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Michelle Yu (MBA ‘26) on why success can still feel like failure When I was admitted to HBS through the 2+2 program, my parents were thrilled, but not for the reasons people might assume. It wasn’t because Harvard is an Ivy League, as I had just completed my undergraduate studies at Columbia. Nor was it because of the Harvard name specifically, given that members of my extended family had attended the university before. What excited them most was something far more utilitarian: the fact that the degree was an MBA. To my parents, who both hold MBAs themselves, those three letters signified one thing above all else: that my future earning potential had changed dramatically. At the time, I had just begun a career in the film and television industry—a path that, to many, prioritized passion over practicality. Entertainment as a field is unpredictable in nature and rarely offers the kind of financial security my parents had built for our family and hoped I would one day achieve for my own. An MBA, in contrast, represented an entirely different trajectory—one defined by structured recruiting pipelines, predictable salaries, and the prospect of steady upward mobility. In their eyes, the degree fundamentally reconfigured the scale of my future possibilities. My “potential,” as they understood it, had suddenly expanded. The idea of potential has been on my mind recently. Over the past few months, I’ve heard the word surface repeatedly in conversations with classmates—an unusual preoccupation to encounter so frequently at a place where, on paper, students have already cleared some of the most competitive filters in the world. And yet, the anxiety around unfulfilled potential persists, if anything more acutely than before. Why? What Does It Mean to Fulfill One’s Potential? For some, the answer is financial. An MBA significantly alters one’s expected earnings trajectory, with certain career paths—investment banking, private equity, asset management—offering particularly high ceilings. Within this framework, fulfilling one’s potential is synonymous with maximizing compensation by choosing the role that pays the most, offers the fastest promotions, or unlocks the most lucrative opportunities down the road. But even this seemingly straightforward definition fractures under scrutiny. If potential is measured by earnings, expectations inevitably diverge depending on one’s starting point. Someone raised in a modest household may view economic security or the surpassing of his or her parents’ income as the realization of earnings potential. For someone from a wealthy family, the benchmark may be considerably higher, with founding companies, occupying positions of power, or reaching levels of financial success associated with the economic elite regarded as baseline expectations. The same phrase, in other words, can encode radically different aspirations. For others, potential is defined in terms of impact. At HBS, conversations often revolve around launching startups that transform industries, leading organizations that tackle global challenges, or enacting policies that affect millions of lives—ambitions united by a desire to change the world. Framed this way, however, the threshold becomes nearly unattainable, as very few individuals markedly alter the course of history. Most people build careers that are meaningful within their spheres of influence without becoming household names, but in environments where such rhetoric is pervasive, those contributions can begin to feel insufficient. A third way to think about potential turns inward. From this perspective, fulfilling one’s potential means engaging in work that genuinely reflects one’s interests and temperament—pursuits that feel intellectually absorbing and that organize one’s life around the kinds of questions one feels compelled to explore. Under this interpretation, potential is realized not through prestige or compensation but through coherence among one’s talents, curiosities, and occupation. For much of my life, this was the definition I assumed would guide me. In high school, I was known as a “creative” who spent most of her time entering competitions; attending programs; and assembling a portfolio in film, music, and writing. This distinguished me from many of my friends, who were oriented toward careers in medicine, law, or finance. It was perhaps unsurprising, then, that my decision to go to business school years later was met largely with confusion. In one instance, a former teacher asked whether my “filmmaking and artistic days [were] in the past now,” adding that I would “always be an artist.” It was a remark that left me with the impression that I was renouncing something I was meant to become in favor of a path that was more pragmatic but less honest.  There was, of course, a sound rationale to such a reversal. Careers in creative fields are notoriously difficult to establish and maintain, with outcomes shaped as much by timing and chance as by ability. A more structured career offered, at least in theory, a degree of stability in place of uncertainty. Still, in its wake lingered a subtle sense of self-betrayal—one I suspect may deepen over time. Why Does HBS Care So Much About Potential? The prevalence of these concerns, first and foremost, reflects the structure of the environments through which students move as they advance into increasingly selective institutions and industries. As such environments grow more concentrated with high performers, perceptions of success recalibrate against ever more exacting reference points. A job offer that would be considered exceptional in most contexts can feel merely average when several classmates are pursuing similar opportunities. Compensation that places someone comfortably within the top percentile of national income can appear modest within certain professional circles. This dynamic is reinforced by the organizational design of the careers themselves, where the number of available positions contracts at each successive level. There are far fewer managing directors than analysts, fewer partners than associates, fewer CEOs than vice presidents—every rung of the professional ladder accommodating a smaller group of people. At the same time, both internal and external expectations continue to escalate, making individuals increasingly reluctant to accept roles that fall below desired levels of compensation, prestige, or influence. The result is a persistent and often irreconcilable tension. The higher one ascends, the more constrained the range of seemingly acceptable outcomes becomes. When such outcomes become conflated with fulfilling one’s potential, satisfaction grows correspondingly elusive. It is not coincidental, then, that questions of potential arise most frequently in environments rich with opportunity. Many people spend their lives focused on more immediate concerns—earning enough to support a family, maintaining stable employment, navigating circumstances that leave little room for abstract reflection. For those surrounded by a wide array of options, the challenge is of a different kind: choosing among alternatives that each promise some form of success. While such abundance can be liberating, it can also foster the notion that every decision carries outsized significance and that venturing down anything other than the most impressive path risks forfeiting something of value. At a place like HBS, this pressure is amplified by the assumption that admission to such a prestigious university imposes an obligation to achieve at the highest possible level. Underlying this tension is the absence of any neutral definition of potential. Every answer has its trade-offs. A career that maximizes income may limit time available for family or creative pursuits. A path oriented toward impact may demand sacrifices that few are willing to make indefinitely. Even work that feels personally meaningful can carry opportunity costs that only become visible in retrospect. The language of “fulfilling one’s potential” suggests a singular trajectory—one that can either be attained or missed. In practice, however, each decision necessarily forecloses other versions of the life one might have lived. What appears as a failure to realize potential may simply be the unavoidable consequence of having chosen at all. If the very act of choosing inevitably excludes other possibilities, then the idea that there is a single “right” life to be optimized reveals itself as an illusion. The idea of potential suggests that, with enough foresight and discipline, one might arrive at the best possible combination of choices. But life does not present itself as a problem to be solved. It unfolds through decisions made with incomplete information, under shifting conditions, and in alignment with values that evolve over time. To optimize for a life is to misread what a life is in the first place—and to mistake a prevailing narrative for a universal truth. 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.

