Michigan Ross Mbas Reflect On Their First Year & Discuss The Journey Ahead

Michigan Ross Mbas Reflect On Their First Year & Discuss The Journey Ahead - Online Custom Essay Writing Service

Michigan Ross MBAs Reflect on Their First Year & Discuss the Journey Ahead

welcome to the touch MBA admissions podcast do you need help figuring out which schools to apply to or how to get into the world's top MBA programs hey you're not alone join thousands of others on this podcast and on our site touch nba.com as they seek the admissions edge and now here's your host Deron Joe what's up guys it's Darren welcome to the touch MBA podcast what we do here is talk to students and alumni and professors and admissions directors of the world's top business schools to give you an inside look of what's going on at these top programs and how you can get in them this week we're continuing with another guest-hosted episode of the touch MBA podcast this time I brought on Sabina Kamara who's actually been on our show before episode number 109 where we discussed crafting your best story Sabina at the time was an applicant who had just gotten into Michigan Ross she was an avid listener of the podcast joined our admissions edge program. we kind of did a breakdown on what she did to to apply to Michigan Ross and now she just finished her first year man time flies I really thought Sabina could provide a new energy and perspective to the show and I believe in this episode she really has not only through her perspective but also through the types of guests she's able to access. in this case Sabina brought on her good friend and president of the Ross MBA Council cachet Sanders and they break down their first year look back at it talk about things like impostor syndrome when jumping into new internships and new industries. I think yeah this episode will give you a lot of content that you haven't heard before but first just a reminder that you can get free school selection and profile help at touch nba.com. I proudly present to you now our second guest host of the show Sabina Kamara hi my name is Sabina Kamara and I'm a first year MBA at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business before Ross I worked in HR compliance for adversity inclusion helping companies become more diverse during my business school application process I was an avid subscriber of the touch MBA admissions podcast and the resources provided by Darren truly helped me develop my strategy for success in the process I've decided to guest host the podcast primarily because I want to share my experiences and those of my peers to provide additional insight into business school for those who are considering this path on this episode I'll be interviewing my classmate and good good friend cachet Sanders who is also first year MBA at Russ hi cachet how are you oh good awesome. guys um cachet is like a phenomenal human being and as she launches it to tell you about herself I just want to put in the plug that she's the new president for the MBA Council at Ross. you are speaking well you're listening to the president the student body yeah. again my name is cachet Sanders and a little bit about me is that I'm originally from the Bronx New York and which I'm very proud of New York is just it has my heart and a lot of my professional background is actually a social impact and. my undergraduate was at Dartmouth College I focused on gender studies there and then I did a bunch of exploration. I lived in India for two years working in social enterprise I worked in government focused on workforce development and then I was at a non-profit focused on homelessness and then business school wasn't originally in the plan I thought I was gonna get maybe an MPP or a law degree because those are the things you do when you care about social impact or that's what I thought but then I started observing the organizations I worked in and realized that they were doing wonderful work but one thing that was stunting our progress was that leadership really wasn't take care of employees I saw Bernal I saw high turnover I started on duty and. I thought there has to be a better way to work and when I looked at what kinds of places offer that type of education it was Business School and then when I looked at who was really into voting resources to the idea of how do you create positive organizational cultures it was Ross and that's that's how I ended up here awesome. let's kind of talk about one your internship that you'll be taking on this summer why you decided to go into that internship and then also like any activities that you're currently involved in at Ross and then we'll just kind of launch into that like reflection period like the MBA one experience for you I love reflection. in terms of my internship I was very fortunate to land an internship with Microsoft this summer and their HR program is called HR tracks and I came in with that as my dream. I knew that I wanted to do an HR internship in tact when I came into Ross because Tech is in an interesting place right now where the industry is changing rapidly they have to be very responsive and amongst the top companies there's a lot of competition for talent and. those companies right now are very invested in how do we create experiences that people want to be a part of. they stick with us for the long haul and. what tech is doing right now in HR are. creative and that's why I came in wanting to do that. I'm pumped to be at Microsoft this summer especially given their their incredible leader Satya Nadella who has instituted quite a lot of changes of the organization and. in terms of involvement at Ross to help me manifest some of those passions one of the key areas of my focus this year was human capital Club which I loved I got to spearhead our first human capital week which was an opportunity to invite the broader Ross community into why we care. much about human capital and the