Hooked
How to make seafood without an ocean. p. 14
Frame by Frame Bringing stories to life on screen. p. 28
Inside 30 Rock Behind the scenes of the iconic New York address. p. 34
Defining Leadership
John J. DeGioia (C’79, G’95) holds the distinction of being Georgetown’s longest-serving president. As he now transitions to the role of president emeritus, Dean Paul Almeida looks back on his service and the impact of his tenure.
A Legacy of Leadership
Honoring
over 40 years of service, global understanding, and impact.
As Georgetown’s longest-serving president, John (Jack) J. DeGioia has been a defining leader of the university and its global community for over four decades — expanding the university’s footprint in the nation’s capital and beyond, deepening the school’s Jesuit identity, and building new interdisciplinary partnerships across campus and around the world. As he transitions into a new role as president emeritus this spring, Paul Almeida, dean and William R. Berkley Chair, shares a personal reflection on DeGioia’s impact over the years as a leader, colleague, and friend.
How would you define President DeGioia’s leadership over the years?
Jack believes deeply in our Jesuit values, including our mission to serve the common good, to make a difference in the world, to support the marginalized, and to be women and men for others. He championed these efforts during his tenure as president and lived these values as a leader and servant of our community. Jack also has a talent for bringing people together. Where else in the world can you learn alongside people of inter-religious faiths and backgrounds and foster productive dialogue and understanding? This is Georgetown, and it’s been carefully woven into our DNA through Jack’s leadership and personal values.
Jack’s impact can also be felt through simple interactions within the campus community. Even as a young faculty member, Jack took the time to get to know me by name and remember details about my life and kids. I greatly valued his partnership and support over the years, and I know I am just one example of how his leadership has resonated with colleagues across our community.
What can people learn from his approach to service?
President DeGioia was the first lay person to lead a Jesuit institution in the United States, yet in many ways he is the embodiment of our Jesuit character. As a Georgetown graduate himself, he demonstrated the importance of leading by example, finding deeper meaning and purpose in our work, and creating a culture of belonging. When you embrace leadership with these principles at the forefront, you can unleash the good in everyone and empower people to reach their full potential. Jack has set a new standard for the type of leadership that is needed at academic institutions as we contemplate the role of higher education in a changing, ever-evolving world.
How can we carry forward his legacy?
Georgetown is known for our Jesuit character, our global emphasis, and for interdisciplinary programs and research. In addition to strengthening our campus in Washington, D.C., Jack took our university to new regions across the world — we launched a campus in Doha, established centers in London, and grew our presence in the United Arab Emirates through the Executive MBA in Dubai, among many other international initiatives.
Global engagement through the lens of our Jesuit values is central to our identity at Georgetown and it is a critical part of how we shape the future of business and society. We will continue Jack’s legacy by immersing ourselves in new cultures, remaining true to our Jesuit identity, and finding new ways to make a positive difference and bring our global community together.
Off the Hook
The world could use more fish — but it isn’t getting any more oceans. Entrepreneur Doug Grant thinks cultivated seafood could offer the answer.
Trouble at the Top
While C-suite executives may have reached the pinnacle of their careers, they are also shouldering immense mental and emotional pressure. We asked mental health experts and career coaches for advice on how to support leaders.
“Artists should use whatever tools are available to them to make the best possible work. But there will never be a substitute for the human heart and imagination.”
Daniel Ostroff has spent an entire career telling stories. His latest project takes him behind prison walls to explore a surprising trend.
PATHS | 06
Landing the Interview: Market Watch
Beyond Business: A Promise Kept Six Degrees: The Road to (CVS) Health Career Up: Pivot Points
INNOVATIONS | 10
Buying / Selling: How to Play the Game Making the Case: Supporting Small Business The Edge: From Bitcoin to Banking
CONNECTIONS | 34
My First Job: A Solid Plan My Shot: Changing Course
Pivot: It’s Family Business
My Feed: The Power of Curiosity Class Notes
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Three Decades of Global Experiences
10 Years of Steers
In 1995, Georgetown McDonough pioneered the concept of the Global Business Experience (GBE) — taking its Executive MBA students abroad to consult with executives to address real-world challenges facing their organizations. The program is now a required course for most graduate students and an elective for undergraduates, further solidifying McDonough as a leader in global business education. Over the past 30 years, 11,200 students have conducted over 2,200 consulting projects across 41 cities and 30 countries to immerse themselves in international business and advise client organizations on complex topics such as market entry, market development, innovation strategy, and global growth strategy, among many others.
Strengthening Global Capital Markets
McDonough’s Office of Custom Executive Education partnered with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Milken Institute to support capital market development in emerging markets. Over the course of eight months, participants in the Capital Markets Program engage in a series of graduate-level courses, workshops, and internships with private-sector financial companies and development finance institutions in the United States. They gain the knowledge, advanced skills, and expertise necessary to address pressing economic challenges and drive meaningful market-development efforts in their home countries.
“We are proud to join together to offer our interdisciplinary expertise and connections as we prepare rising professionals for meaningful careers in emerging economies across the world,” said Paul Almeida, dean and William R. Berkley Chair.
The Steers Center for Global Real Assets celebrates 10 years since the naming of the center, which was made possible by the generosity and vision of Robert Steers (B’75, P’06, P’08, P’10) and his wife, Lauren (P’06, P’08, P’10). Formerly the Real Estate Finance Initiative, the center gained the Steers name in April 2015 with the goal of building upon the initiative’s experiential learning opportunities, industry connections, and global approach to real estate — positioning the center as one of the top destinations for real estate education and training. Over the past decade, the Steers Center has launched new degree programs and co-curricular programming, expanded its signature Luminaries Series event, and broadened its application of real estate to real assets, including new property types, alternative energy sources, and infrastructure to build a new generation of professionals who can meet the evolving needs of the industry.
“The past 10 years were a pivotal time of growth for the Steers Center and we are grateful to have the vision and support of the Steers family to drive these initiatives forward,” said Matthew Cypher, director of the Steers Center and Atara Kaufman Professor of Real Estate. “As we reflect on a decade of transformation, we look forward to the future of the Steers Center as we empower future professionals to drive positive change in the new real assets economy — both here in Washington, D.C., and in communities throughout the world.”
MATTHEW CYPHER ON:
“ If you link sustainability to business performance, it becomes a business imperative as opposed to something you do on the side. We have to take out the fringe programs and bring them back to shareholder value with a view to society.”
—INDRA NOOYI, FORMER CEO OF PEPSICO, DURING A STANTON DISTINGUISHED
LEADERS SERIES LECTURE
Psaros Center Distinguished Fellows Announced
Center of Excellence
The Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy appointed three distinguished fellows to assist the center as thought leaders and conveners on topical issues at the intersection of finance and policy: Rostin Behnam (C’00), former chair, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Lael Brainard, former director, White House National Economic Council, former vice chair, Federal Reserve Board, and former under secretary, U.S. Department of the Treasury; and Patrick McHenry, former congressman and former chair of the House Financial Services Committee.
“We’re proud to welcome experienced and forward-thinking professionals to the Psaros Center team,” shared Reena Aggarwal, director of the Psaros Center. “Their expertise will be instrumental to advance our mission to shape the future of global finance by impacting policy and practice.”
The distinguished fellows have diverse backgrounds and experiences in policy making and financial markets, having served across presidential administrations, federal financial regulatory agencies, and Congress.
“Our Psaros Center is known for its bipartisan approach to addressing the most critical elements of global financial policy, and these fellows will add a depth of experience and knowledge to the center,” said Paul Almeida, dean and William R. Berkley Chair.
Georgetown Entrepreneurship was recognized by the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers as a Nasdaq Center of Entrepreneurial Excellence for its “enormous contributions in advancing entrepreneurship as the force in economic growth.” The award recognizes entrepreneurship centers that have achieved extraordinary success in the following categories: outreach to emerging ventures; entrepreneurship curriculum; community collaborations; special projects; overall prestige; recognition in the entrepreneurship field; and entrepreneurship research. Georgetown Entrepreneurship was among a small number of universities across the globe to receive top honors during the award ceremony.
THE INTERVIEWER
LANDING THE INTERVIEW
Market Watch
What it takes to represent the nation’s largest privatesector industry.
Matt Shay (EMBA’11) speaks with Claudia Del Rio (B’25) about how Georgetown’s Executive MBA program helped him bridge the gap between law, government affairs, and business leadership.
What drew you to Georgetown’s Executive MBA program?
I was a mid-career executive when I decided to get my MBA. It was for a few reasons. One was that I had a background as an English and political science major during my undergraduate years. Then, as an attorney, I focused on government relations, legal affairs, lobbying, and legislative activity. But as I moved into new roles in the association world, my primary clients were CEOs of companies who were members of my board and association.
