Hello friends,
I am <name> - an Indian classical dancer and a technology consultant.
I have been trying new expressions in the traditional dance form – Mohiniyattam for over 5 years. When I showcased the new fusion
Raised in a military family, the suburbs we grew up in were like an extended family. Even in such a supportive community, the sense of duty, self-reliance, and respect for all people I interact with are three values I hold dearly.
When I joined the MIT School of Engineering, my father offered support to pay for the tuition. I negotiated to limit the support to 30%. To fund the rest, I started a venture out of <y>, offering end-to-end relocation services for single-parent families moving to Cambridge and the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area. Started ..
...
I was two years old when my mother sheltered me to escape the genocide in Rwanda. At one time, we were asked to pick our grave spot before the rebels aimed shots at us.
My relentless crying changed their minds.
When I joined the school, I lived like an American but was unsure of my heritage. On a couple of occasions, I shared our family’s historical trauma. In the 90s, without phone cameras, the truth was often manicured into 15-minute news features ..
....
My parents were lawyers from New York City who switched to farming in upstate New York. To manage the operations of the farm and educate my brother and I, they chose homeschooling. From the strict regulation to a relatively easy schedule in our new home, the change expanded my habit of experimenting. From high school, I developed a keen interest in soil health and integrating drones to measure soil nutrients.
In Grade 7th, the DIY class was led by my father, who fit multispectral cameras to a drone and attached specialized filters to ..
...
Dear Friends,
My name is <x>. I am a project manager at <Y oil company> - the youngest to earn the honors.
Leading teams to new frontiers in exploration was a scary and challenging endeavor. I was worried about my experience, but the team of specialists, engineers, and management supported my ...
Hello MIT Sloan friends,
I come from a traditional chartered accounting background and entered the world of entrepreneurship through one idea – Alexa for Villages.
My engagement to automate <company’s> accounting practices ..
Sample MIT Sloan MBA Cover Letter – Consulting to Technology Entrepreneurship (296 Words)
August 01, 2024
Ms. Pallavi X
New York City, USA
Dear Admissions Committee,
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
Working for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the delivery of vaccines to the remotest villages in Somalia was one of the most technologically and strategically challenging projects. By improving the margin by 2% through predictive data modeling for <retail giant> and adopting gamification to improve engagement by 37% for <start-up’s> Math Educational platform, I was deeply aware of the role data and persuasion played in changing behavior.
In Somalia, Doctors and hospitals rarely kept comprehensive ..
....
August 01, 2024
Mr. Vincent X
New Delhi, India
Dear Admissions Committee,
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
As a Field Engineer for <x> in Texas, I have been the beneficiary of the fracking boom in the Marcellus Shale that engaged me in designing, installing facilities, and verifying the oil-field map. The oversight of a 120-member operations team, broke many leadership myths on motivating a team of 23 nationalities. The facility would contribute towards 55% of all energy needs in North America until 2030. Although the experience was life-transforming, I wanted to be part of an industry that is designed for the future. To lead the change towards cleaner sources of energy, I joined ...
....
August 01, 2024
Ms. Ying X
Beijing, China
Dear Admissions Committee,
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
The rapid evolution of Generative AI from a philanthropic endeavor to a consumer service triggered fresh demand for AI chips that would lead to chip shortages for personal computers, traditional servers, and even IoT devices in 2025.
Under such a dynamic supply-demand cycle, I developed a dashboard that gave a live update on the life cycle of the phone components. These judgments on prioritizing components, choosing suppliers, and predicting the component's price and its impact on the product pricing upgraded my role from a traditional components engineer to an operations manager. ..
...
August 01, 2024
Mr. Alexander X
Los Angeles, USA
Dear Admissions Committee,
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
The role of the Financial Officer for <z>’s Wealth Management business brought me in close contact with Billionaire entrepreneurs from 23 countries. By defining Key Performance indicators for each entrepreneur and offering customized advisory services, I maximized their aggregate return by 150%.
Although wealth management is a privileged service, I began to conceptualize how tailored advice could be offered to millions of customers in low-income communities. As the first generation Venezuelan American to earn a college graduate degree in our family, I was lucky to be ..
August 07, 2024
Mr. Jon X
Shanghai
China
Dear Admissions Committee,
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
I had the good fortune to work with the Search Engine giant, Baidu, before pursuing my interest in telecom infrastructure with China Telecom - the largest state-owned enterprise.
Working with the nimble expectations in Baidu and a bureaucratic hierarchy in the government gave me the experiences of adapting my leadership to two teams with widely different motivations...
Innovating a visual recognition module ..
Humanitarian Affairs Officer exudes a title of authority, but in reality, I was managing a chaotic geo-political dance. A dance that involved a slow bureaucracy, leading without power, and an endless fight against misinformation.
Frustrated with the pace of change, I joined Facebook ..
During a break from analyzing the $2bn consumer goods businesses, I sat in the front seat of the coffee chain, <z>. 180 seconds passed before the cup reached the customer. A 60-second delay masks the unique bitterness for which customers pay 400% more than their homemade coffee. 5% of the customers will never return. At that moment, I knew my future lied in helping ‘coffee reach the right customer’.
The $2bn consumer business I was analyzing before the coffee break, prioritized a product according to my recommendations..
I have a gift for finding insights from complex data. By correlating expenses to market trends, I helped <x> - a media-savvy CEO, acquire a high-value brand. Later, working for <y> - another CEO, a low-profile leader who was obsessed with asset valuation - I found a new framework for valuing assets, including algorithmic staying power, a metric that is often ignored in digital-first businesses. Despite my contributions, <x> declared bankruptcy with a risky acquisition while <y> diversified and became the #1 telecom operator in <country_z>
One time, my interruption on retaining certain costs triggered a PE manager to say, “Why is he in the meeting after the due diligence?”
2014 was catastrophic for farmers. Years following the crop failure, the tension between herders and farmers escalated from disputes over water and grazing rights. The impact of climate change required enforcing sustainability standards through capital infusion. In 2018, I helped the largest pension fund diversify into the Agri industry, which requires a long-term investment horizon. With small farms operating with outdated processes, our acquisition of large farms introduced sustainable water, energy, and soil management practices to the region.