Notes from the Front Lines of a Consumer Revolution For years, I have been fascinated by the daily sacrament of consuming products, or literally placing a finished good on or in our bodies, since my earliest days working in beer in 2017. Now, having personally taken a 180-degree pivot from my consumer alcohol phase (I stopped drinking entirely when I started at HBS in 2024), I have spent the better part of this academic year immersing myself in the world of consumer wellness. This was not done through a Bloomberg terminal, but rather from my happy place, on the ground: walking the floors of Expo West in Anaheim, having 1:1s with founders and operators at all hours, tasting creatine martinis (also known as "creatinis") in a Venice Beach loft at an emerging consumer brand party, and sitting in rooms with some of the most consequential founders in the CPG space through HBS's "Moving Beyond DTC" intensive course. All this to say—this journey has left me with a growing conviction that what I have been witnessing is not a trend. It is something more profound and more urgent. It is a revolution. We Are What We Have Been Fed The story of American food is, in many ways, the story of American industry. It begins simply enough—grain, corn, meat, crops, the staples of a continent whose early inhabitants (and later early settlers) made things from scratch and ate what the land produced. Then industrialization arrived and with it the capacity to produce food at scale. For a time, this was a genuine triumph. But somewhere along the way, scale became its own imperative. We did to our food what we have always done with our most sacred and cherished substances: we took something relatively benign and distilled it into something far more potent. Just as we refined the poppy into heroin, the coca leaf into cocaine, and fermented alcohol (beer) into distillates (liquor), so too did we engineer the raw materials of American agriculture into products that are cheaper, more shelf-stable, more palatable, and increasingly, more damaging. The critical difference, of course, is that we need to eat. There is no opting out. The result is a country where roughly 60% of total calorie intake now comes from ultra-processed foods, with consumption linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. In a recent survey, 92% of Americans said they believe these products are engineered to be hard to stop eating; nearly half support regulating them like tobacco or alcohol. The language people are reaching for—"engineered environments," "systemic accountability"—is not the language of dietary preference. It is the language of betrayal. And they are not wrong. The Revolution What I witnessed this year at Expo West (which, for the uninitiated non-CPG-wonk, is the largest natural consumer product trade show in the world) was not a consumer wellness convention in the traditional sense. It was the bell toll for the future of consumption, the vanguard of a cultural shift. Creatine, once the province of bodybuilders, was showing up in gummies, cocktails, ready-to-drink formats, and kefir shots. Beef-based snacks were reimagining the Cheeto. Dates were everywhere, positioned as nature's candy. Brands were deconstructing the foods Americans grew up loving and rebuilding them with ingredients people can actually trust (and pronounce). This month, a startup called Yough! launched Greek yogurt-based frozen pizza in nearly 2,000 Target stores—rethinking not the toppings or the marketing fluff, but the dough itself, the actual foundation of the product, to deliver protein and clean ingredients inside a nearly $7 billion category whose fundamental formula has not meaningfully changed in decades. That is not product innovation. That is a value statement. The numbers confirm what the convention felt like. According to Bain's 2026 Insurgent Brands report, 113 young challenger brands drove 36% of all growth in the fast-moving consumer goods sector last year, with 44% touting better-for-you claims and 40% leading with protein. These insurgents grow ten times faster than the category average and are projected to drive up to half of all FMCG growth over the next five years. Legacy CPG is not leading this movement. It is acquiring it: Siete, Poppi, Simple Mills, all scooped up as fast as the incumbents can identify them. Meanwhile, Yuka, the ingredient-scanning app, now counts over 20 million American users, with 25,000 new sign-ups every day, driven in no small part by Gen Z, who are scanning their cereal boxes and beauty products with the same skeptical eye they bring to everything else. The consumer is no longer willing to outsource trust to a brand simply because that brand has been around for fifty years. In the minds of a growing and vocal cohort, General Mills and Perdue have become the new Marlboro. This is not hyperbole. It is a value shift, and it is accelerating. The political class has taken notice too. The Make America Healthy Again movement, now institutionalized through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has brought the ultra-processed food debate into the highest levels of government for the first time in modern American history. Whatever one thinks of the full MAHA platform—and it is not without serious controversy—its focus on food dyes, seed oils, and the industrial food complex has given mainstream political legitimacy to conversations that wellness advocates and “fringe” brands have been having for years. When the Secretary of HHS is publicly endorsing an ingredient-scanning app, it is a signal of just how far this cultural shift has traveled—from the health food co-op to the White House. So what is driving this revolution? At its core, I believe this is about agency and meaning making. We live in a moment of profound institutional distrust—economic, political, environmental—in which the systems we were told to rely on have revealed themselves to be something other than reliable. Consumer goods is one of the few domains where individuals can actually act in a way that can meaningfully impact our quality of life, and ultimately happiness. The democratization of information—podcasters (e.g., Huberman, Hyman, Shetty, and Robbins—all of whom have their own wellness ventures or joint ventures), ingredient scanners, Reddit threads, an entire ecosystem of voices outside the corporate marketing machine—has given people the tools to do so. Consumer dollars are yearning for new places to flow. The Overlooked Bottleneck This new flow of dollars is running up against a tension: consumer demand for "better-for-you" products has never been higher, and yet the brands creating those products still struggle to reach the people who want them. This past January, I had the opportunity to sit with founders and operators behind some of the most dynamic brands in the space—AG1, Eight Sleep, Magic Spoon, David Protein, Shopify, Immi, Swoon, and others—through HBS's "Moving Beyond DTC" intensive, now in its seventh year and led by consumer investor Matt Higgins, as well as HBS Profs. Len Schlesinger and Ayelet Israeli. The throughline across nearly every conversation was this: the distribution problem is the central problem. A decade ago, the removal of manufacturing barriers combined with the rise of social media gave a new generation of founders the ability to build brands and reach consumers directly. Customer acquisition was cheap, the audience was attentive, and the window was wide open. Apple's privacy changes, platform saturation, and the sheer volume of competing content have since transformed that window into a wall. Social media is now a bottleneck, not a solution. The brands that found their first hundred thousand customers on Instagram cannot rely on the same playbook to find their next million. Traditional retail, to its credit, is catching up. Target just expanded its wellness assortment by 30%, launching a national campaign with in-store sampling events and a Times Square billboard. And it is still not enough. The most sophisticated founders today understand that distribution is not a downstream concern. It is the strategy. Being where your consumer already is—with the right product, at the right moment, in the right context—is the variable that separates brands that break through from those that burn out on paid social. Every new point of presence is also a new source of insight about who is buying, why, and what they reach for next. The consumers most aligned with these products are not primarily discovering them in the mass-market aisle. They are discovering them in motion, in community, in the high-intent moments that define their routines. Consider this: HYROX, the fitness competition format, expects 1.5 million participants this year across 8,500 affiliate gyms in twenty-two countries, with its co-founder describing the ambition not as a sport but as "a lifestyle." The person leaving a HYROX event or a boutique studio class is in a fundamentally different frame of mind than the person pushing a cart down a grocery aisle. They are primed. They are looking. They are ready to try something new. The brands that show up in those moments—authentically, with something worth trying—build the kind of community-anchored loyalty that no amount of paid media can manufacture. Alcohol solved this problem generations ago. Bars exist not merely to sell drinks but to create the context in which discovery, trial, and loyalty are built in the same moment. I witnessed this and tapped into it firsthand when I was selling craft beer bar to bar in New York back in my Anheuser-Busch days. Wellness, as a category, has no equivalent. Not yet. What Comes Next The brands that survive this moment will be those that get creative about where and how they show up, that treat distribution not as logistics but as an expression of brand identity. For legacy CPG, the window is narrowing. The choice is binary: acquire aggressively or face death by a thousand cuts. A wave of consolidation has already begun. It will intensify. For investors, the opportunity is real, but it requires a different mental model. The power law logic of traditional venture capital may not fully apply here. This space is producing durable, category-defining businesses that do not need to be unicorns to matter, and that are often better served by patient, operationally-engaged capital than by the growth-at-all-costs mandates of a ten-year fund that needs one 100x return to work out. Platforms like Founders Row, launched last year by SweatHouz founder Jamie Weeks explicitly to back founders in their earliest, most capital-intensive years with both capital and, critically, hands-on operational support, represent a signal that some smart money is already rethinking its approach. Indeed, unlike most investment firms you’ve heard of, Weeks intentionally put the word “founder” in the name. This signals his intent to holistically support early-stage ventures, where founders are often brand new to the space or entrepreneurship altogether. Notably, Founders Row recently backed Yough!, the same clean-ingredient, values-forward Greek yogurt pizza startup that opened this piece. This throughline is not coincidental. It is the thesis made tangible: patient capital, founder-friendly structure, and a consumer who has already decided they want something better. There is a real and underserved need for more of it. But the biggest story, ultimately, is the consumer. They have woken up. They are scanning labels, listening to podcasts, building routines, doing independent bloodwork analysis through platforms like Function, and spending more on products that align with the conviction that what they put into their bodies is a choice worth making carefully, not to mention spending more on. It is, in its own way, a founding American instinct reasserting itself: the belief that we are entitled to the freedom to know what we are consuming, and to demand something better. Our new unalienable rights are indeed life, liberty, and the pursuit of wellness , which could also be counted as happiness macronutrients. The floodgates are open, and the brands, investors, and institutions that truly understand and internalize this have an extraordinary opportunity to shape what comes next. For this is indeed, as our founding fathers once penned, a matter of lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Name (MBA ‘XX)  is the TEMPLATE.