way it just can be a support to all other functions with business. we did things like intro to people analytics or we had a wall of quotes from human capital leaders and all of these things and that that was a huge proud moment for me this year okay. now thinking about like that MBA one year experience. we're both MBA ones we've had different experiences just based on kind of like what we were recruiting on what we were involved in but just kind of looking back like what are the things that you think went well and then what are the things that didn't go as well or what are the things that you think you would have liked to change well I think well was um I had a desire to be proactive about things I wanted to do and how to pull resources around the things I was passionate about. human capital week is one example of that another one is I was sitting in a meeting with a friend and we were thinking to each other you know Ross doesn't seem to have any service trips how can we create that space and. we said okay let's just do it and then the next thing we knew we were planning a service trip experience to Houston and got supported by the Center for social impact and. I would say taking those leaps and just saying like alright let's try it I've never done this before but like the resources are here the support is here yeah just do it yeah in that service trip was that the hurricane relief. yeah it was hurricane Harvey relief thanks for clarifying oh. basically what we did was we connected with this nonprofit organization called all hands and hearts that is terrific. they are going in after a natural disaster has occurred and focusing on the rebuild and they did the same with hurricane Harvey after it hit Houston. we stayed on a volunteer base for a week and some of us help to finish homes I spent most of my time working on a school but it was it was a powerful experience I got to share with other rosser's nice and then okay. thinking about like now thinking pivoting into like you know what would you like as far as your experience. as we know like coming into like the MBA experience you're told that you can only that there's like three certain pillars right recruiting social and academics. what we've heard is like a lot about the extracurricular a lot about the recruiting but is there anything that you think that like act like just kind of basing it off of those three pillars that you would have liked to change like I know we had like an earlier conversation about like travel right for leisure or anything like that like what would you have changed about your experience or and then thinking how how you plan to come into like the second gear and really hone in on those goals yeah I love that the first thing I think of honestly is you could only know something like this in retrospect but I wish I would have been more patient with myself coming in. you get to Ross with. much energy to make us big an impact as you can and you get here and you realize that there's a learning curve you have to get settled in there's. much going on it's hard to be an immediately in a place where you can contribute but I remember in the beginning just being. mad at myself for not moving fast enough yet not doing enough and the reality is I needed to set up a foundation first. even just remembering that as I go into my internship there will be a period where I won't know much and I need to ask questions and I have to be comfortable with being in that stage. that is one thing the only thing I was mentioning to Sabina earlier that I've got to do some interesting travel that's more structured I'm. like map or M track but now I'm thinking you know it could be fun just to get to know my classmates in a more informal way yeah everything has to have like the structure around it. I just want to let myself do more of that next to you as well yeah and you mentioned math okay. that's like a really cool and segue into like this next portion. math is Ross's multi disciplinary action project which essentially is required by all first-year MBAs during the final quarter. it's a seven week consulting project in which we help you know top companies from all over the world solve a problem. for example my map project was with the Kellogg Company of course the serial home company and I didn't get a lot of travel I was based here in Ann Arbor with travel quote unquote to Battle Creek Michigan which is about an hour and a half away not the best but the project was phenomenal I had a great sponsor we we Dobin to like this really blinks this problem about you know how you know future changes in mobility which is specifically autonomous vehicles connected cars and ride-sharing how would that impact the way people eat. it was a huge point place and we had to kind of fill in the gaps for Kellogg's and develop strategic opportunities that they can kind of see well they can use over the next 10 to 15 years. that was my project. for you cachet I know you had a really great project with phenomenal experiences and you got to travel outside of the US. if you want to just kind of talk a little bit about that project and any learnings or any growth that you saw or that you experienced as a result of that right and it's cool to hear more about your project. yeah I have to talk about that more yeah but I I was at a company that was based out of Shanghai and what they were seeking to do why they had a map team was they had merged with a company another company to help them expand their scope of products but they hadn't really taken steps to intertwine themselves as a company leverage each other's strengths I'm truly integrated. they reached out to us to say how can we better do this and how are our competitors doing it and. when we got there we got to interview senior leaders across the company who are. forthcoming with us about the issues they were facing internally we totally didn't expect that and then as we dug deeper