In this episode, Alex Neuber (HBS '21) is interviewed by her co-host Julia about her journey from marketing at Wayfair to Harvard Business School and eventually to entrepreneurship in the food tech industry. Alex shares how a gallbladder surgery in college sparked her passion for food and nutrition, leading her to pivot her career focus toward the food industry while building entrepreneurial skills at a high-growth company.
The conversation covers Alex's essay writing process, her strategic approach to business school applications, and her current role at a food tech startup called Foodberry. She discusses the importance of authenticity in essays, the value of intentional decision-making, and her philosophy on entrepreneurship that prioritizes autonomy over venture capital backing. Alex also shares practical advice about taking the GMAT early and building a genuine narrative that connects past experiences to future goals.
The application process for business school was one of the most stressful periods of my life, other than planning my wedding. I just got married, so at the time it was the most stressful time in my life. It didn't help that it was also a stressful period at work, so it was just the combination of both.
I felt like it was a pretty lonely process a lot of the time. Yes, I had friends going through it, but at the end of the day it's such a process of just looking inward and trying to come up with your story. And then you start comparing yourself, and when you start going down the comparison route, you start to doubt yourself, and that is like a very lonely death spiral, basically.
I'm the youngest of three, and my siblings before me have done very well career-wise. My brother did the I-banking route, then private equity, and now is working in Bermuda. He's second to the CFO at a massive reinsurance company down there, and he's actually at Wharton right now doing their executive program. My sister, out of school, did the GE FMP program, which is I think the oldest financial training program in the country, and then did management consulting, and she went to MIT Sloan. So again, my siblings were crushing it, and so I was trying to also crush it career-wise, live up to the precedent that was set.
I'd wanted to go to business school starting in undergrad. When I was a sophomore in college I went to the women in business conference that HBS hosted, and I remember calling my mom on the way home telling her, like, I need to go here someday. So I for sure had my sights set on business school even before knowing my sister was going to go to MIT. It was particularly an entrepreneurship panel during that conference that I was like, oh yeah, I want to go to HBS and one day start my own company. That was what I had in mind. My brother can set a legacy in finance, I can set a legacy in entrepreneurship.
For sure, and especially at that conference, all the women on the panel, I was like, wow, they're so cool, and I can't wait until I'm them.
I'm originally from upstate New York, Clifton Park, which is in between Albany and Saratoga. I was very focused on school, and I was the valedictorian of my high school, so that for sure helped in terms of all the application process. I was just so focused on college for a very long time. I think I started college visits in my sophomore year of high school. I was going on college tours with my sister too, so I was like, oh, let me keep this in mind for what I want as well.
Funny enough, when I went to visit Cornell it was the only one my parents didn't go with me, and I came back and I was like, yeah, I'm going to apply to Cornell early decision. I really liked my tour guide, and he was saying that he was in the business major at Cornell, and I was like, oh yeah, I feel like I should do business. So at Cornell the business major is applied economics and management. We call it AIM. At the time, instant messenger was still a thing, so I was kind of confused why everyone was talking about AIM. But no, so I applied to the AIM program specifically, or the Dyson school as it's now called, and went early decision.
When I got there I was so glad I chose the business program. I really liked my professors, what I was learning. And then sophomore year, which you'll hear more about in my essay, I had to get my gallbladder removed, and coming out of it it was just a long process of trying to feel better and get back to normal. Meanwhile, I happened to be at one of the most agricultural focused schools in the US, or at least in the Northeast, and so I started taking some of the food industry classes in addition to the rest of my business classes, and then ended up
Loving the professors, I did a food marketing fellow program on campus, went to the produce marketing show out in Anaheim, California as part of the student program, did a lot of food stuff really quickly. I did my summer internship sophomore year in Bentonville, Arkansas at Walmart headquarters, working on the coffee, pasta, and breakfast cereal division within Sam's Club.
I got to meet Fergie, still have a picture of her. And also it was the 50th anniversary of Walmart, and so every year they do a huge shareholders meeting and they went all out, like they got Celine Dion, Taylor Swift, Lionel Richie, and Zac Brown to perform. Highlight of the summer. They have a great intern program, they for sure spoil their interns, it was really fun.
And then the next summer I went to Unilever and worked on Country Crock margarine. Margarine, the sexiest of businesses, Can't Believe It's Not Butter's step cousin. It had been declining relative to butter for like the last 10 years. The reason I didn't go back to Unilever was you could tell the people on the team all wanted to be working on Dove and Axe within Unilever, which is understandable, those are the sexy brands that are actually growing. And I could tell that Unilever was going to continue deprioritizing their food business, other than Hellmann's mayonnaise, which is their cash cow. And sure enough I was right, they ended up selling off the margarine business a couple years after that.
