Blog
Blog
MBA Voices
MBA Voices
In April of 2020, Sarika Mendu (MBA ‘20) and Amina Mohamed (MBA ‘20) watched their EC year turn upside down due to a sudden global lockdown and saw an opportunity for MBA students to get involved and help small businesses stay afloat in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The soon-to-be graduates recognized that many struggling organizations could benefit from those with MBA skills -- marketing, finance, strategy, etc. -- to navigate unprecedented challenges. As they spoke to friends about this, they found hundreds of MBA students eager to help, but who didn’t know where to begin. Seizing this opportunity, they founded “MBAs Fight COVID”, an initiative that matched HBS students with business owners seeking help. [...]
For seven years we built our friendship spending nine months a year together, sometimes in the same dormitories. When we graduated, we set our sights on studying in the US and -as your typical nerds - we both went into engineering. I studied Electrical Engineering at Georgia Tech, and Kevin went into Chemical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. [...]
My name is Omar Aboulezz, and I’d like to share with you a bit about my journey to HBS and how I persevered through multiple setbacks. Nearly four years elapsed between starting my first HBS application and stepping foot on campus starting as an MBA student in 2019.
I first applied in 2017, was invited to interview, but was not admitted. I tried again the following year with the same outcome, but this time without an interview. Both of these rejections were tough. [...]
Although I did not know it at the time, my path to business school began on March 1, 1992. It was my ninth birthday, and I was enjoying the liberty that came with growing up on a farm on the outskirts of a small mining community in Ohio: riding my all-terrain vehicle (ATV) through muddy fields and plunging in and out of puddles of melted snow. My future career was far from my mind, but even at that young age, I was contemplating the world and my place in it. In Appalachia, opportunity ebbs and flows with the demand for steel and coal. And in 1992, many of the factories that had provided the community’s lifeblood sat dormant along the banks of the Ohio River. Consumed by poverty, the soft bigotry of low expectations had crept into the social construct, sentencing families in underserved communities like mine to a lifetime of waiting for steel and coal’s resurgence. Through rust-colored lenses, our place in the world appeared immutable. [...]
Career treks and conferences organized by student clubs remain fundamental elements of the MBA experience at HBS. Like other events, though, clubs had to move these signature treks online. [...]
Load More Loading...
The views and opinions expressed in the MBA Voices blog are those of the authors.
Any political views shared by students are their own; HBS does not endorse a
particular party or candidate.