Essay 1 (Required): a) What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 words)
b) What are your career goals for the first three to five years after completing your MBA, and how will those build towards your long-term professional goals? (150 words)
Profile: Mr. J
Profile (Background): Mr. J, a Brazilian investment banker, advised on pension funds. With a mandate to include ESG metrics in the fund, he explored deals that brought funds to farmlands in South America. With a family business in Africa in the agriculture sector, he wants to leverage the VC community in the UK and his deal experience to bring sustainability to African farms.
Essay Approach: “Why Wharton?”
Mr J should explain how Wharton offers the foundation to marketing farm products to clientele willing to pay a premium for authentic organic produce, build a strategy to scale the vision, and network with the right ESG investors to invest in small farms and bring sustainability practices to small farms.
Essay Planning
Problem: The high failure rate of small farms in Africa and the lack of sustainability practices among small farmers managing them.
Problem (Explained): When a PE firm or a large fund invests in farms, meeting sustainability standards is a regulatory requirement. The applicant in one such deal brought fund influx into large farms in Africa. The implementation of sustainability practices, following the arrival of the funds, improved profitability, reduced the carbon footprint, and introduced water conservation and sustainable irrigation practices to the farms. But small farms exist in siloes, at the mercy of the weather. They struggle to survive.
Feasible Goals: Finding a premium market for small farm produce and finding investors interested in creating a marketplace for small farms.
Short-term Goal: US investors and large pension funds have slowly diluted their holdings in businesses with ESG goals. By segmenting the ESG investors, Mr J wants to apply his market segmentation skills and find investors passionate about sustainable Agriculture in small farms.
Long-Term Goal: Create an umbrella brand for small farms to offer collective bargaining power in the marketplace.
Wharton’s Strength: Access to the ESG community in the US will help Mr J find the right partners to fund small farms in Africa.
Opener: Starting with a connection with the farmers in Africa helps the Brazilian applicant build a case for the small farmers.
Strategy: After establishing the applicant’s passion for Africa, his success in persuading a large pension fund to invest in farms, I want to present the skill gap in brand positioning that Wharton could address. I also want to highlight the hesitation of VC funds in the US in pursuing ESG funds, as the pressure on short-term return is high. Mr J also needs access to the VC funds specializing in agri-tech startups that the market segmentation could offer. Networking matters the most in accessing these investors. Wharton with a targeted curriculum offers the opportunity.
Sample Wharton MBA Goals Essay: Short-Term and Long-Term Career Aspiration (Investment Banking to VC & Small Agri Farms) (169 Words)
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 ..
