The Harbus - November 2021

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

Women Hold Majority of Section Leadership

page 03

The United States Should Compete Rather w than Block China

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From the Editor’s Desk: The Difference You Choose to Make. - page 02

THE HARBUS

Fall Semester, 2021

Bringing news to Harvard Business School since 1937

November Edition

Making It Easier to Treat Yourself Part of a series of articles on female founders, Ziana Kotadia (MBA ’22) asks Grace Gorenstein (MBA ’22) about her beauty startup, tys.

Ziana Kotadia, Women Leadership Editor Tell us more about your start-up, tys?

Much Ado About Squid Game As Netflix’s newest binge-worthy sensation took over the HBS community (and the world), the Harbus asked K-drama enthusiast HBS Professor Sandra Sucher to weigh in.

Sapan Shah, Community Editor

You mention in your blog that over the last year you have watched more than two dozen Korean shows.

What about K-dramas fascinates you?

Let me first admit that a lot of my opinions about K-dramas come from mentally comparing them with all the Hollywood that I am familiar with, and not just what they are by themselves. There are several things that I think are distinct about them, and one of the things that I love is that they are quite willing to mix genres. For instance, if you watch Vincenzo (which is probably one of my favorite K-dramas on Netflix), it is an absurd story about a Korean man raised in Italy

who becomes consigliere to the Mafia and later comes back to South Korea to repatriate some gold. Even within this premise, they mix an enormous amount of humor. Within these terrible situations in some of the most extreme dramas, you will find some humor. I believe they have something quite special to tell us, that life is not just one thing.

These shows are also very good at character development, and the viewer truly empathizes with the characters that they are watching. In Squid Game, you see 10 minutes of a backstory for each character, that comes in and out of scenes, really driving home the history of these characters. And so, some of the emotional force comes from knowing more and caring more about the characters than we would ordinarily. This goes beyond just the plotlines because it organically makes sense that

A loves B or that C is really ticked off about a situation.

There is an emotional texture that comes through.

Another thing that I like is that they are unafraid of crossing over into fantasy.

I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy, and Korean shows bring the genre to life in a way that is quite wonderful. In Crash Landing on You, you will see a South Korean heiress paragliding into North Korea by mistake. By the time you have accepted the premise, you are hooked.

That kind of playful attitude toward life is actually quite inspiring because it really does show that we can get enjoyment from engaging with something that we find improbable. And for extremely rational people, like all of us at HBS, this notion of suspending disbelief and just going with it is exhilarating.

Continued on page 07

Tys, sounds like ‘ties’ and stands for “treat yourself”. I’m trying to build a tech platform which makes the experience of booking beauty appointments easier.

Currently, the process of making an appointment is clunky and outdated.

I found that when I was

working in high pressure roles in financial services, and my time was limited, I didn’t have the time to call several nail salons to find an appointment and play the walk-in roulette. This seemed to be a problem that so many other women were also facing. Taking care of yourself, even if it is just for 30 minutes, creating a moment of respite, is so important. Women tend to be self-sacrificing with time, energy and resources. I want to create this one tool which empowers a woman to take a Continued on page 08

IN THIS ISSUE

The Transformation of Marketing in Healthcare

Mountain Biking Scene in Boston

- page 04

- page 06

Startup Corner: Belle House - page 09

Alumni Startup Corner: Investors’ Favorite HBS Companies - page 11

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Startup Corner: Epakon Capital - pages 10

My Take: Living Authentically - page 12-14

N OV E M B E R 2 0 2 1 THE H A RBUS NEWS CORPOR ATION Harvard Business School Gallatin House Basement Boston, MA 02163 phone: 617-495-6528 fax: 617-495-8619 general@harbus.org www.harbus.org

Editor-in-Chief NOELIA LOMBARDO GAVA nlombardogava@mba2022.hbs.edu Chief Executive Officer ISRAT TARIN itarin@mba2022.hbs.edu Chief Operations Officer NATASHA LARSEN natasha@harbus.org Chief Revenue & Marketing Officer VAUGHN KURTENBACH vaughn@harbus.org Chief Design Officer GARRETT TONGE garrett@sylvanus-urban.com Campus News Editors ERIKA MIONIS KATHERINE RICHARDSON Community Editor SAPAN SHAH Entertainment Editor FELIPE CERÓN Entrepreneurship Editor MIKE KELLY ALEX SMITH Industry News Editor ALEX SMITH Women Leadership Editors TEMI OJUADE ZIANA KOTADIA MONIKA BERANKYTE Satire Editor NISHKAM PRABODH Marketing and Communications VALENTINA BULAVA Contributors KEITH BENDER ARTHUR BROOKS MARGARITA CHIQUIZA DAVID EDELMAN MARTÍN RODRÍGUEZ RODRÍGUEZ DIEGO SALAS Board of Directors STAN CHANG UPOMA DUTTA GABRIEL ELLSWORTH RASEEM FAROOK NATASHA LARSEN SUMIT MALIK HARSHA MULCHANDANI RYO TAKAHASHI ASHA TANWAR

The Harbus is a publication of the Harbus News Corporation, a nonprofit, independent corporation of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Harbus is published monthly throughout the academic year, distributed free of charge to members of the Harvard Business School community, and updated continually on harbus.org. Email the editor if you would like to contribute.

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The Harbus is committed to diversity, and we strive to provide a forum for the free exchange of ideas. As a result, the opinions reflected in articles, editorials, photographs, and cartoons are those of the authors and artists and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Harbus, explicitly or implied, regardless of author or artist.

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©Harvard Business School

From the Editor’s Desk The Difference You Choose to Make

Noelia Lombardo Gava, Editor-in-Chief We started putting together this issue under a bright, blue sky, with a beautiful temperature. As we wrap up, the skies have turned gray and the rain only stopped for the Head of the Charles. The mood on campus goes down with the weather and students experience midterm fatigue.

Those blues come also with the realization that, in a little over a month, this semester will be over. Too fast, too soon.

The good news is that the HBS community is not brought down by the

melancholy of fall. I can never cease to be surprised by the energy and impact of our articles’ protagonists.

This month, our incredible team of editors and collaborators bring you stories of entrepreneurship, entertainment, industry insights and much more. Our Women Leadership editor, Ziana Kotadia, continues with her series on female entrepreneurs, featuring the founders of tys and Belle House, both impacting the world of beauty and self care. Temi Ojuade, also Women Leadership Editor, complements this optimism by reporting on the section leadership gender distribution for the Class of 2023—the majority of positions are held by women.

We also bring you stories of entrepreneurs who are still MBA candidates but also of those who graduated.

The Industry Insights section comes with two thought-provoking articles.

The first one, by professor David Edelman, elaborates on the transformation of marketing in healthcare. The second one, an interview of former ambassador of Chile to China by Martín Rodríguez, suggests that the US should compete rather than block China.

Also thought-provoking, Margarita Chiquiza shares her My Take on living authentically—a must read of this issue. And to balance the seriousness of these topics, our team brings you an analysis of Squid Game

by professor Sandra Sucher, a review of the mountain bike scene in Boston by Felipe Cerón and an invitation by professor Arthur Brooks to “Stop Waiting for Your Soul Mate.”

Getting to read all the stories of the Harbus is really a privilege, through which I have learned that creating meaningful differences in the world is our choice to make. What will yours be?

Noelia Lombardo Gava (MBA ’22) was born in Argentina but identifies herself as a global citizen.

She is a biomedical engineer, a management consultant, a storyteller and a lifelong migrant.

She loves the outdoors, diving, yoga, reading, and good debates.

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THE HARBUS NEWS

PA G E T H R E E

WOMEN LEADERSHIP

Women Hold Majority of Section Leadership Positions in the Class of 2023

Women proudly represent 55% of section leadership positions as compared to being 46% of the general population of the class. Temi Ojuade (MBA ’23) speaks to some of these amazing women to share why they decided to run for these positions.

Temi Ojuade, Women Leadership Editor Before I looked at the election data, I strongly held the hypothesis that women hold the majority percentage of section leadership positions. My hypothesis turned out to be true. Women make up 55% of section leadership across all positions and sections according to data from the HBS Student Leadership Directory.

Representation differed across sections: Section I had the highest percentage of women leaders at 76% while section G had the lowest percentage at 20%.

Across roles, not surprisingly, Women Representatives were 100% women while the lowest representation for women were in the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Representative and Senator roles, both roles having 25% women. The 55% representation in women leadership compared to the 46% women demographics shows the passion that the women of the class of 2023 have for leading to make a difference. I spoke to some of these women leaders about their motivations for running for the specific role they chose.

Data by Position Male

Female

Admissions Representative

42%

58%

Alumni & Career Representative

25%

75%

Athletic Representative

70%

30%

Community Values Representative

22%

78%

Diversity Equity and Inclusion Representative

75%

25%

Education Representative

55%

45%

Family Representative

71%

29%

Health & Wellness Representative

44%

56%

International Representative

38%

63%

Section President 45%

55%

Senator

75%

25%

Service Representative

30%

70%

Social Chair

43%

57%

Tech Representative

50%

50%

Treasurer

71%

29%

Women’s Representative

0%

100%

Brianna Kim (MBA ’23) President, Section I

each other’s experiences and perspectives, so I decided to run by embracing this philosophy.