The perfect movie or series to watch based on the RC class you loved most In the whirlwind of three-case days, no-offer recruiting panic, daily birthday Partiful invites, and weekend trips that somehow spill into Monday, it’s easy to forget to take a moment for yourself. Sometimes, the best reset is simple: binge a great series or let a film transport you, even if only briefly, outside the HBS bubble. And because, let’s be honest, everything at HBS somehow circles back to HBS, here’s a guide to what you should watch based on your favorite RC class and what that choice might say about you. LCA If you love LCA, you’re drawn to questioning the ethics behind decisions and exploring moral gray areas. Juror #2 (2024) is a perfect fit as it masterfully captures the tension of an ethical dilemma and forces you to confront your own moral framework.  BGIE If BGIE is your favorite, you’re either an international student who is excited to discuss your region or someone who thrives on political debate. You’re fascinated by how historical and political forces shape everyday lives, and no series captures that more beautifully than Pachinko (2022-2024). DSAIL If DSAIL stood out to you, you’re probably trying very hard to be at the forefront of AI, no matter what it takes. Maybe even to the point of forming emotional attachments to it. If you want a glimpse of where that path might lead, Companion (2025) is your pick. LEAD If LEAD is your favorite, you love a good character study and watching how poor leadership can unravel an entire organization. The Studio (2025) is a chaotic comedy that doubles as a cautionary tale about leadership gone wrong. Just like your LEAD classes expect a lot of cameos too.  TOM If you’re a TOM enthusiast, you value speed, efficiency, and precision. The recent blockbuster F1 (2025) is right up your alley: beneath the spectacle lies a story driven by operational excellence that may even trigger a few SHAD exercise flashbacks. FRC If you enjoy FRC, you like numbers, but more importantly, the drama behind them. The Imitation Game  (2014)   is a great fit, showing just how powerful, and consequential, numbers can be. FIN1 If FIN1 was your favorite, you lived for getting your Excel model exactly right and matching the final reveal in class. Naturally, you’d enjoy a good whodunnit, but more importantly figuring out who did it before everyone else did. The Undoing (2020) delivers a gripping mystery that rewards those who pay attention, nailing the ending feels just like getting your model to match the professor’s. FIN2 Like FIN1, you enjoy getting to the right answer, but with added complexity. The questions are bigger than just “should I invest?”. All Her Fault (2025)   fits perfectly: a layered mystery that goes beyond “who did it” and pushes you to think about broader consequences of ‘figuring it out’. STRAT If STRAT was your favorite, you loved tapping into your inner child, whether through discussing Lego, Disney, or Blockbuster. Saving Mr. Banks (2013) beautifully explores that idea, showing how reconnecting with your childhood can unlock meaning and creativity. Plus, it’s a fitting nod to Disney. MKT If you loved Marketing, you probably enjoyed using an abundance of data to make decisions that could, arguably, have been made with intuition alone. Anatomy of a Fall (2023) is a compelling watch that leans heavily on analysis, even when instinct might lead you just as far. CAP If CAP is your favorite, you’re a team player who also appreciates a good getaway. Triangle of Sadness  (2022) is the perfect (and slightly chaotic) pick; it’s a reminder that even the best trips can fall apart without strong teamwork. PURPOSE If Purpose of the Firm resonated most with you, you’re someone who constantly asks “why” instead of just “what.” Women Talking (2022) is a powerful exploration of underlying motives and moral responsibility, pushing you to reflect on your role in the world. TEM If you love TEM, you probably believe your future startup will be the ‘next big thing’, you just haven’t figured out the idea yet. Eternity (2025) is a rom-com that speaks to that tension: the feeling of having everything (and nothing) figured out at the same time. No matter what your favorite class says about you, one thing is certain: any of these picks will make for an excellent watch, whether you’re planning a movie night with friends or just settling in for a well-deserved lazy Sunday morning. Maajed Albastaki (MBA ‘27) is from Dubai, U.A.E.. He studied Information Management at UCL before beginning his career in retail in Dubai. He then moved to the public sector as an advisor to in the U.A.E. Prime Minister’s Office, where he worked on policy development and national strategy design.

It's the small things—  a whisper in class, a chuckle we couldn't contain,  an airport ride before a big day,  Bollywood songs turned up  so I could take off, heart feeling lighter. It's the small things— meeting in the first week as a group of strangers on the Cape  and slowly becoming each other's space for comfort,  calm and endless giggles,  an anchor through everything,  reminding each other where we started  and how far we have come. It's the small things—  putting dinners in the calendar this summer so neither of us felt alone in a busy new city,  making me dinner when I return with homesickness,  celebrating Diwali and Holi by my side in the cold March weather,  until this place started to feel like my own. It's the small things—   saying yes to a cold message out of nowhere,  then giving your time so generously,  turning coffee into conversation,  conversation into trust. It's the small things—   inviting me to your nephew's birthday  and treating me as your own,  introducing me to those  who would become my tribe,  making gifts with calligraphy as beautiful as the thought behind them,  bridging sparring cultures in one family,  because here, borders do not exist. It's the small things—   helping me negotiate like the boss you are never dropping your encouragement  through months of chasing the right role then celebrating harder than I did when it came through. It's the small things—   your time and resources, given more than once,  the gentle joke that my math has suffered (it has) ,  reminding me to care for myself before ambition took over,  the quiet push toward risk when I wanted the safety of standing still,  dancing with pride in my success as if it were your own,  and offering your shoulder when things came apart,  until I could pick myself back up and keep going. It's the small things—   calling me wherever you are in the world,  diving, driving, surfing, whatever it is you're up to,  waking me in time to tell me to catch the next flight out,  showing up to panels you had no reason to be at,  clapping with all your heart from the back rows,  chai that tasted like comfort,  long talks over countless cups of tea,  your art shared alongside your heartache,  watching me cry without hesitation,  the sofa always ready,  your home always open,  hugs that steadied me more than words. It's the small things—   giving me courage  to share my MyTake,  smothering me in hugs and tears after. It's the small things— nicknames I'd never had— Sravu, Sravs, Srav —each one a shorthand for love and a meal with your mother in a city that until then felt unknown,  but in an instant, you made it home. It's the small things— an amusing discovery that we are distant cousins,  but true to that,  you have shown up as family at every turn,  celebrating me even in your most important milestones. It's the small things— being a sanctuary, a rock when I come home,  inspiring me every day with your energy and discipline, your endless laughter sharing quite literally everything,  and being surprised when  I asked you if you’d be a bridesmaid— though to me, it was never a question at all. It's the small things— meeting me five minutes before boarding closed,  in the terminal of a country neither of us calls our own,  just to place a piece of my homeland in my hands  when landing anywhere felt uncertain. It's the small things— gathering a thousand wishes from every corner of the world,  celebrating my birthday three times over,  on a highway in the middle of the night,  balloons and streamers taking me back to childhood,  taking me dancing where you know I'm happiest. It's the small things— a letter written in my name,  your personal word placed on the line,  to help me safely return in a moment of chaos,  standing up for my character. It's the small things— rallying behind me like an army when I took on my biggest challenge,  showing up in ways I hadn't thought to ask,  showering me in love and pride,  making the journey so much more meaningful  than the weekend it ended with. It's the small things—  daring to tell me the truth,  to see things a little differently,  to put the right thing first,  knowing it would eventually only strengthen the friendship. Perhaps,  in the end,  these aren't such small things at all. Sravani Royyuru  (MBA ‘26) , prior to HBS, worked at Boston Consulting Group and studied mechanical engineering at Imperial College London. At HBS, she was co-chair of the India Conference.

If your life were an HBS case study, what would the "Exhibits" forget to mention? We spend our mornings at Aldrich dissecting the pivots of CEOs and balance sheets of companies. Have you ever realized that you might know more about what used to keep Rob Parson up at night during Morgan Stanley, than about the person sitting three seats away from you? What's behind their "happy to chat" pleasantry? The Unwritten Case started with a similar realization. It was born out of a reality check outside Aldrich. Gaurang (MBA '26) and Sankalp (MBA '26) had spent their RC year studying cases together in Morris, so they assumed they knew enough about each other's lives. But during an interview exercise in Founder's Mindset last semester, they were forced to ask a set of questions designed to uncover the stories and values that shape how someone leads. Interviewing each other, they were struck by how much had never come up in everyday conversations. The podcast was born from this simple observation: we are surrounded by future "cases" in our community, yet we rarely pause to hear the stories they're living right now. Since launching last semester, every other week they invite a classmate over, pour a cup of Moroccan tea, and record the conversation we usually don't have time for. This is an ode to the MyTakes tradition, taking those moments of classroom honesty, preserving them beyond the classroom, while trading the formal podium for a couch and a cup of tea. Moving from "happy to chat" coffee chats with hard stops to a quieter, more human narrative, one of doubt, identity, resilience, and the messy dreams that don't fit into our busy lives at HBS. Each episode, their guests surprise them. The stories that come out over tea are never the ones you'd predict from a LinkedIn profile. Stop waiting for the case to be published. The people around you are living the most interesting chapters of their stories right now and most of those chapters go unheard. In hearing their stories, you might find a better way to tell your own. Pull up a chair. Find the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and all major platforms, or scan the QR code below. Sankalp Shankar (MBA ‘26)   graduated from Shri Ram College of Commerce, with a Bachelor’s in Commerce. Sankalp is passionate about climate technology and impact investing, and worked at Dasra, a non-profit organization in India.