into the project we had this our I had this delightful discovery that it was really at its core about HR and management organizations the questions they were asking were how do we design this for efficiency and productivity how can we improve communications across offices in the same city or across the world these are the questions that strategic HR professionals are thinking about right now the other cool part was as we were working a lot of the times I would say things like oh this reminds me of that case that we did in a strategy or oh wait this is management accounting yeah. actually getting to see why these cases that feel a little bit you know not able not applicable in the moment yeah to see how they matter to a business in real life that was a powerful moment for me I mean. in that way that truly is a laboratory but the way the way in which it's not a laboratory is that it does have the potential to have real impact on these companies and. that was a cool experience for me and just getting to on my own do some of the things I have read. much about like how do you create a post-merger integration plan yeah I had no idea but then I figured it out yeah and that was that was an empowering process yeah it's just kind of thinking about just the dynamics of that project as far as do you know what the problem was and how you guys solved it how do you kind of see that translating into you know your protector position at Microsoft in HR like do you see that recked I guess relationship or how do you feel that you can use that experience to inform your your 10 week you know internship this summer in Seattle I think that's a good point it I would say one is that it gave me confidence that I can go into something knowing nothing and then come out feeling like I have enough of a command around a topic to give thoughtful like intellectually grounded recommendations yeah I think you know for me I've had a lot of roles that have been in kind of HR adjacent but I've never formally worked in a charge this would be my first time really doing that. knowing I can step in and say like you know I don't know much about this but I trust that I can dig into the resources needed to be able to produce something useful yeah the confidence boost to me is where it comes in the most handy absolutely and that's I mean just reflecting on my experience as well during that. although it's like our projects are vastly different we're working on like different problems you know trying to solve those but I'm going into consulting. I'll be at Deloitte strategy and operations this summer in New York very excited but I didn't come from a very strong quantitative background or like whatever like I didn't have like the big name company behind me you know coming into this nough school. of course you kind of have well for me like you kind of have like this imposter syndrome where you feel like oh my gosh like will I really be able to do this with is this you know going to be a great summer like how can I contribute and just thinking about my experience that map well during mob I realize that I have. much to offer yeah and it's like you know you realize that you know through working with your team like I had a six-person team others have four-person teams but been working with your teams you're growing this skill set and really being able to apply like the things that you've learned in school like for me specifically I was applying like things that I learned during the case interview process for recruiting with. like I was able to learn like to use the way that I learned to break down a problem to help my team break down the problem and move forward like and to develop hypotheses you know test those hypotheses and then move forward. it was really cool to see that that growth from like learning in the classroom and even through recruiting and extracurriculars and being able to apply it to a project solve that problem and then know it Wow like I'll be a great consultant this summer like I'll be successful. like you're saying like it's just. awesome just to have that that out of classroom experience and map is it's a phenomenal value proposition for for us knowledge map is an incredible experience yeah it's challenging in a way that is ultimately productive absolute which I appreciate absolutely okay. outside of mug let's talk about this summer because know we've gotten out of Mad like literally like last week oh we we we had a final presentation to our sponsors we had to write like a 30 page written report maximum 30 pages not ignoring the maximum 30 pages of a written report with our findings and now we're done know what time we're done. we're like a little ahead of the game as far as like other business schools because we and like April 25th and we have like about a month or. before our internship starts like normal time for internships start to go. we have a lot kind of in-between. for me I'll be going to Japan on our G truck which is a student-led trip that happens at the end of the year and a lot of them ba ones and then ba Tuesdays well go it's about like 70 to 80 of us they'll be in Japan for about a week and a half. cachet it's gonna be awesome. cachet what will you be doing before internship starts yeah I'm excited to talk about this because I have this program. in the month of May I have the distinct opportunity to participate in a really unique feature of the Ross experience called Ross open road an open road is a program that engages teams of MBAs. typically about four people per team about three teams to take a road trip across the country where they work with entrepreneurs who are serving their communities on a business challenge that they have for one week. it's four or five weeks long it's a new entrepreneur each week and typically it's just inspiring to see these local businesses in action. for instance one of the places that my team is going to is a sweet potato pie shop