Last year, we witnessed positive returns on our investments, but small farms continue to struggle. With a Stanford MBA, I want to pivot from Investment Banking to a Venture Capital role and start a fund investing in the Small Farm Agri market in Africa.
By joining the Stanford IMPACT fund in the Food and Agriculture niche, I will expand the fund’s portfolio into ..
...
When I began my career in Consumer Product Goods (CPG) Marketing, influencer marketing was in its infancy. The ‘concepts’ that I finalized were founded on mapping the values of the brand to customer needs. In 2020, influencers filled a void for our cooped-up home/office life. Suddenly, brand identity was devalued. Views and likes became King.
Recognizing the need to set the right tone for our brand, I moved to a General Management role and managed the brand identity of five Fortune 500 companies. Getting buy-in from the executives, who often valued automation over customer loyalty, was a frustrating process.
With the economic slowdown in 2024...
Living through the M-Pesa era, I saw agents facilitating a banking ecosystem in the remotest parts of Kenya. The customers didn’t even know that the agents used M-Pesa. Joining UCLA Anderson in a city where such resistance to technology adoption doesn’t exist revealed two contrasting worldviews. One driven by faith in the institutions that ushered in growth. And second, from the abuse of power that has kept Africa poor.
When marketers ..
After the rocket launch, my mind lingered on the beach. As a coastal resident, I have been following erosion science since college..
My nerves were flaky. We were minutes away from the launch. I went to my happy place - the walk with my father as a child through Cartagena beach. The mind transportation calmed me down. By immersing in the learning curve, I contributed to helping us find planets with life-sustaining molecules – a tiny contribution to the collective consciousness at NASA.
After the rocket launch, my mind lingered on the beach. As a coastal resident, I have been following erosion science since college..
My parents masked the tragic memories of the Cambodian civil war with a rainbow of sweet, sour, salty, and bitter flavors – a palette preference that matched perfectly with American tastes. The unique flavors never reached most American homes. While the curiosity often lingered on the lack of Cambodian cuisines in popular restaurants..
...
While the promotion from Operations Engineer to Team Lead to Delivery Manager has been at an unprecedented pace, I recognize the privilege of managing on-ground staff from 85 countries. Recognizing the water degradation caused by each rig operation, I proactively integrated green infrastructure with gray infrastructure to meet the requirements of the Clean Water Act.
The growing demand for ..
As a single parent, my mother would drop my brother and I off at the New York Public Library and pick us up when her shift ended.
Reading Immanuel Kant to Aristotle, to Nietzsche, my exploration had no theme. Science fiction, philosophy, technology, finance, and politics all branched out to a new way of thinking. Entrepreneurship..
Algorithms killed bi-partisan consensus.
At the Thanksgiving dinner, Uncle Pete made a case for Trump; Aunt Eva believed in Vice President Harris, while Uncle Phil preferred a moderate for President – echoing the talking points of the YouTube influencers they subscribed to.
Only 3% subscribed outside their echo-chamber.
In 2022, I, a person with liberal views, and my friend <z>, a person with conservative views, started a News App ..
For our first AI-driven text generative tool, my role as a Product Manager was to spot biases in all our machine-learning algorithms.
The algorithm concluded a negative observation about the credit score of African Americans.
I had observed the struggles of my mother, who had to work two jobs to raise my sister and I after my father, an African American, abandoned our family. Every instinct pointed to validating the observation, but with research, I found that in 1881, one of America's largest insurance companies began putting a clause ..
...
As a teenager, I hid my father’s legendary surname. The chaos of fame set my mind to seek professions that were as close to the real world as possible. For the summer of my 11th grade, I volunteered and joined UNHCR, assisting with aid allocation to war-torn countries.
When I joined the UN Geneva office as a Humanitarian Affairs officer, I found my humanities degree insufficient in ..
..
My mother would ask our neighbors to knock on the door in a certain pattern and check on us while she juggled two jobs. Gang violence in the neighborhood was a routine. The paranoia ended when Father Barreiro initiated an after-school math program.
He set weekly goals, turned Math into a game, and organized after-school football matches to channel our energy..
...
Growing up, I had experienced all the cliches of a military family – timekeeping, spick and span shoes, and no shirts/trousers with wrinkles. Only when offering EMDR..
On the merits of winning the consultant of the year for 5 consecutive years in the Latin America region, I was assigned to my first energy project in the US to prevent fires similar to the Palisades fire in 2025. The fire destroyed over 18,000 structures while insufficient water infrastructure escalated a local to a catastrophic national event. While offering solutions for modernizing the grid, I offered
LBS MBA’s Strategy core course would help me ..
Women in Latin America constitute 60% of the informal workforce in the region. Out of necessity, many women start small and medium enterprises (SMEs), generating 67% of the jobs in the region.
While access to microcredit has grown, women-led micro-enterprises face a $93 billion funding deficit. When we engaged with the government of Colombia, they were in the middle of implementing a fast payment system (FPS) ..
With an LBS MBA, I want to explore cultural misalignment and incentive structures through the Strategy Execution Course...
Living through the M-Pesa era, I saw agents facilitating a banking ecosystem in the remotest parts of Kenya. The customers didn’t even know that the agents used M-Pesa. Studying in Los Angeles revealed two worldviews - one driven by faith in the institutions, and the second, from the abuse of power that kept Africa poor.
When marketers pushed for influencer marketing for our EdTech App, I intervened with a context-driven design – audio only while the students travelled, video in broadband connections, and interactive when they were among peers..
As the pre-sales person of a legacy technology company, I was inundated with requests for AI features. We had built a state-of-the-art banking solution with an ‘investment assistant’ that offered suggestions to invest and even flagged excessive line expenses. The users and banking customers loved our non-intrusive style of engagement.
With an LBS MBA, I want to gain both the strategy and the product management perspectives to ..
Coming from a Brazilian farming business, each summer was planned around my father’s meetings with farmers in Benue, Nigeria. 2014 was catastrophic for farmers, who faced the biggest droughts. Years following the crop failure, the tension between herders and farmers escalated from disputes over water and grazing rights. The impact of climate change requires enforcing sustainability standards through capital infusion. In 2018, I helped the largest pension fund diversify into the Agri industry, which requires a long-term investment horizon. With small farms operating with outdated processes..