Carly Silver (MBA ’23) - Service Representative, Section F

I chose to run for Service Representative as I feel strongly about giving back to the local community and wanted to help facilitate volunteer opportunities for my sectionmates, particularly for causes we feel passionate about. I served as Community Service Chair in my former role at JP Morgan and found the work extremely rewarding!

I am working as a Co-service Representative with Kevin Miao. Additionally, I was eager to work with Service Chairs across the RC class and help shape the Section F experience through the leadership team!

Cici Xie (MBA ’23) Admissions Representative, Section A

Data by Section Male

Female

A

67%

33%

B

53%

47%

C

25%

75%

D

40%

60%

E

36%

64%

F

39%

61%

G

80%

20%

H

44%

56%

I

24%

76%

J

44%

56%

K

60%

40%

Total 45%

55%

I chose to run for section President because I wanted to empower my sectionmates to feel personally responsible for shaping our section experience. Upon meeting them, I was immediately struck by everyone’s unbelievable backgrounds and knew that those stories only scratched the surface. Perhaps the most important facet of this HBS experience is to immerse yourself in this diverse community and learn from

[I chose to run] because I am passionate about helping prospective students understand the HBS MBA program better. I believe the admission process is a twoway process. I also want to provide more touch points and perspectives for international students.

Having lived my entire life as a foreign “other” in first Indonesia, Singapore and then the US, I knew what it was like to be different. Yet as I reflect, too many times we try to adjust and assimilate to the local culture as a foreigner. I wanted to run for International Representative to celebrate the differences that shape our community and foster an experience that encourages us to embrace who we are. As Dr. Maya Angelou once said, “Diversity makes for a rich tapestry.”

Emma Miertschin (MBA ’23) - Women’s Representative, Section K

Coming from the male dominated field of engineering, I feel passionate about creating spaces for women to be themselves. I have seen the negative consequences at work for disempowering women, both financially and ethically.

I want to help empower the women in my section to be their most authentic selves and experience success in whatever form they envision it.

Laetitia Tiani Vessah (MBA ’23) - Alumni and Career Representative, Section D

Elisa Djuhar (MBA ’23) International Representative, Section E

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I want all of us to secure a bag: whether it’s a job offer or an entrepreneurial pursuit.

HBS has so many resources for all things career: from the aspirational to the tactical aspects. I wanted to serve as a conduit for Section D to utilize what we paid for and deserve.

Temi Olonilua (MBA ’23) - Community Values Representative, Section B

One of the reasons I chose HBS was the section experience. Coming here, I knew I wanted to serve and have an impact on my section in a meaningful way, and I felt that the CV rep position would best allow me to do this. As someone who grew up in a close-knit community, I’ve been proud to bring my full self and strong community values to school and work to actively contribute to and learn from those around me.

Working on very diverse teams in my pre-HBS career, I saw how connecting with people on a human level broke down invisible walls and led to a culture of collaboration and respect on an organizational level, created mutuallybeneficial relationships rooted in trust, and propelled my teams to realize their full potential. By serving as the CV rep, I’m able to work with other leaders in Section B to shape our section experience.

Temi Ojuade (MBA ’23) is from Nigeria. Prior to HBS, she worked in special situations and distressed investing in London and at an education company in Nigeria.

She loves amplifying stories of women. She enjoys baking and rewatching episodes of the medical series, Grey’s Anatomy.

PA G E F O U R

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THE HARBUS NEWS

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

The Transformation of Marketing in Healthcare David Edelman (MBA ’86), a Marketing professor at HBS, shares his experience as the Chief Marketing Officer at Aetna.

David Edelman, Contributor Tell us more about your background and what drew you to marketing.

Everything I did well at growing up combined left and right brain—analytics and creativity—especially playing saxophone, music directing shows, and playing on the math and chess teams.

I was not a sports kid at all.

When I arrived at HBS—36 years ago!— I was not sure where I wanted to focus but was looking for something that hit the right “chord” in me. First Year Marketing did that. My professor, the legendary Steve Greyser, and the cases we did, had me hooked. To be honest, a dream of mine would be to have that effect on a couple of students this year.

I stayed in Marketing roles, in consulting, in helping set up an interactive agency, and then as a CMO, ever since.

How is the marketing function structured at Aetna and how did it evolve during your tenure?

When I started at Aetna, I was their first CMO. Marketing had been a secondary function, stuck under sales and broken up by division. My charter was to turn Marketing into a strategic driver of growth, by building a central team that would raise the bar on strategic thinking, digital capability, and a new brand launch. Our Marketing team had strategic product marketers facing each BU, backed with centers of excellence in insights, creative, marketing ops, marketing tech, and media.

We had to turn over 40% of the employees who had been labelled as “marketing,” adding senior strategists, a full in-house creative agency, media analysts, and researchers. Marketing was a “client-service” organization, enabling the growth objectives of Aetna’s major business units, but we were also an enterprise catalyst in developing and bringing a new brand to life, opening up new ideas of what was possible digitally, and launching the first customer experience improvement program.

What was your biggest challenge at Aetna and how did you address it?

It was not easy. First of all, I entered an organization that never had strategic marketing and just did not know, or believe, in our potential. It took dozens of meals with my peers and with their direct reports to build credibility and prove we could understand their business needs well enough to generate realistic upside. I had to find and hire top talent into a sector— insurance, which, on the surface, did not sound exciting. But as I laid out our strategy for transforming health care by using marketing to get people to adopt better health behaviors and to grow the business through a simpler, more transparent customer experience, we built a passionate team. And we constantly faced the vagaries of fluctuating budgets and the business looked better or worse quarter to quarter.

That required building a rich understanding of how our marketing financials worked, and tightening our relationship with the CFO team.

How has the health insurance industry responded to Covid-19?

Within two weeks, Aetna had thousands of call center employees working productively from home, a massive achievement, given all the hardware that had been the foundation of our call centers. We created new ways of explaining and selling Medicare digitally to seniors, and launched market-bymarket communications

with members to make sure they understood everything they could take advantage of as the pandemic spread.

Telehealth exploded, as did mental health needs, both of which required new ways to help members get access and new procedures to ensure all claims were covered. Going forward, there’s no doubt that remote care, mental health support, and a dramatically expanded range of digital tools for consumers are here to stay.

How has marketing at Aetna responded to the emergence of digital advertising and influencers?

Digital advertising and influencers were not a sudden shock, they were already an issue when I joined Aetna in 2016. It was a key reason I was hired. We had to upgrade our whole marketing technology infrastructure to enable personalized messaging, attribution that would enable rapid test/learn cycles, and roll out a consistent online brand. We shifted substantial budget into digital channels, and built “war rooms” for our major digital marketing programs that had us constantly innovating, testing, tracking impacts, and remixing our media budgets.

Agile, agile, agile. We also used a growing cadre of influencers who noticed and liked what we were doing to improve member experience to accelerate the spread of branded content that educated and inspired our members to take actions that would improve their health.

What do you see as the future of marketing in health insurance?

Marketing in healthcare, ideally, will not feel like marketing, but will be an ongoing stream of support to people, matching their personal context, that helps them take their next step in their health journey. Through AI, experimentation, massive pools of new data available from devices and other digital interactions, and new ways to communicate with members, health marketing should become the natural support one expects in an experience with a payor or provider. New rules for common data schemas, and supporting a consumer’s right to move their data around, will enable more continuity of care. I am not sure where pharma marketing will go, as big campaigns to support high cost specialty drugs are unlikely to fade, but maybe better targeting, If highly private information can be made useful, this could reduce the noise.

What advice do you have for students who are hoping to pivot into a career in marketing?

If great Marketing cases, like my favorites this year— Chase Sapphire, Cialis, and Hubspot, get you excited about how Marketing can really be a strategic driver of growth, don’t stop learning and exploring the field.

Certainly, there are great second year courses one can take, and along the way read more—Adobe’s CMO. com, Salesforce’s Marketing publications, and thought leadership in HBR and the output of all the major consulting firms.

Think about the campaigns you see,

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changes in consumer needs that constantly emerge, and follow the developing world of digital media. Invest in your Strategy course opportunities as well, given a lot of overlap between marketing and strategy. Look for a summer job where you’ll help shape a marketing strategy, and look for a position, either in a professional services firm—a top agency, or one of the top consultancies (all of which now allow you to focus on Marketing), or with a mid-size company where you can step into a role that is not too narrowly pocketed.

And I am always available to chat. Marketing always needs great talent, and great talent breaks through to transform companies through all that Marketing can bring.

Dave Edelman (MBA ’86) is delighted to be back at HBS after graduating in 1986 from Section H. Since he was wowed

by Marketing in his first year course, he has continued to build his expertise and reputation as a leader by creating new Digital Marketing practices at both BCG and McKinsey, helping to launch the digital agency Digitas (in between the two consulting gigs), and then becoming CMO of Aetna, continuing through the completion of its merger with CVS. He has published two articles in HBR: the 2010 cover story “Branding in the Digital Age,” and then the followup “Competing on Customer Journeys” in 2015, and has over 1.2million followers on LinkedIn. He is a passionate musician, playing saxophone as often as he can, and advises on marketing and healthcare issues outside of HBS.