I realized I needed more exposure to the business side of the way companies operated. I picked Georgetown because of its reputation and proximity to Washington, as well as the school’s ability to draw business and government leaders into the university, both as instructors and students. The things we learned during our coursework were immediately applicable in the work I was doing. It helped round out my perspective on the way in which business actually operates, exposed me to subject matter that I’d never had before, and gave me confidence to be credible when I had conversations with executives and represented them on association business.
How has Georgetown impacted your career?
The Georgetown degree has enormous value in the market, and it’s a globally-recognized institution. As proud as I am of my undergraduate and law degree, the Georgetown degree on a resume from the McDonough School of Business, even for somebody at this stage in my career, still adds value. People respect it and recognize the work that goes into obtaining
Claudia Del Rio (B’25) International Political Economy and Business
the degree and being associated with Georgetown. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the lessons I learned and professors I was fortunate enough to learn from, and to apply those lessons in the work I do at the National Retail Federation.
It was while I was at the Franchise Association that I started my MBA. In the middle of the two-year experience, I changed jobs and came to the National Retail Federation (NRF). I think the search committee that hired me saw that as a commitment to lifelong curiosity and helped give them a sense that here was someone willing to learn new things and take on challenges.
What are the challenges you’ve faced at the NRF, and how have you navigated them?
The initial challenge was thinking I knew what the opportunities were and not fully appreciating how substantial the challenges were until I got there. There was a lot of work restructuring and rehabilitating the organization from a financial, personnel, and operations perspective. Once we got that done, we laid a solid foundation for a healthy organization able to serve members and take on new priorities. That really helped us endure the next challenge — the pandemic.
We have a revenue model that relies heavily on programs and events to offset the expense of other activities, specifically our lobbying and advocacy work. We went into the pandemic with a $60 million annual operating budget. Because we had to cancel events and programs, our revenue dropped to $20 million a year, and that presented real challenges for how we took care of the team, supported staff, and served our members. We were able to rely on the balance sheet, a very robust line of credit, and aggressive cost management to avoid layoffs, furloughs, or pay cuts. Everyone kept their benefits. At one point, I took a voluntary pay cut. Today, we’ve more than recovered, and we’re on the way to $100 million in annual revenue.
Any advice for alumni looking to lead a large organization?
Recognize that sometimes you should begin with a leadership role at a smaller organization. No one starts at the top, whether you build a business as an entrepreneur or are a manager, corporate leader, or nonprofit leader.
I also can’t overemphasize how important it is to be a supportive, positive, and collaborative teammate. When executives are looking at the next generation of leaders, they’re looking for individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to the success of the team and organization ahead of their own personal interests.
THE INTERVIEWEE
Matt Shay (EMBA’11) President and CEO, National Retail Federation (NRF)
A Promise Kept
Kristen
Staples is driven to do good.
kristen staples (mba’94) has always felt a gravitational pull toward helping others. While battling thyroid cancer in 2010, that motivation turned into more of a vow.
“At one point, I was praying ‘please, God, if you save me, I will promise to be your hands and feet for the rest of my life,’” Staples said. “And strangely enough, everything fell into place after that.”
After surviving cancer, Staples founded HubDot D.C., the local chapter of an international women’s networking group. She then discovered Hope To Walk, a nonprofit that provides low-cost prosthetics to amputees living in developing countries. It was a full-circle moment
— considering Staples’ grandfather was a prosthetics inventor — and she embarked on a mission trip to Honduras with the organization.
“Once I saw the level of poverty and saw their level of appreciation for our help, I thought to myself, ‘How could I do anything except help?’” Staples said. “We’re so blessed in this country, we don’t even understand the challenges of the international poor.”
Over the course of six years, Staples advanced from volunteer to executive director and chair of the board at Hope To Walk. During her tenure, she expanded the organization’s reach from two countries to nine, including Belize
and Vietnam. Her work helped nearly 2,000 amputees walk again.
Staples recently started a new role as the executive director of Wellness Connection, a holistic mental health and wellness practice. She has been tasked with growing the nonprofit arm of the organization, which provides financial support for people who need therapy but can’t afford it. Ultimately, Staples’ hope is to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health care.
In her endless pursuit to help others, Staples is also planning an educational and medical nonprofit to support women and children in Guatemala called La Sirena Foundation, which she hopes to launch at the end of the year.
Looking back, Staples says pursuing her MBA at Georgetown McDonough is the best decision she’s ever made.
“It seemed crazy to everyone at the time, because I had a high-paying job at Oracle in California, and they wondered, ‘Why would you leave this and spend all this money?’” Staples said. “It was just something I felt I had to do.”
Over the years, Staples has kept close relationships with her classmates and has often sought out business advice. Some of her fellow alumni have even financially supported the causes she has been involved in.
“Georgetown colleagues are a lot of like-minded people who realize how blessed they are and who use their talents for good,” Staples said. “One of the things that has inspired me is the Jesuit tradition of giving back and helping marginalized populations.”
Staples has seen by giving back to the community, amazing things can happen and lives can change.
— BRIAN REA
During her tenure, Kristin Staples expanded Hope to Walk’s reach from two countries to nine, including Cambodia and Vietnam. Her work helped nearly 2,000 amputees walk again.
My manager at CVS Health is a fellow Hoya alumnus
Sam Khichi (B’90) executive vice president, chief policy officer, and general counsel
Through my involvement with EmpowerHER, I’ve formed new relationships with MBA alumnae like
Kaitlyn Smith (MBA’20) & Catherine Torlucci (MBA’21)
Following the launch of the and faculty leader
Sudipta Dasmohapatra
Business of Health Initiative
Sandeep Dahiya
Professor of Finance, Crnkovich Family Business of Health Chair, Director of the Business of Health Initiative
Senior Associate Dean of the MBA Programs and a Professor of the Practice in Business Analytics
I’ve been brainstormimg potential collaborations with Alumni Admissions Program
I conduct interviews with first-year and transfer applicants as part of the
I return to campus each year to serve as a judge for the Executive Challenge.
I have been able to reconnect with former professors like
Bardia Kamrad Professor of Operations
Through the MBA Mentorship Program, I have given career advice to students like
Mark Betts (MBA’24)
THE ROAD TO (CVS) HEALTH
As a triple Hoya, Rebecca Bedno (SFS’92, L’96, MBA’96) holds a special place in her heart for the eight years she spent on the Hilltop. Bedno took advantage of Georgetown’s D.C. location by interning for a U.S. senator and working fulltime at a law firm during her senior year. After completing her undergraduate studies in the School of Foreign Service, Bedno enrolled in the dual JD/MBA program. She is currently the senior vice president and chief counsel at CVS Health. Bedno has remained active in Georgetown’s alumni network, including serving as national vice chair of EmpowerHER, a program designed to foster a community of people who share the goal of supporting and empowering women business leaders at Georgetown McDonough.
Pivot Points
it’s never too late to pivot! After a 20year career in financial services, I made a life-changing pivot into higher education. Here are three lessons I learned:
SUCCINCTLY DESCRIBE YOUR GOAL
Empower your network to generate ideas for you, both in terms of opportunities and potential contacts, by sharing concrete details they can understand.
OWN YOUR STORY AND TELL IT WELL Don’t try to hide or gloss over your experiences. Use the limited window of opportunity to direct the trajectory of the conversation and be upfront.
CLEARLY ARTICULATE YOUR VALUE
Know your strengths, transferable skills, and areas for growth, and remember — no one is starting from scratch, even when making a significant career pivot.
—MAUREEN CLEARY, ASSISTANT DEAN, CAREER UP
SIX DEGREES
Innovations
How to Play the Game
International trade policy is more complex than scholars once thought.
In her research, Renee Bowen (C’08) studies multi-agent interactions like a game of monopoly or chess — through the lens of players, actions, and payoffs. Bowen, the Dean’s Professor of International Business and Global Affairs, is jointly appointed in the McDonough School of Business and Walsh School of Foreign Service. Her research focuses on political economy, microeconomic theory, and international trade.
Bowen uses game theory to examine the design of domestic political institutions and how they interact with international trade agreements. Through this framework, players represent economic actors (two countries), actions are the behavior being studied (countries setting trade policies), and prizes are the payoffs to each player contingent on every possible combination of actions. Unlike a real game, the research model is less concerned about who wins the game and more about the institutional rules that allow both players to gain higher payoffs.
When it comes to international trade policy, game theory shows that although free trade is universally better, countries playing the trade policy game will always choose protectionism if
they are not sufficiently patient. With renewed conversations about tariffs, Bowen discusses the various factors that influence international trade policy in the modern age.
BUYING
International Trade Policy is a Complex Market Involving More than Governments Governments are complex and vary along a spectrum from autocracy to democracy. Ultimately, governments consist of individuals playing a gigantic game with their own personal payoffs. Elected officials are “selling” trade policy in exchange for votes or other personal gain. In turn, voters buy trade policy with their vote. Various special interest groups and companies purchase these policies by making campaign contributions. Similarly, lobby groups and think tanks pay for the policy with the information they provide. There is an enormous, complex market for trade policy in any given country and this interacts with a different, complex market in another country. Research in this area has also shown economic motivations are just one determinant of payoffs in the trade policy game — national security, food security, sovereignty, fairness, and other issues play a role, too.
