From the Editor’s Desk

In all of my 25 years on this planet (there are very few moments when I’ve wished I were older, but for dramatic effect, this is one of them), I have never randomly run into someone I knew on the street. I was beginning to think it was purely a cinematic device used to shoehorn years of plot into a two-hour movie because the idea that someone who 1) grew up in a suburb of fewer than 10,000 residents with a single strip of stores meant to pass as “downtown” and a graduating high school class of just over 100, and 2) graduated from Columbia and then spent years working in and around New York City, would never once bump into a familiar face seemed implausible. I was about to blame Hollywood for giving me unrealistic expectations once again until I ran into not one, not two, but dozens of HBS classmates this summer.

When it rains, it truly pours because I was seeing MBAs everywhere: on the corner of 57th and 5th in front of the 52-foot Louis Vuitton suitcase, at the East Side entrance of Central Park on the one day when the city relented with tolerable running weather, and in line at Magnolia Bakery after a co-worker shocked the office by revealing that he’d never tried their banana pudding. I even crossed paths with a classmate in the thick of Times Square, both of us wedged in a heap of sweaty tourists posing with Elmo and police officers telling a man to put his pants back on. New York City, where you can be no one and everyone in the same breath, suddenly felt very intimate.

Perhaps this should not have surprised me. The HBS refrain, after all, has always been clear: to educate leaders who make a difference in the world, a mission now borne by some 86,000 alumni worldwide. It’s a distinction underscored from the very start. And yet I never truly grasped the magnitude of that number, let alone the gravity of its reach, until I realized just how small the world becomes when you belong to something so expansive.

I don’t need to rehash why having a network like HBS is invaluable. This issue of The Harbus already does that in spades. You’ll find a cover story on Professor Reza Satchu’s push to redefine entrepreneurship at HBS through his Founder Launch class, alongside a profile of one of the many startups born here. You’ll also read reflections on ideological boundaries in the workplace, the raison d’être of business in a world unsettled by shifting economic doctrines, and the Mary Oliver poem behind the oft-quoted “one wild and precious life.” Taken together, these pieces remind us that the HBS network is more than a list of names in a database. It is a chorus of voices shaping industries, communities, and conversations far beyond Aldrich Hall.

The question, then, is not about what the network gives us, but what it asks of us. An HBS degree is not a golden ticket; it is a responsibility. Many of us will someday influence housing, healthcare, or employment. Some will guide the flow of capital across industries, channeling resources that decide whose dreams come into being. Others will lead companies that determine how food is grown, technology is deployed, and energy is produced. These paths are enticing, but they’re also fraught with ambiguity. It’s easy to get swept up in ambition and forget that, the higher we climb, the fewer people there are above us, and the fewer still willing to tell us when we’re wrong. Left unchecked, that detachment can corrode judgement, its consequences proliferating in ways we cannot foresee.

That is the paradox of 86,000 alumni. It sounds enormous until you realize it’s a fraction of the eight billion lives that may be touched, often invisibly, by the choices we make. The world is small, yes, but the aftershocks that our decisions leave in their wake are immense.

That small-world feeling is what makes this place exhilarating, but it’s also what makes it humbling. The serendipity of the unexpected encounters I experienced this summer is the same current that will draw us back to former colleagues, future business partners, and lifelong friends. It is a reminder that, no matter how far we travel, we are never truly operating in isolation. Every decision casts a shadow, and, in a world this small, those shadows are never far behind.

As we begin a new school year, this duality shapes The Harbus’ vision: to be a forum that reflects not only the closeness of this community, but also the weight of its influence. A place where ideas can be shared candidly, where stories remind us of our responsibilities as much as our opportunities, and where we can resist the temptation to live inside an echo chamber.

Because if this summer taught me anything, it’s that you don’t just run into people. You also run into ideas, into perspectives, into relics of who you are and whom you want to become. And perhaps that is the real lesson of the HBS network: not that the world is small, but that it is never quite as anonymous as it seems.

Michelle Yu (MBA '26) is originally from Cresskill, New Jersey. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Film and Media Studies and worked for CNBC, NBC News, and CNN prior to HBS, along with projects for HBO, Showtime, Oxygen, and Spectrum. Outside of work, she is a 2x marathon runner, American Songwriting Awards winner, and filmmaker whose work has screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and AMC's Empire Theaters in Times Square.