The world’s first sovereign wealth fund, the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), was established in 1953 to invest the state’s income from natural resources in a range of assets and funds around the world. The KIA’s mandate is fairly straightforward: diversify beyond oil and generate sustainable returns for the country’s future generations. The concept of a state-operated investment arm isn’t novel anymore, with north of a hundred SWFs around the world managing approximately $15.8 trillion in assets (per Global SWF). Roughly 40% of that is concentrated in the GCC (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates). These funds have made it a priority to foster economic cooperation between the Middle East and the West, invest in innovative businesses, and serve as capital partners for the world’s leading visionaries. The events that took place on February 28, 2026 and the subsequent targeting of the GCC might impact that calculus. In the aftermath of the attacks on Iran, the regime decided to retaliate by indiscriminately targeting civilian hotspots, critical infrastructure, and energy production facilities across the entire Gulf region with drones and missiles. As of March 26, 2026, Iran fired approximately 1400 missiles and 3000 drones at the six GCC nations, with the Gulf maintaining a defensive stance and choosing patience and restraint so as to not flame the fires. As Iran continues to lash out and attack the countries that lobbied hard to prevent a war in the first place, what path could the GCC take in the coming weeks to protect their interests? In this article, I’ll speak to one main vector: economic tools and channels.  Liquidity Iran has chosen to set the whole region ablaze by specifically targeting key energy infrastructure such as Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG terminal and Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah refineries. They also decided to cripple a key international trade route by blocking the Strait of Hormuz. What happens when you attack energy production sites and close down the point at which this energy is exported to the rest of the world? Well, losses pile up and missed revenue starts to accumulate. At some point, the opportunity cost will be too large and the GCC will need liquidity to cover key expenses and rebuild. Dipping into the holdings of their wealth funds is one way to provide this liquidity. In a sense, these funds were built and grown over the years to serve as a rainy day account for liquidity crunches. I, for one, never imagined that the rain in question would be missiles and drones. De-Risking Roughly 20% of the world’s oil and LNG passes through the Strait of Hormuz, making it the world’s most critical chokepoint. Blocking such an important artery is causing a global energy crisis that some experts believe will be one of the largest in history. A supply shock means more expensive oil and gas, and increasing energy prices will have an inflationary effect on everything from the gas we pump in our cars to the fertilizers that are used to grow the produce we eat. As input costs go up, margins compress and corporate profits start declining. All of a sudden exposure to equities is riskier than it was a few months back, and investors need to reassess their holdings and rebalance their portfolios in response. Gulf SWFs, who own trillions in American and European equities, might decide to take some chips off the table if they believe a global recession is to come from the energy crisis that’s currently underway. Pressure and Influence The last and least likely route the GCC could take is using their large state-owned funds to place economic pressure on the United States to find a quick and lasting offramp to this conflict. Since early 2025, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE have pledged up to $4 trillion (with a T) in investments in the US, with a focus on technology, AI, and defense. The aim is to further strengthen US–GCC economic cooperation, a cornerstone of the region’s allyship with the United States dating back decades. The GCC might decide to halt certain projects and redirect capital flow if their voices aren’t being heard and their security and interests aren’t being considered. Due to the deep ties connecting the Gulf and the United States and the long-term nature of most of these investments, my belief is that this option has a very low probability. The events currently unfolding in the Middle East will have massive ripple effects on the global economy and will leave a lasting imprint for years to come. The role the GCC is playing today is that of a shock absorber and diplomatic mediator. Despite daily attacks on all six countries for more than three weeks at this point, patience and restraint prevail. The question is how much longer will this be their key strategy, and what tools will they use to de-escalate and mitigate losses? Mohammad Almejel (MBA ’26) was born and raised in Kuwait. He studied structural engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and earned a master’s degree in civil engineering from Columbia University. Prior to HBS, Mohammad was the Co-Founder and Director of Operations at Fiz, a quick-commerce startup based in Kuwait .

Nixon the preferred candidate of the HBS student body in 1960 Editor’s Note: This issue’s From the Archives piece originally ran on October 28, 1960, two weeks before the presidential election between Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy and Republican nominee Richard Nixon. The Harbus  endorsed Nixon, warning against the “big daddy” government Kennedy’s vision argued for. Of note: Harvard Business School did not start enrolling women until 1963, or three years after this publication. The election campaign of 1960 comes at a time when the world issue is clear: Will government dominate men, or will men dominate government? This issue is fundamental to the 1960 election campaign, and permeates every aspect of our society from domestic educational policy to topics of foreign affairs. But the election campaign of 1960 comes on a confused America where men see their values slowly slipping from their grasps and yet are unable to know how to change the course of events. Two young men are running for the office of president in this time of continued crisis, where leadership is a necessity for survival. Both of these men are qualified for the office they seek. Both are brilliant, aggressive, tenacious, and able. Both have served the country in the past with competence and forcefulness. Both have ability to lead men. We believe that Richard M. Nixon is better suited to the office of President than his opponent John F. Kennedy. Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kennedy agree on many goals, especially in the field of foreign policy. But they disagree, we believe, in many basic ideas as to means of attaining America's goals. Mr. Nixon subscribes to a philosophy of government as being a leader of people, rather than a big daddy for them. He realizes that the strength of the country cannot ever be measured by the size or activity of the government, but is essential in its roots, which are people. His programs are aimed more at supporting, and encouraging the private and non-government activities of individuals rather than at increasing the role of government in our society, as Mr. Kennedy urges. He believes in action, but not, we believe, activity primarily for the sake of activity. Mr. Nixon's philosophy of government is, we believe, more appropriate for the future years than Mr. Kennedy's. His experience, training, and background make him a logical choice in the 1960 election.

Seeking an understanding of this dynamic and complex space, I turned to my favorite literary characters A few weeks ago, as I was walking to Aldrich Hall for a full day of classes, I hit the pause button on the podcast episode to which I was listening. That morning, the hosts of The Daily  were discussing Polymarket, a major player in the relatively new decentralized prediction markets space that is seemingly taking the world by storm. (I know, not that new; Polymarket has been around since 2020, and its only true peer, Kalshi, was founded in 2018. But it is undeniable that these platforms are on the rise now more than ever.)  If you're still living under a pre-Polymarket rock, here’s the down low: Polymarket and its peers are sites where you can place a bet on anything (literally, ranging from the highly speculative “Will Jesus Christ return before 2027?” to the much more predictable “2026 Winter Olympics: Most Gold Medals.”).  My immediate reaction to the podcast episode was one of shock. I thought that these prediction markets seemed dangerous, yet another sports betting-like rabbit hole that would certainly be wielded to prey upon the vulnerable. But when I conducted a quick poll of 63 of my HBS classmates, asking them for their opinion on Polymarket, only 56% said it was “dangerous,” with 32% saying it was “promising” or “exciting,” and the remaining group indicating neutrality. Frankly, I had expected the “dangerous” option to win by a landslide. As I dug deeper into the prediction markets space, one of my classmates shared a news release from 2003 that described how the U.S. Defense Department had then considered incorporating a platform called Policy Analysis Market into their processes. The PAM would have used anonymous futures speculation to predict the outcome of geopolitical events; it was never approved due to Congressional backlash over betting on terrorism.  But the fact that PAM was ever considered, and that its inspiration, the Iowa Electronic Markets, has actually seen significant success (including in predicting the 2008 presidential election outcome to an astonishingly precise degree—within 0.5% of votes), made me pause.    What exactly was, and is, the draw of this kind of platform? Are they addictive, predatory gambling websites, or democratizing, epistemic tools?  The CEO of Polymarket, Shayne Coplan, argues that his site serves as an anti-misinformation aggregator; to back this up, he draws on the fact that crowdsourced opinions are often more accurate than those of single experts or analyses (James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds , for example, argues exactly this point). I see the merits of this argument: bettors’ incentives are aligned with those of the truth-seeking public, in that the former is incentivized (by the possibility of a monetary upside) to research thoroughly and place well-informed bets.   