So senior year I was kind of torn between, okay, should I try to find something that's definitely food, or should I take a risk more and go with a company. Coming out of the Unilever experience I knew I didn't want to work on something that had been declining for 10 years, I needed to be at a high growth company. I also knew so much of your day-to-day is based on the people that you work with. I could tell that this team, this was just a stepping stone. Not checked out, they're very successful workers, but it was more like, I'm going to work hard so that I can leave food. So I wanted a place where people seem to be happy to work there.
So I actually just applied to a bunch of companies, including Wayfair, which was based out of Boston, and loved it. My super day, I just remember, wow, every person that interviewed me that day I would want to hang out with, and they just seemed to love what they were doing. And Wayfair was a rocket ship then, and it was for the five years that I was there. So I did growth marketing for Wayfair, and my last two years there.
I was part of the founding team of PerigoldGold.com, which was the Wayfair luxury brand, and that was a super cool experience. It felt like working on a startup within a bigger company, which was a good testing grounds to see if entrepreneurship and earlier stage companies was where I wanted to be, which it for sure was. So that's a long way of getting there, but I always knew I wanted to go to business school. This reaffirmed that I want to pursue something entrepreneurial, I want to ideally get back into the food industry if I can, and business school seemed like a good way.
Of course, I will caveat this: you do not need business school to start your own company. But I do think starting your own company is a combination of hustle and who you know, and the who you know part is what I was trying to get with business school.
It's like going into a three, four year time capsule. All right, so:
"You're not the typical fair, fat, and 40," said the nurse wheeling me into my gallbladder removal surgery. I didn't dwell on the comment in the moment, my hypochondriac mind too preoccupied convincing myself I wouldn't wake up from the anesthesia. It wasn't until I was recovering at home that I even remembered the nurse's remark. At only 19, my gallbladder had failed, an occurrence common for people in their 40s and 50s, but rare for a still teenager. Obsessed with getting to the root cause of all problems, I asked myself, why me? The first step in my seven-year journey to applying to business school. I started researching risk factors. Although genetics played a role, there's a number of emerging studies linking poor diet to gallbladder disease. While I'll never know if diet was a contributing factor in my case, I was alarmed to discover the breadth of research linking diet to a multitude of diseases, even cancer.
It was a wakeup call for me. At the time I was an unhealthy eater, frequently overindulging in sugary, highly processed food. I quickly became consumed with the desire to know more, not just about diet and disease, but everything about the food we eat, from how it's grown to what I should and shouldn't be eating. Trying to reconcile the conflicting facts and opinions available proved overwhelming, but there was one thing that almost every expert could agree on: vegetables are essential to a healthy preventative diet. With the optimistic enthusiasm I applied towards any new endeavor, I set out to eat more vegetables. But it was hard. Most vegetables were bland, expired quickly, and required at least some preparation.
At the time I was in a consumer behavior class at Cornell, learning about the challenges behind changing consumer habits. Despite a strong will to change, if a change isn't easy, no change will occur. The challenges we discussed in class were the same challenges I'd encountered trying to eat more vegetables, and I knew I wasn't the only one. A problem solver at heart, I realized my calling: I was going to figure out an easy, delicious way for people to eat more vegetables, and thereby live healthier, longer lives.
Still a sophomore at Cornell, I resolved to make the most of my remaining time by learning more about and getting involved in the food industry. I pivoted my studies to dual specialize in marketing and food industry management, applied for and was chosen to be a student representative at the Produce Marketing Association's Fresh Summit in California, completed an individual study on produce marketing, and joined a consulting club within the graduate business school where I led a project advising a local food startup. I sought out work experience in the industry as well, first relocating to Arkansas for a food merchandising internship at Sam's Club, and then to New Jersey for a food brand management internship at Unilever. All of these experiences were invaluable in teaching me the unique and challenging dynamics of the food industry.
Suddenly it was my senior year. I knew I eventually wanted to start my own venture in the food industry. The passion was there, and through my studies, internships, and experiences, I could hold my own in a conversation on food marketing. What I was lacking, however, was an entrepreneurial skill set developed through real work experience. I struggled with whether or not this experience needed to be within the food industry. The advice of one of my professors ultimately swayed me. He told me that the entrepreneurial skill set was transferable across industries, and that I should choose a company that would develop that skill set the most. So rather than take my return offer with Unilever, a mature company with established processes for how things work, I sought out a company that was growing quickly, gave junior employees high levels of responsibility, and valued entrepreneurial thinking. My search led me to Wayfair and a role on the customer growth team.