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PA G E F I V E

THE HARBUS NEWS

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

The United States Should Compete Rather than Block China Jorge Heine, former Chilean ambassador to China, discusses US-China relations. Martín Rodríguez Rodríguez reports.

Martin Rodriguez Rodriguez , Contributor I sat down with Jorge Heine at the Boston University faculty club in late October for a wide-ranging interview discussing the Chinese real estate bubble, climate diplomacy, big tech companies, Blackrock’s foray into China and international trade. Mr. Heine, a former Chilean Cabinet minister who holds a PhD in Political Science from Stanford and is a prolific author, was also, from 2014-2017, the ambassador of Chile to China, and is currently a research professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University.

The conversation starts in Spanish but swiftly switches to English, “a lot could get lost in translation,” Mr. Heine says, and I quickly realize this seasoned diplomat will be very careful with his words, but to my surprise, will not dodge the inquisitive line of questioning I brought for our conversation.

Apropos the international context, Mr. Heine believes we are at the dawn of a Second Cold War. He said as much in a 2020 Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica article that received some pushback but, in retrospect, he says he feels vindicated by events, “if anything, things have gotten worse between the United States and China since then.” He is concerned about the implications of a world divided into rigid blocs, as “Latin America went through a very difficult period in the first Cold War, with very negative effects on the politics of the region, and we are very concerned that something similar might happen with an upsurge of a second Cold War.” Regarding China’s economy, his assessment of the disappointing annualized 4.9% third-quarter growth comprises power shortages and the technology sector crackdown.

Unprompted, he brings up the situation of Evergrande, a property developer with $300 billion in debt in the brink of default, “we will see how that situation will be resolved; hopefully, it will be resolved satisfactorily, but it speaks to

the Chinese real estate bubble that has been accumulating for quite some time. I sense that the Chinese government will find a way of solving the issue, but, in the meantime, there are many questions as to how that would move forward.”

What about the technology sector? China successfully excluded American tech giants from its market and was able to keep Silicon Valley at bay. In fact, just very recently, LinkedIn, the only Western social media platform operating in the country, announced that it would shut down. I probe if Mr. Heine thinks the West should adopt a reciprocity policy regarding Chinese tech companies, or instead let Chinese-owned TikTok take

we can do to avoid that both from the Chinese side and the Western side is better.”

At the same time, he raises a critical point about technology giants’ relationship with the state. “I sense that the rise of Chinese tech companies presents challenges to the Chinese government that, in many ways, are quite comparable to the challenges posed by Big Tech to the US government. I see a lot of parallels there, and in that sense, it is important to understand that these are challenges that are common to many countries around the world and for which few governments have been able to come up with appropriate responses.”

A different kind of challenge is the one raised by

is not very constructive and would entail significant costs for both countries and for the world economy “. He adds, “it seems to me the best way forward and the most constructive one is to look for ways to work together rather than imposing such bans.”

On supply chains, he is skeptical about nearshoring.

“The nearshoring hype from last year was a bit of a mirage (…) Even shifting parts of the supply chain to Vietnam, which you could argue is not that much nearshoring, has proved to be a lot more difficult than was expected.

If that has been difficult, you can imagine what it would mean to move plants from China to, let’s say, Mexico or Colombia.”

With the upcoming COP

its American rivals, such as Facebook, for a ride.

Mr. Heine explains that China’s reserving these virtual spaces for Chinese companies obviously raises the question of whether Western countries should do something similar. However, he points out this could lead to technological bifurcation and “whether we will move from having a single internet to several internets, which in some ways defeats the whole purpose of having it.”

In his view, one of the most significant challenges we face “is that if we move towards a sort of a split internet, the costs would be considerable for all parties involved, and we might end up with severe communications problems.

My thought is that whatever

George Soros, who suggested in the Wall Street Journal that by accommodating to the Chinese authorities, BlackRock struck a Faustian bargain with the Chinese Communist Party, putting American national security at risk and calling for Congress to pass legislation to curb the financial flows that American investment firms can funnel to China.

This time Mr. Heine starts his answer with a question: “Do we want to continue escalating tensions between the US and China?”

With command of the details, he describes the deep level of interdependence between the two economies and concludes “the whole idea of decoupling, which is something that Mr. Soros’s proposal points at,

26 conference in Glasgow, we turn our attention to Climate Change. Mr. Mr. Heine starts by disabusing the notion elucidated by climate czar John Kerry and the Biden Administration that, because of its importance, climate change could be a “critical standalone issue.” In his view “obviously, there are linkages between these issues, and it is not as easy as to say we will confront you on this, but we will cooperate on this other matter.” He continues, “China’s position has been that it doesn’t quite work that way, and if the US is keen to continue to exacerbate tensions on some issues, that raises a question mark about how serious the United States is committed to cooperation.”

As an example of the

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complexity involved, he points out that the United States has been particularly keen to denounce human rights violations in Xinjiang.

Still, as it happens, the region is where around half of the world’s supply of polysilicon, a critical raw material for solar panels comes from, so he asks, “If you boycott products made in Xinjiang, are you also boycotting solar power? It is a complex set of issues.”

We have been conversing for a while. I have a final question but hesitate to ask. It is based on a book written in the 90s by a very influential Chinese scholar and current member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Wang Huning, after he visited more than thirty American cities and close to 25 universities: America against America.

Mr. Heine was surely not expecting this question. With caution he replies that “what the book does is identify the tensions that exist within the United States and the contradictions in this country.

Right now, you have seen the big tensions that were so apparent in the last election and what followed.” He would not say if American decision-makers should read it or not, and I declined to press him on the matter.

After the brief detour, Mr. Heine happily returns to our topic of discussion and argues the way forward for the US in this great power struggle should be to compete, to show that it is better at doing things than China, “to build a better mousetrap.” He thinks US actions that seek to bar Chinese investments and trade with Latin America are not helpful, and laments that several big Chinese construction projects in Panama have been suspended due to US pressure. For him, “the right approach is to compete rather than to block.”

Martin Rodriguez Rodriguez is aVenezuelan policy entrepreneur working at the intersection of government and the private sector and always keen on creating good and necessary trouble. He is a section D partner.

PA G E S I X

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THE HARBUS NEWS

MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

Mountain Bike Scene in Boston Extreme sports close are close to campus.

Felipe Cerón, Entertainment Editor Western Greenway—a mere 20 minutes drive from campus—is this alluring piece of nature which holds tricky up and down hills ripe for beginner-to-medium level mountain bike adrenaline seekers.

I was invited to partake in this adventure hosted by the Outdoor Club a few weeks ago. I had tried MTB once before with catastrophic results. Scraping most of my limbs, falling over rocks and having the worst time. It is hard and scary, and I had decided not to do it again.

Having had time to reflect and to get into some other extreme sports, paired with a friend’s insistence on the matter (you should buy a MTB and go ripping into

the mountain, there’s nothing like it and you’ll never go back!), I had come to think that I might eventually give it another try. Of course this was kind of a lie, since I hoped this “eventually” would run to infinity. But it did not.

I had a random lunch with Cragun Liston (MBA ’22 and Outdoors Club CoPresident), who invited me to join the event. “Do you have a helmet?” I did. “Do you have a bike?” I did not, so I could not go, of course.

Cragun would not have an extra one. “Not a problem!

We can get you one from a partner who owns two.”

Damn it. It is interesting that when we are confronted with things that we kind of want to do but not really at the same time, it becomes really hard to make up excuses. So I had no excuse and I commited to go next Monday after class.

We load up the truck and start talking business, of

which I understood half. Bike anatomy has vocabulary that I am mostly ignorant of. But I was interested. Thankfully the partner that owned two bikes graced me with the better one. A proper MTB, which I immediately realized I had never used, and it takes some time to understand it.

For my past MTB foray I had used a regular route bike. Big mistake. They are incredibly different. The handlebar is elongated giving you more control and agility, the wheels are wide with more grip and there is a lever on the left of the handlebar which can be used to regulate seat height.

This is important because you want to have a lower center of gravity while you are descending, being able to modify it without having to stop. Above all, a MTB just feels different. A MTB is a tank which can run over rocks, roots and branches, while a route bike is way more vulnerable. One sign

that this could be more fun than my last attempt.

For MTB you have to work for pleasure, and it is highly rewarding. You have to go up to go down, so we start out on a route that goes steadily upwards for a few minutes, warming up our bodies and giving me time to understand this bike.

Later on we go down. First big challenge. Any advice?

Trust your bike and look forward, look at the point you are headed to, not the one in which you are.

This is one of the sports that you have to go all in, because the faster you go, the easier it is to go over obstacles, and vice-versa.

In MTB you do not avoid obstacles, you go through them. The tricky part is that you have to be nimble enough to avoid narrow paths of trees, moving rapidly sideways, which is harder to do if you go faster. The rapid response on the handlebar

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helps tremendously. Trust your bike.