SELLING
Governments Are Unitary Actors Choosing Trade Policy on Behalf of Their Country Most economists agree that, from an economic perspective, reciprocal free trade is better than protectionism. Prior to the flurry of trade policy action over the last decade, economists believed the trade policy story was finished. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and World Trade Organization were in place for 75 years, which appeared to be working well. But there was a complex game happening in the domestic politics of each country that determined the fate of free trade. Scholars have often focused on governments as unitary actors that choose trade policy on behalf of their country. In this sense, the punishment that makes free trade agreements work is simple — threaten to impose tariffs if the agreement is violated. Game theory shows that when players are sufficiently patient, they are able to sustain the best possible outcome in the long-run with an appropriate system of punishments, known as “The Folk Theorem.” But recent experiences have shown that there is still much to learn about the design of trade agreements to help better sustain them.
—BRIAN REA
Support Small Business
a roadmap for maximizing key revenue streams. To address brand challenges, the students implemented a comprehensive brand guide to shape Peel Haus’ brand persona, standardize their brand assets, and develop a tailored digital strategy. They also performed a competitive analysis and customer survey to assess the member pricing structure, which provided the insights necessary to streamline the pricing structure.
Kartik Agarwal (MBA’25), Jinay Deliwala (MBA’25)
These student teams show you how.
small business corps (sbc) was founded on the belief that when small businesses grow, local communities thrive. Through project-based fellowships, the program mobilizes the skills, energy, and creativity of Georgetown students to empower and support small businesses in under-resourced communities in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia region.
Over the course of several months, SBC students are matched with select small businesses to address complex problems facing their organization and to help them achieve long-term stability and success in the local economy. Here is a look at three of the companies the SBC fellows supported during the inaugural year of the program, the challenges addressed, and the solutions provided to support their goals.
Aishwarya Mulay (MBA’25), Fabiola Gonzalez (MBA’25), Saloni Jain (MBA’25), Simran Dubey (B’26)
The Problem: Peel Haus is a premium aesthetic and medical center located in the heart of Capitol Hill. The center has an ambitious growth strategy but needs more human capital to build a financial growth model, multichannel brand strategy, and pricing structure that meets their business objectives.
The Solution/Pitch: The team built a financial model to evaluate Peel Haus’s growth strategy and created
The Problem: Sustainable Facilities Management Services (SFMS) is a minority-owned and woman-owned small business operating out of D.C. since 2014. After a decade of steady growth, the founders are looking to scale the company, including developing the operations, systems, and technology needed for this plan.
The Solution/Pitch: Agarwal and Deliwala developed a comprehensive growth strategy for SFMS. They created a framework to monitor financial performance, designed a phased five-year expansion plan to five states, and restructured the organization based on a diagnostic and employee capability assessment. Additionally, they redesigned the company’s website to enhance its brand perception. These strategic initiatives aim to position SFMS for successful scaling, improve internal operations, and support long-term growth while maintaining its commitment to sustainability and quality.
Saloni Jain (MBA’25), Andrew Pagan (B’25)
The Problem: AMAR Group LLC, a small architecture firm focused on social impact projects, has primarily relied on word-of-mouth for client acquisition. To expand its reach and secure more projects aligned with its mission, AMAR needed a structured marketing and networking strategy.
The Solution/Pitch: Jain and Pagan developed a targeted marketing strategy to identify key client segments, including local developers and nonprofits. They recommended a website overhaul to better showcase AMAR’s portfolio and created structured outreach materials to enhance networking. To boost brand recognition, they identified industry awards and affiliations and suggested hiring a marketing intern to support long-term efforts.
Aishwarya Mulay, Kartik Agarwal, Saloni Jain
From Bitcoin to Banking
The rise of Crypto.
Cryptocurrency is rapidly gaining prominence in the financial services industry, even becoming a major point of consideration in the latest presidential election. Millions of dollars are regularly invested in the industry as individuals have increased opportunities to take advantage of its benefits, but with these opportunities come risks. As with any new technology, there remains uncertainty regarding rules and best practices. Whether individuals are pro or anti-crypto there is one consensus: the industry needs clearer regulations as it continues to expand.
Investigating the opportunities and challenges of incorporating crypto into today’s banking system, Associate Professor Vicki Wei Tang discusses insights from her research, “Financial Inclusion, Trust, and Geography of Cryptocurrency”.
Your paper highlights that a lack of trust in banks drives cryptocurrency use. What are the key points of your research?
People who do not trust banks are more likely to turn to cryptocurrency as an alternative to traditional banking systems, expanding financial inclusion. Blockchain-powered cryptocurrency provides a digital cross-border payment option, which lowers payment costs and largely mitigates friction in less developed, conventional financial markets. When certain countries are banned from the traditional worldwide banking system, those with underdeveloped cross-border payment infrastructures experience greater Bitcoin inflows from sanctioned nations compared to those with more advanced systems. The more people that use traditional banks in a country, the less cryptocurrency flows into that country.
As cryptocurrencies become more mainstream, how might the banking industry be reshaped?
Cryptocurrencies, if properly guided, will likely substitute the banking industry in some use cases and complement the banking system in others. For instance, cryptocurrency could serve countries with less developed banking systems and those who are traditionally unbanked or underserved in more developed countries in cross-border payment markets. These markets are more effective by reducing transaction times and lowering cross-border payment costs. Meanwhile, the existing banking industry can integrate cryptocurrency into all aspects of operations by allowing easier exchanges between traditional currency and cryptocurrency for their existing customers.
Other initiatives are being explored to expand financial inclusion such as reshaping how credit scores are calculated. In your view, how does the expansion of cryptocurrency compare to the reform of traditional financial institutions in advancing financial inclusion?
The key difference, in my view, lies in the ultimate beneficiaries. Credit score modifications primarily impact banked populations — those with existing transaction histories within conventional financial institutions. In contrast, cryptocurrency expansion has the potential to benefit unbanked populations, who are often excluded from traditional financial services. For example, in rural Africa, some farmers must travel hours to reach the nearest bank branch. Cryptocurrency can provide these individuals with direct access to financial tools, bypassing the barriers of conventional banking infrastructure.
The world could use more fish— but it isn’t getting any more oceans. Entrepreneur Doug Grant thinks cultivated seafood could offer the answer.
Doug Grant (MBA’16) was holding a revolution in a styrofoam cooler. It was April 2024, and he was on a train, transporting a sample of cultivated black sea bass meat from the lab space of his startup, Atlantic Fish, in Raleigh, North Carolina, to the NC Food Innovation Lab in Kannapolis, where the culmination of years of cutting-edge research would be formed into breaded nuggets.
The first taste, says Grant, wasn’t a loud celebration but quiet meditation. He had talked about this idea in the abstract for years, and now it was real. He slowed down to take in the moment. It was a huge milestone for him, for the company, and a step forward in radically reshaping how the world eats.
His route to that revolutionary meal was circuitous. As an undergrad, he set his sights on becoming an astronaut and began working toward a Ph.D. focused on the geology of Mars. “There are kind of two tracks to becoming an astronaut: there’s the science route and then there’s the pilot route,” says Grant.
He ultimately chose the latter, dropping the doctorate plans and joining the Navy, where he served as a helicopter pilot for a decade. But he wasn’t able to make test pilot school — which he understood to be a necessary (albeit exclusive) precursor to NASA. “I wasn’t in that 1%,” says Grant. He was at a crossroads. Then one day, in 2013, he saw an ad in the Metro for Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, with a man holding an earth in the palm of his hand. “The tagline was, ‘Somewhere a business is going to waste,’” Grant recalls.
Grant was immediately drawn to entrepreneurship. It just felt right. After he landed his last-ever helicopter flight for the Navy in late 2012, he patted the side
of the helicopter. “Okay,” he thought. “Time to find the next thing.” And that thing had to offer a similar thrill. “I just didn’t think anything else could be as exciting or comparable to flying as starting your own company,” says Grant.
His first startup was a bone marrow donor registry aimed at addressing a critical shortage of donors. While the company ultimately didn’t succeed, it taught Grant valuable lessons about the importance of market size and personal fit. “You have to be able to answer the question, ‘Why you?’” he says. “Why are you the one to start this business?”
In 2019, Grant read an excerpt from Amanda Little’s “The Fate of Food” in Rolling Stone that detailed a startup pursuing a cultivated duck breast. He tucked the idea away. Then, during COVID, he read Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World by Paul Shapiro, which considered the prospect of cultivated meat from a climate angle. He was hooked. Determined to learn more, in 2020 he launched a podcast, Brave New Meat, where he talked to experts and entrepreneurs at the forefront of the cultivated meat movement — including Clean Meat co-author Shapiro as his first guest.
