I studied English literature and political science at Williams College. When I graduated, all I wanted to do was work in theater. But after one year as a stage manager, I realized theater wasn’t for me, and I began searching for something different. I stumbled into a scrum master role at a home security startup. It turned out to be a great fit. I realized that my love of theater had never been about the art. It was about building things with a team of people.
But as I got deeper into my tech career, I saw that many of the factors preventing my teams from executing on great ideas couldn’t be solved with good project management alone. They were larger issues of product strategy and organizational design. I wanted to learn more about these areas, and an MBA seemed like a great way.
My liberal arts education and my quirky career path helped me appreciate the value of interdisciplinary thinking, so Yale SOM’s integrated curriculum really appealed to me. All the courses connect in meaningful ways. I loved hearing Professor Novemsky and Professor Jain play off of one another in Modeling Managerial Decisions. Professor Novemsky used his behavioral economics background to show us how flawed human decision-making can be, which would have been unsettling if Professor Jain hadn’t been on hand to teach us how to build more analytical frameworks for making decisions.
I’m involved with the Consulting Club, the Tech Club, Women in Management, and Wine Class, which has been my favorite way to unwind on Monday evenings—even virtually. The Consulting Club was instrumental in helping me find an internship. All of the second-years are so generous with their time! Their well-developed, rigorous curriculum gave me the support I needed at every stage of the process, from deciding whether or not consulting was the right career path for me through interviews and offers. I love that this is a tradition that rests on second-years teaching first-years. It’s such a great example of SOM’s strong community and our culture of helping one another.