I went all in, and had the best time. While doing MTC, it is easy to achieve a flow state and 100% focus. There are few feelings like going down a narrow path on a hill filled with obstacles and ripping through them.

Excellent weekday break adventure.

More info about the Outdoors club on https:// engage.hbs.edu/organization/ outdoors. Check it out for upcoming events and treks including Patagonia, Costa Rica and Kilimajaro!

Felipe Cerón (MBA ’22) is a Chilean who worked in consulting and retail. He is a musician, and he is an avid fan of films. Getting in ring, laughing over a beer and reading inspiring books are among his favorite pastimes. He thinks Pisco is the best beverage ever created.

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MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

Much Ado About Squid Game As Netflix’s newest binge-worthy sensation took over the HBS community (and the world), the Harbus asked K-drama enthusiast HBS Professor Sandra Sucher to weigh in.

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Over the last few years we have been seeing trends reflecting the Korean Wave (or Hallyu), with the rising popularity of K-Pop groups like BTS, the Oscars sweep

by Parasite, and now, Squid Game. What is your take on this deliberate phenomenon of “culture as an export”?

If you are asking if is it okay for a society or for a country to try to export its view of the world to the rest of the world? I would say, as your typical HBS professor, it depends. And what it depends on is the quality of the content that is brought to the table. There are some worldviews that I would not be that interested in, and this happens to be one where I think there is a lot to learn from, and I appreciate learning about a culture that is so different from my own, even if it has these strands of familiarity. And so I think it is great that South Korea is breaking the hegemony of the United States over global popular culture. I think it is good for the world that a country the size of South Korea, which is not huge in population but an economic powerhouse in itself, is doing this.

In your opinion, what is it that made Squid Game so universally popular? More specifically, why do you think the HBS community was so enamored by it?

I think it has to do with several things. One is about competition. There are reasons why we go to sporting events and bet on horses—or even people for that matter. There is always a great appreciation for people who can best themselves in a competitive environment.

Moreover, because it is a fiendishly clever competition, it is weirdly appealing. There is a design to each of these games that are calibrated to promote betrayal. You go from one game where you have to cooperate with the people on your team to the next game where only one of the two of you is going to win. On the one hand, it is quite compelling to watch that, but also, it violates our

sense of morality because we do not like that changing of the rules. These morality plays are some of the most compelling themes in various K-dramas. Squid Game, albeit unintentionally, takes it one step further. An October 7 article in the Wall Street Journal talks about how one of the phone numbers on the business cards flashed on the screen actually belonged to someone, and they were inundated with calls. And none of the producers at Netflix really did anything to protect those harmed as a result of the show’s popularity. For a show and a production house that makes big talk of morality, it inadvertently also raises all these other issues. When we speak of universal popularity, what I find interesting is that there has been lots of media coverage of this—Bloomberg, the Economist, the New York Times, and what have you.

Every OpEd takes a different stance, but it has been written about in business domains. It speaks volumes about income inequality and rigged systems.

Speaking of inequality and rigged systems, you observed how morality often plays a central role in a majority of Korean media, more prominently so, in Squid Game. And you have—quite literally— written a book on morality.

How do you reconcile the general correlation of capitalism and immorality, especially being at Harvard Business School?

I spent 20 years in business before I became a professor and I have always thought that there is a core of morality in doing business well, and you do not need to decorate that with philanthropy. I mean, the simple provision of good products and services that people cannot create for themselves, that helps meet people’s needs or creates jobs, to me, that is a moral act. I have not felt much tension because I studied the merits of what we do, and I also spent a fair amount of my time thinking about what is not so good, but I have not concluded that the system is rotten. It is more the people

and the organizations in that system that do things that are not very palatable.

That would be more of a “how” question; how do people go about making money? How do they go about gaining market share?

How do they go about treating their employees and what are the values that drive the way that they do business? I teach a course called The Moral Leader and I have found that there is a big appetite among students at HBS to try to figure out how they want to behave as leaders. Sure, every student’s heart may not beat to this particular drum, but it gives me great joy to work with students who are trying to figure out what works and what does not.

Even in Squid Game, the caricature of capitalism is very pronounced, you cannot even see the faces of the people who were exploiting the players. And I thought, candidly, that was a little over the top. I did not need them to have the mask to know that they were not great people. I would have liked a little bit more realism because it made it harder for me to take seriously the tension that they were trying to introduce into the series around rich people exploiting poor people.

Popular culture as a whole, and Hollywood in particular, still has a long way to go in rejecting gender stereotypes. How have K-dramas dealt with this?

The typical female character lead in a K-drama would be from a lower socioeconomic background, remarkably capable, smart, and hardworking. And she is someone who has spirit, which helps her overcome the limitations of her status. Almost all of the female leads actually have working lives. And so, I have been fascinated that a lot of K-dramas feature capable women and not just characters who are an appendage to a man. Quite honestly, it surprises me, because even though I am not aware of how women actually fare in Korean society, as a storytelling choice, it is so pronounced

when you watch enough of these shows. There is something here about seeing value in the way that women live their lives. Moreover, K-dramas like Mr. Queen have also tried to break free of the rigidity of gender identity and have plot-based reasons why a character is depicted a certain way.

Speaking of the women in Squid Game, one of them [Han Mi-nyeo] has chops— she will do whatever it takes, to survive. Another [Kang Sae-byeok] does not care what other people think, the only thing she cares about is her brother. Filial piety is a huge theme throughout K-dramas, and she is very much on point in that regard.

Her portrayal is the reason why you feel so good when the little boy, her brother, gets taken care of. And then there is the third character [Ji-yeong], who just sort of wants a friend, someone to be with. That is not a big theme that I have seen in K-drama women—liking women and trying to be friends. This is where the show steps out in a way that I thought was quite moving because she ends up saying “you have something to live for, I do not.” When you think about the three characters I have described, none of those women is just there because she is associated with a male character. And so, even within this highly stylized drama, there is still this thread of women as having value on their own.

Finally, what would you like students at HBS to take away from Squid Game?

Let me try and turn this around, and ask you to think of it as a case in class. The first thing that I would ask students would be: “which character are you?” That is always the question in any drama: which is “who do you identify with and why?”

I think that would stimulate some interesting thoughts from people about why it is that they most identify with X or Y. And I would think that we would have a fair number of people who identify with the character who was in financial services. He seemed like a reasonable individual who got caught up doing some

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evidently unpleasant things.

He evidences a kind of moral flexibility that allows him to do some things that he probably did not feel great about, but that he nonetheless did. I think that there may be a group of people who could see themselves doing that.

Another question is, “what about the show appeals to students?” So what would really interest me is what students’ thoughts are. I could imagine some really good and thoughtful discussions just based on those few questions. You can tell I’m a fun case teacher, haha!

Sandra Sucher is a professor of management practice at HBS and an internationally recognized trust researcher, who studies how organizations become trusted and the vital role leaders play in the process.

Her research has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Quartz, Business Insider, CNBC, NPR, Marketplace, and in Germany, Latin America, and Japan. Sucher is also the Section Chair for RC Section F.

Sapan Shah (MBA ’23) hails from India. Before HBS, he worked in consumer goods and non-profit healthcare, and during the latter had been vital in the implementation of India’s HIV/ AIDS control strategy. He spends his leisure time immersed in popular culture and quizzing.

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Making It Easier to Treat Yourself

Part of a series of articles on female founders, Ziana Kotadia (MBA ’22) asks Grace Gorenstein (MBA ’22) about her beauty startup, tys. male entrepreneurs, single handedly building technology businesses.

Think of Pierre Omidyar, Jeff Bezos, or Aaron Patzer.

I really need someone with technical experience to join me in fighting the good fight (i.e. eliminating chipped nails from female existence), but given the gender bias within tech, I haven’t found a partner with both a deep understanding of tech and also the consumer problem.

How are you balancing HBS and this?

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small break in her busy days to get treatment and take care of herself. If I can create one moment of joy, and peace, for another woman using this technology, I’ll consider tys a success.

When did you first start thinking about tys?

The first iteration of this idea was when I was working in New York. For me, having my nails done was part of being dressed and going into the office. As the only female professional in my office, I felt there was an expectation to show up, and to show up well. Midtown Manhattan however, was a deadzone of nail salons. I thought to myself, I can’t be the only working female in the area that needs an 8am appointment before arriving at the office no later than 9am. I asked myself, why aren’t these salons open earlier or later? I vividly remember that I faced this problem even before I was working. During high school, when I was getting ready for prom, I sat in the pedicure chair waiting for

90 minutes. At that age, I was too shy to say anything, so I just kept waiting. By bringing consumer-facing technology to the largely analogue nail industry, I aim to empower the consumer a little more in a market where she has historically taken what she can get, and hasn’t necessarily enjoyed the experience of self-care.

How has your experience pre-HBS helped you develop this tool?

Following banking, I worked at a consumer focused private equity firm, where my role was to identify interesting high growth consumer companies and understand whether my firm was a good capital and operational partner for them.

