During the year, we’ll be connecting with some of our 2017-18 HBS Leadership Fellows, who will share their experiences in the Fellowship year. In this post, we hear from Hrithik Bansal (MBA 2017), Special Advisor at BRAC USA; and his supervisor Donella Rapier (MBA 1992), President & CEO at BRAC USA. [...]

In November of 2015 I set in the upper deck of Faneuil Hall in Boston, looking on 300 people from 80 countries congregated to take their oath as the newest crop of US citizens. Among them was my girlfriend, now fiancé, who had navigated her own journey to the US as an asylum seeker 14 years prior, arriving here with no contacts and no English, ready to start a new life. Seeing her would have been an emotional experience no matter what, but having been supported through chemo for the prior few months, arriving together on the other side, healthy and ready to celebrate her accomplishment, elicited one of the most powerful feelings of gratitude I had ever experienced. [...]

About 10 years ago, I was a bright-eyed HBS intern at the World Bank in Mozambique. I went there thinking I would continue to work with small and medium businesses globally, making them more efficient given my background prior to graduate school. Instead, I came home wanting to design a maxi pad out of a banana tree for half the world! How did that happen? [...]

When I was 12-years old, my parents took me to visit the rural village in Gujarat India where our family originally came from. The children we met there were filled with spirit, and yet were running around barefoot, poorly nourished, and out of school. It felt unfair to me that I had more opportunities than them just because I grew up in Canada. I didn’t have the vocabulary then, but I knew it just wasn’t right. Since then, I have become acutely aware of the millions of children around the world who face limits because of where they were born or how much their families earn. Many days, this feels daunting. [...]