In the military, you learn people skills and you really learn how to be a leader. The military makes a special impact, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle. There’s a lot that the public sector and the private sector can achieve, and that they can achieve together.
I wanted to build a bridge to other sectors, but I needed better quantitative skills first. An MBA was a great place to start. I’m most interested in exploring how to make lasting social impacts through business. Yale SOM’s mission is educating leaders for business and society. It’s just the framework I was looking for.
One of my favorite courses has been Modeling Managerial Decisions. It teaches us how to model the world, and how to make decisions using quantitative and technical tools.
In the military, a lot of what we did—even though we’re a very bureaucratic and leadership-driven organization—was decided through gut and instinct. Now that I have tools to quantify, and compare, my decisions, I have a metric for evaluating the best outcome. It’s going to make me a better decision maker and a better leader down the line.
As I’ve moved further through the SOM curriculum and learned more about business and how the world is changing, I realized that I want to work at the intersection of data analytics and corporate strategy. Future business leaders need to be able to leverage data to make effective and efficient decisions.
Before I applied to Yale SOM, I sent a general email to members of the student Veterans Club, asking for advice, and I received a ton of replies. By the time I got to my interview, I was totally prepared.
You see this sense of camaraderie, and of helpfulness, all over the SOM community. Every single person here is so supportive, and everyone is mission-driven. The mission is all about serving business and society, and it resonates in everything we do, from the way Charley’s Place uses local sourcing, to the issues that clubs address, to our class discussions, which always include a corporate responsibility or ethical supply chain or diversity and inclusion angle. These are the topics that are important in the 21st century, and we touch on them all.