Many of those conversations included discussions as to how technology was changing consumer value propositions and uplifting consumer expectations; for example, Amazon Prime’s one-day shipping guarantee has fundamentally altered consumer expectations as to how fast they expect to receive products ordered

online.

During that experience, I got to talk to some incredible founders.

However, I also spoke with a lot of people whose ideas I doubted. What I found inspiring about the founders of these doubtful ideas was their commitment and passion. This made entrepreneurship seem so much more achievable and realistic. During HBS, finding a community of women who are so supportive of me solving this problem, and encourage me to pursue this idea, has given me real confidence. Finance could be very “dog eat dog”, but the women at HBS have done nothing but uplift me.

I don’t think I would have had the confidence or self assurance to pursue this idea if it wasn’t for the amazing women I’ve met here.

What stage is tys at now?

I am in the process of completing our pilot launch.

I am building the technology to launch in 10 salons in the Cambridge area so that women of the Harvard community can start testing this service. Though tys will

always be primarily focused on elevating the consumer experience, I’m also trying to figure out how to improve value to the provider. This is a two-sided marketplace, so I want to build something that will help salons with staffing, scheduling, pricing and customer service. I’m hoping to develop my thesis on how tys could work as a two sided marketplace, and then build capabilities in other service areas, such as eyebrow threading and waxing. After that, I will need to raise some serious money to develop a sustainable application. The fear of failure is real, but I am trying to be resilient. Even if the pilot fails, I will take the venture as a success, because I’ll have learned and pushed myself along the way..

What made you want to launch tys by yourself?

Are you looking to expand your team and find a cofounder?

I am absolutely looking to expand my team, but I’m not looking for a co-founder at this time. We all support the narratives about determined

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I’m not! This is when I really appreciate having other founders on campus.

I’ve had a hard adjustment coming back to being in person. Before this, we had small breaks between classes where I could do laundry or do a little bit of grocery shopping. My internship this summer was also remote, so I was able to work on tys in the early morning before work, after the workday ended, and on weekends.

Being in the classroom is all consuming, in the best way possible, but I definitely feel like I’m not as connected to as many people as I was last year. My balance is way off right now, but I’m hoping things will settle soon once I’m in a better routine.

Grace Gorenstein (HBS ’22) grew up in New York. She founded tys to digitize the nail salon booking experience. After two years of investment banking, Grace co-ran the L Catterton Flagship Fund’s Proprietary Deal Origination team. Representing a $2.5bn consumer-focused fund her work resulted in $470M in capital deployed. tys is her solution to the challenges professional women face when trying to book everyday beauty appointments.

Ziana Kotadia (MBA ’22) is from the UK, and most recently made the move from London to Boston.

She loves to travel, learn about new cultures and enjoys eating her way through cities. She loves to cook and is passionate about great food.

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Building a Clean Skincare Brand

Part of a series of articles on female founders, Ziana Kotadia (MBA ’22) asks Elizabeth Arenz (MBA ’22) about her skincare startup, Belle House.

Ziana Kotadia, Women Leadership Editor Elizabeth Arenz (HBS ’22) worked in Investment Banking and Private Equity before attending HBS. She is passionate about beauty, skincare and sustainability.

Italy is her favourite country in the world

Tell us more about your start-up, Belle House?

Belle House is a skincare brand that gives consumers the most potent form of skincare ingredients, such as retinol and vitamin C, in plastic free packaging. The goal of Belle House is to use clinically proven ingredients that will actually change your skin for the better, with no filler ingredients, while being kind to the environment. Belle House is inspired by Italy and the Amalfi Coast. I chose Italy specifically for a few reasons.

Firstly, I have a personal love for Italy having studied there as an Art History major, and returning to the country nearly 10 times across my life so far. Secondly, there is such a rich heritage in Italy of craftsmanship, and doing things “the right way.”

There is so much pride in the country for good quality products.

What makes you passionate about the beauty industry?

I first became interested in the clean and plastic-free side of beauty when my fiancé was using Malin and

Goetz deodorant that didn’t have aluminum in it, and said it worked really well. I had also recently heard from my older sister, who is in the healthcare space, that if you have breast cancer, doctors recommend you don’t use antiperspirants, which have aluminum in them. I found this really interesting, and so looked up the ingredients of all the other beauty brands I owned. I realised there are so many different ingredients, all taking different forms, with different properties. I went on this journey of ingredient and product discovery, and immersed myself in reviews from dermatologists, even looking at dermatology journals. At the same time, I was also in investing, and one of the portfolio companies was a private label manufacturer of soup and baby food. I was in the warehouses of other similar companies and saw so much plastic packaging, there were

cases and cases of plastic bottles. I learnt that when plastic isn’t refrigerated, and gets warm, the plastic can leak into the substance the packaging contains. I started thinking about how much plastic there is around me, and also re-evaluating my own behaviours. Most of the products I love are in plastic containers.

What products will you start with?

I will start with a facial moisturiser after having done some research on what people are most willing to try.

Moisturisers can also be much simpler than a serum, and are most important for a beauty regime. Even when you’re wearing nothing else on your face, everyone always tends to use a moisturiser. The plan is to launch seven skincare products initially, including a cleansing balm, a water based cleanser, and eye cream and

three serums (retinol, vitamin C, glycolic acid).

What are your ambitions for the brand?

I hope the brand will be D2C initially. Then I’d like to be in retailers such as Blue Mercury, Credo Beauty and the Detox Market. These places will help me stay authentic to the brand, and the clean messaging. Eventually I’d like to be stocked in places like Sephora. The goal is to be big enough, and disruptive enough, to push other brands to be sustainable.

female entrepreneurs, as well as the professors who are experts in different spaces, from strategy to branding to entrepreneurship. The alumni network has also proven invaluable. You can reach out to the CEO of a large beauty company, and they’ll respond to you because you have this shared connection of HBS. The school does a great job of fostering entrepreneurship, and makes you realise it may not be as not as risky as you think it is.

How has HBS helped you develop this idea?

Start-up bootcamp was incredibly helpful, it introduced ways of thinking about how you start a company. For me, the biggest help has really been the network, meeting other solo founders and

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Ziana Kotadia (MBA ’22) is from the UK, and most recently made the move from London to Boston.

She loves to travel, learn about new cultures and enjoys eating her way through cities. She loves to cook and is passionate about great food.

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The Great Latin American Venture Opportunity VC funding for LatAm startups grows 185% YoY with two months left in 2021.

Diego Salas, Contributor

Tell us more about your background and what inspired you to be an entrepreneur.

My passion for entrepreneurship was born when I started investing in startups as an angel investor in March 2020. In addition to investing capital, I often joined as an advisor to the businesses aiming to put into play what I had learned in my academic (business administration/finance) and professional career (scaling technology products). What I quickly realized was that the investor in me aimed to capture value while my strategic orientation aimed to create value. I also realized that by getting deeply involved with the business, the value I created would ultimately allow me to capture additional financial value in the future. Could there be a way to systematically do both? This is when the idea of operating an investment vehicle first came to mind, and Epakon was born.

What is the problem that

you are trying to solve?

There are two main issues that are related: 1. Latin America historically has experienced a mass exodus of talent because of the ubiquitous social, political, and macroeconomic challenges in the region.

People who have opportunities or have gotten high levels of secondary education tend to leave their home countries in pursuit of a better quality of life elsewhere. This phenomenon has created a never-ending cycle, where the talent gap increases as countries cannot always reap the rewards of the citizens they have educated. Because of this, innovation in the region lagged that of the developed world, even though the region is home to over 600M people.

2. Given the lack of innovation, the region has always been underdigitalized.

Until Covid-19 hit in early 2020, it was not a substantial issue, but now it is the focus of every government and company that is looking

to scale and become more efficient.

What is your edge?

Epakon deploys strategic capital for firms looking to build, grow, and scale their operations. The largest valueadd, however, is not the capital itself but what comes with it, which is a team of experts in venture, technology, and finance, which also has a track record of success with a ~10x MOIC (Multiple on Invested Capital) over the past 18 months.

What was the inspiration behind Epakon?

Our first portfolio company, Yummy, crushed all expectations. It wasn’t always easy. Bringing capital to what was at the time a flailing economy, Venezuela, was tough. We got more nos than yeses by a landslide, but we knew the amount of capital we needed to launch and be successful, so we persevered, and we were able to close a full round of funding. Beyond the financial return, we have been able to generate thousands of jobs and power an economy to its first positive GDP growth in a decade. This impact that both our capital and strategic thinking can achieve is what

inspires us every day.

Tell us more about Yummy.

In Venezuela, we are doing over 4M in annualized transactions. The company expanded its offerings to include ridesharing and quick commerce (under ten minute deliveries). The Series A we just closed will allow us to expand across the region, starting with Peru and Chile, both of which launched last month. The goal is to be in every country in Latin America within two years.

How did you get started?

Angel investing requires capital. We were fortunate to have worked in technology and finance jobs for a few years, which allowed us to build sufficient wealth to start investing VC-type checks.

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Any advice for people looking to start investing in startups?