With LBS MBA’s core courses in Marketing, I will learn to segment ..
I have worked in boutique M&A deals and PE funds, riding the waves of vaccine and LLM hype cycles. We were like the bottom-feeding fish, scrapping onto the remains of deals left over by large PE funds. We found two winners, thanks to our structured thinking and patience in supporting entrepreneurs through several setbacks. However, the biggest challenge in boutique firms is access to deal flow.
With an LBS MBA...
Earning the Consultant of the Year for 5 consecutive years in the Latin America region encouraged me to take on the most challenging transformation projects. MBA was not in my immediate plan until I met <y> - Stanford 2023 MBA, who encouraged me to gain global exposure. That advice motivated me to pursue projects in North America.
I was welcomed to America with my first project – a sustainable solution to prevent fires similar to the Palisades fire in 2025. I scoured ...
a) In the short-term with a Wharton MBA, I want to gain both the strategy and the product management perspectives to transition from my current role in pre-sales to a product managerial role where I could have a direct impact on the product’s roadmap.
b) I pitched our ‘investment assistant’ to banking clients. Clients requested a ChatGPT-style feature that required ..
...
a) In the short-term with a Wharton MBA, I want to gain both the strategy and the product management perspectives to transition from my current role in pre-sales to a product managerial role where I could have a direct impact on the product’s roadmap.
b) I pitched our ‘investment assistant’ to banking clients. Clients requested a ChatGPT-style feature that required ..
...
a) With a Wharton MBA, I want to pivot from Investment Banking to a Venture Capital role in the Agri industry.
b) The 2014 drought in our farm in Benue, Nigeria, was a wake-up call. Sensing the need for capital infusion, I helped the largest pension fund ..
a) In the short term, I will work for a large consulting company in the US. To acquire the best consulting practices in the US, I would learn from my peers at the Wharton Consulting Club (WCC) and take advantage of Wharton’s consulting-focused majors.
b) When we engaged with the government of Colombia, I could drive the conversation on several strategic gaps and bring FinTech partners as critical stakeholders, but women-led micro-enterprises face a $93 billion funding deficit.
With the Online Business ..
a) My short-term goal is to work on a global Energy project in the US. With majors in Business Economics and Public Policy, Business, Energy, Environment & Sustainability, and Management, I will build on my energy experience in California, where I developed solutions to predict wildfires.
b) Even after the scale of the 2025 Palisades fire, the organization was hesitant ..
..
a) My short-term goal is to work on a global Energy project in the US. With majors in Business Economics and Public Policy, Business, Energy, Environment & Sustainability, and Management, I will build on my energy experience in California, where I developed solutions to predict wildfires.
b) Even after the scale of the 2025 Palisades fire, the organization was hesitant ..
..
August 07, 2024
Mr. Ross X
Lansing, Michigan
USA
Dear Admissions Committee,
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
While guiding the world’s largest private hospital network, I began envisioning solutions that could improve access to healthcare services worldwide.
A trifecta of factors - access to diagnostic data to determine pre-existing conditions, the optimum treatment options, and studies on drug efficacy determine the health outcome for a patient. While most government initiatives are around the first two factors, drug development has remained stagnant for over 20 years.
A Ph.D. friend in Drug Discovery enlightened me about the reasons for the stagnation ..
....
I was five when my mother shared that “we would be leaving the comforts of Mumbai” to <x> - a village 200km away to start a rural school.
Growing up, I felt inadequate, but my mother showed me the possibility of learning from the best. The invitation to NASA space camp reconciled the notion that one can stay far away from the crowd but reach out to the best in the world if one is determined to do so.
When we pioneered Remote Operations in our offshore drilling, there were no ..
....
In late-90s India, stamp collection was bigger than TV. I started a club with one condition—a rare stamp of my choosing from both participants. In just a week, I had accumulated stamps from over 70 countries. It was a win-win-win deal for all three players, but the limitation of the middleman was evident as a seven-year-old when the top collectors facilitated meetings outside the club.
When I started a Grocery Delivery ..
....
Rami called me in panic. “I don’t know how to reach the school.”
The 20-minute car drive winded up in an alley where I saw a malnourished boy barely resembling the happy kid in our neighborhood.
I lost my father at 9. Rami lost both his parents to AIDS. His uncle couldn’t manage the financial burden of an additional child.
I side-hustled, selling software to fund my way through school and college. When my WordPress plugin became the most downloaded ..
..
Doctor or Engineer – this was a question I used to hear growing up. I would annoy my parents with the answer ‘detective,’ but the answer ironically became a mantra in when I was volunteering to shift high-risk patients from homes to hospitals. The decision was based on diagnostic data, distance from home to hospitals, and, most importantly..
After four years of iterative development in AI diagnostics, I was curious to know how international machine-learning communities specializing in healthcare diagnostics were progressing...
I had seen hundreds of Facebook likes on Mental health Awareness. I kept ignoring them until, in 2015, a cousin succumbed to the ugliness of her thoughts.
Traditional government campaigns were ineffective in reaching the most vulnerable in low-income families. I founded <X>' - a non-profit to communicate the mental health epidemic in India.
First, we ..
.....
When I shared about the walk to reach school, the pitiful roads, and the fight for running water, my engineering friends at Stanford recalled similar stories their grandfathers would tell about rural America of the 1940s.
Joe's intervention through <Y_non_profit> by removing all distractions from the child’s daily schedule transformed our education. However, the government was caught in a catch-22 scenario—invest ...
From a middle-income home, in a year, we saw the square footage of our house triple. Coming from a culture where the privilege to talk was not equal for men and women, I kept small notes that turned into elaborate analyses on regulation, global competition, and sustainable steps to reduce the carbon footprint in family’s silver and zinc mining business. The strategic insights became the blog –
.....
......
“Will you succeed, Papa?”
I still remember his sincere smile. At one time, I saw him sleeping on the floor. In his mind, he was not worthy of any comfort without reaching a milestone.
The Hyundai deal closed. I saw him slowly & successfully build the auto parts brand ..
...