As he began to understand the wider industry through those conversations,
he discovered an incredible opportunity for impact in cultivated seafood. “Generally, about 50% of the fish we eat comes from aquaculture and 50% from wild-caught,” says Grant. “But the problem with the wild-caught is that we can’t make more oceans. Something like 80–90% of our fisheries are either overfished or harvested at max capacity. And when you tack on the population growth on top of that… well, we know it’s only going to get worse, and we just don’t have other means of producing those proteins.”
The mission also was becoming personal. Grant had grown up hunting in Mississippi, and spent most of his life as a “committed carnivore.”
“I really had a crisis of conscience,” says Grant, who is now what he calls an “aspirational vegan.” “I felt like this was something really core to my identity. And whatever happens with this, I’m going to work in this industry for the rest of my life. This is my thing,” says Grant.
He had his answer to the “why you?” question. “And I was all in.”
In 2022, with a business plan in place, he officially launched Atlantic Fish with Trevor Ham, a Duke postdoc researcher focused on cell agriculture, who became the company’s chief science officer. Grant once again was ready to take flight.
THE FIRST BUILDING BLOCKS OF cultivated fish come from a biopsy. You take a sample of cells from an existing fish — Grant chose black sea bass, a relatively expensive fish without much competition from aquaculture — and grow them in a giant metal fermentation tank, like the kind you might see at a brewery. The cells grow in a liquid broth of salts, amino acids, and other nutrients that would normally help them grow inside the fish. “It’s real fish,” says Grant. “It’s just made in a different way — and you’re really starting at the smallest scale.”
That broth — technically termed growth media — and the large fermentation tanks are the largest cost drivers of the business, Grant says. “We need the media to get down to about a dollar per liter, which will translate to the product being $20 per pound,” he says. And he needs bigger tanks, too. “We need to be able to grow this at a large scale and in sufficient densities that the bioprocess makes sense from an economic perspective.” In other words: “More cells, growing quickly, in big volumes, with cheaper inputs.”
If Atlantic Fish were to add, say, three or four 20,000-liter systems to its arsenal, he notes, it could potentially produce a million pounds of product annually. Which sounds like a massive
amount of protein, but it’s still an infinitesimal percentage of the $400 billion annual global seafood market. “It’s a massive, massive market,” says Grant.
The opportunity to claim some portion of a market of that size will naturally attract capital. Atlantic Fish, which now has five employees, has received grants from the likes of the USDA as well as loans and investments from groups like NC IDEA, a private foundation supporting the state’s entrepreneurial community, and Sustainable Food Ventures, an early-stage startup funder.
“But federal funding and venture capital are two really, really different segments,” says Grant. The federal agencies are interested in the science, armed with questions about technical milestones and research. “The investors, on the other hand, really just want to know is the business case there — and can you really pull it off? Can your technology actually get to price parity? What does scaling up actually look like? How quickly can you do this? How much capital are you going to have to raise?”
The industry has had some notable success on the fundraising front. Upside Foods, who Grant first encountered in that influential Rolling Stone article, has raised over $600 million, and several others have raised north of $100 million. “Those have been really trailblazing
companies that we’ve learned a lot from, and we’re benefiting from a lot of the stuff that they’ve done — from both improving the industry’s technology to getting through regulations,” he notes.
But investors, says Grant, want to start seeing companies get real products onto the plates of consumers. “You have to be able to say, ‘Hey, we can make this at production scale. We can sell it, there’s a demand for it, there’s a market, we’ve got the technology, we know how to do it,’” says Grant. “That’s when you start to get the big corporate meat and seafood companies involved in this, and that’s how you really scale this up.” And when you get those big, multinational conglomerates involved, it forces a larger culture shift. “It changes how we all think about food, right?”
It’s the kind of potential revolution that Grant envisioned; it’s the rocketship he always wanted.
He balances this passion with pragmatism, says cofounder Ham. “He’s really good at building a real business in a field where a lot of people are trying to build aspirational businesses. I’m not interested in pitching some pie-in-the sky, 50-year plan. I want to pitch a company I think can make a product, that I believe we can make, I believe we can sell, and that can happen in a real timeframe. And Doug
is really good at that.”
He also has an uncanny tolerance for the grind. “I’ve known a lot of CEOs of startups who aren’t really willing to do the boring, difficult work to fundraise, to do business development, to meet customers,” Ham says. “They only want to fundraise from the biggest venture capital firms, and they only want to get huge multimillion dollar checks. They’re not willing to accept that sometimes you just have to go out and talk to 250 different people to get five of them to give you money. That is the kind of work that distinguishes good startups from failed startups.”
As grounded as he may be in the realities of the business, Grant can still storytell like a visionary. He reflects, for instance, on how he sees fewer coral reefs today when he scuba dives than when he dove as a kid, and wonders how much irreparable damage already has been done. “We’re just trawling the ocean floor and destroying these ecosystems,” says Grant, gathering steam. And he’s not just animated by the environmental protection aspect. There are also the positive outcomes for climate change, animal welfare, and food security.
“Utopia is too strong of a word,” says Grant. “But I can see a much, much better world if we just solve for our protein problems.” GB
Troubleat Topthe
AS TOLD TO MAUREEN HARMON ILLUSTRATIONS BY NOMOCO
While C-suite leaders may have reached the pinnacle of their careers, they are also shouldering immense mental and emotional pressure. With 50% of executives reporting high stress and an alarming rise in burnout, we asked mental health experts and career coaches for advice on how to support leaders at the top.
Success isn’t always defined by the move to the C-suite — sometimes it’s defined by how leaders handle the mental load. On paper, a CEO or leader’s role might be the pinnacle of their career, but mentally, executives often struggle. They are under enormous pressure from shareholders and boards, they are responsible for the livelihood of their workforce, they are often buoyed by the tides of the economy, and their work-life balance often suffers greatly in this world of 24/7 business decisions. In fact, 50% of top executives experience significant stress levels, and 1 in 5 rank that stress as high or extreme, according to Harvard Business Review.
In a world where executives are often called upon to champion their workers’ mental health, their own is neglected. “In
2023, a record number of CEOs left their positions,” writes Julian Haynes II in Forbes, “with a sobering statistic revealing that 19 CEOs tragically passed away while in office. The relentless demands of the C-suite are breeding exhaustion and stress, with 75% of C-suite executives seriously considering quitting their jobs for better well-being support, according to a Deloitte and Workplace Intelligence survey.” Haynes goes on to point out that CEOs are working an average of 62.5 hours per week, a number that isn’t likely to decline.
So how do we help our leaders today and in the future? We reached out to McDonough alumni working in the mental health field and as career coaches to offer some words of wisdom to our not-always fearless leaders.
PRERIKA AGARWAL (MBA’13) | FOUNDER, INSPIRATION CAREERS | PODCAST HOST, CAREER BY DESIGN
Rewrite Your Story
Prerika Agarwal says she always felt out of place growing up. Having come to the United States from India at the age of three, she sought validation through academics and saw great successes on paper — she quickly became a star student. She was able to ride on those accomplishments, including earning her MBA, and thought she was on her way to corporate career success and a happy life. But a failed engagement left her contemplating her decisions and her purpose.
“I embarked on a journey of self-discovery, challenging the ingrained mentality of overworking for success,” says Agarwal. “I shifted my mindset to feeling an abundance of time and recognizing that success is not measured just by external accomplishments but from holistic fulfillment from many areas of your life.”
Today, as the podcast host of Career by Design and a consulting executive, Agarwal finds herself in the position of the coaches she leaned on in difficult times. Her goal is to help professionals, from mid-career to executive, find both a successful career and a healthy mind. “As a coach, I work with high-achieving professionals who, on paper, have everything they worked for,” she says, “but inside, they’re exhausted, disconnected, and wondering if this pace is sustainable.”
AGARWAL’S TIPS FOR THE TOP
Boundaries are a Leadership Skill.
Leaders who struggle to set boundaries burn out faster and create the same toxic culture for their teams. If you answer emails at 10 p.m., your team will too. Decide when you’re off, communicate it, and hold that line. Telling your team to prioritize well-being means nothing if you don’t.
Don’t Wait for Time to Reset — Build It In.
Leaders need to schedule micro-breaks, when they step away from their desks, and create true mental pauses. You wouldn’t run a marathon without water stops, so why are you treating work that way? Step away for 10 minutes, go outside, grab coffee, breathe. Small resets keep you from hitting a wall.
Bring Joy Back Into Work — It Changes Everything.
High performers don’t just need a paycheck — they need purpose. The executives who reconnect with what excites them about their work show up better for their teams and themselves. When was the last time you laughed at work? Find moments of connection — whether it’s celebrating wins, mentoring, or doing the parts of your job that excite you. If everything feels like a grind, it’s time to recalibrate.