jawanda sweet potato pies and she said that she sees herself as of course you know a pie shop in a big goods shop but also wants to be a support for her community. for instance in her restaurant they have a prayer jar where people can put in notes of things they want you know the their team to pray over and that's how she serves her communities. that is just going to be a wonderful experience that will allow us to to think about again how can we take these concepts that feel really high-level in the classroom and use it to work with people solve the day-to-day challenges of their business and how long is open road again. it can either be four weeks or five weeks or five weeks that's phenomenal thank you I'm. excited we have some great entrepreneurs lined up I love my team we put a lot of work into developing a healthy team dynamic before we hit the road since we'll be in a car or four weeks together. that's important healthy team dynamic yes what does that mean like how how did you learn about that one and how did you guys prepare yourself to make sure that you have that team dynamic you know prior to starting open road oh that's a great question. to me healthy team dynamic a lot of my understanding of that is frankly influenced by the Center for positive organizations um. I am a plus lab fellow at Ross which is basically the centers effort to engage students in examples of organizations that are implementing positive practices and one thing they teach us about is a concept called high quality connections and in simple terms it just means how do you focus on building relationships with your team such that the work is not merely transactional and then when you focus on implementing those connections it helps to group whether difficult moments on the road which they will inevitably hit and. we did that a number of ways some of it was just by hanging out like going to dinner and going to see a movie other times we asked intentional questions. you know what's something that matters the most to you and how did you arrive at that and. it allowed us to build will be often calling the group some relational capital with each other. in those moments where there is tension we have this capital fall back on you have that trust to fall back on and that's what we've done to prepare for this journey yeah and that sounds very similar to the team Charter that we had to develop for for math which was essentially you know what are the things that we are what are our goals format or how do we operate within the team and like what are our rules for you know ensuring that we have positive relationship dynamics within the T. it seems like that's but in a normal version of like our formal team charter which is just really important because I guess a lot of people don't recognize just how important is to set that foundation oh yeah as a team because you know you guys are gonna be working at such a high level there's gonna be a lot of stress oh yeah a lot of differences and you know being able to fall back on that positive relationship dynamic that you guys established in the beginning will definitely be really beneficial oh yeah yeah I think I think that it's. crucial and I feel like our team has acknowledged that and put in the work to ensure that we have that foundation. it makes me just optimistic about what we can accomplish on the road thank you okay. that was open road we heard a lot about caches internship this summer is there anything that you know you're excited about or that's just different from like the norm like maybe are you excited about just being in Seattle and like or you are you excited about developing new relationships like outside of just a company like what are you excited about your summer internship this year. many things are buzzing through my head because it's it's very layered but what I can say is and I was just talking to another colleague about this is at Ross oftentimes you meet people who are brilliant but you don't always get that one-on-one time with them to really sit down and say like what is your story you know can we hang out more you know and. I'm excited just to see all the rosters who are going to Seattle especially people who have been like oh I know you're wonderful we just have not had a chance to sit down and. I think it all allowed me to just expand honestly how I see the core of my Ross community by getting to spend time with people outside of the Ross context and just give more insight on who they are as people. that that's one of the things I'm really excited about and I plan to make intentional space for people to come together and connect in that way that's wonderful and just thinking just about how things have kind of played out as far as location and geography goals like knowing that there's going to be a heap of rosser's it'll be in Seattle Chicago New York like all over the nation it's really wonderful to know that like we still have that community you know whether it be big or small we still have that support base an opportunity to get to know people that you you weren't able to to know they're in the school year because just as background like a lot of business schools while all business schools essentially have either sections clusters or streams whatever it is that they call they call it for their business school which is in the beginning of the school year for the first semester or just essentially the first year you're going to your classes with the same people like that's how it is at Ross like we like for the first semester we went to this class went to classes with our sections we have five sections but that makes it difficult to make cross-sectional relationships. like have any opportunity to be and like in your internship in a different state and meeting other rosters outside of your section yeah it's just getting to know them on like a deeper level because at this point you know you guys have gone through