I made the most of my Wayfair opportunity by asking for projects and seeking out roles that were most entrepreneurial in nature. Despite already managing two marketing channels for Wayfair's AllModern brand, I asked my manager to take on more responsibility with direct mail, a brand new channel with a lot of growth potential. Within this role I put together the business case to test a full-length print catalog and led the process from ideation to execution. Through this experience I learned how to communicate a vision and convinced senior leadership to not only sign on but also increase headcount.
After launching the AllModern print catalog program, I was eager for another entrepreneurial opportunity, so I asked to be a founding member of the customer growth team for Wayfair's newest lifestyle brand, Perigold. The task was daunting but exciting: scale customer acquisition and take Perigold from a brand with only two customers and $3,000 in sales to what our CEO believes can be a $1 billion business. Through this Perigold experience I learned how to look at a business holistically and prioritize numerous initiatives based on potential impact. I also learned how to advocate for resources, convincing managers on engineering, creative, and product teams to prioritize Perigold initiatives despite its small scale relative to other Wayfair brands.
In my Wayfair roles I learned to turn ideas into reality, but in a safe environment. If I failed, Wayfair Inc. would still prevail. I yearned for more, wanting to understand what it's like to build something out of nothing. I signed up to be a host for YLAI, a program that matches entrepreneurs from Latin America with US companies for a four-week long learning exchange. I was matched with Viviana, the owner of a souvenir clothing business that features designs from Ecuadorian artists. Over the duration of Viviana's stay in the US, I learned the ins and outs of her business and helped her formulate expansion plans and solidify marketing strategy. Together we also submitted a project proposal for a reverse exchange that would send me to Ecuador. Our proposal, organizing and executing a speed painting contest to discover new artists, was accepted, and I was able to travel to Guayaquil for a two-week exchange this past summer.
I learned a lot through the exchange, from the challenges Ecuadorian startups face, to consumer attitudes towards e-commerce, to of course the local food culture. One of the most important takeaways, however, was the necessity to adapt quickly and persevere through major setbacks. For example, a machine malfunction during the production of a new line jeopardizing order fulfillment for Viviana's biggest retail account. Viviana had to rearrange her entire schedule to visit other facilities and negotiate last minute contracts. She told me such setbacks were unfortunately frequent. You have to adapt quickly, as there's no time to waste.
Through my personal experiences and continued curiosity-fueled research, I've developed and continued to nurture a passion for the food industry and preventative nutrition. At Wayfair I've learned how to lead cross-functional teams to turn ideas into reality in a resource-constrained environment, wearing many hats in the process of learning to think holistically about a business. I believe this skill set will serve me well in starting and managing my own business one day. However, there's always room for me to improve, which has led me to apply to Harvard Business School. I want to continue to develop my skill set and build upon my existing knowledge, from figuring out how to nail a sales pitch and secure funding to understanding how to scale an organization from both the people and resource perspective. I'm eager to learn from brilliant professors and classmates and take advantage of the multitude of resources the Rock Center has to offer. Finally, I'm confident I can contribute to the HBS community as well, by sharing learnings from my hands-on experience, engaging in and initiating thought-provoking discussion, and hopefully one day becoming a successful entrepreneur who can mentor future students.
It's not like I sat down and immediately put pen to paper on this.
I downloaded the sample HBS essay guide, read some analyses of what was working in those essays, and one of the pieces of advice that someone did give was think about the hard times that you've had in your life and what you learned from it, and how that then ties back to what you want to do. I was actually in Ecuador on that reverse Exchange program sitting in my hotel room, and I was like, oh yeah, duh. I knew I wanted to write it about food, but it's what's a good learning experience, and how do I tie that into something. It was just one of those epiphanies, oh my god, of course. In the grand scheme of things, gallbladder surgery, the surgeon was with me for 20 minutes. Yes, technically it's a major surgery, but it's really not, from that perspective. So in a lot of ways, when you're rewriting your own history, you're like, oh yeah. I'm a pretty happy easygoing person, so I'm like, oh, I've never really struggled in my life, but then when you actually sit down and you're like, no, what were really tough times in my life, then you come to this.