Have a Safe Space to Talk.
Whether it’s coaching, therapy, or a trusted peer, find a space where you can be real about stress. You need it just as much as your team does.
Change the Conversation.
The leaders who thrive won’t just manage stress — they’ll change how leadership works. The CEOs of the future will be measured not just on performance, but on how well they lead their people — including themselves, which brings us to one last important point: the best leaders aren’t the ones who run themselves into the ground — they’re the ones who set the tone for a sustainable, high-impact career.
The Leadership Rollercoaster
Anita Hossain Choudhry’s goal in launching The Grand was to make the world feel a little less lonely. Isolation, she knows from experience, is detrimental to anyone in any position, but can feel most intense at the top where leaders are faced with a constant stream of high-stakes decisions, unexpected challenges, and a persistent undercurrent of uncertainty. Through all of that, they are expected to lead, remain calm and objective, and guide others on their own career paths.
“We saw how transformative this group coaching model is because it helps people feel less lonely in their journeys as they were supported by a group of peers who really get it,” Hossain Choudhry told Forbes in 2021, just two years after launching her company. The phrase “it’s lonely at the top” is often repeated, but what does it actually mean?
A friend once asked Hossain Choudhry what had surprised her most about being a founder — especially given her background in venture capital and executive coaching. Her response? “I knew there would be high highs and low lows. I just didn’t realize how quickly they’d cycle. You can feel on top of the world one moment, and 15 minutes later, a dreaded email can make you question everything.”
Managing the emotional rollercoaster of leadership isn’t just about resilience — it’s about being intentional in navigating the ups and downs. The Grand’s model revolves around group coaching and community, helping members find confidantes who are navigating similar transitions, from starting companies, being promoted to manager, or becoming a new parent returning to work and more. The future they envision is one where no one has to walk through work or life alone and can understand their strengths to become the best version of themselves.
Find a Peer Group.
One of the most powerful ways to combat isolation is to connect with peers who truly understand the journey. A dedicated peer group provides a space to exhale, gain fresh perspectives, and remember that no leader is alone in their struggles.
My founder peer group is invaluable — especially when I was fundraising while pregnant with my second baby. Their support helped me build self-trust in a season of intense uncertainty. I also learned a crucial lesson: sometimes, the fear of failure creates the conditions for failure. Having peers who challenge that mindset can make all the difference.
Adopt a Reflective Practice.
Research shows that 70% of learning comes from reflecting on experiences. Yet, in the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship, leaders rarely carve out time to pause and process. Building a reflective practice is essential. Whether through journaling, guided frameworks like The Grand Retro — an assessment of well-being across eight different dimensions — or simply taking a beat after key moments, intentional reflection helps leaders extract lessons and course-correct in real time.
Use Vulnerability as a Superpower.
It’s tempting for leaders to put up walls — to protect their teams, their investors, and even themselves. But real strength comes from vulnerability. This doesn’t mean oversharing, but rather setting the tone for open, honest conversations about stress, burnout, and well-being. At The Grand, this has become a core part of our human-first culture, helping leaders build deeper trust within their teams and communities. One simple but powerful tool The Grand uses is Red, Yellow, Green Check-ins: Red — Physically present but mentally elsewhere. Yellow — Engaged but with something lingering on the mind. Green — Fully present and focused. This practice allows teams to acknowledge their emotional state without judgment and fosters a culture of understanding and support.
ANITA HOSSAIN CHOUDHRY (B’07) | FOUNDER, THE GRAND
HOSSAIN CHOUDHRY’S TIPS FOR THE TOP
KORIN TORRENCE (EMBA’18) | FOUNDER, TORRENCE STRATEGIES
The Quest for Peace of Mind
As the Founder of Torrence Strategies, a consulting firm specializing in AI and digital strategy for the public and private sectors, and host of The Soulful Circuit Podcast, a series that delves into the connections between technology, spirituality, wellness and personal growth, Korin Torrence has worked with organizations tackling pressing issues like mental health.
One of the most impactful projects she has helped cultivate is URaWARRIOR, a mental health app dedicated to ensuring individuals never feel alone. Through strategy and change management consulting, the app team analyzed mental health struggles across higher education, nonprofits, corporate organizations, and health care. “The findings were clear — suicide rates and mental health challenges are rising, fueled by social media pressures, increasing isolation, and heavier workloads with fewer resources,” says Torrence. “Without accessible, stigma-free solutions, these issues will only escalate, making it critical for organizations to prioritize mental well-being at every level.”
This is tough for any leader, but women often feel these pressures acutely. 69% percent of C-suite leaders report significant work-related stress, and over half face burnout (Forbes, 2023). Women are disproportionately affected — 69% of mental health-related leaves in 2023 were taken by women, with Millennial women accounting for one-third (Deloitte, 2023).
As a woman of color in leadership, these challenges are even more pronounced. Women of color hold only 5% of senior executive roles in the United States (McKinsey, 2023). “All of this means we’re often the only one in the room, navigating bias, higher performance expectations, and a lack of representation,” she says.
TORRENCE’S TIPS FOR THE TOP
Seek Balance, Not Blending.
Women leaders often adopt work-life blending, where work infiltrates their home life and vice versa — a far cry from worklife balance. Working moms and executives often juggle the demands of leadership with the responsibilities of their families, leaving them feeling like there’s never enough time for either. The weight of this dual responsibility (often felt by women though it can be true for men, too) creates a persistent feeling of guilt and unrealistic expectations. The result? Exhaustion. So throw away the idea of blending your worlds together and truly look for balance. Turn the computer off at a certain hour each day, avoid checking messages until a certain time each morning, and plan for urgent matters that need your attention.
Identify the Barriers and Help Break Them.
Long hours and the pressure to overperform have only intensified, with over 50% of women reporting higher stress than the previous year (McKinsey, 2023). Yet only 25% of women feel comfortable discussing their mental health at work (Deloitte, 2023). And for many women of color, the "Only" experience — being one of the few in leadership — can feel isolating and mentally exhausting. But here’s the good part: executives have pressure, but they also have power. Addressing representation gaps is critical, fostering a culture where female executives — and everyone who works for them — can thrive rather than constantly prove themselves.
Can’t Change Your Life? Change the Culture.
As leaders, we can be the key to an organization’s acknowledgement and normalization of mental health challenges for executives — and everyone who works for them. Creating workplace flexibility allows executives to balance professional and personal responsibilities more effectively.
Make Sure Women are in the Conversation.
As a woman of color, a leader, and a mom actively juggling both worlds, I know firsthand that the mental health conversation must include executive women. Prioritizing our well-being isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity for sustainable leadership, thriving businesses, healthier families, and the future of the workplace for everyone
SHEILA WALSH (MBA’08) | WALSH WEALTH AND WELLNESS
Wealth Health
C-Suite execs are used to managing an organization’s cash flow and financial statements. They forecast, they visualize the future they want to build, they know big expenses need to be planned, and they build in a margin of error. They know to keep spending low, revenue high, and manage liabilities. But do they apply these same principles in their personal life? Not always, says Sheila Walsh, a Certified Financial Planner™ professional and owner of Walsh Wealth and Wellness. When your job is to be the face of an organization and manage all of its financial ups and downs, it can feel like more work to look at your personal finances and make smart decisions for your future and future generations. Walsh works with clients to help them identify skills and strategies they use in their everyday lives and roles that can then be used in managing personal finances. “Our physical, mental, emotional, and financial health are intertwined,” says Walsh. “While many of us prioritize eating healthy and going to the gym as part of our self-care, our financial wellness is often overlooked.”
WALSH’S TIPS FOR THE TOP
What Does Your Future Look Like?
C-suite execs visualize the future of their companies and brainstorm big ideas. Do they similarly take time to visualize their future? This can be especially helpful when individuals are feeling anxious about their money, overwhelmed, have been ignoring their personal finances, etc., because it helps lower the barriers to actually taking the steps needed to address their personal finances. You need clarity on your money goals and what it will take to achieve them. Then you need a plan to get there, and commitment to check on the plan routinely so you can adjust as needed.
Exercise Your Values.
I take a values-based approach to financial wellness. Trusts, wills, and medical proxies are often put off as something ‘I’ll get done in the future.’ Yet, if you have core values of family, health, independence, and you haven’t created or updated important documents, you might have a misalignment.
Plan a Financial Get Away.
Book yourself a financial wellness meeting every month. Protect this time on your calendar. Use it for anything related to your personal finances — from getting your credit report or researching prices for a desired purchase, to locating your password to finally update your beneficiaries on your retirement plans. If you have a partner that you share finances with, consider a money date.