Some of our classmates are even innovating in the prediction markets space. Firas Atoui (MBA ‘26) is creating a startup called Sawa, which brings prediction markets to the community level, allowing people to participate in markets with friends on a localized scale. When I asked him what he thought about the promise and dangers of prediction markets, he advocated for the regulation of insider trading (Kalshi, for its part, does ban insider trading explicitly) and “whales,” wealthy individuals who can singlehandedly skew the outcome of bets in their favor. But, he continued, sites like Sawa, Polymarket, and Kalshi are democratizing forces that allow people to “monetize their beliefs” in a “user friendly [market] for the masses.” Everyone, regardless of upbringing, education, or career, can easily understand how to use and participate in prediction markets.   It was clear to me that opinions on prediction markets diverged wildly and that many of my classmates viewed them with excitement and interest. And if I’ve learned anything from my time at HBS, it’s that I have plenty to learn from my peers here; I knew there was something more for me to explore in the world of these markets. Over the winter break, I had read The Wisdom of Finance , a book by HBS Professor Mihir Desai. In the book, Professor Desai makes literary and cultural analogies to explain important financial concepts like mergers and risk management. So to better grapple with my own understanding of the prediction markets industry, its benefits and risks, I turned to my favorite authors, and their novels that have been so pivotal to my personal development and edification. I identified characters who have moved me with their strongly-held convictions, and tried to understand what they would think about prediction markets. Maybe with this framing, I thought, I could better structure my arguments for or against them.   Of course, these are just my personal reflections on these characters. Presumably, none of the characters I reference below knew about Polymarket or its peers, and I can’t feign certainty on whether their creators would align them with my interpretations.  But take from this what you will, and I hope you walk away with not just some food for thought on Polymarket, but a couple of book recommendations to boot. Below, I’ve aligned each character with a persona regarding prediction markets, roughly arcing from most to least skeptical. Character: Billy Watson  Book: The Lincoln Highway  by Amor Towles  Persona:  The Regulator   Billy is the eight-year-old younger brother of the novel’s main character, and is one of the most brilliant young minds I have encountered in a book. His attention to detail, curiosity, interest in uncovering the truth, and wise-beyond-his-years sense of calm make him deserving of the respect and adoration of those around him. But most of all, he loves rules:  “Billy wasn’t simply an abider. He was a stickler. He made his bed and brushed his teeth without needing to be asked... and he always raised his hand in class before speaking.”  (pg. 145)   What would Billy think about prediction markets? I think he’d advocate for regulating them in a structured, consistent fashion, seeing great potential for adventure, but also the potential for chaos and unfairness to abound without a strategic approach. Protections (which arguably ought to be table stakes) could include, for example, placing upper limits on the bets made by individuals, to prevent the market-moving behavior of “whales.” Characters:  Dodo; Theo Decker  Book: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store  by James McBride; The Goldfinch  by Donna Tartt  Persona: The Vulnerable Innocent; The Addicted Bettor   Dodo is a bright, deaf boy who is unjustly held captive at an asylum, where his intelligence and compassion shine through as he forges close friendships and stays true to his morals. Throughout the novel, his treatment is symbolic of the poor treatment of the innocent, vulnerable, and pure:    “She loved Dodo’s generosity. He was a simple child of love, easy to satisfy, easy to give.”  (pg. 109)  A character with a very different background, but who is similarly illustrative of struggle and vulnerability, is Theo Decker. Theo is the troubled protagonist of The Goldfinch . After the death of his mother, he struggles with grief and guilt, attempting to cope with his trauma as he grows up with a largely absent father. His addiction manifests in different ways over the course of his life: through alcohol, but also through repeated, self-destructive, reckless choices he makes through the years:  “...I get it. We can’t choose what we want and don’t want and that’s the hard lonely truth. Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us. We can’t escape who we are.” (pg. 770)  Together, Theo and Dodo’s experiences are analogous to decentralized prediction markets’ potential to prey upon the vulnerable; to be highly addictive and pattern-forming. To take advantage of spur-of-the-moment decisions, yes, but also to enable whales or, without regulation, insider traders to gain outsized benefit from individual trades. Whether they eventually rank alongside other addictive platforms and substances is yet to be seen. But in this particular regard, I don’t see them as being meaningfully different from DraftKings and other, arguably predatory, sports betting platforms.  Character: Hassan  Book: The Kite Runner  by Khaled Hosseini  Persona: The Moral Compass & The Democratizer  If you’ve read this book, you know that Hassan is a character who pulls at the heartstrings. He is the sweet childhood companion and servant of the main character, Amir, and his strong moral compass serves as a throughline that endears the reader to him until the very end:  “While I ate and complained about homework, Hassan made my bed, polished my shoes, ironed my outfit for the day, packed my books and pencils. I’d hear him singing to himself in the foyer as he ironed, singing old Hazara songs in his nasal voice.”  (pg. 27)   For me, Hassan serves as an indicator that our very humanity is at stake when presented with prediction markets. If we can just as easily bet on the price of Bitcoin as we can on natural disasters and the number of US measles cases, what are the implications for our morality? For our ability to understand one another?    Maybe I’m getting soft in my mid-twenties. But I see it as a real risk to our empathy, our acknowledgment of one another’s humanity, that many of us will soon be betting on these very real, often devastating situations as if they are as trivial as the weather.   At the same time, Hassan is incredibly curious. He grows up unable to read, but:    “...despite his illiteracy, or maybe because of it, Hassan was drawn to the mystery of words, seduced by a secret world forbidden to him.”  (pg. 28)   And in that vein, I think Hassan is a symbol of the democratizing capabilities of prediction markets. We are rapidly progressing toward a world where access to information and capital is one of few real differentiators. Can sites like Polymarket contribute to a more equal playing field by allowing people to bet on something that is easy to understand? It is this tension, between morality and democratization, that underlies my personal internal struggle around prediction markets.  Character: Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov  Book: A Gentleman in Moscow  by Amor Towles  Persona: The Resilient Shape-Shifter   The Count is the lovable main character of this Towles classic (I’ve included 3 Towles novels in this book list, so you’re not done quite yet). Confined to his Moscow hotel, under house arrest for decades, he shows incredible resilience:    “With so little to do and all the time in the world to do it, the Count’s peace of mind continued to be threatened by a sense of ennui—that dreaded mire of the human emotions.... But for the virtuous who have lost their way, the Fates often provide a guide.”  (pg. 55)  The lesson here? Maybe the Count would argue for making the best of the situation you are dealt. If we are moving towards a world that favors sites like Polymarket and Kalshi, that streamlines access to not just betting but betting on everything , should we make like Sheryl Sandberg and Lean In? Applied to prediction markets: as misinformation abounds, as generative AI makes it increasingly easy to create digital clones and generate hyper-realistic videos, I’m willing to cautiously explore whether prediction markets can actually serve as a more trustworthy information base. And maybe that’s a possibility to embrace. I see a tension here between passivity and acceptance on the one hand, and empowerment and fostering trust on the other; this is a balance that the industry and the betting public will need to grapple with moving forward.  Character: Eve Ross  Book:   Rules of Civility  by Amor Towles  Persona:  The House (Who Always Wins)  Eve is the charming, beautiful, and brave best friend of the novel’s protagonist. She is cunning and incredibly situationally aware, meaning that she often knows how to navigate the world’s challenges so that she comes out ahead: “A giddy girl can’t tell what’s happening next.... But there weren’t going to be any surprises for Eve. No unfamiliar gambits or sly combinations. She had drawn the squares and carved the pieces.”  (pg. 115)  The lesson? The platform itself is likely to win. Polymarket’s revenue structure isn’t ultra-clear to me: from what I’ve found through the platform’s documentation and an Intercontinental Exchange press release, it charges selective transaction fees for takers, keeping an undisclosed portion as revenue and redistributing the rest to makers, and is now exploring a data monetization strategy. But its increasing usage does foreshadow near-term financial growth.  Billy, Dodo, Theo, Hassan, the Count, and Eve have taught me untold lessons, and now, they have helped me once more as I’ve sought to frame my understanding of this industry.  So when it comes to prediction markets, color me... reluctantly bullish? I foresee the general appetite for prediction markets becoming steadily friendlier in the coming months, as more people embrace their truth-dispensing potential and gamified appeal.  I will personally continue to abstain, because I am unsettled by the dangers these apps pose, especially when it comes to use by teens and the vulnerable; further, I suspect that for every dependable prediction market outcome, there are many more powered by (mostly young male, according to a recent NPR report) users squandering precious time on their bets. But even though I align myself more with Hassan than the Count, and believe that this industry demands more regulation than most, I concede that it’s likely only up from here for Polymarket, Kalshi, Sawa, and the copycats and spinoffs that are certain to proliferate. Correction: March 30, 2026 An earlier version of this article falsely stated that Polymarket receives a cut of every winning bet on the platform. This article was updated to clarify details on Polymarket’s revenue structure. Keerthi Medicherla (MBA ’27)   is originally from McLean, Virginia. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a double major in Computer Science and Global Studies in 2022. Prior to HBS, Keerthi worked as a software engineer at JPMorganChase in Seattle, Washington .

