Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog

I decided to use my two years in business school to learn more about what it's like to work with smaller companies—especially startups—and try my hand as a founder, experimenting in entrepreneurship. Fuqua has turned out to be the perfect place to do this.

Growing up, I knew I wanted to attend schools that placed an equal emphasis on academic and athletic success. I pursued my undergraduate degree at West Point but I never forgot about Duke or those, “Cameron Crazies.”

I like to joke that my business school journey would make a perfect entry for, “How not to prepare for business school.” I chose Fuqua for many reasons, the most compelling of which is the Fuqua community. The turning point for me was attending the Women’s Leadership Weekend in November 2018

Here at Fuqua, we believe that design thinking is a fun, creative way to answer questions, design products, and ideate process improvements. We strive to introduce these skills and provide a fun environment in which to practice them.

School fit was an essential criterion when evaluating which school would be the best choice for me. Thus, attending the Workshop was a crucial step in my search process. Throughout the weekend, I was able to get a real sense of Fuqua’s overall community.

I had been researching business schools for a couple years, and after a while, all the top schools seemed the same. I needed something that would cut through the sound bites and similarities to know whether or not I, an openly gay individual, would belong.

My journey at Fuqua was not linear. I moved from Brazil to the United States specifically to join Fuqua. I’ve experienced all the feelings and struggles international students usually go through when pursuing their MBA.

Needless to say that an entrepreneur's life is not all roses, and I learned a lifetime of lessons in this journey. Here are a few I think everyone should know at the beginning.

This past year, Fuqua launched a new set of core summer term introductory courses. One class was Technological Transformation of Business, which discussed how technology and specific companies revolutionized and disrupted markets, institutions, businesses, and ultimately, society.

Even with 2020's challenges, our employment report boasts impressive numbers and tells the stories of what our Duke MBA grads overcame.