I have one CMO client that has a money retreat twice a year with her husband where they go somewhere (outside their home), talk money, and then do something fun together. GB
BY DEBORAH LYNN BLUMBERG AND MAUREEN HARMON PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAX GERBER
Filmmaker and producer Daniel Ostroff wants his work to be engaging, certainly, but more important to him is the responsibility he holds in telling people’s stories.
THE STORY TELLER
Daniel Ostroff (B’76) loves movies. That’s why, one year after he graduated from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, he was standing in line outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood at 5 p.m. on August 5, 1977: Opening day for George Lucas’ new film, Star Wars. Ostroff was there because he had read an interview with Lucas in which Lucas described his forthcoming movie as a “space opera,” he recalls.
Ostroff needed to see what that was all about.
But maybe it wasn’t movies that Ostroff loved so much. He loved reading, too. So maybe it was the stories. In stories, after all, anything can happen. The dog can save the kid. The guy can win the out-of-his-league girl. In stories, creatures called Wookies with names like Chewbacca fly around with smugglers in beat-up spaceships like the Millenium Falcon. As Ostroff moved through high school and college, he learned that these incredible stories didn’t all live in fantasy and that Lucas had done his homework. “He had read and absorbed lessons from humanity’s past that were universal truths,” says Ostroff.
Ostroff loves the stories from real life, too. There’s the gentleman he met recently at San Quentin Prison who had been violence-free for eight years and refused to play basketball in prison because inmates played the game full-contact. “But he said ‘pickleball is cordial, I’ll play pickleball,’” Ostroff says. There’s the warden he met at another prison who played pickleball in his suit alongside inmates for three hours. There’s the 78-year-old retired banker who shows up in prisons across the country to teach everyone inside how to play the sport in hopes that it might aid their rehabilitation.
Ostroff has spent a lot of time reading and viewing stories, as a script reader, as a stage manager at Georgetown, and as a kid sitting inside Mann’s Theatre watching cinema history, but today as an Emmy-nominated film producer and a scholar of American architects and designers Charles and Ray Eames, his role has become the storyteller who tells stories — both fiction and nonfiction — as honestly and as authentically as he can.
DANIEL OSTROFF WANTS TO write a book about screenwriting, and he already knows what he will call it: “God’s Architecture.” It’s a theory he’s developed over a career in storytelling that in well-told stories and in life, God — or the universe or whatever it is you believe is bigger than you — has a way of putting people, events, opportunities, and challenges in people’s lives
to give them what they need. And it was only recently that Ostroff saw how this theory played out in his own life. “I was definitely one of my own characters,” he says, “because when I was a student at Georgetown, I didn’t know what I needed.”
He had studied at UC-Berkeley for two years and headed back to Washington to work at the Library of Congress. He decided to wrap up his degree at Georgetown, but only saw that as a box to check: “You went to elementary school, you went to junior high, you went to high school, then you got a college degree.” His journey through McDonough was driven by something different. His ambition told him to dive into something for which he had little interest. For Ostroff, that was business administration. “I’d been going to the movies every Friday night since I was 10 years old and reading books about the history of movies — I didn’t need that to be a classroom assignment.”
While pursuing his B.S. in business administration, Ostroff stood one day in front of a bulletin board reading various notices. That’s when Donn Murphy, beloved Georgetown theatre professor, came up behind him and offered a simple observation, but one that would affect the filmmaker’s Hollywood career. He said, “I think the Responsibility Quotient is more important than the Intelligence Quotient.”
Ostroff gave him a quizzical look. “Can you be more specific?”
In a quick attempt to offer him some of that coveted responsibility, he said, “You should join Mask and Bauble,” referring to the Georgetown dramatic society, one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. Ostroff took the hint, joined, and Murphy introduced the young student to script-reading
OSTROFF’S
INTELLECT
IS
OBVIOUS.
HE IS
SLOW TO ANSWER QUESTIONS BECAUSE HE ISN’T WILLING TO THROW OUT AN OFF-THE-CUFF THOUGHT.
and made him stage manager for a production of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth.” “Mask and Bauble became my world,” he says.
Murphy, who became executive director of the National Theatre, was a trusted mentor, helping Ostroff secure a position reading scripts for producers at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, then an internship that led to a fulltime job with Kennedy Center Productions after graduation. “I had had jobs since I was 14 years old, but Murphy arranged for me to have a job in the entertainment business with real responsibility,” says Ostroff.
After starting out as an intern there while still in college, Kennedy Center Productions quickly made Ostroff company manager for the U.S. premiere of Tom Stoppard’s “Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land” at D.C.’s West End Theatre and The Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater, and later when the production moved to Broadway. Insight from Stoppard and director Ed Berman stayed with him. “They said, ‘The audience likes it when you reward them for paying attention,’” Ostroff says. His last Kennedy Center Productions job was to oversee the production of Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” at Boston’s venerable Colonial Theatre.
Ostroff enjoyed theater, but his heart was with movies. After completing his assignment in Boston, he moved to Los Angeles to take a job in the mailroom of International Creative Management. “You could only work in that mailroom if you had a college degree and two of the seven of us had law degrees,” says Ostroff. “The rule was that if you were still in the mailroom after one year, they would fire you.” Ostroff spent his nights reading scripts for agents and writing summaries. After six months, he was promoted to script reader. Six months after that, he became an agent for writers, directors, and books to film, eventually representing the creators of award-winning films like “The Right Stuff,” “Dances with Wolves,” and “A River Runs Through It.” The final two movies he had a hand in as an agent for the creators were “Space Cowboys” and “Road to Perdition”.
After transitioning from a large talent agency to a medium one and then a partnership, he eventually opened his own agency, The Daniel Ostroff Agency (1987 to 2001). “That’s where I was the most productive as an agent,” he says. Ostroff has also carved out a niche for himself as a historian studying the texts of American architects and designers Charles and Ray Eames. He preserves and shares lessons from their marriage and professional partnership of 50 years and is the second-longest serving
non-family member to work with The Eames Office. Since 2019, he’s been head of acquisitions and research at The Eames Institute, a nonprofit organization. He produced An Eames Anthology, a highly regarded book published by Yale University Press.
Over the years, the couple’s approach to design has influenced how he approaches his own work. In client meetings, he’d often share a diagram the Eameses referred to as they decided what projects to take on. “I’d sit my client down and I’d show them the diagram or even draw it,” Ostroff says. “Then I’d tell them, let’s select things you have a passion for, but also things that the current market wants, and, to follow the Eames example, things that are good for society. It’s simple, but it’s useful to share.” It’s an exercise that’s applicable to creatives considering a project, says Ostroff, but could also extend to business students mulling over a career path. “Charles Eames once wrote, ‘Take your pleasures seriously,’” says Ostroff, “meaning, do for a living what you would do for free.”
His first movie as a producer was “Snow In August”, based on a bestselling book by Pete Hamill and the movie received three Emmy nominations. His second was was “Dogtown and Z-Boys.” This award-winning documentary based on a series of stories in Skateboarding magazine, focused on a group of kids who revolutionized the sport and built a style of skating that still endures.
Ostroff is working on his second sports documentary now, which was also inspired by something he read, in this case, a Washington Post story headlined “Pickleball’s Latest Court? The Prison Yard.” The story interested him so much that he decided to personally fund a trip to Mexico to film Roger BelAir, the man responsible for bringing pickleball to prisons, and capture footage of him teaching resort guests how to play pickleball before following him into four maximum security prisons throughout California where he taught inmates the sport.
THROUGHOUT OSTROFF’S CAREER his intellect was obvious, and he is always applying his responsibility quotient with every project. Even today, Ostroff is slow to answer questions because he isn’t willing to throw out an off-the-cuff thought. He mulls over his ideas, offering an answer only after he has thought through the question entirely.
The pickleball in prison story caught Ostroff’s attention because he’d recently learned how to play, and he and his girlfriend hit the courts on weekends. “I was really struck by
all the contrasts in BelAir’s story, his business success and his stature and the environments he chose to go into. He was bringing wiffle balls and beefed-up ping pong paddles into places where bench pressing and basketball were popular. “I liked his vision, and the clear way he articulated what he was doing,” says Ostroff. “There’s drama in conflict and contrast, in this case, the world Roger lives in and the world in which he chooses to volunteer.” For this project, Ostroff selected a crew, including Academy Award-nominated documentary director and cinematographer Vicente Franco, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Kim Komenich, and sound man Ray Day. The project’s executive producer is two-time Academy Award-winning documentary director, Malcolm Clarke.
BelAir’s hope is that the game will not only help inmates get physical activity into their day, but that a game accessible to just about anyone may also help in their rehabilitation — learning to work together with teammates, strategizing plays, and communicating. To date, Ostroff has filmed at 10 maximum security prisons. Now he’s raising more money in order to cover the way BelAir’s impact has expanded. There are now people in 20 more states and Washington, D.C., who were mentored by BelAir and teach in prisons regularly.