In general, yes, business schools like to see you overcoming adversity and learning from it, but I think they also want you to - and my sister told me this too, she's like, they want people who were intentional with their decisions. And yeah, maybe you weren't actually thinking each one of those through, but then as you look back, you're like, oh no, actually this did all make sense. At the time maybe you were following your gut, but retrospectively you can be like, oh yeah, I followed my gut and my gut was right, because that was clearly what I was supposed to be doing.
How long did it take you to write this, from first sitting down and thinking about the topic to hitting submit?
I started writing in July and then I submitted in September. I wanted to start my essay earlier, but frankly I had to take the GMAT three times before being able to.
I had my first GMAT test scheduled the first week of July and I got a 630 and bombed the math part. I knew it in the moment as I was taking it. I was like, oh crap, this is going to be a waste of time, because it's a horrible feeling when the answers, or the questions, were getting easier and you know that's a bad sign. So I had originally planned, okay, I'll study for my GMAT until July and then I'll have all of July and August to write my essay. But then when I bombed that part of the GMAT, I was like, okay, I still have to start writing my essay but I also have to keep studying for the GMAT. Unfortunately the last time I took the GMAT was the day before I had to submit, and thank God it was a 710 and I was like, you know what, it's good enough.
It's just an awful feeling if you haven't taken it yet, because you sit there and you know your score at the end. So you've just put in four hours of work on top of however long you've studied and you hit submit and you see if you're good enough or not, and you know pretty quickly. It's just the worst. I did submit the 630 just to show that, because actually my reading score was higher on that. I don't think schools super score, but if you did super score I think I would have been 730, so I was like, okay, I'll include that. I also did better at the writing, because by the third time I took it I was so over it.
The number of drafts was definitely double digits, probably close to 20. I did not use an MBA consultant, but I used my sister. She was at MIT Sloan at the time, she had obviously successfully gotten in there, and she had gotten to the interview point of HBS, so clearly her essay wasn't glaringly wrong, I would assume. So she was helpful. And then my friend who was my roommate at the time was also applying to business school, so the both of us looked over each other's stuff. Then I had a friend who was an English major who did all the grammatical proofing for me, and I had a couple people read it just to gut check.
When my friends said this is very authentically you, I was like, okay, yep, I'm on the right path, I just need to narrow it down. I will say my essay is longer than what they advise. I think they advise around a thousand. Mine's like 1500 or something, so it is on the longer side. And of course the first draft was like 2500 words, so it was a lot of making sure each sentence is useful. Getting it from the 13th draft to the 19th draft was tougher almost, because you have to just cut words. It's for sure a stretch on your writing abilities, because frankly in the workplace, yes, you write emails and it's good to be succinct there, but it's harder because it's more storytelling while at the same time trying to be as concise as you would email your boss. It's also like you feel like this is your shot to say this is who I am, and so you don't want to miss anything.
I wanted to apply first round to HBS. I knew from back, you know, sophomore year of college that being my dream school. And then MIT was on my list because they're really great for entrepreneurship. My sister was there, she was loving it, she thought the people were really down to earth, which was for sure important to me as well. And ultimately just landed on those two.
I thought about applying to Stanford and HBS. Frankly, all of the people before me, or I should say in the years before me at Wayfair who got into HBS, none of them even got an interview at Stanford. So part of it was just like, you know what, will I actually even get an interview at Stanford, to then actually want to uproot my life and move to the West Coast? At the time I was dating my now husband, my sister is nearby, my parents are three hours away. You can argue it both ways. On the one hand, when you don't really have any ties - my now husband Rob, yes, he was for sure mobile, he could also move to the West Coast if needed, children aren't in the picture, things like that - it for sure would have been an easier time to go versus like 10 years from now.
But I had friends who were in San Francisco, and every time I went out there it felt so tech-focused, which is good, absolutely, and food tech for sure is blowing up right now, so you could marry it with food. But I felt like on the East Coast it didn't have to quite be that. On the East Coast you see way more of the consumer-facing brands and all the new retail brands and people selling or doing CPG in different ways, and I felt like that was probably a better fit. But frankly, a lot of it was personal, to only apply to Boston-day schools.
Looking back, either at this essay specifically or in general, is there anything you would do differently in applying?
I for sure would have listened to the advice of people being like, you won't actually study for the GMAT unless you book a test time. So I should have booked a test time back in March and gotten that out of the way so I wasn't doing both GMAT and essay studying. Sure enough, on the weekends I'd be like, oh yeah, let me do a couple hours of studying for the GMAT, and that was starting in January. Then sure enough, when I actually booked the first test time in July, then it was like every night I am doing practice questions. You just really don't take it that seriously unless you have a looming deadline. Book the damn test.
