly, caring, and fun to hang out with. Contrary to my expectations, they aren’t aggressive or elitist—they’re just regular people trying to advance their career and learn about business, like I am. Ultimately, I’ve realized that we all have a lot in common and we’re all working together to achieve our goals, which is what makes the Stern community so incredible.