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AUGUST 2000 MBA JOURNAL: INTRODUCTION Tangwena Nelson: Who I Am and Why B-School is for Me "While in Quito [Ecuador] I had the opportunity to help a small business execute a business plan, and it was while doing this that I stumbled on my Aha! Moment."
My name is Tangwena Nelson, and like many other B-schoolers I'm a career changer. I've spent my professional life primarily in marketing roles, and initially thought that was where I would remain. After graduating from Howard University in 1995, I accepted a marketing opportunity with American Airlines and enjoyed an incredible fast-track career that encompassed five positions within four and one-half years. With each rotation, from training program to district manager, I gained a wealth of responsibility beyond my expectations and a plethora of new challenges. However, while my positions consistently fed my appetite for challenge, I did find time to stop and smell the roses, exploiting my travel benefits at every opportunity with such adventures as day trips to London for lunch. By the summer of 1999 I had donned the moniker of jetsetter and was traveling to a foreign country (primarily Latin America) every weekend. And so, while my friends gathered for happy hours on Fridays, I would often crunch into an airline seat for trips to some of the most intriguing places in the world. In between run-ins with local immigration officers and death-defying bus trips down mountains, I found the time to make friends in each country. And as I became familiar with Latin American cultures I felt compelled to learn the language, and took time off from work to attend a local school in Quito, Ecuador. While in Quito I had the opportunity to help a small business execute a business plan, and it was while doing this that I stumbled on my Aha! Moment. An Aha! Moment is that point in time when you suddenly discover something profound. For me, it was determining what I truly wanted to do with my life from a career perspective. While I had enjoyed my time at American Airlines, particularly the interaction with senior management and the challenge of working on multiple projects, I knew it fell short of being a complete experience. For example, though I often worked on projects that included evaluating economic models, they rarely involved working within the arena of capital markets, which I had long been fascinated with. As well, my passion for working in diverse foreign cultural environments was often limited to long-distance team projects with colleagues in other countries. Consequently, I surmised that a complete profession for me would involve not only working with senior management on projects that help shape companies, but should also involve working within the realm of capital markets and provide for a consistently intense intellectual challenge, and be an ongoing generator of new skills. Additionally, with a personal goal of helping others and a passion for new cultural experiences, I realized that I would ultimately meet my career objectives in emerging markets, most notably in Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean. So I developed a multi-year career plan that I hope will be my blueprint to professional and personal utopia. Why B-school Not unlike many applicants, I knew I wanted to go to B-school before I knew why. I even remember dreaming about B-school acceptances during the mundane ceremony of my undergraduate convocation, and by the fall of 1995 I had begun the application process. I would ultimately apply to three schools, all on the strength of recommendations from friends. However, my ego took a major bruising when I was rejected by two schools and waitlisted by one. In hindsight, I really had no business applying to school then, as my only motive was to feed my ego by having a master's degree before I was 25. Looking over those old application forms now, it's obvious that this attitude permeated my essays. However, armed with a new plan for my career, I now have a true purpose for school (a factor that I've since learned carries a lot of weight in the B-school application process). Not only will B-school provide the marketability I need to attract my targeted employers, it will be the ultimate training ground for the skills I need to become successful. It quickly became just a question of which school. Selecting a B-school I decided that the academic experience at any top-10 school was relatively the same, and that the only real difference for me was that some schools had more accessibility to the "Street" than others, a factor that could be easily overcome with a bit more legwork. So I relied on other factors to make my decision. Having gone to a fairly large university as an undergraduate, I knew I wanted to pursue my MBA in a more intimate setting. Additionally, like most applicants I wanted to incur as little out-of-pocket expense as possible. So I targeted schools that offered multiple scholarship opportunities beyond the traditional ones. Through my scholarship research I stumbled onto the Robert A. Toigo Foundation (RTF), a fellowship for students embarking on a financial services career, post B-school. In addition to funding for school, I learned that the 30 recipients gain access to an incredible network of RTF alumni, exposure to senior managers on Wall Street, and garner immediate respect associated with the foundation and the 12 business schools in the program. Impressed with the reach of the organization and its network, I tailored my efforts toward RTF schools and complemented my selections by applying to schools in the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management. Cornell, as a small program and an RTF school, was one of two programs that fit my search perfectly. After attending its weekend extravaganza for accepted students, my decision was set. Not only was I impressed with the school's new facilities, which include a state-of-the-art financial research center, I was sold on the students I met. They had a unique mix of smarts and humility, plus diverse backgrounds ranging from U.S. national rugby players to acclaimed concert pianists. Combine that with the fact that I received a RTF Fellowship, and it's easy to understand why I decided, unequivocally, that this is where I want to be. And if the admissions weekend is an indicator of what my time at Cornell will be like, it should be a fun, fast, and intellectually stimulating two years. Stay tuned.  | | [an error occurred while processing this directive] Learn about your online education options |
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