Nowadays, platforms like Republic, AngelList, StartEngine, and WeFunder allow you to invest small amounts of capital into startups, so if you are interested in getting involved and fit the qualifying criteria, you can start investing.

Diego Salas (MBA ’22) is a founding partner at Epakon Capital, a Latino-managed venture fund investing across Latin America. At HBS, Diego served as Social Chair for section F as well as VC Chair for the Entrepreneurship Club. Diego’s goal is to uncover technologies that create positive social compounding effects around the globe. He is passionate about wine, cooking, and exercising.

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Alumni Startup Corner: Investors’ Favorite HBS Companies

HBS alumni venture capital investors share their favorite startups founded by fellow HBS graduates. Keith Bender (MBA ’20) reports.

Keith Bender, Contributor

HBS alumni startup founders have created $364B in market value since 2010.

Accordingly, graduates in the venture capital industry closely follow the companies our fellow alumni are building.

This month, I asked a panel of alumni VCs to share: “What are your current favorite HBS alumni-founded startups—at any stage, whether you have invested in them or not?”

Nnamdi Okike (MBA ’09, 645 Ventures)

Dave Anderson (MBA ’19, Beat Ventures) My favorite HBSfounded startup is HeadsUp, which is a no-code platform that generates actionable Product Qualified Leads (PQLs), allowing companies to zero in on customers that are most likely to buy. We were first introduced to Earl Lee (Harvard MS/MBA candidate) and his co-founder Momo Ong from fellow 645 portfolio company and current unicorn, FiscalNote. We were impressed with the team’s in-depth market expertise, technical ability, and passion for the industry, ultimately convincing us to lead their Seed round.

Merritt Hummer (MBA ’16, Bain Capital Ventures)

There are two early-stage startups founded by classmates that I’m super excited about.

The first is Foodology which was co-founded by my section-mate, Daniela Izquierdo. They’re scaling virtual restaurant brands across Latin America and just raised a $15M Series A led by a16z. The second is Bundle, founded by Kayla Lebovitz, which provides personalized, interactive experiences for employees.

Eric Paley (MBA ’03, Founder Collective)

and sold this year in a terrific outcome.

And on another crazy level of scale, we were very lucky to be seed investors behind Bom Kim (who left the MBA program after 6 months) and Coupang. It’s worth around $50B now as a public company and makes a convincing case for being the leading mobile commerce company in the world.

thredUP comes first to mind. We were very lucky to meet James Reinhart (MBA ’09) very early and be investors from the first round through the IPO. And although we weren’t investors, I also greatly admire Ovia Health, founded by Paris Wallace (MBA ’08). It gets less attention than it deserves

Tim Brady (MBA ’95, Y Combinator)

My favorite HBS alumni-founded startup is the Southeast Asian juggernaut Grab, for the simple reason that it is in my opinion the most consequential technology company to ever come out of HBS. The company started out as a ride-hailing startup and rapidly expanded into delivery, ecommerce, payments and financial services. It is slated to go public later this year at a valuation of ~$40 billion via Altimeter’s SPAC.

Corey Mulloy (MBA ’01, Highland Capital)

I’m biased as an investor, but Julia Cheek (MBA ’11)— Everlywell—is the best.

Alex Taussig (MBA ’09, Lightspeed)

I’m a big fan of Torch Dental, founded by Khaled Boukadoum (MBA ’17), which is transforming the world of dental procurement through its operating system for dental offices. Torch’s long term vision is to combine the best of vertical SaaS, embedded fintech, and embedded procurement.

2012. The other is Cloudflare (NET), which continues to soar to new heights and power a nontrivial portion of the internet.

Two HBS-founded companies that I’ve enjoyed working with at YC are Ribbon Health and UpEquity. Ribbon Health, founded by Nate Fox (MBA ’17) and Nate Maslak (MBA ’17), is providing healthcare information to companies in order to lower the cost of care. UpEquity, led by Tim Herman (MBA ’20) and Louis Wilson (MBA ’20), is helping home buyers increase their buying power by competing with all-cash offers.

Both teams are great, wellmatched founders with superb technical talent.

Rob Toews (MBA ’17, Radical Ventures)

I’d pick two, both founded by my classmates from 2009.

One is thredUP (TDUP), which just went public this year and was my first investment when I moved to the West Coast in

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Keith Bender (MBA ’20) is an investor at Pear VC in Palo Alto, where he invests at preseed, seed, and Series A rounds across industries. He leads Baker Founders, a community dedicated to HBS alumni entrepreneurs.

Previously, Keith worked at Bessemer Venture Partners and BCG. He is a graduate of Harvard College and is originally from Arizona. For comments and questions, please reach out to keith@pear.vc.

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MY TAKE

Living Authentically In celebration of National Coming Out Day, Margarita Chiquiza (MBA ’22) shares her story.

Margarita Chiquiza, Contributor [This is a transcript of the My Take given by Margarita Chiquiza (MBA ’22) in Klarman on October 12, 2021] Thank you all for taking the time to hear my story. It is just one of many millions, and it’s not representative of the entire pride community.

Everyone’s story is unique— this just happens to be mine.

I hope that in sharing it with you, you will be inspired to be more empathetic, and to live more courageously. It has taken me many years to embrace who I am. I have learned how to cultivate compassion and stand in my own power, but this path hasn’t been straightforward.

But to tell you my story, I have to start with my mother’s.

It’s the year 1970 in Chinavita, a small town in the countryside of Colombia.

In a farm in the outskirts of the village, seven children are feeding the cattle in the blazing sun. Their father watches them from the shade of a tree. He doesn’t take care of them or give them any money—and the only food he offers are the scraps from his meals. The oldest, a girl, pockets her food and shares it with her siblings in the dark before bed.

See, when my mother was seventeen, her mother died in a car accident. She was left to raise her six younger siblings and protect them from my abusive grandfather who forced them to work on his farm. Eventually, my mother was able to escape the peasant life and protect her siblings— they moved to Bogota, the capital, where she worked in a cafeteria during the day and studied at night. And she never forgot what her mother taught her: that education was the key to a better life. She worked hard and became an attorney, eventually earning enough to put all of her siblings through college.

They were the first generation in my family to earn college degrees.

When my brother and I were born, my mom was determined to provide us with every opportunity to help us succeed. She dedicated herself to us completely, and she invested every penny into our education.

She taught us the importance of resilience and hard work, and always challenged us to dream big. I was raised by an extraordinary woman—I

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MY TAKE

know for sure I would not be here with you today if it wasn’t for all the sacrifices she made.

And so, growing up, I wanted to live a life my mother could be proud of. I wanted to live up to the opportunities she gave me—by being my best academically, and professionally. At school, I excelled inside and outside the classroom. My mother enrolled my brother and me in every extracurricular activity you could think of. I took swimming, horse-riding, karate, skating, math, English and French lessons. You name it, I did it. When I got into the best university in Colombia, my mom encouraged me to go, and never for a second let me worry about whether we could afford it. She made sure I was able to get the best education in the country, because in her mind, again, that was the only way to move forward.

You might be wondering where my dad fits into this picture. Well, he doesn’t. My parents divorced when I was four. My mom had to fight in court for our alimony and, because my father had great lawyers, he got away with having to contribute very little to support us—despite him being a very successful businessman. While I was in college, my mom struggled to pay for my education, sometimes borrowing from my uncle to get through the year. When my brother finished his undergrad, he also started helping out financially.

After I graduated, I received a full-time offer to work at a regional brokerage firm. At the time, I thought it was a good opportunity.

But my mom challenged me to dream bigger. She said that I shouldn’t settle for a regional company,

that I deserved better, that I needed to fight for the things I wanted. Because she believed in me, I decided to apply to the most competitive jobs in finance—without any finance background. I ended up landing a job at Advent, where I was fortunate to work alongside some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Without a doubt, that job set my career, and my life, on a completely different trajectory—and I have my mother to thank for that. My mom has always been my biggest cheerleader when it comes to what I can accomplish. And she still is. She gives me confidence when I have doubts, and she’s never stopped challenging me to dream bigger.

But at home, for my brother and me, the rules were strict, and our options were limited. My mom raised us with the same narrow-minded view of the world she absorbed from her conservative Catholic upbringing in rural Colombia.

Fulfilling her vision of success also meant hiding who I was.

And in doing that, I learned to hide from myself, too. For the first twenty years of my life, I felt like a stranger to myself. I didn’t know who I was, and I lived in constant fear of people discovering that I was gay.

This was compounded by the fact that my parents’ divorce, and my dad’s rejection, made me a very shy, introverted kid growing up. I was afraid of being rejected again. I never talked to friends about my dad or how hard it was to feel abandoned by him. I protected myself by keeping people at a distance—by keeping so many parts of me hidden from sight.

When I was young, I never imagined that I might be gay—I didn’t even have

the vocabulary or education to describe how I felt. But thinking back now, I can see that some of the friendships I had were more platonic than others. Growing up, I only dated guys. Those were the rules, and my mind couldn’t even begin to imagine that things could be any different.

My life was colorless and dull.

