MBA

Profiles

Brett Lindsay Laffel, MBA 2010

Growing up as the daughter of transplanted New Yorkers deep in the heart of Red Sox Nation proved formative for Brett Lindsay Laffel. "I was raised as a Yankees fan in enemy territory," Brett says. "In order to wear my Yankees caps to school and risk being ostracized I had to really, really know my baseball."

While many of her peers initiated careers in consulting and banking, Brett kept her eye on the ball. "I sent out tons of inquiries," Brett says. "Then I got my first break — a summer internship with Major League Baseball. The catch? I had to start just three days after graduation."

At MLB, Brett joined the Labor Relations department while the collective bargaining agreement with the players' association was taking place in 2006. Later, she joined the Baseball Operations department of the New York Mets to provide the Manager, coaching staff and other front office personnel with statistical analysis that was used for in-game strategy, salary arbitration, assessment of teams' Player Development programs, and the First-Year Player Draft.

The right time for HBS

After another stint at MLB, Brett looked into getting an MBA. "I loved my job and I loved everyone I worked with," Brett explains. "But I realized that with each year that passes, it would be harder and harder to leave baseball — it was best to get my MBA now."

Brett's first introduction to HBS came when, as a Harvard undergraduate, she wrote her honors thesis with HBS Professor Max Bazerman and PhD student Dolly Chugh on the impact of implicit bias on decision-making. "I knew I wanted to go to HBS right then and there. The faculty love what they do and want to be here."

Reflecting on her first year at HBS, Brett says, "Growth isn't necessarily all happy and cheery. You're truly challenged here. But the experience is genuinely transformative. The case method forces me to form opinions and express them clearly every day. As a result, I can convey my ideas so much more coherently than I ever had before."

"There's also so much to do in a limited amount of time. You have to decide what's important or not — and that makes you much better at time management. And there's personal transformation as well. Taking classes in a section of 90 students creates a common experience. We come from different backgrounds. We have different ideologies, different perspectives — yet we're willing to help each other now and in the future. HBS has opened my eyes to people I might not have otherwise sought out on my own."

Back to baseball

For her summer internship, Brett will be working for a venture-backed technology startup in San Francisco." Eventually, she would like to return to her first love. "But in the short-term, I want to continue to broaden my business skill set outside of sports," Brett says. "I want to learn new things so I can add that much more to baseball sometime in the future."