Carolyn Chen might be considered the archetypal “post-9/11” MBA student. She was living in the Soho district of New York at the time of the September 11 attacks, and says everyone who was in the area then was changed by the experience.
But the “post-9/11” classification has a meaning that goes beyond Manhattan, and reflects the emergence of a more socially-aware, internationally-minded MBA applicant and student.
“Definitely, my classmates have that kind of perspective,” says Ms Chen, a 29-year-old second-year MBA student at NYU Stern School of Business in downtown New York. “It’s not that their mindsets are changing in business schools to be more socially-minded, but that everyone who comes into business school now is just more socially-minded.”
That applies across the board, she says – and includes the traditional MBA student seeking a lucrative post on Wall Street after graduating.
“The downtown location of NYU means that everyone has a little bit of an edge,” she says. “When you live and go to school in such a crazy neighbourhood, even the traditional bankers and traders are extremely committed to the community.”
Before starting her MBA, Ms Chen spent four years in healthcare consulting, then worked for Teach for America and Doctors without Borders, two prominent non-profit organisations. If she had wanted a career on Wall Street, she says, she would have gone there already.
So why do an MBA? “When working, I found it easy to move from the private sector to the public sector,” she says. “But to move higher in the public sector, utilising all my skills, I felt that an MBA would be the best way to package it all together and open more doors.”
It is probably only in the past five years, she says, that public sector organisations, including governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and non-profit organisations, have really begun to exploit private-sector skills.
To be sustainable and effective, all these organisations need to be managed well, she says. “That’s where the MBA really works.”
Doing the MBA at NYU Stern was “kind of a no-brainer”, she says. But this was not only because of the strength of the school’s social enterprise programme. Under NYU’s dean, Thomas Cooley, the ethos of social enterprise and corporate social responsibility is embedded in all the MBA classes.
After her first year at NYU Stern, Ms Chen had an opportunity to use her skills during a three-month summer internship at Pfizer, the US pharmaceuticals company. She was working in the corporate affairs division in a job that was specifically created for an MBA student, assessing socially responsible investment firms (SRIs).
“I probably never had another job where I used every single skill that I ever had – in secondary education, at undergraduate and graduate level,” she says. “I was shocked by how much I pulled from my courses at Stern – the core courses in strategy, marketing and finance, in a corporate social responsibility setting.”