Then, when I was 17, I met a girl in French class who I couldn’t stay away from. I felt so drawn to her. We’d spend hours talking non-stop, and one night we got drunk, and we kissed. For me, it felt like an earthquake. Everything made sense. I wanted to be with her, to capture this new feeling, to keep it safe and close and never let it go.

But for her I was just a distraction. Someone to help her forget her ex. She never let me in. She was the first person I said “I love you” to, and the first person to say she didn’t love me back. She said we didn’t have a chance in life as lesbians, so there was no point in trying. I was completely broken; I couldn’t wrap my mind around losing something that, for the first time, felt so good, so real.

Getting over her was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. You see, I didn’t have a support system, I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened, what I was going through. Deep down, I couldn’t shake the feeling that what had happened was wrong and a sin, and that no one could ever know. I shoved it deep down inside myself and decided never to think about it again. But after breaking up with my first, and last, serious boyfriend at 22, I was determined to finally, properly, date a woman.

Honestly, I just thought it was something that I needed

to get out of my system so that I could move on with living the life that I’d worked so hard to build. The life my mother had worked so hard to make possible for me.

Soon enough, I realized this wasn’t something temporary.

The more I dated women, the more I found my true self, the more I reconnected with the little girl I once was, who felt free and safe in her own skin.

It felt liberating, authentic and at the same time very, very scary.

For a while, I didn’t tell anyone. I told friends that my work was keeping me too busy to date. At the office I was constantly on edge, asking myself in every situation “What would a straight woman say?” I wouldn’t ask people about their lives out of fear that they might ask about mine. I was terrified that if people ever found out they would think less of me or treat me differently. After all, if my mother—the woman who raised me and opened every door for me, believed it was a sin, that it was evil, how could I not assume that everyone else would, too?

And deep down, I still thought that there was something wrong with me, too. I felt ashamed.

You see, my entire life, I was taught that there were consequences to breaking the rules we’d all been taught. At school, kids used to bully the butch girl who hung out with the boys and played soccer and bully the boys who didn’t act tough enough. In undergrad, I didn’t know a single gay person.

At work, I was surrounded by very straight, mostly conservative men. One of my managers was constantly telling homophobic jokes and everyone else just laughed along. It didn’t seem like a place that would welcome me if they knew who I really was.

I felt like I was in a cage.

I couldn’t stop worrying that someone would find out, that my lies wouldn’t add up and that if they realized I was gay, that I would never be promoted or, worse, that I’d be fired. So, I worked as hard as I possibly could to keep my secret safe from them.

At home, being gay was a sin, the work of the devil.

Being gay would shatter the strong and successful family image my mom worked so hard to project to the rest of the world. At dinner, with my uncles, conversations would sometimes turn to how unnatural it was for same same-sex couples to marry.

And how ridiculous it was that gay couples were allowed to adopt kids. In their mind, kids would be better off in the streets—anywhere but with a gay couple. All this to say that having a gay child was probably my mom’s worst nightmare.

After a year or so of dating women, I finally built up the courage to come out to my closest friends. Really, I figured out that if I drank enough liquid courage, and cried until my eyes were swollen shut, I could

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eventually manage to choke out the words “I think that I am gay.” To my surprise, everyone I told was incredibly accepting—they were my friends and they wanted me to be happy. For so many years I felt alone. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I felt like the only way for me to exist was to be invisible, unseen, unheard, unknown.

That was how I could fit in, be accepted. Be successful. But in coming out to my friends, I discovered that, while there is some safety in invisibility, there is freedom and power in being seen. There is power and joy, in being vulnerable and showing my whole self to people. I was finally able to say how I felt, to make real connections, true friendships.

Now, coming out to my family was a different story.

I didn’t exactly come out to my mom. She found out, one night, when I brought my girlfriend at the time to my apartment without realizing that my mom was there. When she opened the door and saw us kissing, I could feel the whole world shaking underneath me. She immediately started screaming at us about hell, the devil, and prostitution.

She even threatened to call the police. That night, I confronted my mom. I told her not to yell at us, and I even built up the courage to tell her that gay people could also be successful, that I would better off because of it, not worse.

Soon after, however, I broke up with my girlfriend and my mom and I never talked about that night ever again. For a while, things seemed like they’d gone back to normal— or at least to the way that they had been before. On the inside, I continued to struggle with my sexuality and how to live up to my mom’s definition of success. A part of me still secretly believed that one day I’d be able to settle down with a husband and have a nice, straight family.

However, in January of 2018, I met Diana, my partner, the light of my eyes.

We met on Tinder, and I didn’t have high expectations—I thought I wouldn’t have much in common with an artist.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. On our first date we went to a bar in downtown Bogota, and we had an insane chemistry. We didn’t take our eyes off each other for the entire night. I can still see her smile from that night—it made me want to laugh, to kiss her and to share my life with her. It was the first time that I didn’t care if anyone was watching me, if anyone saw me, or knew my secrets, because the woman across the table, she knew me.

And that mattered more than anything else.

She was funny, pretty, and driven, a self-made entrepreneur and, most importantly, a free soul, undeniably authentic to herself. I fell for her right on the spot. I started spending all my time with her. I had Continued on page 14

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MY TAKE

Continued from page 13

never been as happy or as free in my whole life. With her, all my fears—the feelings of loneliness, and anxiety about being outed, all of it felt like feelings that belonged to someone else; a different person and a different life. I was free in a way that I had never been before. I began to see life through Diana’s eyes: For her, being gay wasn’t something to hide, it was who she was. It was a part of her, and like every other part of her, it was authentic and powerful.

At the time, I was still living with my mom. And our apartment window overlooked the street. So my mom started to recognize Diana’s car, and she could see that it was a woman driving.

Soon, she realized I was seeing another woman, and she began to cycle between denial and anger. One day, she would pretend everything was okay, and the next she would storm out of the room midconversation, calling Diana the devil, and blaming her for taking her daughter down to the sinful path. This went on for a while, until one day on a bright afternoon in July, we went out for lunch and out of nowhere, she broke down crying and she told me she couldn’t keep living with me.

She said she’d been suffering from anxiety and having trouble sleeping knowing that I was out with Diana doing God-knows-what. I was devastated, but not entirely surprised. I told her that I loved her, and that if moving out would make her feel more comfortable, I would.

My mother had sacrificed everything, her whole life, for her family, especially for my brother and me and I would have given anything to make her happy. But I could not give up Diana. Not her.

She was the love of my life.

When my mom told my brother she wanted to live alone, he couldn’t understand what could have gone so wrong that my mom would rather live alone. So, he took a flight to Colombia from the US, where he was working at the time, and confronted me. Besides my mom, my brother was the other person I was most afraid to come out to. He was my idol. And, growing up, we were always competing to be the best— in school, at sports, and once we’d graduated, in our careers as well. A part of me was afraid that telling him I was gay would mean losing the race we’d been in since childhood or, worse, that he’d no longer see me as his equal, that I’d lose his respect forever. After the longest 2 hours of my life and a very persuasive interrogation, I finally came out to my brother in a sea of tears. And, to my surprise, he hugged me tight and told me that he could not possibly love me more. He said that yes, he was Catholic and yes, he was conservative, but most importantly, he was my brother and that he would always have my back.

We were a team, he said.

And that was it. From that moment on, my brother has been my advocate. He’s been the one who’s had the difficult conversations that I never could. He’ll pick up the phone and say, Mamá, you don’t know what it would mean to Margarita if you would accept that she is gay. I love him so much for that.

My mom’s journey with my sexuality has been a bumpy one and it’s a journey she’s still on. She loves me and my brother more than anything in the world. And she wants so badly for us to be happy. But it has been very, very hard for her to reconcile the way she was raised, and her beliefs, with who I am.

At first, she tried her best to

pretend I wasn’t gay. She still loved me, still supported me, but it was easier to do those things if she didn’t feel like she was betraying her own values. However, it got harder to pretend once I started dating Diana. I was out all the time, and from our apartment window, she saw the same blue car pick me up night after night. It became impossible to ignore. And so, she moved out—out of sight, out of mind. Still, ever since that night when she walked in on me kissing a woman, we’d never talked about me being gay.

As I applied to business school, I realized how important it was to start this new chapter of my life honestly, and without fear.

This was a time for visibility and power, not invisibility and safety. I asked my mom if I could read her one of my essays. She said yes. She sat quietly, not saying a word, as I read to her. I kept my eyes on the page as I explained how hard it had been for me to live up to my mom’s sacrifices while at the same time embracing my sexuality.

By the time I finished, we were both sobbing. For a while we just hugged each other and cried. We still didn’t talk about me being gay, but she did say “Margarita, I love you. And I always will.”

Since I’ve been at HBS, my mom has had time to reflect on how she wants our relationship to be—she has realized that if she keeps trying to ignore this part of me, she’ll never really know me. Not fully, not truly. Neither of us wanted that, but there was no way to avoid it. Diana and the Pride community here have become core parts of my life. They make me happy, they make me feel free, they’ve helped me to discover the parts of myself I love most. I am myself because of them.