If you have the flexibility now to take the GMAT, it does last years. That's the message: book the damn test. Thankfully I finished it and then could go to the essays part, but I can't imagine doing both at once with the timelines looming. Definitely not great, but it all worked out.
For sure, very glad I went. Personally, great friendships, for sure, especially this lady, Julia. Obviously, I love, as I said, digging in, getting to the root of things, and I do feel like HBS, and business school in general, would have been helpful. HBS was really good about understanding my motivations for entrepreneurship specifically. Some people want to be that famous billionaire, Bezos level, and kudos to them. I really just wanted to be my own boss, and I wanted to be at the decision-making table.
What's really helpful about that is also realizing the reality of venture capital-backed companies. I work at one now, but the reality is the board and your investors become your boss. So it really made me realize, if I can avoid it, I don't want a venture-backed company. I would want to build a business where I'm very strategic about the cash flow of the business, like how can I do something where I first get money from the customers and then have to pay my suppliers. Having all these restrictions of, I want to be my own boss, but I want to do it in a way that's sustainable. Ultimately, if you end up owning as the founder 20% of the company, you don't get to make the final calls.
I see it with my brother-in-law. He worked at Wayfair for a long time and overlapped with myself, and the Wayfair founders still own the majority stake of the company, so ultimately they can tell the board, they can tell the stock market to frankly F off. And then my brother-in-law went to Stitch Fix, where the original founder probably at this point, or for sure, owns less than 20% of the company, and ultimately they had to keep making decisions for their public company based on their stakeholders. So there goes the idea of being my own boss, even though that's a company that, I don't know what it is now, but at the time was for sure valued at over a billion dollars. Absolutely a successful company, but at the end of the day, you're not the boss.
At the time, a 10-person food tech startup called Foodberry. It wraps up wholesome foods into snackable format by replicating the technology of a fruit skin, so like the way that an orange peel protects the inside orange, we can create food forms that sound like they're almost imaginary in a way, like a ball of hummus wrapped in a red pepper puree skin that's poppable, portable, and more sustainable, requiring a lot less plastic packaging, if any at all. It is so good, I've had some of them. So making healthy wholesome foods more accessible and easier to fit into consumers' lives, going back to that whole bit in my essay about consumer behavior. Given all the time in the world, a lot of people for sure would choose to eat hummus and a cut-up red pepper if possible. But frankly you're running out the door in the morning and you don't have time to pack it, or you'll be gone all day and it's something that needs to be refrigerated, things like that. It is hard to eat healthy, and so it's like how can you make healthy foods fit into a consumer's lifestyle and help the planet at the same time, and not have to, because currently convenient formats require a single-use plastic. And a lot of them aren't actually healthy. They just confuse and use those labels.
They also make ice cream balls that maybe aren't as quote unquote healthy but are so decadent, healthier relative to other ice cream. The ice cream product specifically is similar to Emoji, but it's like chocolate brownie ice cream wrapped in a raspberry fresh fruit puree on the outside, so it's decadent like a truffle. But we also have elderberry lemon wellness varieties that are a boost of immunity, and a lot of cool different options in our portfolio.
I should say what my actual role is. I was the first business hire, which can be risky at a tech company. Sometimes it depends on the team if they actually value business opinions or they think you're just an annoying necessity. Luckily it seems like they actually did value my skill set, and so technically my title is head of business planning and marketing, but really it's a catchall business function, just head of business essentially. Everything from finance and accounting to marketing to even graphic design for the company, and project management, using my TOM skills that our operations management class first year, figuring out bottlenecks in the production line, and if we can solve those, what that means in our capacity and things like that. So it's been great, I've been able to see a lot more beyond just marketing, all aspects of the business. Right now we're trying to raise money, so putting together the investor deck, and it reaffirms the fact that I don't want to be doing hundreds of slides for investors to prove, frankly it feels like a waste of time. Wouldn't you rather want the CEO you're investing in to be working on building the business rather than convincing you that they have a good business?