Photo Credit: Joao Aguiar (@thejoaoaguiar) How persistence, integrity, and rigor shaped a mentor — and my path to HBS. I want to tell you Carlos Moedas’ story, the impact he’s had on me, and why he’s a useful lens as we think about life after HBS. He always told me his life didn’t follow a master plan that he drafted while walking around Aldrich. Rather, it was a series of unforeseen moments during which he had the audacity to believe in something and push past doubt — to raise his hand and take a shot. I Called, He Answered (Eventually) “Thank you so much for not giving up. Would you have time to meet?” Those were the first words Carlos ever spoke to me. After my outreach, he asked me to call him so we could talk. And so I did — twice a day, at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. After almost a month, he finally picked up. When we met, the gentlest of men began by fully apologizing for his absence. For weeks, he had been working around the clock, negotiating Lisbon City Hall’s budget, and the day he answered was the day it finally passed. We found a time to meet and I eventually joined his team. I didn’t know it then, but my persistence was key for him to start believing in me. A Remarkable Arc For those who don’t know, Mayor Carlos Moedas (MBA ‘00) has a remarkable story. He grew up in a small, poor town in Portugal’s interior. In the late 1980s, he moved to Lisbon to study civil engineering at the country’s top university, then worked in Paris for a major hydraulic company. Eventually, he came to HBS with just enough money for the plane ticket and later joined Goldman Sachs in London. He became a national figure during the Eurozone financial crisis — one of the most difficult periods in recent Portuguese history. As Secretary of State, he was responsible for monitoring and coordinating the structural reforms agreed upon with the so-called “troika”: the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Later, he became one of the youngest European Commissioners for Research, Science, and Innovation, overseeing what was then the world’s largest science and innovation budget and working alongside figures like Bill Gates. Years later, in 2021, he left his role at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to run for Mayor of Lisbon, starting more than 10 points behind in the polls. I first met him in late 2023, halfway through his first term. Photo Credit: Joao Aguiar (@thejoaoaguiar) That resumé alone could fill countless Harbus  pieces. As mayor, he has approved a record housing budget, launched the city’s largest climate-adaptation and resilience project, and helped Lisbon win the European Innovation Capital award. But I want to offer a more personal take and share what I learned from someone who became more than a boss and mentor, as I am now proud to call him my friend. 1) Persistence: The Compound Interest of Character I mentioned persistence already, but it runs through his life story. Carlos has this quiet belief that most doors aren’t locked; they’re just heavy. You knock, you push, and you push again — politely, consistently, respectfully — and they move. His persistence doesn’t come from being reckless; in fact, it’s quite the opposite. It comes from a deep sense of commitment and respect.  “I owe it to the ones who believed in me first,” he told me.  He was also the first person to look me straight in the eye and say I could make it to HBS. I wasn’t so sure, but after that conversation, there was no way I wouldn’t try to push that door. 2) Integrity: Lead in a Way That Will Make Your Family Proud During my first week on the job, I was nervous. I had accepted a role at City Hall driven by a desire to serve the public good, but also because of trust in a person. That nervousness faded quickly as I watched how Carlos approached difficult decisions. Early on, he framed the test simply: could he stand by a decision in public, and would the people closest to him be proud of how he had acted? That standard stayed with me. It suggested that I would be working for someone who tried to look beyond immediate optics and act in a way he could defend with conviction. That may be one reason I stayed for nearly two years, until leaving for HBS, rather than the two or three months I had initially planned. Integrity was not just a slogan. 3) Rigor: An Obligation to High Standards Photo Credit: Joao Aguiar (@thejoaoaguiar) Since arriving at HBS, I’ve understood even better the method Carlos installed in his cabinet. It runs on memos: clear, concise, written thinking. He reads them every day, often alone, marking up the margins as if he were in Spangler preparing a case for class the next day. Before a meeting with Mario Draghi — the former Prime Minister of Italy — he asked me to analyze and write about Draghi’s report on EU competitiveness. I barely slept for three days, distilling arguments and implications. The day after I delivered it, he called me in. The printout sat on his desk, covered in notes. We went straight to the exhibits and second-order effects. At the end, he summarized his position and asked, “does this seem fair to you?” There was no posturing — just hard work and intellectual honesty. The memo wasn’t a formality; it was the crucible where arguments were tested and decisions were earned. I was his “discussion group” in preparation for the “class.” He treated every intervention as an obligation to contribute something real, not filler. What This Means During and After Our Time at HBS I’m sharing these stories because they’ve had an immense impact on me and because they’ve become a useful lens as I navigate my RC year and think about life after HBS. Carlos always told me that his life didn’t unfold according to a grand, meticulously thought-out plan. Instead, it was a chain of moments when he chose belief over hesitation and action over fear. When I told him I’d been admitted to HBS, he was thrilled and shouted, “you are going to the best place in the world.” I understand that much better now. When he left HBS, he wasn’t focused on where HBS was sending him but on where he would be taking HBS. He wasn’t seeking the “five-star hotel experience”; rather, he was looking for meaning in the things he found priceless: the rigor to read and analyze until your ideas are a real contribution; the integrity to choose what you’d be proud to see on the front page; and the persistence to show up one more time. “João, don’t be scared to raise your hand,” were his last words when I left his office in August. I didn’t fully understand them then. I’m trying to understand them now. P.S. If you’d like to hear Carlos’ story from his perspective, I would recommend the C40 Cities 1.5 podcast  or the Heart and Hustle of Portugal podcast . If you’d like to hear him talk about his view on policies, I would recommend his interview  with Bloomberg or his conversation  with Emmanuel Macron at the Lisbon Unicorn Factory. Both are available on YouTube with subtitles. João Sátiro Coelho (MBA ‘27)  is originally from Faro and Lisbon, Portugal. He graduated from Instituto Superior Técnico with a master’s in architecture. Before HBS, João practiced architecture, then worked at McKinsey & Company in Lisbon, served as a direct advisor to the Mayor Carlos Moedas at Lisbon City Hall, where he focused on several initiatives, including coordinating the city’s partnership with Bloomberg Associates, the consulting arm of Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Practical lessons from recent alumni on getting a job in this market When I first arrived at HBS, the formalities of U.S. recruiting were incredibly confusing to me. Coffee chats with no coffee. Cold emails to strangers, hoping they would make time. Conversations that were not quite interviews, but not entirely casual either.  Over the past year and a half, I have learned a lot about how recruiting works here. But before recruiting for full time roles, I decided to ask alumni in tech who had just gone through the recruiting process themselves what their biggest insights are. So I spoke with four alumni who took very different paths into tech: Matt Young (PM at Apple), Madden Osei (PM at Riot Games), Arushi Jindal (AI investing to DevRev Strategy & Ops), and Ivan Goryachev (Technical Staff at Pi). I asked them how they chose roles, how they secured interviews, what interviews actually looked like, and what they wished they had understood earlier. Matt Young (Big Tech) 2+2 → McKinsey → NFL Chief of Staff → HBS → PM, Apple (iPhone) How did you get your offer? I interned at Apple over the summer in Services. There was no promise of a full-time role. During the summer, I had a coffee chat with a former MBA intern who had joined a year before me. At the time, there was no headcount. While I was on the China trek, she submitted my resume internally when something opened up. I interviewed during the trek and got the final offer the night before OWA move-out in late June. How did you decide where to apply? For my MBA summer, I made a list of 15 companies. I told myself not to put too much pressure on myself - I wanted to get outside my zone of knowledge. I wanted to do something new and either love the internship or hate it.  For full-time, I withdrew from processes where I was just to ‘go through the motions of interviewing.’ I was also aware that many of the roles I wanted were just-in-time hiring. If I locked something in during September recruiting, I might miss something that would be posted in April. I was genuinely willing to graduate without an offer if it meant waiting for the right role. You need to have an honest conversation with yourself about how long you can sustain that before settling for any job. I was solving for two out of three: company, location, type of work. If I was moving to a location I didn’t love, the bar for the job had to be high. I wanted to work in the core of the business, under strong leaders, at the cutting edge. With the right leader, opportunities compound. What actually worked to get interviews? Networking mattered, but not with executives. The former MBA intern who helped me was six months into her role. Cold emails worked occasionally, maybe 50% response rate when thoughtfully written. Resume drops alone were far less effective than targeted outreach. At the end of the day, you only need one to work. What do interviewers look for? If a company is hiring externally, they’re open to teaching you how to succeed internally. Show respect for existing processes. Ask smart questions and form a perspective. Acknowledge the learning curve. Madden Osei (Late-Stage Startup) McKinsey → Microsoft PM → HBS → PM, Riot Games How did you decide where to apply? Business school is expensive, but I optimized for growth over compensation. I wanted a role that felt slightly bigger than I could handle. Smaller teams, more ownership. I applied to around 25 companies. Ten were through my network, 15 were cold. 8 of the 10 networked applications became interviews. 