About a month ago, my mother called me out of nowhere. I almost dropped my phone when I picked up and she said “Margarita, I accept you.” I had waited my whole life for her to say these words, I almost couldn’t believe she was actually saying them. She still didn’t say the word “gay,” but she said she knew I’ve had a tough life, and that for the years she has left, she wanted to be there for me. She just wants me to be happy, to be part of my life. She loves me, and even though she’s not 100% there yet, she wants to accept that part of me. A few weeks ago, my mother came to visit me here at HBS. It was nerve-wracking, for both of us. I’ve been re-learning how to share my life with her.

The morning before she arrived, I went to open up the fridge to make breakfast, and right in front of me was a picture of me and Diana at the Gatsby party. We hadn’t dressed up like that in years—COVID times—so we were very excited, and we made sure to get pictures to have memories of the night.

We’re being goofy in one of them, we’re smiling so big in another—Diana’s smile is the same as the night we met at that bar in Bogota, the night I fell in love with her. And in the last photo we’re kissing.

For a moment, that morning, I wondered if I should hide the photo before my mom arrived. If I should cover it with a magnet, or take it down altogether and hide it in some drawer. But I kept the photo up. I had felt what it was like to be known, and to be seen, and to be loved for who I was, by my friends, by my brother, by Diana, and I couldn’t go back.

I wanted to feel that way with my mother. When she got to my apartment, I watched her eyes go to the fridge and find that photograph. My heart was racing. She looked at me

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and said, “Wow, your fridge is so big!” Baby steps.

Later, she asked me about my friends here and I told her about the Pride community at HBS, and I even talked to her a bit about Diana, though we didn’t use the word “partner.”

Still, it’s the first time I’ve ever said her name to my mom.

We went for a walk around Boston Common and there was a Pride fair going on. My mother said she wanted to check it out and I thought she must not have known what it was. But when I told her that it was a Pride event, she just nodded and said, “it’s okay.”

A year ago, I couldn’t have ever imagined that I’d be telling my mom that my friends at business school were the gay community, that I’d be telling her about Diana, that after moving out of our apartment because it was too hard for her to see Diana pick me up, she’d come visit me here and stay in an apartment with pictures of me kissing the woman who was behind the wheel of that little blue car.

I could have never imagined that I’d be telling this story, my story, here, in front of all you, and that my mom and brother would be sitting in the audience, listening. But they are. I know it hasn’t been easy, but I am so, so proud of her. And I hope that someday she also gets to be proud of this part of my life, that she gets to admire that I chose courage instead of safety, that I chose happiness instead of fear.

Some day.

Te amo, Mamá.

One

day.

Margarita Chiquiza (MBA ’22) was born and raised in Colombia.

She worked in Private Equity for 5 years and will join Google after school. She is passionate about running, meditation, reggaeton, and all things PRIDE!

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THE HARBUS NEWS

PA G E F I F T E E N

COMMENTARY

Stop Waiting for Your Soul Mate Love isn’t destiny. That’s what makes it so sweet.

Arthur Brooks, Contributor

[Editor’s note: This article was first published in the September 9, 2021 edition of the Atlantic. © 2021, Arthur Brooks.]

Do you believe in true love? Probably so: 94 percent of Americans say they do, according to one 2019 survey by the data-collection company Statista. I am one of them, after 30 years of marriage to my true love.

True love isn’t too controversial, I think. But a large portion of Americans also hold some even more romantic—and less realistic— beliefs about love. According to a 2017 survey run by the dating site Elite Singles, 61 percent of women and 72 percent of men believe in love at first sight. Back in 2011, a Marist poll asked, “Do you believe in the idea of soul mates, that is two people who are destined to be together?”

To this question, 74 percent of men and 71 percent of women answered “yes.”

To many of those who believe in them, these widespread, almost magical notions of romance might be the essence of true love.

Others might say that a more earthbound approach to romance is better—that true love over the long haul is a combination of good luck, free will, and hard work. The evidence shows that the latter group is correct. What’s more, engaging in fanciful ideas about romantic love can make it harder to find and keep.

M a n y studies have shown that popular culture and media tend to portray love and romance unrealistically, leaning disproportionately on love at first sight and living happily ever after. Research on Disney’s animated movies, for example, shows that the majority of them rely on exactly these themes. These films may, in turn, influence children’s and young adults’ views about romance. A 2002 study on 285 unmarried undergraduate students (both women and men) found a strong correlation between the time they spent watching television programs related to love and romance and how much they expressed idealistic expectations about marriage.

A 2016 study found that tween girls who had recently watched a movie depicting a love story

were more likely to “endorse idealistic romantic beliefs” than those who had watched a non-romantic movie.

Despite its popularity in stories and movies, love at first sight has little to do with reality.

Researchers have found that what people describe as “love at first sight” has no connection to the real hallmarks of true love, including passion, intimacy, and commitment.

Rather, “love at first sight” is either a phrase people use about the past to romanticize their meeting (notwithstanding the way it actually happened) or one that they use to describe exceptionally strong physical attraction.

Even though it’s a fantasy, believing in love at first sight is relatively harmless for couples. That’s because it’s a retrospective narrative, not one that sets expectations about the current relationship or the future.

Other idealistic but unrealistic beliefs can do a lot of damage.

Take the idea of romantic destiny, or “soul mates”— the belief that two people are deliberately brought together by unseen forces. Research on hundreds of college students has shown that such expectations are correlated with dysfunctional patterns in relationships, such as the assumption that partners will understand and predict each other’s wishes and desires with little effort or communication

because they’re a cosmically perfect match. In other words, a belief in destiny leads to a belief in mind reading.

This wreaks havoc on relationships. For one, it hinders forgiveness after a fight (“You should know what bothers me without me having to tell you!”), which in turn increases distress and escalates the severity of conflicts.

Researchers have also found that people who believe in destiny are more likely to end a relationship via “ghosting,” in which one partner abruptly cuts off contact, leaving the ghosted partner to suffer a breakup with no explanation.

Perhaps people in search of their soul mate feel less of a sense of responsibility to the other person if that particular relationship simply wasn’t meant to be.

The opposite of “destiny beliefs” is a conviction of free will—the view that partners decide whether they should be together, and thus, that they are responsible for the relationship’s success. Lest that sound a bit unromantic, researchers have found clear evidence that when the belief in free will increases, so do one’s feelings of passionate love in a relationship.

Fundamentally, destiny beliefs in romance commit the “arrival fallacy”: the belief that once a certain circumstance is attained, all will be permanently well. Believing

in soul mates is functionally the same as believing that if you get a certain job, achieve financial independence, or move to a sunny place, you will have true and lasting satisfaction. Nothing is more human than this belief, which keeps us hopeful in spite of our negative experiences. But it is a recipe for unhappiness.

We cannot attain permanent satisfaction—at least, not in this mortal coil—and waiting for it will leave us disappointed over and over again.

If you’re searching for the right relationship, you can avoid the pitfalls of destiny beliefs in three ways. First, remember that Hollywood doesn’t have your love interests at heart. When you indulge in a romantic comedy, consider its source. According to the U.K.based Marriage Foundation, “A-list” screen stars have a divorce rate of 52 percent within the first 16 years of their first or subsequent marriages, more than 10 points higher than the rate after the same length of time among even the divorciest cohort of Americans, who wed for the first time in the 1970s; more than 20 points higher than Americans who wed for the first time in the 1960s; and 21 points higher than the U.K. average. Not even the creators of the movie can achieve the standard they are promoting. Enjoy the occasional rom-com as entertainment if you must,

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but do so in the way you do science fiction, because it is about as realistic.

Second, work deliberately to make sure that your romance grows beyond the white-hot flame that characterizes new love. Maintaining passionate love forever after is not only an unrealistic goal, but one that wouldn’t make you happy even if it were possible. On the contrary, the most joyful, enduring romances are those that are able to evolve from passionate to companionate love—which still has plenty of passion, but is fundamentally based in deep friendship. To increase the odds of success, as your romance progresses, don’t ask yourself, “Is our passion as high as it was?” but rather, “Is our friendship deepening?”

Finally, ask any potential partners about their destiny beliefs right from the start.

Someone who says he is looking for his “soul mate” or who confesses to believing in love at first sight might seem wonderfully romantic at the outset, but a few weeks or months down the line, he’ll be disproportionately likely to be unable to forgive you for not reading his mind, or to suddenly become unreachable by voice, text, DM, or email.

Looking for a realist is a better bet.

Enduring love is not some kind of cosmic switch, turned on once and for all by mysterious forces. Rather, it is a dial that we can turn up over time by the commitments we choose to make and keep to one another. Romantic love is very much like any other important pursuit: Success comes from our ongoing effort; satisfaction from a job well done.

“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,” Shakespeare wrote in his 116th sonnet, “But bears it out even to the edge of doom.” True love goes on and on, along sometimes bumpy roads.

Challenges and low points are not evidence that partners are not meant to be together; rather, they are inevitable, and opportunities for growth.

Long-term romance is such a sweet adventure precisely because it is not destiny.

Arthur C. Brooks is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, the William Henry Bloomberg professor of the practice of public leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a professor of management practice at the Harvard Business School. He’s the host of the podcast series How to Build a Happy Life.

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