Ostroff says, “You do something like this because you want to engage the audience with the contrast between something that’s fun and something that’s very serious. It’s nice to document something that is really positive. Until Roger thought of it, no one realized that convicted felons, and stressed-out correctional officers need pickleball,” says Ostroff. But Ostroff approaches this project from all angles — telling this story can get sensitive quickly. “We can’t just consider the incarcerated,” he says, “but also the prison staffs and the victims of the crimes that the incarcerated committed.”
Meanwhile, before “Pickleball in Prison” comes out, Ostroff’s “Menace,” the first horror film he’s produced, is scheduled to release in early 2026. The film tells the story of a research student who has a psychotic breakdown and goes to live with her aunt and uncle in a small town. When people begin to disappear, the student questions her sanity. As he did with “Of Two Minds,” his award-winning movie about the impact of schizophrenia on a family, Ostroff had a psychiatrist vet the script for “Menace.” IFC films acquired rights at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
Today’s world of 24/7 streaming is making it possible for more storytellers to reach new audiences. “What was always
“NOW CAN BECOME A GOLDEN AGE FOR STORYTELLING… BECAUSE THE AMOUNT YOU CAN DO WITHOUT A HUGE BUDGET HAS RADICALLY CHANGED.”
a challenge in the past was access to distribution and the cost of production, and that’s no longer the case,” says Ostroff. “If you’re talented — and there’s a legion of really talented people — you can make something terrific and there isn’t a bar to accessing the audience other than your own ingenuity.”
“Now can become a golden age for storytelling,” Ostroff says, “because the amount you can do without a huge budget has radically changed.” Perhaps Ostroff has more aptitude for business than he thought back in the ’70s.
New technologies will only be a boon for storytelling, he adds. For artists, Ostroff sees any technology as a tool. “Oil paint was a new medium when Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. Artists should use whatever tools are available to them to make the best possible work,” says Ostroff. “But there will never be a substitute for the human heart and imagination.”
Ostroff’s imagination has been on the go since he first read about BelAir. When the team entered their first prison, Ostroff turned to his teammate, Kim Komenich, and said, “Please get me a good photo of Roger smiling. I’ve never seen one.”
The moment came when Ostroff and BelAir walked into Folsom Prison. “We’re in the middle of the yard, enclosed by guard towers manned by snipers and formidable 150-year-old thick stone walls. BelAir had just been told that the elderly and the infirmed are going to come out and play first,” says Ostroff, “and then Roger looks out — maybe 50 are going to play and 500 tough guys in the yard are watching — and he smiled broadly, naturally, effusively and said, ‘Today is going to be a great day.’” BelAir’s theory, Ostroff knew, was that the paddle sport could do great things for prison culture, but Ostroff also saw in that moment his God’s Architecture theory at work. That smile, captured by photographer Kim Komenich, showed what giving back was doing for BelAir. GB
Ostroff has spent a lot of time reading and viewing stories, as a script reader, as a stage manager at Georgetown, and as a kid sitting inside Mann’s Theatre watching cinema history. Today he’s an Emmy-nominated film producer and a scholar of American architects and designers Charles and Ray Eames.
Connections
A Solid Plan
Inside 30 Rock.
For lauren presley (b’23), a day in the office begins like most: completing administrative work and attending meetings. But her day becomes anything but typical once she steps into the famed studio inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
“This was always my dream, to work on shows and to work in live TV,” Presley said. “There’s nothing like it — working all day toward something and then actually seeing it happen that night.”
Presley began her professional career in the rotational Page Program at NBCUniversal in New York City, where she most recently supported beloved shows like The Tonight Show and Late Night with Seth Meyers. Presley’s path to 30 Rock is unconventional for those in the entertainment industry.
She studied international political economy and business at Georgetown McDonough, with a minor in film and media studies. Initially, Presley wanted to go into consulting. But it was her professors at McDonough, including Michael O’Leary and George Comer, who encouraged her to follow a dream she always had inside of her.
“What a lot of my professors told me is ‘if this year doesn’t go well, you still have the rest of your 20s to figure out what to do after,’” Presley said. “It was really scary to do something new, but it
ended up being one of the best decisions of my life.”
Through the support of the McDonough Career Center, alumni connections, and the Georgetown Scholars Program, Presley began her journey with NBCUniversal in September 2023 and has moved through various departments at the network from The Kelly Clarkson Show to SNL and the TODAY Show.
“I think Georgetown did an amazing job of teaching me how to network,” she said. “It’s important to be active with your networking because, especially in entertainment, your next referral comes from people who know you and people who believe in you. Your reputation does matter in that way.”
While Presley may not be using technical business skills in her first job, she still relies on her business education and credits her experiences at McDonough for equipping her with confidence and presentation skills.
“No one really asked me why I wanted to do art and entertainment because I went to business school,” Presley said. “It never hindered me. It’s only helped me.”
Presley applied to hundreds of jobs and heard back from just a few before landing the one. She encourages firsttime job-seekers to be vulnerable about their ambitions, take calculated risks, and keep believing in themselves.
—BRIAN REA
As a Rockefeller Center Operations Page at NBCUniversal in New York, Lauren Presley supports shows like The Tonight Show and Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Class Notes
2000
Samer Judeh (B’86) was recently honored by His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan with the Silver Jubilee Medal on behalf of Jordan Wind Project Company. The award recognizes the company as the first privately sponsored utility-scale renewable energy project in the Middle East and its contributions to clean energy and energy transition in Jordan. The project has also made a significant impact on the development of the local community. This honor was part of the country’s celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of King Abdullah II’s accession to the throne.
Eugene Ubalijoro (B’86) retired after 35 years in the global beverage industry with Heineken International and Molson Coors Beverage Company. He currently is chairman of the Board of Directors of Bank of Kigali, Rwanda’s leading commercial bank, and he also serves as a nonexecutive director of AGE Africa, an NGO focused on advancing girls’ education in Malawi through targeted initiatives in leadership development and mentoring. Ubalijoro recently joined the board of Groupe LM, a fruit and vegetable distribution company on the island of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean.
Jason Lee (B’00) recently assumed the position of senior director and chief intelligence officer at Moody’s, where he leads strategy and development of automated investigation tools for analysts at federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Previously, he was a longtime senior executive with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, specializing in financial crimes.
2004
Meredith Murray (B’04) wrote a children’s book, The Question, which was published in February 2025. This venture is novel for her as she has worked in the fast-paced world of technology for much of her career. Yet the book stemmed from a dream, and she is excited to share the philosophy contained within The Question far and wide with children and the many adults in their lives.
Patrick Weiss (B’04) founded Groove, an AI-powered coaching service designed to help adults over 50 reduce pain and improve strength, mobility, and balance as they age. Groove aims to provide personalized guidance and support to enhance the health and wellness of older adults, offering a unique solution tailored to their needs.
EML
2020
Jose Olivero (EML’20) was inducted into the Long Island Metropolitan Lacrosse Hall of Fame on January 25, 2025. A native of the Dominican Republic, he was previously honored with induction into the United States Military Academy Sports Hall of Fame in 2006 for his achievements as a three-time All-American in lacrosse and a two-time AllAmerican in soccer. He also served as captain for both teams during his senior year at West Point. After graduating in 1978, Olivero had a distinguished career in the U.S. Army Special Forces, retiring as a colonel in 2006 before continuing his service as a civilian in the Department of Defense until 2023.
MA-IBP
2018
Jacob Armstrong (MA-IBP’18) was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the United States Army on April 1, 2024. He celebrated the milestone with friends and family in Oklahoma before departing to assume command of a unit in Vicenza, Italy. A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Armstrong has previously served in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, as well as in San Antonio, Texas, and Los Angeles, California.
MBA
2014
Johnny Victor Toma (MBA’14) was recently promoted to director of finance and administration for the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization (BGRO) at Georgetown University Medical Center. In this role, he supervises a team of four senior-level financial administrators supporting the BGRO Basic Science departments and the Biomedical Graduate Education programs.
2017
Christian Johan Hyland (MBA’17) was appointed Head of Customer Success at Toku, the first comprehensive global solution for token (cryptocurrency) compensation and tax compliance. In this role, he leads client operations across 80+ countries, supporting a company that is transforming how people are compensated in the Web 3.0 space.
2024
Andres Brillembourg (MBA’24) won both the $30,000 grand prize and the $5,000 People’s Choice Award at this year’s Leonsis Family Entrepreneurship Prize “Bark Tank” Pitch Competition. His AI-powered caregiver recruiting tool, Hilda, impressed judges with its ability to streamline the home care hiring process, reducing interview scheduling from weeks to a single day.
While Layla
Changing Course
From the Federal Reserve to the Peace Corps, one grad’s path to personal growth.
layla weiss (b’22) is an alumna who exemplifies a willingness to explore uncharted territory in pursuit of growth. Born and raised in New York City, Weiss’ multicultural background and diverse educational experiences instilled in her a passion for learning and service.