5 became offers. With cold outreach, I got 2 interviews and 2 offers. When you chase too many rabbits, you catch none. Once I narrowed to entertainment x tech, the community started working for me and sent opportunities my way. How do you actually get the interview? The moment you get admitted to HBS, their job is done. Say thank you for the brand name and take it from there. I looked for HBS alums doing something big in the space I was interested in and worked to get warm intros to all of them. A lot easier of a strategy than searching in the ether. Every job I got wasn’t posted on any website. My strategy was to connect with alumni and network, and explain what I want to do. I ended up finding jobs that weren’t posted anywhere. I used some first principles thinking: “What experiences do I want to get and what do I want to do” rather than focusing on a specific role. Let your network tell you what you should do and what role you should have.  I didn’t formally apply anywhere until I spoke to the hiring manager. It’s physically impossible to sort through thousands of CVs. The way in is to get your resume directly to the decision maker. Most of the roles I got weren’t posted anywhere but rather came through a conversation. What does networking actually look like? People are more receptive than you think. And they like to talk about themselves. During calls: Find what genuinely excites you about the role or business. Talk to the person in front of you like you would when you meet someone interesting at a bar - be genuine, don’t be rigid with a list of questions.  The goal isn’t to ask for a job immediately. It’s to ask, “Can you coach me in my career?” At the end, always ask who else you should speak to. Leave with a clear next step. Just be normal. What do interviews look like? Huge variation. Some had take-home assignments, product teardowns, panel interviews. In one case, I pitched myself into a role. When you talk to the hiring manager early, they give you the cheat code. Prepare obsessively. If it’s an AI role, use the product nonstop. If it’s gaming, play constantly. Show you can add value immediately. For AI roles, understand systems conceptually. Don’t just name tools. Arushi Jintal (AI Startup / International) VC Roles → HBS → Together (AI Fund) → DevRev Strategy & Ops How did you decide where to apply? Geography was non-negotiable. I wanted to return to India. I spoke to eight funds even if they weren’t hiring. For tech roles, I wasn’t too fussy about sub-sector, but I focused on AI. I got serious about three opportunities. People get confused applying everywhere globally after business school. Specificity helps you move faster. What worked to get interviews? Cold emails. All my jobs came from them. I used Apollo to source emails. In the email - I made sure to get to the point quickly. I found it was very effective to tell startups what are 3 specific ways you can do to help them. For investing, I sent my work upfront.  How do you vet companies? Revenue isn’t enough. Ask how conflicts are handled. Ask how founders behave in rough times. In India, the market is small. I always tried to find someone who knew someone at the company. Pay attention to the vibe. What about interviews and skills? Investing roles required presenting a thesis. DevRev required a consulting-style deck. Reuse and improve materials across rounds. For business roles, highlight generalist skills. For GTM, highlight sourcing. For operating roles, show analytical depth. Did you upskill? Mostly on the job. But I spent weekends experimenting with AI tools, learning workflows, models, and agents. Curiosity matters. Show what you’ve built. Ivan Goryachev (AI Robotics) Mechanical Engineer → MIT → HBS → Technical Staff, Pi (Robotics) How did you get your role? I was set on founding after HBS, though this fell through around graduation. When it did, a friend introduced me to Pi. The interview included a 48-hour design challenge. I slept six hours total. I ended up also sending them a deck on where robotics is heading and what I would do if hired. Treat the process like you’re joining as a co-founder and show that level of ownership. Why take the job? Three reasons: Rare chance to be at the cutting edge. Quality of people. The founders were transparent and humble. Emotional continuity. Every role in my life opened because of the previous one. What matters most in getting hired? Good taste in decision-making and high motivation. Be humble, but not falsely modest. Don’t hide strengths. Don’t pretend you have skills you don’t. Get as technical as you can. Build prototypes. Learn tools. Even non-technical roles require systems thinking. Networking advice? None of my jobs came from applying online. Blasting resumes led to one interview and one offer. When reaching out, don’t send casual coffee requests - make sure you respect other people’s time. Present a clear case for what you can contribute and have a specific ask. What repeats across all four Despite different paths, a few themes were consistent: Focus beats volume. Targeting 40 roles will lead to lower results than focusing on 10. Network > Linkedin. Sending in CVs won’t get you anywhere.  Technical fluency is increasingly expected. The best roles often don’t follow structured recruiting timelines.  Recruiting into tech is less structured than consulting or finance. That can feel uncomfortable. But it also means the process is more malleable than we assume. Turn that into lemonade. Shira Amit (MBA ‘26)  is from Israel and is the current HBS Tech Club Co-President. She graduated from the Hebrew University with a degree in Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics. Prior to HBS, she was a Product Manager at Wix, Head of CRM at a startup, an air traffic controller, and had a stint in farming.

A (not) Guide to Rage-Baiting as an Established Brand On Sunday, 22nd February, on the eve of the worst blizzard Boston has seen in ten years, the Office of the Dean of Harvard Business School sent out an email which sent a chill through the community. Stating that all classes in the MBA program would be held in person the following day, with no Zoom option, this move broke away from the precedent set by every other Harvard school, which held classes online; by Mayor Wu, who declared an emergency in the broader Boston area; and by Mayor Mamdani, in our sister city New York, whose policies are unclear to me but looked cute in the reels advising New Yorkers not to Doordash. Reactions to this move varied across the spectrum. Some students praised it; “When would we schedule cancelled classes instead?” asserted one EC; “My weekends are booked up till mid-June.” Others were affronted. “How can school remain open when Trader Joe’s, the final bastion of civilized society, is closed?” one appalled Continuum resident said.  Exhibit 1:   “Cambridge doesn’t really clear sidewalks, you’d have to walk on the street to make it.” “They don’t really clear that either.” The proverbial cherry on this snow cone was in addition to not having options for virtual attendance, not attending class would count as a dreaded unexcused absence, on account of “Travel Disruption.” my.hbs.edu   academics suggested that this move would prevent the blizzard from worsening the MBA students’ historically fragile health on Mondays and Fridays. Dean Datar* stood at his window, his eyes following the lone ray of light coming from the construction lights festooned on the empty hull of McCulloch. What was the reason for this mayhem? * Do protagonists volunteer information on this fenestral rumination? Is this white lie accepted under artistic license of the case writer? Is this HBS’s hidden stamp of authorship of a case? Harvard Business School, the West Point of Capitalism  Founded in 1908, Harvard Business School (HBS) is a leading business school which offers a full-time MBA program, the anchor of its brand image, and various other programs I discover on LinkedIn when I check who else attended the same school as me. Paradoxically, the MBA program contributes only ~15% of the school’s annual revenue (2019), lower than Executive Education (~24%) and publishing (~28%), suggesting that MBA students are valued but not valuable. A true capitalism enthusiast focused on shareholder value might wonder—is there not a situation, then, where one might consider sacrificing the wellbeing of the MBA student for profits? Well. In 2026, the administration of HBS had been kept busy dealing with multiple storms over the past year—which had made consistent features in the New York Times headlines for months and had the potential to affect enrollment numbers. This list of exigencies, the chronic printer crisis which demanded a cloud-based revamp, and a troubling surge in truant RC ski trips was addressed through a coordinated campaign of emails and LCA cases. These, however, saw little success.  Concerned about how these internal dynamics affected HBS’s long-standing prestige war with their unnamed West Coast counterpart, the administration turned to other avenues. The MBA Brand: Ripe for Polarization In the present-day attention economy where discourse translates to dollars, there has been a rise in “outrage marketing” or “rage-baiting”—where a brand deliberately provokes controversy to drive engagement. The administration was no stranger to using shock-factor tactics to win eyeballs. “Shark Tank” was hosted on admissions weekend, for the incoming class to hear from Prof. Satchu, entrepreneurship guru, that ~35% of them (~19% consulting / ~16% VC/PE) had wasted the prior four-six years of their professional life. Possibly only six months earlier than they would have received that message from him, anyway. Bound by the decorum expected by a century-old institution, HBS could not openly harness the partisan discourse the MBA brands inspired, seen from Poets and Quants to the MBA Reddit thread, r/mba. However, in engineering a situation using their underutilized internal communications channels—having often missed opportunities for timely communication—they saw an opportunity to create an organic viral marketing moment. Exhibit 2: HBS had, in the past, exercised unfortunate judgement on which issues its community expected to hear from it about. For context, Continuum, a residential complex close to campus, houses dozens of HBS students. In taking a hard stance on keeping school open for regular operations, the administration seemingly wished to reaffirm to the world 1) HBS’s notoriously rigorous stance on classroom learning and 2) the community of go-getters it attracted. In keeping SHAD open, they took the more important stance that there are no excuses to skip leg day.   