MBA Insider

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes

Gorick Ng is a HBS Alum and the Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Start Your Career Off Right,. The Unspoken Rules is now offered at multinationals, professional services firms, startups, and non-profits around the world for onboarding, training, and diversity and inclusion. In 2021, Harvard Business School offered The Unspoken Rules to every MBA student. Gorick has been thinking about careers and jobs since he started helping his mother prepare her resume and apply to jobs when he was only a teenager. Since then, he’s gone on to help countless numbers of students and young professionals navigate their careers, and built his own career first as a management consultant and now as a career development expert.

During our conversation, Gorick spoke about his learnings about careers over the years, some of the challenging events in his career that led to the ideas for his book “The Unspoken Rules’ ‘ and a wide-ranging conversation around career development advice for MBA students and Alum.  

Links:

• Unspoken Rules 
• Gorick’s Website
• Gorick’s LinkedIn

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes

Felix Watson Junior is a UCLA Anderson Alumni, and the Founder of the PM Mastermind Group. After starting his career as an engineer, Felix pursued an MBA to pivot into a career in product management, and has done PM stints at Microsoft and Google. Now, Felix helps educate current and aspiring Product Managers through his PM Mastermind Group. 

During our conversation, Felix spoke about his journey into Product Management, and his advice to aspiring Product Managers. 

Additional Links

• Felix’s LinkedIn
• LinkedIn Product Management Mastermind Group

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes

Breanna Atkinson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Kokada, whose mission is to create good-tasting and healthy food with ingredients from around the world. After her undergraduate career, she spent some time in consulting. She was inspired to pursue her MBA early on, and applied to Wharton while launching her first company. Another large influence has been in her time as an athlete, playing as a student athlete at Duke, and then going on to be a member of the Jamaican national women’s volleyball team. 

In this conversation, we discuss her journey as a student-athlete, developing her pitch, the value of an MBA for an entrepreneur, and the challenges of starting your own business. 

Links

• Website 
• Breanna’s LinkedIn
• Instagram

Right now, many MBA students are in the thick of internship interview season, navigating preparing for interviews, finding opportunities and building relationships with hiring managers and recruiters all while managing all the other academic components of business school is no easy task! In this episode, Al Dea, walks through some common challenges that MBA students face during internship recruiting season, and provides some tips and best practices for staying on course and focusing on your own personal goals.

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes from 2023

This week, we’re flipping the format on the MBA Insider Podcast, with the help of a former guest and friend Eryn Schultz, and putting Al Dea (MBA Insider Host) in the guest chair. In this episode, Eryn, a fellow entrepreneur, talks to Al about his own entrepreneurial journey with building MBASchooled. Al spoke about his motivation for creating MBASchooled, why he recently left his corporate career at Salesforce to focus on his entrepreneurial journey, and what’s next for MBASchooled.

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes from 2023

Paul Millerd is an MIT Sloan MBA Graduate, and the Author of the Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story for Life and Work. Like many hard-working and driven college graduates, Paul entered the corporate world after college ready to work hard, achieve success and climb the corporate ladder. But through a series of events before and after business school, Paul ended up taking an alternative path, and evolving his views on life and work. Much of which is written about in his book The Pathless Path as well as his newsletter, Boundless.

During our conversation, Paul spoke about his career journey after graduating from MIT Sloan and with an MBA, and what ultimately led him to leaving his corporate career for a path of exploration, as well as the many learnings, lessons, and experiences Paul got along the way. We also spoke about his book, and the applications and insights that can be relevant to those who are reflecting on their career aspirations.

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes from 2023

Many MBA students cite that networking and building relationships are two of the most valuable parts of the MBA experience. But how does that play out, and how do MBA graduates cultivate their relationships with their peers and classmates during business school and beyond? In this episode, we spoke to three MBA alums, Margaret Nealon (USC Marshall, ‘22) Ethan Siegel (Owen, ‘22) and Jill Toner (UNC Kenan-Flagler, ‘22) about their MBA experience, and how the as recent MBA alums are using their relationships to develop personally and professionally after they graduate from business school.

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes from 2023

Christina Wallace is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, an HBS Graduate, entrepreneur and author.

In her most recent book, The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger Than Your Business Card, Christina makes the case for how employees are multi-dimensional individuals, and can re-think and reframe their relationship with their job and career, and to use portfolio and diversification theory to de-risk and explore multiple paths instead. 

During our conversation, Christina spoke about how living her own version of a Portfolio life gave her the idea to start researching the book, and why we need a more expansive mindset around how employees can navigate their lives and careers in a more expansive and modern way.

She shares her perspective on how people who are not interested in a more traditional or tried career path, can use the portfolio model to find meaning and success, and  she also makes the case, for how in the future of work, The Portfolio model can be a more expansive way for employees to manage their career in today’s modern world of work.

Links

• The Portfolio Life: https://www.portfoliolife.com/ 

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes

One of the questions that is top of mind for any professional who is considering an MBA is around value - what is the ROI of an MBA degree, and is it worth it for me? In this solo episode, Al talks about how an MBA is one of many potential accelerants for career growth and learning, and why someone might value an MBA degree. He walks through key questions around figuring out if an MBA is worth it to you, the common reasons why people see value in an MBA, some alternatives to MBA degrees, and how to figure out if an MBA is the right path for your own career learning and growth.

Links:

• Should I get an MBA?
• The MBA Premium