When my cousins shared the horrors of neighbors falling dead to crossfires and mortars rumbling 30-year-old ancestral homes, my father would say proudly, “We are in heaven’s zone of a war.” He had a hardware business. Grandmother stayed with us. She was right to be worried. All except for one of her siblings were wiped out in bomb attacks.
My father’s ..
.....
The war in Afghanistan was in decline but I received the notice. On departure, my father gave a despondent look one sees in funerals. Since the destruction of strategic assets had relevance geopolitically, we were constant targets in Kabul.
Kids who barely made it out of high school were on a mission that ...
...
My curiosity as a child drove the invention of a new game and opened my world to machines, math, science, and leadership in sports.
In an inter-school baseball tournament when I struggled to motivate my team, my father – a veteran of the Iraq War, advised to build camaraderie before leading. We met every day and took on ..
....
Growing up as the son of immigrant parents had all the clichés of sharing a 1-bedroom apartment, lessons on frugality, and 20 years of hard work, culminating in owning our store.
When I tried to enforce contrarian strategies driven by maximizing order value, my father unanimously told me that number chasing is not how we build a business. I parted ways with my father and joined <X> – a co-working start-up. In just a year, we achieved 2nd position in the North American market. And then, the COVID crisis hit us in March 2020 ..
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I looked at wonderment on the two to four computer screens of American YouTubers. Even in a better-off African economy like Kenya, 70% of students don’t own a computer.
The government tried to subsidize computers, but corruption kept Kenya behind. My curiosity to find better learning paths that made computer the last mile of a child’s learning, encouraged me to host Sarah – an Education Major at ..
....
As a two-year-old, I foot-tapped to the music of Hendrix, Beatles, and Led Zeplin. My father nurtured my talent by playing the biggest rock hits before every dinner. My mother insisted that I focus on my academics. A bit behind in the class, I didn’t pay much attention until my father shared the realities of making a career out of performance arts.
Competing with the best guitarist accelerated my guitar skills. I imitated the strategy and joined the Math club. By high school, I was at the top of the class in Math.
Things got worse when my mother was diagnosed with ..
...
The innocent eyes, eager to be mesmerized, didn’t know the reality that the visually challenged market wasn’t profitable for the publishers of “Ship of Theseus.” My curiosity to learn pushed me to painfully decode each English word to the most authentic braille word. The children’s smile was my reward.
I hate ‘No’.
When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, I ..
...
When my friend put his arms around his father, I would glance at mine. There was an expression of disgust on his face that only family insiders could recognize.
My father is a 3rd generation military veteran. Growing up, I had all the cliches of a military family – timekeeping to the last second, spick and span shoes, and no shirts/trousers with wrinkles.
"Sir." No, Sir." The strange practice ...
The grueling journey to the Antarctic culminates in witnessing the hair grass among the sea of icebergs. None of the satisfying visuals exists in remote Oil & Gas operations for women engineers. With the industry moving rapidly to automation, establishing systems for remote operation is a logistical nightmare in inhabitable terrains..
..
While I was excited to work on an innovative product that shortlisted clients eligible for mortgages from underserved communities, I soon recognized the inherent biases in machine learning algorithms. While collaborating with the FTC, the Chairman proposed the application of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) ..
Our unique culture of welcoming non-finance candidates across geographies has given us a strategic advantage in the NFT (non-fungible Token) market.
An Engineer with an illustrious 20-year career in technology was onboarded to evaluate the feasibility of the technology running the NFT marketplace and the marketing strategy we had integrated into the App. Although ..
When I joined <z>, I saw the old guards who relied on the brilliance of their phrases, losing out to young reporters like me, who learned to integrate analytics into our content plan. I analyzed the opening paragraph that improved scroll rate, the lines that led readers to click more and the end credits that earned a share in social media.
In three years, we were fighting misinformation generated by ..
...
The panicked 911 call recording still haunts me. I could hear my aunt's helpless attempt at reviving my cousin. My brother was sobbing uncontrollably in the background. In our chats, he shared teenagers' obsession..
..
The C-Suite of a Technology giant had neatly laid out five probable reasons for the customer churn rate. I changed my ‘consultant’ hat and became a user. As my timer hit 2 minutes and 10 seconds, a customer support executive answered.
Unfortunately, the power users were not facing trivial issues but sophisticated workflow errors that required interaction with a customer service human over an AI bot. The competitor’s friendly 1-ring answer for power users was the reason for the 15% churn rate.
We designated three personas– loyal, power, and light users. Based on the value of the subscription service, we ..
...
We made incredible progress in overhauling the curriculum for < Y's> summer school online program by working with instructional designers, UI designers, and subject matter experts.
As the project manager, I monitored that grade 1 to grade 4th students were fast, but kindergarten students spent an inordinate amount of time on the instructions. Soon, we realized that despite parents supervising the kids, they often multitask – many working from home while the sessions were conducted. For the next iteration, we included audio elements in instructions – a small change ..
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Leading a team of four on a product that serves the highly volatile FinTech space in India, Malaysia, and the UAE required navigating three different regulatory environments. When one key person in the team haphazardly began taking a leave of absence, I began exploring his perspective. As a father of a newborn, he was in an incredible phase of his life that required supporting his wife. Since there were no shortcuts to the rigor of our testing process, I formulated a flexi-leave policy for new parents that has become a unique incentive in our hiring process.
I explored a similar open-mindedness ..
...
Growing up in a conservative Sikh family, I was indoctrinated with the value of truthfulness and service. As the purchasing manager, I sourced ingredients worth $10M. The incentives were designed to tie performance bonuses with the bottom line.
The VPs found a shortcut and favored suppliers that arranged backend commissions for the contracts, costing us 15% of the profit margins.
I raised the alarm, and the CEO entrusted me to redesign the incentives.
The first reform was ...
After selling B2B marketing solutions for 3 years, I designed a marketing application that seamlessly managed campaign schedules, analytics, chat history, and newsletters in an easy-to-use interface. Eager to build a customer support team, I posted my requirements on LinkedIn. Soon, I began receiving a call from <z>, who couldn’t complete even a single sentence in English. The fourth call was with a promise to be the most loyal soldier for the company.
As a test of my hypothesis that ‘attitude and commitment matters,’ I recruited ..
....
