By Pete D’09, T’16
A first-year student at Tuck, Pete is co-founder of Decade Records and drummer for Filligar, a touring American rock band. He has served as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. State Department and is a voting member of The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences. Pete holds a master’s degree from Oxford University and a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College.
Just 24 hours after clicking “submit” on my application to Tuck last January, I was on a plane to Kuwait City. My rock band was headed to the Middle East for performances—the latest adventure in our globetrotting as U.S. arts ambassadors.
With time to kill and the application behind me, I started to think ahead. A couple of weeks performing in Kuwait, a U.S. tour, and a new album to finish—my immediate future was action packed.
But what about the application? What if I got in? Launching a record label has taught me enough about business to know this: I couldn’t pass up the sacred opportunity of an MBA education at Tuck.
And then a few months later, while recording in my band’s studio in Venice Beach, I got a call from Tuck’s admissions office with the good news. I was elated.
I was also a little concerned. I had spent the last few years in big cities naturally connected to the business world. Would I become disconnected from that world upon entering the deep woods of New Hampshire? Dartmouth’s motto seemed to say so—Vox clamantis in deserto, or “voice crying in the wilderness.”
It’s now November and I’ve been at Tuck for a little over a month. No doubt, we’re in the wilderness here. But it’s everything but isolated.
In fact, I’d modify the Dartmouth motto. Replace “crying” with a word like “resounding” or “thumping.” Tuck is a voice amplified through 400,000 megawatt stadium speakers, resonating well beyond the Upper Valley—not to some slow song—but something with electrified, pulsating soul. Think Daft Punk. Kings of Leon. Adele. HOVA.
I’ve never felt more optimistic about my business aspirations. My dorm, Whittemore Hall, rivals a Fortune 500 office space with state of the art business facilities. My own room feels like a managing partner’s office. Just yesterday I conferenced my partners in New York and Los Angeles about upcoming projects.
One of Tuck’s esteemed professors Sydney Finkelstein—who this term taught my AGM (“Analysis for General Managers”) course—recently offered strategic insights into how to guide my business ventures. My managerial economics professor Teresa Fort even sat down with me for an hour to talk about pricing strategies on iTunes. At Tuck, these professors shaping the global business discourse become partners in your own journey.
I’ve been fortunate to visit every American city—from Austin to Albuquerque, Savannah to Fargo. I can relate to a business fear of the wilderness. In my industry of interest, being in the heart of action is essential.
But Tuck really is at the center of it all. I view Hanover as the world’s smallest, worldly city. CEOs, politicians, cultural icons, and entrepreneurs find their way up to Dartmouth and are suddenly no longer swarmed by the public. You have access that is otherwise impossible in a metropolis.
Every day I receive an invitation to join a CEO at an intimate dinner, or find out that another of the world’s most desirable companies wants to talk with me over coffee. Later this month, I’m going to see world renowned jazzman Wynton Marsalis at Spaulding auditorium for a subsidized $10 (I couldn’t even get a box of popcorn at Lincoln Center for that price).
My real business here is learning. And for that, I couldn’t imagine a better landscape to focus and fortify my business mind than here at Tuck.