I USED MY EMBA TO...
Three Major Takeaways from my EMBA Experience 1. It certified and validated my seven years of professional experience. Since graduating from my undergrad in 2004 with a degree in English, I have put myself on a rotational program – learning about different industries in a wide variety of positions. I wanted to learn business from the inside out, from customer service, to sales, to marketing, to forensic auditing, relationship management, business development, strategic partnerships, to real estate and nonprofits. However, I still felt that my experience was not garnering the respect it merited. I completed the EMBA to obtain that respect.
It taught me that time is valuable and I shouldn’t waste it pursuing someone else’s dream. 2. It allowed me to switch careers. I was frustrated at nonprofit inefficiencies and the lack of business approach. I got into nonprofits during my ‘quarter-life crisis’ at the age of 28 in 2009. I had volunteered since childhood and even served abroad in high school in Mexico and Nicaragua. I even found myself auditing financial statements in the wake of the global financial crisis. When the earthquake hit Haiti in 2008 I quit my job and vowed to do something more meaningful. I found an opportunity with the same nonprofit I had been with; AMIGOS, and I went to work at their International Office in Houston, Texas. However, when I met my classmates at the beginning of my program I hesitated to tell them I was working at a nonprofit – because I was not a ‘nonprofit type of person’. I needed some time to reflect philosophically on where I wanted to work; to be satisfied. A good indicator came at the beginning of the first class. We had a retreat in the rolling green hills of Tarrytown Estate and the assigned reading was C.K. Prahalad‘s ‘The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty
Through Profits’, in which he makes a business case for companies to address many of the developing world’s most pressing needs. At that point I knew I was in the right program for my personal journey. All too often, diverse business models and revenue models are not used in the nonprofit world. The EMBA, and the people that I met through it, have enabled me to transition from working at meaningful nonprofits to meaningful start-ups – disrupting industries using technology and business principals. 3. It helped me to build a network that enabled me to feel confident in relocating across the country. On a personal level, here is my story: my girlfriend began law school at the same time I began business school. We wanted to plan to end up somewhere where we would both be happy. We had both lived in NYC before and knew we liked it, so we decided to aim for there. I lived in Austin for the first year of my studies and commuted to NYC, staying in a classmate’s guest room on the upper west side during my weekend trips. I then moved to NYC in my second and my girlfriend and I managed long-distance for a year. I was able to get to know everyone pretty well during class and group projects. A classmate and I were interested in startups and data, so I consulted for his business in the area of marketing in order to grow his services and help develop a new software product that improves search query time using massive parallel processing. My girlfriend got an associate-ship at a law firm and spent the summer in NYC with me. She is studying at NYU School of Law this semester as a visiting student. Our relocation plan truly succeeded when she got an offer from a white shoe firm and, as a result, she will be moving permanently after graduating from The University of Texas School of Law. Other classmates and I have gone on to create a social club of like-minded entrepreneurs who meet monthly and share resources, ideas and ‘needs’ that we can help each other with – whether that is introductions, practical advice, business partnerships, funding sources or anything else. It has turned out to be quite a support system and has opened up many opportunities to launch new companies with others in the club. I am currently co-founding a company that will supply a technology-based baby product to the market before this holiday season – so look out for it! I chose Fordham University for my EMBA for the same reasons that I chose it at undergrad. The Jesuits have a spiritual mission to educate. They are sharp scholars who are dedicated to teaching. I would recommend it to anyone seeking more business knowledge, a strong network, or a career switch.
Biography Ø Luke Carrière is a Business Analytics Consultant at VIEW B.I., Founder of 3 Day Startup NYC and an AMIGOS NYC Board Member. Luke Graduated with an EMBA from Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business in 2013.
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