There was visible anger on the Doctor’s face as he opened the App.
The patient record was running on an App from one vendor, the doctor’s notes had poor integration with the records, and the insurance details from a third vendor slowed down the preview of the record.
The first week of on-ground data collection required us to observe doctors. The information flow about referring patients to another department happened through phone or email or a note that were stuck in the workflow of the slow App. The hierarchical nature and specific chain of command around seniority made the customer – the patient an afterthought.
As a consultant, I developed
I gave my victory lap, soaking in the love of the crowd. To acknowledge the appreciation, I raised my fist and felt a sprinkle of sweat falling on my legs.
It was embarrassing.
An estimated 2-3% of Americans experience axillary hyperhidrosis – the excessive sweating of the underarms. Unlike an athletic event where the audience is removed from the athlete by at least 100 meters, at the office, college, and in a social event, the sweats leave a visible stain. The underarm pads were clunky and didn’t offer a permanent solution. As an Entrepreneurship major, I developed the prototype ..
The numbers dropped from a 25% conversation rate to 0% in our sales dashboard. Assuming some error in the data connection, I refreshed the App.
100+ flight cancellations in 1 minute.
The pandemic had arrived.
A month before, I was present in the board meeting with our team of 15 for the acquisition announcement to <x> - the leading travel services company. With a proprietary predictive algorithm, we could set pricing for over 20,000+ hotels, optimizing their sales and campaign plans. ..
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I was surprised when the Founder shared the news that he had accepted a $20 mn acquisition deal with <x>. As part of the deal, the management gave promotions to the top 10% of the employees. The triple promotion that I earned in a year led to an interesting first-day meeting where I was leading technologists 10 to 20 years senior me.
Our project customized AI and cloud services for Fortune 500 companies. The transition involved a steep learning curve as, traditionally, the company sold enterprise technologies with proprietary products that have been tested and deployed in thousands of servers and devices.
Although the company had the distinction of earning the most patents, the honor also perpetuated a culture of individual brilliance over teamwork. Cross-functional idea ..
Starting my career in a 900+ strength Fortune 500 company made me wonder whether I had any impact on society. When the founder of the non-profit, <x> invited me to join their consulting team, I embraced the opportunity.
In a year, I was entrusted to lead a team of 12 on a renewable energy project in rural India. The organization has a tradition of recruiting engineers as most of the problems require interpreting complex datasets and correlating the impact of policy, laws, and budget allocation on government projects in the villages.
The quant-heavy nature of the analysis that attracts engineers also led to the development of a monolithic culture.
Two years back...
....
With just 2 years into developing campaigns, I was assigned to lead the campaign for <X> – a newbie from the US with limited market penetration. However, the flagship brand – <c> chip, had a cult following in India and Japan – two markets with opposite palettes for spices.
The campaign was the first time I was leading a team of creatives. Unfortunately, for a niche market, my employer had limited resources, and I was assigned professionals with relatively low experience.
<X> was not impressed with the initial campaign idea. Our slogans integrated Cricket into the Campaign in India and Anime for Japan. The head of marketing laid it out in brutal honesty. “We are going to lose the account if your team doesn’t come up with a fresh campaign.
..
...
From the comforts of the city, I was thrust into an environment where infrastructure was lacking. As the daughter of an entrepreneur, I gained a unique perspective on building an educational institution in rural India but felt less than my peers in the city. The selection into a global team of 20 for NASA’s <x> program built my confidence.
Witnessing some of the best minds iteratively build ...
Controlling a machine through the uncertainty of the troposphere makes me feel alive.
My earliest memory as a child is a field trip to Buckley Air Force Base, where my Dad, a military pilot, showed me the massive panels of the 777 …
I have worked with products of scale at Google and Meta. To gain experience in Digital Marketing and Strategy for small businesses and to help my friend’s boutique, I worked closely with her to strategize for the growth phase.
We developed processes that ...
I led a team of three to take the office security solution live for 3m+ customers with minimal glitches. Leading up to the event, I had several interactions with the VP of Strategy of a client ..
…
Are you ready to jump? I shouted, “Yes,” masking the risks with the adrenaline rush of jumping from 10,000 feet above the ground. It was the precise moment when my legs left
…
…
I was obsessed with App development right from high school when I won the Google Code Jam competition. Once I applied my skills to large tech giants, I explored ways to help non-profits with fast..
..
When 2020-21 set a record in fundraising for SaaS companies started by white founders, black communities struggled to raise funds. As a black founder from Detroit, I found inspiration from the sub-culture with unique designs that disrupted the clothing industry, but Silicon Valley ..
.....
As a non-profit on a mission to increase financial inclusion for women in rural India, we undertook the challenge of changing culture where husbands controlled how women’s incomes were spent.
While men spent 65% of their income on alcohol...
I grew up in a volatile family where violence was the language that everyone understood. As the middle kid, I was the mediator, negotiator, and pacifier. The role kept the family from disintegrating into chaos, but the mental stress ..
With 4+ years of experience as a Technology Consultant, I have worked in the insurance, e-commerce, and Banking industries. While implementing a $12M software solution for an e-commerce giant in the US, I was entrusted to build..
I thrive in an Entrepreneurial culture, and implemented the first AI-driven software programming module that improved the product shipping time by ~20%.
Implementing frontier solutions is exhilarating. Looking back, I ..
Coming from a middle-income family, I am fortunate to be among the 27% of women in India who are employed in a full-time role. Despite a shift in attitude towards sharing household chores, women still ..
When I began my career in a start-up, the return on our investment was calculated with the knowledge that if we overspent, the company would fail. Frugality became the greatest virtue. Because of the diverse responsibilities in a start-up, I ..
Relocating from the US to Fiji with comfortable housing in the island’s capital felt like a privilege compared to the hundreds of thousands of villagers, who have seen their beloved land gulped by the ocean’s rage.
We established rapport with neighboring clans..
Figuring out the shortest path from the villages to the suburbs of Mumbai for the <x> pipeline project to designing the shortest interactions before food is delivered to your doorsteps, I have been fortunate to engage with the Government of Maharashtra and also present my understanding of user resistance to the team at Uber.
What makes me feel alive is when..
