About Us
Student & Alumni Profiles
Bertina Ceccarelli, MBA 1993 Senior Vice President, United Way of New York City
Career Path
When a company I was working for relocated to Omaha, I knew I wanted to stay in New York. I'd always moved from one job in the for-profit sector to the next, so for the first time I had the chance to really think about what I wanted to do next. I'd always imagined I would do something in the nonprofit sector, but figured it would be at some point much later in my career. Then it just occurred to me: Well, why not now? I started using the HBS network to talk to people before I ended up interviewing for the position of senior vice-president of marketing at United Way of New York City in early 2001.
Applying MBA Skills
What I love about this work is that it brings together so many different skill sets; in addition, I get to interact with people from government, the for-profit sector, and academia. The boundaries between sectors are more porous than they once were. I work very closely with our corporate donors, and I think of our results in the community as being the product that we have to sell. That's where having an MBA degree comes into play—when you're working within a corporate environment, and with high-net-worth individuals, the more you cast the results of your work in terms of investment analogies, the more successful you will be. At the end of the day, everyone is looking for a sound return on investment, whether it's a philanthropic or financial investment.