Exhibit 3: Pictured: Regular Operations. See who wants to go skiing on a school day now, RCs. Initially, it seemed that the campaign was a success.  From all over Cambridge and Allston, intrepid MBA students filed into the campus in time for their 8:30 am. A cross-registration student skied from MIT to Harvard, and posted about it on LinkedIn; in fact, multiple sightings of both skiers and ski gear were made on campus. At least two harried groups of weekend trippers, caught off-guard, began a long drive up to Boston, from Pittsburgh and Nashville, to make it.  Exhibit 4: Did no one inform you that your section’s Park City trip was curricular training? It seemed that the campaign was a success. Faced with enticingly insurmountable odds for a potentially meaningless outcome, the students rallied; proving that a culture of bringing in only successful, larger-than-life personalities for discussions on strategy might lead to muddled lessons on risk calibration. The MBA is the prime of one’s online persona’s life; a deluge of stories from various angles of the snow-covered Spangler lawn created an online moment of uniformity and scale last seen when Reese Witherspoon visited the school. This hubbub reached feverish heights (not literally, thanks to kindly campus residents who contributed their hair dryers to combat the wet socks epidemic) when it began to attract copycats—a second wave of influencers who wished to cash in on this viral moment. Tre Mansdoerfer (MBA ‘26) took off to campus armed in ski gear on-camera during a virtual class, the end of his triumphant journey captured in the Hawes camera in the last moments of the session. Exhibit 5: The Liberation of Man. Digital Print.  Yet, at 8:45 am, the Office of the Dean issued a notice enabling hybrid classes. What changed? Risks of Expansion: What Business are You In? The question of what a quintessential MBA student is one that has kept the philosophers busy for decades. Said Confucius, of long-winded class comments: “The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.” Schopenhauer, in speaking of consulting recruitment: “We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.” I think that the MBA student, fundamentally, is an unemployed 28-year-old with $100,000 in debt; they have knee injuries, time on their hands, limited means, and constant anxiety. Not unlike retirees in senior homes, their disposition ranges from carpe diem recklessness to nitpicky warfare for dubious causes. In attempting to win aspirants with the type of questionable agency prized in this confused AI dystopia, HBS committed a Marketing 101 faux pax  of alienating their core customer base. The denizens of OWA, bemoaning their lack of tunnel connectivity despite living on campus and their permanently non-functional elevators, found it outrageous that they were expected to overcome yet another hurdle to make it to class. “Without in-unit laundry, paying $1.75 per load, I will not be stepping into the slush.” The Pittsburgh drivers took the executive decision to break their journey at Waterbury, Connecticut on Sunday night. “My email to the professors referenced the famed HBS code of conduct:  ‘…mature and responsible conduct also encompasses accountability for one’s well being including responsible decision-making ,’” said Nairi (MBA ‘27). “We started driving down again on Monday—after attending our classes online, of course.” I personally, after complaining about the uncrossable chasm of the ten-minute walk from Continuum between me and my $625-per-class education, found myself with access to Zoom classes. After spending one hour and twenty minutes zoning out from the comfort of my bedroom, I wondered if Malala too found herself conflicted about her causes on discovering she disliked calculus . Beyond eroding trust with their core customer base, HBS also did not plan for consistent messaging to their different stakeholders. Notably, they offered professors rooms on campus to spend the night, while assuming the off-campus student population would be able to brave the storm—an already disgruntled, larger group this year, after being ousted from campus with two out of six dorms being renovated.  Decision The protagonist (with my author’s license for narcissism, me) stares out of her frosted window, pondering her choices. Should she run this article and contribute to this online phenomenon engineered by the school? Or should she channel her unearned angst with the resurfacing maturity of a final-semester EC, and open 12twenty? In the distance, the traffic light changed color; it was not a sign, as it was snowed over and no one could see it. Ramya Vijayram (MBA ‘26)   is originally from Chennai, India. She graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, with a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Biotechnology. Prior to the Harvard MBA, Ramya worked at Warburg Pincus in Mumbai, India, and McKinsey and Co. in India.

What high-functioning rooms quietly teach us about being taken seriously My case preparation approach metamorphized in an interesting way over the last semester. My first few cases started with aggressive underlining of case facts and exhibits, to the detriment of the structural integrity of its paper. You could have almost mistaken me for an attorney headed into litigation with the heavy abuse of my highlighter, cascading tabs, and mental preparation for arguments and counterarguments—only to manage to make a nervous 30-second case fact comment or narrate the 50 th  rendition of Porter’s five forces, if I even managed to get called on. Arriving with the generous assumption of being dead average of a cohort of highly intelligent classmates, I at first ignored the underlying reinforcing patterns recurring in the class. Yet, as I gradually spent less time worrying about aggressive underlining and more on the content of class discussions, I began identifying cues on what was actually being evaluated in class discussions. In order to effectively contribute to the “co-production” of the classroom, the ability to contribute legibly, succinctly, and eloquently was often as or more important than the content of a comment.  My learning algorithm gradually and instinctively overfitted to micro-rewards of subtle nods. It learned to reduce the friction of discussion by self-correcting the length of my comments to optimize for listeners in a packed case discussion. It learned to make my comments digestible to both the overly-prepared classmate and the sleep-deprived recruiting zombie. Of course, how quickly you adapt seems to depend on whether you’ve previously survived high-functioning, attention-scarce, continuously monitored environments.  The existence of this learning outcome, or the Shadow Curriculum , as I like to call it, feels undeniable.  While deviating from the formal curriculum of discounted cash flows yet with no associated formal grading metric, the shadow curriculum serves as a fantastic precursor to almost all high-functioning environments we might encounter in the future. Our cognitive ability, for better or worse, cannot be handed out as laminated one-pagers for others to prep beforehand. It is assessed through our ability to convey it through speech, which becomes a proxy for it.  Thankfully, to ease the burden of proving this theory’s legitimacy (which apparently won a Nobel Prize in Economics), economists have already theorized this concept and aptly named it Costly Signaling . My Claude prompt—“explain it to me like I’m a toddler”—worked like a charm, and I can explain this theory through the following paraphrasing: your legitimacy in environments where you cannot directly prove competency stems from your ability to emit “costly” signals . Costly signals are tough to replicate and show real cognitive control. For example, demonstrating confidence or using jargon are not costly signals, as you can demonstrate them without substance. However, staying calm when challenged or being specific when under pressure are costly signals. Revisiting my elaboration on curriculum deviation, the shadow curriculum  serves as the rehearsal ground to hone these very signals.  On a similar note, personally, as someone who for no good reason turns their nose up at performative practices, they ironically aren’t categorized as such signals. Performative speaking may seem like intellectually pandering, but the true objective is to provide a transmission method for your thoughts. As a data engineer would say, that’s just plumbing.  Now, as I spent the better half of my Sunday executing this semi-futile exercise of reverse-engineering the very pedagogy that has outlived all of my career convictions, I couldn’t help but ponder if there are some signals that are costlier than others, and wonder whether we truly indulge in the right signals.  Somewhere down this rabbit hole, costly signaling revealed to me a second, far more visual layer: the Red Sneaker theory. A darling favorite of marketeers, it’s as visual and apt as the name it was given. It describes, psychologically, the presence of red sneakers in a boardroom—an intentional deviation from the conventional “dress code.” When executed correctly, it shows authentic contrast and reframing of predictable patterns. It’s contingent on only one condition: it has to be sequenced after credibility is established.  Whereas red sneakers on a CEO seem intentional, red sneakers on an intern seem like poor fashion choice, or worse, a lack of workplace etiquette. All this is just a dramatic way of saying: figure out what differentiator you can bring to conversations. Deliberately take the risk to introduce that differentiator once your credibility is established. In the classroom, once you’ve proven you can sufficiently understand case progression, leverage that credibility to pull your red sneaker out. It could be naming the assumption everyone is stepping around, or it could be reframing the very perspective of the protagonist. The reward to this intentional risk is the ability to expand the horizon of conversation.  If you’ve managed to read this far, I trust the shadow curriculum to teach us the “dress code” that elevates the finesse expected from an HBS graduate. But I’d urge you to figure out what your red sneaker is. Esha Chalamalla (MBA ‘27) likes reading and writing observational and opinion pieces. She also enjoys sports, travelling, and food. She has basic tastes and cannot comment further on why.