the first year together but separately kind of yeah and you're both going into like this new land basically like on this new journey like this new stressor or you know opportunity and there will be fears. having that support network is key I was going to say too it makes the prospect I'm from New York I'm only live on these coasts and it makes the prospect of potentially picking up my life and moving across the country just a lot more reasonable absolutely because then I know I'll have this core community that I trust and that I have a lot in common with absolutely also I would be remiss if I didn't use this opportunity to quickly plug my M track it's called Alexa take us to the Amazon it's gonna be a list though there'll be pink dolphins there'll be boats it's gonna be great. just check us out our student would travel opportunities that are organized by second year and beat will rising second year MBA by that time will be MBA twos and we're basically it gives an opportunity for the incoming class to get to know people initially and. before they hit campus. I'm also leading an EM Trek to the Baltics. we're gonna be visiting Lithuania Estonia and Latvia. yeah. it'd be a great trip but there's trips all over the world there's one going to Tanzania a few going to South Africa Brazil Chile like you have. many great opportunities to meet your classmates and also have a little bit of fun before you hit the ground running in rocks yeah they're all great Brazil will be extra crazy okay. we have talked through like this entire MBA experience and like in a compressed time period like there's. much more to learn or to talk about which is something that we always do I love our reflection moments. let's kind of think a little bit about Ross like what is your vision for Ross as president of the NBA Council. this is a phenomenal opportunity and cachet was elected by our class and also the 2018 like the student body here Ross and we are. proud of cachet and it's just it's just. wonderful to know that cachet will be leading you know the school next year. I wanted to kind of end here like where she can talk about what her vision is for us for the student body and how she's gonna basically do all these great things okay. but I do want to add some nuance to that and just note that a lot of my row honestly is clearing barriers for the vice presidents. there are seven people on the NBA Council and they each have a specific area of focus meant to advocate for students in different ways. we have the VP of academics and ethics we have the vice president of professional development of international students that was a newly instituted position of finance of diversity equity and inclusion and of student engagements and that deals with you know clubs and Club approvals and. the work of the council is really all seven of us staying in constant communication and supporting each other with these huge realms of student life I think for me one of the main things I'm motivated by in this role is ensuring students who want to be you know change Ages within Ross or want to impact campus and campus life have an outlet to do that and see MBA Council as a platform for reaching the the administrators or the resources they need in order to be able to do that and. what we elevate a lot when we sort of talk about that vision is the work of the diversity equity inclusion committee what they've done is is that they've created a broader committee that is that engages about twenty or. students and. it's not just the VP working alone she has this council that can drive all of these different aspects of what it means to create an inclusive Ross community and. I want to think about more models for how we tap into the energy of students who want to make Ross a better place. that's that's my my high level vision is awesome that's awesome and I really and I get really excited about that primarily because I'm kind of like one of those offshoots of the VI committee I serve as the inclusion chair for my section and each of the five sections has an inclusion chair and we roll up until the DI committee and to the VP of Dei. like you know this is a really great development and it's just not within you know D and I it's just you know within like the entire school as far as how we engage and as a community right awesome thanks for asking yeah it's awesome okay whoa we're at the end of our episode. cliche do you have any final words as far as let's say advice for people who are interested in applying to business school right and for those who are specifically interested in applying to the Ross School of Business you have any parting words for those folks yeah. one thing I tell perspectives when I know they're sort of shopping for business schools is look and see what school has what you need. I think it's easy to get caught up in a lot of different aspects of what it could mean to have a business school degree but what I've observed is that success in this environment means that it has the resources and the support structures around the thing that you're passionate about and. as you you know go down your list or narrow down your list do that inward reflection of what do I need to feel happy and fulfilled in my academic experience and then begin to prioritize based on that that's what I did in my search and I am. grateful all the time that I'm here yeah and that there's been just. much love and support for the things that I want to move forward at school but also in my career well little and there yeah thank you. much cachet supplying us was awesome thanks for listening to the touch MBA podcast don't be shy we have a mailing list go to touch mba.com and get yourself signed up and we'll keep you posted with the best tips and insider interviews on how to get into your number one school you can also find us on twitter and facebook at touch mva see you soon

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