Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog

I believe there is one thing many of us have in common: We come to Fuqua to think seriously about our careers.

To understand more about their career journeys, I posed the same question to these Fuqua alumni working in MES: What’s been the most challenging or unexpected part of building a career in MES, and how did you navigate it?

The F.M. Kirby Impact Prize awards $150,000 annually to a social enterprise with proven impact and a credible path to scale.

ETA means making a commitment to showing up every day and making decisions, often imperfect ones, in service of your customers, your employees, and your business over a long period of time. 

I was drawn to the idea of owning and operating a business, especially in health care, so entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA) felt like a natural fit.

As I navigated the admissions process, I felt that Fuqua had a better infrastructure in place for students interested in recruiting beyond the traditional paths.

We got involved with Net Impact because it was a community of like-minded individuals that we could learn from while gaining access to more relevant recruiting and professional resources.

I came into Fuqua wanting to pursue a career switch without a well-defined plan, yet confident that this community would help me find my way.

I entered Fuqua with a plan to actively practice whatever I learned in the classroom through something of my own.

Each role I held gave me a lesson that didn’t just prepare me for an MBA — it clarified why an MBA was the right next step.