#mba program

COMING HOME TO HBS

My son Francesco was 3 months old when I started at HBS in August 2014. In the winter break of my EC year, my little daughter Giulia Maria was born. Francesco was 2 and a half and Giulia Maria was 8 months old when I started my job at Microsoft in Silicon Valley right after graduation.

Since my husband and I were starting a family at the same time I was starting my MBA, I applied only to schools that met the following two criteria:

Located where my husband would have been able to relocate with his job;

Was a top school. Since we were moving out of our home country of Italy (and literally out of our lives) our financial, emotional, and time investment had to be very much worth it.

HBS matched both criteria, and when I got accepted, I simply had no doubts. Three years post-graduation, I have never thought once that I could have made a better choice, and here’s why.

ATCHING AMY CHU, M.B.A. ’99, stride through Midtown Comics in Manhattan’s Times Square is like watching a queen visit the heart of her realm. The staff know her, of course. She looks up a few graphic novels by writers she knows, then heads upstairs to search for some of her own back issues, breezing past posters of characters she’s written for DC and Marvel: Wonder Woman, Deadpool, Red Sonja, Poison Ivy, Green Hornet.

At 51, Chu is an established comics writer, working for the biggest publishers on some of the biggest titles in the business. She’s living any comics nerd’s fondest childhood dream. It just was never her dream. As a kid, Chu hadn’t wanted to be comic-book writer—or any kind of writer. She certainly never planned on telling stories about antiheroes in spandex or metal-bikini-clad warrior babes for a living.

In fact, before 2010, the closest she’d come to writing a comic book was creating a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation in her old life as a business consultant. “It’s not the same,” she says now. “No one says, ‘I was so moved by your PowerPoint presentation.’” But perhaps there were clues to Chu’s destiny in her early life. Born in Boston, she went to high school in Iowa, an experience she now describes as “fairly traumatic.” Chu was nerdy and shy and one of the only Asian kids in town, and her dream was to play soccer. Only one problem: her school didn’t have a girls’ team. When the school district forbade her from trying out for the boys’ team, Chu’s parents sued and won under Title IX. She joined the boys’ team. But the first time she stepped onto the field to play, the opposing team walked off en masse—forfeiting the game as a political statement, rather than face a female opponent.

She remembers the experience as mortifying. But it stood her in good stead when she eventually made it to Wellesley College, where she completed a double degree in East Asian studies and architecture, in a joint program with MIT. “You sue under Title IX,” she jokes. “That’s a really great thing to get you into a women’s college.”

Hikma Health Wins 2019 New Venture Competition Student Social Enterprise Track

Hikma Health creates customized data management systems for healthcare providers caring for refugee patients. 

Students: Jordan Lebovic, HBS 2020; Senan Ebrahim, HMS; Erik Grueter; Zara Allkhateeb

Which first-year, second-semester course would you be the most excited to take? 

📕Business, Government, and the International Economy 

📗Strategy 

📘The Entrepreneurial Manager

📙Finance 2 

📕Leadership 

📘Corporate Accountability 

MyToolbox Wins 2019 New Venture Competition Student Business Track

MyToolbox is a platform for construction workers. 

Student: Wil Eyi (MBA 2019)

The 2+2 Program is a deferred admission process for current students, either in college or full-time masters programs. It is comprised of at least two years of professional work experience followed by two years in the HBS MBA Program.

Upon graduation, admitted 2+2 students spend a minimum of two years (maximum of four years) working in a professional position in the public, private, or nonprofit sector. We encourage students from STEM and humanities disciplines to apply, but the 2+2 Program attracts accomplished students from all fields of study.