Starting the day with memorizing the photo of the mailman, plumber, and essential handymen was a ritual that I was used to as a 5-year-old. I babysat my 2-year-old twin sisters as my mother was managing two shifts as a single parent in the US. From finding tricks that pacified my sisters to rationing Quesadillas, I grew up faster than my friends.
Marketing for my uncle’s restaurant business, I
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Working as a Product Manager in Drug Development was an uneventful occupation in 2018.
I noticed that the culture, incentives, hierarchy, and societal expectations of gender roles disincentivize women professionals from persisting in the organization. I was no different. In 2019, I received an offer at <_X> to lead product development for a pediatric care product.
<_X> had an entrepreneurial approach to policies. I utilized the opportunity and worked with three senior women managers to start the Women in Healthcare initiative.
We established a research project to study ..
Algorithms mixed our tribal instincts with our desire to seek distraction. The combination with companies’ incentive to monetize the maxim – higher viewing time equals a higher likelihood of purchase led to the creation of information bubbles.
Influencers on both sides of the political aisle exist in silos breaking down decades of bipartisanship that was the cornerstone of a vibrant democracy.
I saw biases accentuated by algorithms even in 2016 while assisting the college admissions team. We pushed for greater representation of US minorities, second-generation immigrants, and international minorities in our admissions ...
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My parents had unlimited resources for storybooks. Toys and Candies – not so much.
We grew up in a household where education won over other demands to our attention.
Stories were essential to building our vocabulary.
My career as a Marketing Manager and my sister's as an author arose from our parents’ early intervention. Our friends were not so lucky. Many lost ..
When my father oriented us brothers to be analytically minded, I rebelled and drifted to painting and music. Then, the choice for a career came. I followed the proven path in Engineering. Even through the compromise, I immersed myself in music, drama, and arts in college. While teaching financially insecure students through <x> - I saw the potential of vivid imagery to create new pathways to learning math and science.
My desire to teach and create led me to ..
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My parents barely had any education. I was born when they were working as assistants in Delis, making $5/hour. Their American dream – a restaurant, failed to get them out of middle-income trap. From that time, my father talked about investing in restaurants.
A BA in Music was an escape from the hospitality industry.
I taught music for underserved children in Brooklyn through <X>, innovated with tempo, and saw the music elevate the mood of distressed children.
Last year, my album – Y, earned 50,000 downloads, but a sad truth faces the new artists: streaming services democratized music but limited the reach of artists.
Hosting shows and live music in expensive venues offer the best ROI, but the upfront cost is too high for most artists..
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For my first project as a team lead, I noticed that <X> was consistently behind the timeline. This came as a shock. She was a star performer in our AI investment niche since she pivoted from technology to our VC team. Her strategies to find industries with the highest probability of integrating AI helped us prioritize investing in entrepreneurs serving these industries.
To empower X to her former best self, I tried all the classic task management strategies and even guaranteed her position even ..
After six months of working on one of the toughest machine-learning projects and three postponements, my teammates from South Africa, China, and India finally joined me in DC.
The final phase of our project required rigorous testing as the FinTech product served the most vulnerable in society who couldn’t afford to risk their savings to security breaches.
A senior developer in the team who was known for making off-color remarks began sharing typecasting comments about our Chinese peer. Initially, ..
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While working for the <X> M&A deal, I worked with consultants, investment banking associates, lawyers, and accounting persons for both the client and our internal team. Among the 15, a junior colleague stood out for his earnestness.
Although our culture was collaborative, the high transactional value of the deal forced everyone to work in silos, engaging with others only when clarification was required. This put tremendous pressure on the Junior Analyst...
Motivating a team of 20+ sales associates and 5 team leads requires a coach’s mindset—firm with targets but empathetic to the challenges they face in closing a sale.
One team lead had a spotless career for 7 years, but the company’s position in the market was shaky after an insurance aggregator prioritized paid partners. Eager to give the company the push it needed, the team lead took a shortcut – instead of informing the customers of the renewal terms, he retroactively updated the terms. The complaints began to rise the week following the renewals.
With a zero-tolerance policy on errors in disclosure, the senior manager let ..
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As an African American, my parents were the first family members to graduate from college.
The impact of education was direct. When I was four, we moved from the projects to a middle-income neighborhood. Their interest in science led me to think and question everything as a child. No matter how silly my questions were, my parents were patient and willing to engage. This attitude of curious introspection allowed me to learn complex concepts.
Teaching was not an afterthought but a virtue that the family cherished.
With the optimism...
A big part of my memory as a child was the summers in rural Iowa, where I tagged along with my Uncle in his tractor to explore the ten-thousand-acre farm. Quite a contrast to the space-hungry lifestyle I was used to in New York City.
The visit during the summer of 2016 was a somber event. The playful cousin, with whom I shared many memories, had overdosed on opioids. The 70,000+ Americans that die of drug overdoses every year aren’t a statistic anymore. I had ...
Building a brand online and developing a loyal following in a niche was a winner-takes-it-all game.
Like in markets, two brands emerged, and so did I and my competitor Y in the editing for the educational video niche.
At the peak of my creative exuberance, I was publishing three videos a day. The smaller competitors with better content but lower volume were buried in the complexity of the YouTube Algorithm. An acquaintance I met during the YouTube Creator workshop was competing in the same space. He emailed his struggle with depression. Although I had created a persona as a strong sounding board, I, too, was internally struggling ..
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Starting at 5:00 am and, planning for the day became a habit for my father as he managed many moving parts – suppliers, finance, staff, and sales. Learning all the functions of a business trained me to think from another person’s point of view. While working for my first leadership role in developing a $30 million technology product, I worked with a team of differing temperaments, skills, and motivations. The leadership revealed that the cash flow for the next two years is guaranteed if we get the product right.
Witnessing my father handle the chaos of the restaurant by ..
Getting coached by the CEO was a career-defining boot camp. Every morning, I presented three versions of the pitch. He would offer feedback on each small inflection.
When I introduced a few complex sentences, he would comment, “You are not selling to Oxford professors.” The practice was exhausting, but when executives from Ghana to Canada..
"You want a cost-effective adoption process; choose Michael."
