Tuck Student Ambassadors collaborate with the Admissions Office to share their Tuck experience with prospective students. Part of this group is structured to represent eight geographical regions, with a Regional Captain leading each. In the coming months, we'll introduce you these student leaders!
Today, meet Enrique Curiel, T'18 and Europe Captain. Please reach out to Enrique, or any other Student Ambassador using this website. They love to connect with future Tuckies!
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am from Zaragoza, Spain. I did my undergrad in Business Management at the University of Zaragoza in my hometown, where I also finished a 1-year Master’s program in Financial Markets and Banking Management.
Right after graduating from my Master’s, I joined the Capital Markets and Treasury team of Ibercaja, a mid-sized Spanish bank based in Zaragoza. At Ibercaja, my focus was on institutional funding and liquidity management. More specifically, raising debt from institutional investors for the bank’s balance sheet, managing those institutional liabilities, and hedging structured products with derivatives.
During my summer at Tuck, I interned at Prudential Retirement, where I worked on Corporate Finance for their Pension Risk Transfer team, highlighting the value of buyout transactions for their clients from a corporate finance perspective.
I enjoyed working in finance, and my plan post-Tuck is to join a finance leadership program or a strategy group at a multinational corporation, where I can get a better understanding of all the moving and interconnected pieces in a large global company from a financial and a strategic point of view.
Why Tuck?
Unsurprisingly, community and location were my top reasons to come to Tuck.
On one hand, I had witnessed during the application process how helpful and supportive current students and alumni were when it came to answering questions about Tuck, and I strongly believed that if that was how they treated prospective students, being a current student would find even greater support from the entire Tuck family, and as an international student who was living and working outside of his hometown for the first time of his life, a supportive network was what I was looking for.
On the other hand, the Upper Valley offered an environment that i) I had never experienced before and ii) I will likely not be able to experience after an MBA, since the vast majority of us will find jobs in or around major cities. Living in the Upper Valley greatly fosters the strong and supportive community that I talked about before, and it is a great opportunity to learn more about rural life, enjoy the outdoors, and practice as many winter sports as possible!
Everyone at Tuck chooses a different path. What’s your life at Tuck like?
At Tuck, I am a Leadership Fellow, a co-chair for the Diversity Conference, and the TSA Captain for Europe. I am also in the process of founding the Game Club with two T’19s. There are so many opportunities at Tuck that you have to really think about what you truly want to do and go after those opportunities. If you want to be involved and be part of the community and help maintain it and even improve it going forward, there will be numerous opportunities for you to do so.
I live in Sachem Village (a graduate student community 3 miles away from Tuck) with my wife (by the way, the partner community is the best you could imagine!). We both love playing hockey, hiking, and playing board games with other Tuckies.
Transformational Moment
The moment I decided (and my wife pressed me) to play goalie in tripod hockey. For context, tripod hockey is a hockey league run and played by current Tuckies with 4 different seasons. I had never skated before coming to Tuck and I had played offense during the fall season, falling and feeling frustrated all the time, as I realized how little (if not negatively) I was contributing to the team. However, in December, there is a “mini” league with only 6 games and playoffs where men’s tripod players play with women’s tripod players and A and B team (people who actually know what they’re doing) players together. I was ready to quit hockey after a terrible experience in less than a handful of games, but my wife’s team needed a goalie. She asked me to try it before giving up on hockey and, since it was just 6 games, I agreed to give it a shot. Given the low expectations everyone had for someone who had never played goalie in any sport and was barely able to stand on ice, any puck I saved was immediately followed by cheer and support from my team.
I loved playing goalie so much that I continued to play during the winter and the spring seasons, almost never missing a game. In fact, my team won the winter championship (see the photo after the victory with my study group mate and friend Jon Ou – I am the one on the left), and I am writing these lines after having played 7 games in the last 9 days.
For someone who had never really played sports before Tuck, this was a unique experience that let me appreciate the team building and support network of a sports team, especially if that team is formed by your classmates and their partners.
Why did you join Tuck Student Ambassadors?
As I mentioned before, current students and recent alumni were instrumental in my decision to come to Tuck, so I wanted to do the same with prospective students by sharing my personal experience. TSA is also a great way to meet those who will hopefully become members of the Tuck community in the near future. Given that we only get to interact directly with the classes above and below us, being involved with admissions as a TSA is an excellent opportunity to get to know students of the next graduating classes at Tuck.
What surprised you most at Tuck?
How open and helpful everyone is. Whatever it is, I just need to ask other students, professors, or the MBA Program Office and I will find a way to get it, whether it is support to found a new club, replacing a headlight in my car, or borrowing a car for an appointment in Manchester, NH (1 hour away). For reference, all these simple examples are just from the last month!
Any advice for prospective students?
Get in touch with us and get to know Tuck. The school does a great job making sure you will be a good fit but you also have to ensure that the school is a great fit for you. Not everyone likes the rural environment, the cold weather, or not seeing skyscrapers in the horizon, so I would encourage prospective students to come to visit Tuck, attend a class, meet current students, and explore the Upper Valley to find out whether Tuck is the perfect school for you or not.
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