By Avi Sethi T’16
It was past 10 p.m. on August 14th when I arrived in Hanover, NH.
While this marked the end of a cross-country road-trip which had started in Palo Alto, CA, it also marked the start of a new journey. There was both a sense of excitement and nervousness that night about embarking on the next two years of my life as an MBA student at the Tuck School of Business. As a former Teach For America corps member, strategy consultant with Accenture, and venture associate with the NewSchools Venture Fund investing in early stage ed-tech startups, coming to Tuck, for me, was about three things:
1. Being in a rigorous academic environment which pushed my thinking, rounded out my managerial skills, and filled in any knowledge gaps I had in accounting, statistics, etc.
2. Developing life-long friendships with the future business leaders in my class as well as opening up my network to a group of alumni passionate about the common bonds we shared, and finally…
3. Making a targeted professional jump – bringing together the different experiences I had gained and finding a career path that would both take advantage of my unique skill-set and provide me with the kind of challenges I was looking to work on next.
Being nervous that first night and my first few days was natural for anyone uprooting their life and moving across the country to start his MBA. Half of that nervousness, though, was rooted in wondering if Tuck was truly the right school to catalyze my career shift. When I had applied to business schools, the half-dozen I had chosen were picked because of their fit with the three things (above) I was looking to get out of my two year investment. While Tuck had an unbeatable reputation with my first two goals (academics and culture), I wasn’t fully convinced Tuck was going to allow me to achieve my lofty career-transition goals.
Don’t get me wrong. When it comes to more traditional routes, such as banking, consulting, or general management, Tuck has a placement record second to none. What I wanted, though, was something more unique—ideally in the impact investing space—which would require a more non-traditional search. While Tuck had been ranked in the top ten by US News in both Finance and Nonprofit, which would make it a strong fit for impact investing, I wasn’t so sure how committed the school was to seeing its management curriculum as a conduit for making social change (and in my case, finding ways to apply that to the K-12 education space).
Boy, was I wrong.
My first week at Tuck kicked off with Tuck Builds, a pre-orientation program. As part of Tuck Builds, I worked with a group of my classmates to construct a 65-foot ramp for a family living under the poverty line; one of the family members unable to walk out of her house due to disability. Not only was I given the opportunity to work with my hands at a real construction site – using a power saw, sledgehammer, nail gun, etc.—but our group leader also used our time together to reveal both the difficulties faced by many citizens in the Upper Valley, outside of Dartmouth’s oasis, as well as dare us to think about the ways our management education could make a dent in those issues. Further, my group was just one of many groups working on various other projects to improve the livelihood of the Upper Valley. All told, over 10% of our incoming class had chosen to come to campus early and take part in this annual tradition.
The next week during Orientation, one full day was committed to expanding Tuck’s reach in the Upper Valley through Allwin Community Outreach Day. 100% of Tuck’s incoming class worked with their study groups on consulting projects for local nonprofits. My study group was charged with helping a free medical and dental health clinic determine how to design and implement a marketing campaign. Seeing how invested each of my teammates was to improving the impact this local nonprofit could have on the community confirmed for me the type of people I would be spending my next two years with. Our group, like many others, even volunteered to provide some additional data analysis after Allwin Day, despite knowing how busy we were going to be during the first few weeks of school.
During a reception held later that night, both a student speaker and alumnus spoke about how the school had supported them when they decided to take the road less traveled. The student, Divya Belavadi T’15, spoke about taking the most non-traditional of internships this past summer … working at a farm and becoming a trusted advisor to the farm’s senior management team. The alumnus, Curt Welling D’71, T’77, had started his career in banking but then transitioned to spend 11 years as the President and CEO of Americares, a nonprofit global health and emergency response organization, before joining the Tuck School as a senior fellow with Tuck’s Center for Business & Society as well as the Center for Global Business & Government. During his talk, Mr. Welling noted that my class included numerous people who had worked with Teach For America, the Peace Corps, and the armed services, as well as many who had sat on the board of a nonprofit before coming to Tuck.
As I watch the leaves change color now, the nervousness I initially felt is long gone and has instead transformed into excitement about what the future holds for me over these next two years and after. Whether my next steps are taking one of the many socially or environmentally focused courses, doing a Tuck GIVES internship at a social impact organization over the summer, or perhaps doing something more entrepreneurial—like helping Tuck start its own social impact investing fund—I am wholly certain that I am at the best business school for me. In addition to the top-notch academics and a culture unique across all top MBA programs, Tuck is well positioned not only for those looking to follow more traditional career routes, but it is also a place where someone like me can thrive in my unique professional journey.
The Center for Business & Society at Tuck aims to prepare Tuck students for leadership in an increasingly complex, interconnected world. Business has become a significant agent of transformation, and business knowledge can be applied to community needs and world issues. The Center works to ensure that the changing issues at the intersection of business interests and society’s needs are a key component of our MBA education and a part of Tuck's broader scholarly activities. We host distinguished visitors, develop projects for academic credit, provide opportunities to make an impact locally and globally, offer financial support for internships and jobs in the nonprofit and public sectors, support new cases and courses, and enable faculty research.
(Top photo by Omar Abdelsamad T'16: Avi, 3rd from right, with his study group during Orientation. Bottom photo by Jack Swain T'16: Avi working during Tuck Builds.)