My friend shared the horror - not of the question but the calmness with which the Adoption Counselor was bidding for a black boy. This wasn't a push for equality but the remnants of a systemic injustice that black communities still pay. Black children
As a 4-year-old, my eyes were glued to the TV.
When the cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed, I would ignore the gunshots in my neighborhood.
As a single mother, my mom saved up for 6 months and finally afforded us a Cello. Enrolling me in <_y>- a free after-school music program and listening to <_z> - the founder and the Orchestra Director ..
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9-11 is a reminder of our family's deepest anguish.
My uncle, a star trader, maneuvered a technique in a trade that works only in 1 in a thousand times. To show his commitment to the investing strategy, he bet on a rising internet startup - <_y>. The crash of 2001 wiped out his entire savings. The note in his Queens home, before he ended the humiliation, was a moment that my grandmother ..
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Ms. Y’s helpless cry on the phone froze me.
I couldn’t advise how to manage her SNAP funds when she revealed that the job loss of her partner triggered his violence.
Recouping from the trauma, she received her first warning for missing work and the second warning from school for children’s poor grades. The fainting spell from type-2 diabetes didn’t ..
I saw stars for ten seconds before hearing Robin, our Team Physician.
I blacked out on the stretcher.
Medicare mandates 20% of the total cost of rehabilitation as a co-payment – a cost that was too steep for our family. I tried to overcome the cost by scheduling therapy services that accepted payments in installments. The lack of timely intervention cost me.
2016 college football was the last I could play.
The frustrating 3 months forced me to write the best practices to recover from ..
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<_x> had one of the best media coverage and goodwill among the residents of New York City’s three boroughs.
When I volunteered to help the team streamline their operations, I noticed that the promotions they ran from July to September for the best giving season – Oct to December, resulted in inquiries spilling over to January to July next year.
Often with requests for donating winter clothes or deliverables that are apt for the winter, the customer management team offered contacts of alternative charities or government organizations for such donations, missing a huge opportunity ..
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As the core accounting person managing 138 subsidiaries at <X>, I witnessed the transition of businesses from startup to mature companies, technology expenses shadowing operational expenses, and regulatory changes stalling reliable cash flow businesses.
Instead of letting external forces determine the future, our Founder/CEO would often share, “Only dead fish go with the flow.”
Embracing a mantra of entrepreneurial thinking ..
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My parents grew up in abject poverty in the Dominican Republic. Immigration to the US changed our destiny. Without education, my parents had to take minimum-wage jobs. While the family found stability, I struggled in Grade 8th.
The principal suggested that I shift to a special-ed school. Mrs. Y dared to take a stand against it. She sat with me, encouraged me to read the question word by word, and queried to find what I understood. With the support of a psychologist, I was diagnosed with a learning disability.
Unlike dyslexia, I took ...
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I never imagined I would be working for Gucci in New York City.
15 years back, the walk to the bus stop was a life and death choice. After 2 consecutive days of nervously walking beside the echoes of gunshots, my mother decided to switch to a school 1-hour away.
In 2009, something magical happened. Cincinnati embraced community schools.
The neighborhood violence stopped.
Communities, businesses, and non-profits ..
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The 21 hours of continuous work that caused the death of an analyst – although tragic, was a secret rite of passage for all junior bankers, even in 2023. After a stellar 2021, large M&A didn’t happen as we anticipated in 2022. 2023 started on a rough note when the CEO mandated a return to office. Junior Bankers protested. My first year physically in an office was spent managing conflicts.
Attrition was expected, but ..
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While working with retail startup <X>, we witnessed a 15% attrition of customers in September despite our innovative personalized offers. The entry of the retail giant A had begun the price wars. Driven by panic, the CTO raised feature requests that showcased high-priced products first in search results, nudging ‘impulse’ purchases.
The strategy, although advantageous in the short term, had a disastrous ..
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Wolf of Wall Street, ‘Greed is good,’ ‘Finance Bro’ – the caricature of my job is plenty.
The reality is that AI has taken over the role of what entry-level analysts used to do a decade ago. Adapting to the change, I committed to learning and thinking from my client’s perspective. From the year our world stood still to 2024, my superstar friends were all let go.
I wondered why I wasn’t. Finally, at one deal celebration party, I built up enough courage to ask my boss, and he, in a plain manner, said, “You ..
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“I was sitting across a 40-something Entrepreneur who hadn’t shared what the meeting was about. The email said, “I have some interesting projects for you.”
“We have to beat <X>.”
<X> was no small player but a Technology behemoth with a market share of $56B. I had drunk ..
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Even as a teen, my friends would huddle around me, pulling me aside for their attention to share their darkest secrets. I wondered about the trust people had in me until two years ago the founder of the startup I worked for shared that he had two months of payroll remaining.
The deepest fears, hopes, and worries of my friends, peers, and family made me aware of the value of listening to build trust and alleviate their stress. In one of the authentic communications I had with an entrepreneur friend, she revealed how her one year of planning was disrupted when her partner quit the entrepreneurial route and took up a job.
Distribution and Marketing were the biggest ...
When a nation is impoverished, the route to relief is an endless maze with frequent sorrow and desperation.
Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation reached a record 500 billion percent. Our family had exhausted our credits, reputation, and connection to finance my engineering studies at MIT. The scholarship helped, but for other expenses, there was no dollar in sight.
Accompanying my Father to Fifth Street – a mile-long private exchange that offered better terms than nationalized banks, I watched him haggle for $200. As the sweat of Harare’s summer heat settled, I wondered ..
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My mother worked three jobs to support my Father’s ambition of building a technology product from our garage. As immigrants from Hong Kong, they recognized the immense opportunity the United States offered for our future. The dedication and complete devotion to their jobs without ever complaining were confusing for us kids.
When my brother and I set a record on bed-wetting, our therapist suggested ..
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When my teacher asked where I lived, I used to say near “x” – a cover not to let them know that I lived in a slum.
My parents migrated from the interior villages of Bihar in India and found the cost of living in Mumbai staggering for their daily wages. Worrying that the chores would take away from my valuable time in learning, my mother took on the brunt of the workload. This was after the eight-hour shift in a textile factory.
Hard work was a way of life, a way to survive ..