At Georgetown, she embraced every opportunity — from serving as the
first female senator of McDonough to engaging in community outreach with people with disabilities, and tutoring previously incarcerated youth. Her journey has been marked by bold transitions, including a significant career move from the Federal Reserve to the Peace Corps in North Macedonia. Her dedication to challenging the status quo and taking
risks has shaped her leadership style.
While her role at the Federal Reserve was both intellectually and professionally rewarding, Weiss felt an inner calling to public service. Despite the prestige and stability of her position, she longed for an opportunity where her work could have an immediate, tangible impact on people’s lives. This desire led her to take a shot with the Peace Corps — a decision that meant leaving behind a job she truly loved.
In North Macedonia, Weiss found herself immersed in a community where her skills could address pressing social challenges. Tasked with projects aimed at curbing nepotism and promoting transparency in state-owned enterprises, she embraced the complexities of a new culture and a different way of life. The transition was not just professional, but deeply personal: Weiss had to adapt to living in a small village, learn a new language, and integrate into a community built on collectivist values. These experiences have enriched her understanding of leadership: teaching her the importance of empathy, resilience, and cultural sensitivity.
“My shot is what life’s all about,” Weiss explains, encapsulating her commitment to innovation and personal growth. Her leap from the structured world of finance to the dynamic, unpredictable environment of international development stands as a testament to her belief that true growth lies in embracing challenges. She continues to inspire those around her, proving that taking calculated risks in the pursuit of service and self-improvement can lead to profound personal and societal transformation.
—MARTHA BARRETTE HOLLAND
Weiss’ role at the Federal Reserve was both intellectually and professionally rewarding, she followed an inner calling to public service.
It’s Family Business
Why Merjan Bubernack left her job and headed home.
in 2022, Merjan Bubernack (B’15) attended a silent retreat in California that became a turning point in her career. After eight years in corporate America, she emerged with a renewed sense of purpose and decided to return to her hometown of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to join her family’s business.
Started in 1968 by Bubernack’s grandfather, ET&T — a telecommunications and technology company — has been managed by her father and mother, Michael and Fusun Bubernack, since 2001. Merjan joined the team in July 2023, but before that her experiences at Georgetown McDonough and beyond all contributed to her rising success to take on the mantle of director of customer success at ET&T.
While a student at Georgetown, Bubernack was actively engaged in
campus life, serving all four years with the Alumni Association’s phone-a-thon initiative, founding the Turkish Students Association, and working in and around D.C. for a social newsletter taking photos at fundraisers and engaging with people in the community.
This exposure to community engagement led Bubernack to seek out roles in sales after Georgetown. Her first job was at Oracle, and she explained that while it wasn’t the typical role McDonough students think about going into after graduation, Bubernack knew early on she saw a different path for herself.
She discovered the role after a recruiter came to the Hilltop for an event. “There are quite a number of us from Georgetown who got hired there… It taught me the basics of sales, getting out there prospecting, and building a
relationship that led to new business.” She stayed in this role for a year and half before pivoting to sales in the restaurant industry at Caviar (now part of DoorDash).
Bubernack signed nearly 300 restaurants in D.C. onto the e-commerce food delivery platform during the two and half years she held this position. “I ate so much good food. I met a lot of really interesting people. I loved it. And again, it was building those relationships, learning about people and what drove their business, and how we could help them be successful,” she said.
However, Bubernack’s long-term goal wasn’t to stay in the restaurant industry. Around 2019, a friend and Georgetown classmate recommended that she join them at Tableau. Within a week of Bubernack accepting the job, Tableau was acquired by Salesforce, making her one of many in a 70,000 person company.
Then, in 2020, COVID-19 hit. Despite the global pandemic, Bubernack rose to become the top rep in her division, earning back-to-back President’s Club honors. This planted the seeds for a promotion. Each time the conversation about a promotion arose, she was passed over. In 2022, she decided to hit the pause button and reassess by attending a silent insight meditation retreat.
“You’re supposed to really be in your zone. I walked out of it and said, ‘I’m ready to go to mom and dad.’”
For Bubernack, the reason to pivot to her family’s company was simple. “It’s really about continuing a legacy about investing in the community,” she said. “We’re building a community here. We’re building a town that’s really exciting to me. I think that the opportunities in smaller family businesses are just as
For Bubernack, the reason to pivot to her family’s company was simple. “It’s really about continuing a legacy about investing in the community,” she said.
lucrative as the ones that you could find on Wall Street.”
As director of customer success, Bubernack works at the intersection of sales, marketing, and operations. She’s also considering how AI can be leveraged to optimize processes, and bring ET&T into its next phase. As a third generation business owner, Bubernack noted that she initially felt a huge weight of responsibility. After meeting with others in her same position, however, and speaking with them about what they want for this next generation, Bubernack feels more empowered. She recognizes her abilities to foster community, honed from years working in sales, and leverages the Georgetown value of cura personalis in everyday interactions with clients, whom she runs into at places like the grocery store and events around town.
Looking back on her pivot from corporate employment to serving in the family business, Bubernack encourages other Hoyas with this message about finding your way post-degree:
“There’s a whole world out there [and] only a small fraction of companies may come on campus and recruit. Think about what excites you, what inspires you, [and] open your horizons [to] what companies and business are out there.”
By 2024, Bubernack was named one of the NextGens to watch. She noted, “It’s opened up a lot of opportunities for me to connect with other family businesses. I’ve been able to connect with people who had their own lives and decided to go back to family business, and pivot and grow and bring that next generation mindset into a lot of these legacy businesses.”
—JESSICA MARR
The Power of Curiosity
Carlo Mahfouz (EMBA’20), an award-winning author and VP of strategic technology partnerships at Laerdal Medical, is dedicated to driving innovation in healthcare ed-tech. Mahfouz is the author of Reality Check: In Pursuit of the Right Questions, an Amazon bestseller that highlights the power of asking the right questions in both business and life. He is also a passionate classical music enthusiast and a budding opera singer.
BOOKS
One from Many by Dee Hock (founder of Visa) Explores the rise of “chaordic” organizational structures, arguing that a blend of chaos and order is essential for effective and resilient organizations.
Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland
To solve economic and political problems, tap into illogical — and even magical — ways of thinking.
PODCASTS
The Artificial Intelligence Show
A deep dive into AI with guests discussing its most controversial applications.
In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen
The CEO of Norges Bank interviews top business leaders, sharing the investors’ perspective.
Scandinavian Product Podcast by Afonso Franco
A look at how great products are built, scaled, and funded for future growth.
MUSIC
A frequent traveler and speaker, Mahfouz enjoys a diverse mix of musical genres — from contemporary classical to Lebanese folklore and Irish pub tunes.
What is Financial Mindfulness?
“Financial mindfulness means maintaining a high level of awareness of what you have and owe, coupled with acceptance — without letting emotions take over. This acceptance shouldn’t be mistaken for complacency, but instead fosters calm, informed decisions that bolster the ability to engage with one’s finances, to manage money, and to build sustainable, long-term financial habits.”
—SIMON BLANCHARD, PROVOST’S DISTINGUISHED ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND ACADEMIC DIRECTOR, MBA CERTIFICATE IN CONSUMER ANALYTICS AND INSIGHTS
COME
GRADUATE ALUMNI REUNION
Friday, September 26 – Saturday, September 27, 2025
Celebrating the MBA, EMBA, GEMBA, CIM, EML, MSF, MA-IBP, MSA, and MiM
Classes of 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020
EVENTS INCLUDE
Alumni Panels
State of the School
Reception with Classmates and Faculty
Picnic Lunch
Reunion Awards Dinner
Georgetown University
McDonough School of Business
Office of Marketing and Communications
211 Rafik B. Hariri Building
37th and O Streets, NW
Washington, DC 20057
Ethically Teaching: Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics (GISME)
Since 2015, GISME has taught nearly
200 professors at other universities about Georgetown’s innovative approach to teaching professional ethics during its annual Teaching the Teachers Workshop.
$1,000
is available for every undergraduate and graduate student team through a grant supported by Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics during their semesterlong Ethics Project.
8 a one-stop shop of
faculty members dedicated to research, teaching, and contributions on topics related to business ethics at Georgetown McDonough.
10
free resources, syllabi, annotated lecture slides, and class activities for faculty and students interested in business ethics.
years of the Ethics Project, which asks students to “think of something good to do, and do it,” as part of their Ethical Leadership course to actively demonstrate how they can add value to the world.
4,000
undergraduate students have created a fictitious business, presented a business plan, and addressed custom-made ethics dilemmas and challenges through the Ethics Project. GISME’s Business Ethics in a Box website offers
2,500+
students have completed
300
Ethics Projects since its inception.
$5,000
in funds are awarded annually to the winners of the Ventures and Values Entrepreneurship Pitch Competition, where students must convince a panel of judges that their business idea is both profitable and ethical.