Nikki Whang ’22

Education equity is important to me, and I’m passionate about how technology plays into it. After three years of teaching and using Chromebooks in my classroom, I wanted to explore how tech could impact learning outcomes at scale, so I moved to a customer success manager role with McGraw Hill’s Workforce Learning Team.

I decided to pursue an MBA because I’m interested in one day starting or leading my own edtech company. I chose Yale SOM because the school’s values seemed to match my own. I felt completely at ease speaking with students and alumni when I visited. The moment that solidified things was the Women in Management panel for admitted students. The panelists were so diverse and honest. As a woman of color, I knew I had found the best fit. And as a student, I’ve been able to work at The Broad Center, keeping my hand in the education space.

Since I come from a nontraditional background, the integrated core curriculum has been helpful in providing me with foundations in all of the topics that I wasn’t familiar with. Learning how to tackle a problem strategically is one of the most critical skills I’ve gained.

The Executive course brought it all together. We examined cases through multiple stakeholder lenses simultaneously. In the real working world, you’re never approaching a problem from only one viewpoint. It’s important to not only be able to put yourself in the CEO’s shoes, but also the CFO’s, the customer’s, and the individual employee’s. Discussing these lenses helped me approach and unpack the strategy problem I focused on during my internship at Adobe.

Being able to tap into the Yale SOM network and talk to alumni about their career paths helped me find the right internship, which has led to a permanent position. The second-year students and the Tech Club leaders, who went through the process just the year before, were also immensely helpful and supportive in getting me ready to interview. And I’d be remiss not to mention the CDO staff, who always had time to do a mock behavioral interview, or review my résumé, or just help me clarify exactly what it was that I really wanted to do next.