Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog

The entrepreneurial mindset is about recognizing real challenges coupled with a desire to solve those challenges and create a systematic approach to deliver a solution.

My decision to pursue an MBA at Duke came during a critical moment in March 2020, working on the frontlines of the pandemic as a nurse in a makeshift intensive care unit for COVID patients.

There is a lot to learn in the classroom, but nothing compares to putting your knowledge and skills to the test in the real world.

Coming from an energy and financial services background, I knew I needed to develop my functional skills further, regardless of my industry of choice.

For the last eight years, I’ve had a deep interest in alternative proteins. However, I did not have any professional experience in the industry, and I wanted to use my time at Duke to change that.

I knew that when I embarked on the journey to pursue an MBA, evaluating the energy balance would be a critical part of my decision.

As a 12-year veteran of Fuqua’s Career Management Center and a Daytime MBA alumnus myself, I take great pride in how we support our students’ career searches. Throughout the program, we help students navigate recruiting while also preparing them for the career journey they’ll experience years after graduation.

I worked with teammates from diverse backgrounds, ranging from management consulting to private equity, to help position a surgical robot against a competitor.

Being on the Kirby Selection Committee gave me a new perspective of scaling social enterprises and funding decisions.

The opportunity to get my hands dirty working on a real-life business problem, and see the impact we were making in real-time, went far beyond classroom learning for me.