It all comes down to the person. Financial security was important to me, which is also, frankly, a lot of professors were like, well, if financial security is what you're after, entrepreneurship might not be for you. But the thing is, what will frankly happen is I'll build a side hustle on the side as I work a full-time job that I still am learning a lot and enjoying what I do, and build this side hustle in a very slow but methodical way that doesn't require me to have an income of zero. Financial security was something that was a big focus growing up in my household, and so it's in me that it's like, okay, financial security is important, and I want the financial upside of being an entrepreneur, and so I'll just do it in a way that works for me and be frankly honest with myself of what am I willing to do, how can I structure this in a way that builds the life that I want.
How do you feel like having a partner plays into your risk appetite?
That is so true. My partner happens to be way more risk averse than I am. But at the same time, he's not happy in his job, and so I'm actually pushing him to take more of a risk of doing a more drastic career pivot. He's interested in the data analytics space, and so that might require getting a certificate that frankly will cost money and will suck up time to do the classes for it and things like that. But that's a risk that I feel like is worth taking given that he's not happy with his current job. Fortunately his current job, he's at a hedge fund and they've been doing very well with the market going down. Hedge funds are crazy in terms of how you can do so well when everyone else is doing so, I try not to think about it that hard. So I think he'll be fine regardless of how bad this upcoming recession will be. He fully knows and supports my dreams of being an entrepreneur. I want to be in a certain state of financial stability when children enter the picture, and so we're both willing to push out children for multiple years to get our careers and finances in the place that we actually want it to be.
Talk about career pivots, my mom started in investment banking and then went to work for the government, and then she ended up running a nonprofit, and then she went back to school to become a counselor, and she's still trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life, which I think is admirable and not a downfall. It's cool to have that curiosity.
What interview question from HBS or another MBA program most took you by surprise?
What would you advise your CEO on in terms of multi-brand marketing? It was a question that was so specific to me and what I did, but I just panicked and my mind went blank when they asked it, because of course that's the question I should be able to answer the most. I did all of this multi-brand marketing within Wayfair and proved out that yes, it is valuable to have multiple brands, and yet I was stunned in the moment.
What stereotype about HBS is true?
There are for sure people that think they're God's gift to the world. Not all of them, not the majority, but yeah.
What stereotype about your school is not true?
That everyone is like that. HBS has a reputation of a bunch of rich kids, but when I went to accepted students weekend, that was the biggest thing. When I was accepted to MIT and HBS, I figured the people would be a big factor, because I was worried that HBS would be a bunch of rich kids. But no.
Who was the coolest alumni or class guest you were most excited to see or meet?
I took the Business of Entertainment, Media and Sports class, and we had Dwyane Wade come speak to our class, which was pretty awesome. But then also Chip and Joanna Gaines were equally as awesome.
What's your most embarrassing moment at business school?
Probably one of our section mates calling me out for sleeping during class the day after the white party.
Would you describe yourself as more analytical or creative?
Creative.
Introvert or extrovert?
Introvert who presents extrovert.
Cautious or bold?
Bold. When I make a decision, I'm going with it and not looking back.
If you had to sort HBS as a business school into a Hogwarts house, what house would it be?
Gryffindor. They get all the glory, and sometimes undeservedly because they're helped by all the others.
If you had to sort yourself into a Hogwarts house?
Ravenclaw.
When you're asked in a formal setting like a job interview what do you say your biggest weakness is?
Lately I've been saying it's my tendency to ramble, which is literally exactly what I'm doing now. Basically, being able to succinctly voice my thoughts and opinions on paper I'm good at, but on the spot, not so hot.
Do you think that's actually your biggest weakness, or do you just say that's your biggest weakness?
Ultimately I think people pleasing is a double-edged sword. It makes you a really good achiever in terms of wanting to please your bosses, but if you're working cross-functionally, it ends up resulting in you saying yes to too many things and being stretched very thinly. I've said that in the past too, but I don't know if I've ever explicitly said people pleaser, but it's the truth.
Is there anything you regret about your business school experience?
It for sure sucked being there for COVID. What I was most bummed about missing out on was the international study trip to Rwanda that I was supposed to go on. I really wanted to see those mountain gorillas, and I wanted to go on a safari, and just thought it would be a really cool experience to learn about business in Africa, because frankly I know very little.
If you had to pick a new mascot for HBS, what would it be?
Given that our mascot is a color, there's a lot I could choose from. Is it lame if I say owl? I like that owls are really good for wisdom, and they have a lot more positive meaning beyond just wisdom too. But they're also not totally docile either. They're carnivores, they eat little mice, and not to say that we're creepy, but they can turn their head 360 degrees around, like they're always watching. That reminds me of if someone's sitting in a class and makes a comment, all the heads swivel. I think an owl is the perfect mascot.