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I began my daily trivia talk on the mechanics of the engine, then switched to horsepower, and with dread, I asked, “Shall I take the car for a spin.” Confused and secretly proud of the question, my father sat with me. As a 11- year old, I barely reached the accelerator.
I was always restless. To avoid trouble in class, my parents found ways to drain my energy with sports, drama, and cars. As the son of an Engineer, I emulated my father’s disregard for the flashy new gadget and appreciated ..
"African American fathers are more likely to stop child support than any ethnicity in the world. I would recommend that the person be quoted a premium at 20% over $R."
<x> - our first AI-driven text generative tool for the insurance giant, Y, was in beta. As the Product Manager, my role was to spot biases and ensure data privacy in all our machine-learning algorithms.
When my friend looked at me for validation, I wondered, "There must be truth to that statement."
My father abandoned my family when I was 5, and my sister was 3. He had developed an addiction that ruined our finances and forced my mother to ...
Repeat after me, “I am nobody without education.”
My mother would force me to repeat these affirmations at least five times before letting me go outside to play. She was nervous. A week before, gang violence in the neighborhood of Montevideo had killed three teenagers. Many of my friends were couriers for the supply of drugs from Brazil. As a Single mother, juggling two jobs where the shifts run 12-14 hours, overseeing me and my younger sister ..
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10 years ago, Uncle Pete gave a passionate speech supporting my decision and reiterating why I should join as an Automobile engineer. He had a conservative ideology, but my father – a liberal believed that a woman shouldn't unnecessarily risk their safety in a men-only workspace.
The cliched American family with a mishmash of ideologies doesn't neatly translate ideologically on all issues. But when media companies assume ..
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I hid my family name for two years.
The 3rd transfer to a private school mandated that we include our father’s name, profession, and mother’s maiden name. The combination proved easy to detect our family’s elusive presence. My education and grades became a subject of interest in Tabloid newspapers and social media as the interest in my father’s Midas touch ..
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Born into a hamlet in India, I was inoculated with a conservative culture that valued tradition over discovery. Luckily, my father’s exposure to port cities for his trading business brought in the consciousness of exploring - a way of thinking that became standard in our household.
When I faced a life-threatening illness that left me with a high risk of an epileptic seizure, we moved to Mumbai.
Unlike the fixed conversations about the sowing season or the new gadget ..
In a world where violence and corruption are normal, it is easy to get cynical about the future. When the world becomes a large pool of cynics, they are blinded from the opportunities that lay ahead. Giving up is easy. Fighting on despite the injustice and the uncertainties is what has made us humans survive over 200,000 years. I take pride in our ancestor’s ability ..
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My mother worked in three jobs and didn’t show up for weeks. Finally, when I had the courage, I asked my grandfather about her erratic behavior.
His words still haunt me, “As an engineer, I had a comfortable life, but if I had just pursued my career, you would not have become a capable young man.”
In 1992, I lost my father in a ..
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Eyes closed, swaying to Tchaikovsky's score, I danced on the stage unassumingly. My friends were snickering at my poses. At 5, I innocently asked, “Is ballet dance only for girls?”
My father, without missing a beat, said, “Don’t worry about your friends. They will find their ballet dance.” The non-judgmental approach became my value in influencing project outcomes.
As a professional ballet dancer, I learned..
Immigrating to the land of the free was an escape from the sectarian violence that was plaguing the newly independent Nigeria of the 60s. The story of my mother’s ancestral home burned to ashes during the 1976 civil unrest was unsettling as our grandparents ...
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Did you sanitize? Did you wash your hands? Don’t allow that gap in your face mask? My father was rigorous with all safety standards when COVID-19 hit.
As a supermarket owner employing 30 in New York, my father couldn’t just shut down the business. Juggling between his sales falling by 80% in ...
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Watching workers dripping in the dirt in our family's marble mining plants while we lived in the comforts of a solar-powered residence in Johannesburg motivated me to pursue a career in non-profit. The energy independence we aim to achieve became part of public consciousness when hybrid work crumbled ..
As a teenager, I accompanied my father to meet property owners. By age 18, I had worked with developers, designers, inspection officers, the fire department, bankers, and homeowners. When we started our boutique real Estate Consulting Company in South Boston, I
In 2019, when we were at the New York International Auto Show, I met Professor <H>, who advised us to reduce costs with strategic acquisition. In 2020, the right moment arrived when prices became attractive. We acquired our
Having exhausted all options of finding an advertiser that matches our mission of ‘science education for all,’ I was tired on my way to the Park Lane Hotel when Usman – the Uber driver, noticed my frustration. He shared ..
I learned the building blocks of Finance through an exploratory internship at <y> in Singapore. The internship expanded my perspective of Finance from a quant exercise to a reflection of the culture, policy and aspirations of a country. The reports I created had all the makings of a short story, merging interactions of ....
At my day job in <X>, I am responsible for managing the accounts of 150+ subsidiaries. Starting with a traditional Oil Refinery Business, we pivoted into digital media, telecom, and FinTech. The diversity has helped me gain ..
Accuracy meant everything at Goldman Sachs. A small margin of error even by half a million dollars was frowned upon by the VP. Under such intense scrutiny, I thrived as an analyst. Unlike peer analysts, I didn’t stop at the numbers. I broke down ..
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When the clock struck 6 a.m., we brothers looked at each other with a sense of immense satisfaction. The menus were strategically planned to increase the order value. Each sourced ingredient was accounted for, and
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As someone who has worked for a Technology giant, selling Enterprise Servers for Small and Medium Businesses, I was comfortable with million-dollar billings. Last summer, as a consultant for an Edu-tech non-profit, I was thrust into a unique environment - working for a local non-profit with grand visions but limited resources.
The Founder had developed a prototype for an affordable Edu-tech service that would reach millions through smartphones. Despite a lofty vision, our on-ground research showed that in a..
Initially, in my career, I assumed that Financial Services is all about technical skills. Once I gained mastery of the technical, I realized it was not sufficient to grow in my career. By pro-actively seeking cross-functional opportunities, I interacted with..
In 2018, our company's valuation improved by 15x when an investor showed interest in acquiring us. From paper millionaires, we had a real shot at financial independence.
When the deal fell apart, we recognized that ..