WEEKEND COLUMNISTS You probably think that Friday’s initial public offering for Blackstone, a listing expected to net co-founders Steve Schwarzman and Pete Peterson a combined payout of up to $2.6bn, has set a new standard for what it means to be successful among New York’s financiers. You are right. But even at a time when it has become possible for bankers earning multi- million-dollar salaries to feel underpaid – a few have actually said this to me, with not nearly enough irony – some highly employable thirty-somethings are making a very different life choice. Having landed lucrative jobs on Wall Street or in consulting, they are taking their MBAs and leaving to work for NGOs that are trying to save the world.
Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto (on whose advisory board I serve), first alerted me to what I would love to call a trend but, for now, can in fairness only characterise as a number of compelling examples. Some of his best and brightest students, Prof Martin said, were leaving top private-sector jobs to work full-time for philanthropies.
“I think some of these folks are saying to themselves: ‘I can make enough to have a perfectly accept-able lifestyle and I will take that instead of really, really a lot of money, in exchange for a life of more meaning,’” Prof Martin told me.
My instinct was to be dismissive. As one private equity partner – and Ivy League MBA – who also took part in the conversation put it: “If they’re looking for meaning, they should be taking a philosophy degree!”
But having spoken to several smart young MBA graduates who have made this trade-off, and a few of their professors and private-sector employers, I think Martin is on to something. Take Columbia, my local business school and the campus most directly heated by the current blaze of Wall Street money.
Professor Ray Horton, director of the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia, wrote in an email from Seoul that “very few people understand the revolution that is taking place in business schools”. He said Columbia’s Social Enterprise Program had expanded eight-fold over the past seven years, growing from 50 to 400 students. Courses that were once able to attract only 15 or so are now over-subscribed.
Suzi Chun, a 33-year-old who graduated from Columbia Business School in 2002, has an undergraduate degree in engineering and has worked at JP Morgan and McKinsey. Now director of charitable giving at a New York technology company, Chun thinks she is part of what is “definitely a growing trend.” “It used to be: ‘Once I’ve made my million, I can give back’,” Chun told me. “For my cohort, it is just: ‘Once we’ve paid off our debt and learnt some business skills.’”
Like all of the MBA graduates I talked to, Chun spoke about the importance of “meaning” in her work. One reason some members of this generation of business school graduates may be looking harder, and willing to make greater financial sacrifices, for work that they feel makes a difference in the world may be the sheer number of hours today’s professional jobs require.
“I started to reassess putting in 12 to 14 hours a day,” recalled Camilla Nestor, another 2002 Columbia Business School graduate, who left a job at Citigroup and now works at the Grameen Foundation. “For me, what is rewarding about work is the impact you have on people. If you are working for a Fortune 500 company, you are really working for sharehold-
ers and the impact on the bottom line. That is certainly a worthy goal. But for me, if I’m going to be working those hours, I want to have an impact on the developing world.”
Leaving Wall Street or consulting jobs comes at a price: Chun described a recent reunion of her MBA class at which she learnt that her salary was just one-eighth of a particularly successful classmate’s bonus. But while the opportunity cost for MBA graduates is significant, many NGOs are now increasingly paying wages that are certainly reasonable by the standards of most Americans. Prof Horton said that a survey last year found the average annual salary for Columbia Business School graduates taking a job in the not-for-profit and public sectors was around $90,000. A
student loan assistance scheme for MBAs who take jobs in either the non-profit or public sectors – fairly typical of leading business schools with programs in this area – further eases the financial equation.
One of the most significant cons-equences of the defection of this talented minority from Wall Street may be the continued blurring of the lines between doing well and doing good. The graduates I spoke to said their education and private-sector training were increasingly valued and valuable in the not-for-profit world. Nestor said that each year saw more and more job-seekers with MBAs applying to work at Grameen.
Ian Davis, managing director of McKinsey, even sees, dare I say it, a business opportunity: “Business has to build social issues into its strategy – either for moral or for practical reasons – and NGOs will need to think … how can we build the skills of business into what we are trying to do.” It is not quite the lion and the lamb, but when social transformation becomes part of the business school curriculum, the relationship between capital and what used to be called revolution definitely seems to be changing.
Chrystia Freeland is the FT’s US managing editor
More columns at www.ft.com/freeland
