2018 MBAs To Watch: Parul Kashyap, Boston University (Questrom) - Poets&Quants

Parul Kashyap

Boston University, Questrom School of Business

“Value-driven mobilizer to people and happiness, genuine life learner and community builder.”

Age: 29

Hometown: San Jose, CA

Fun fact about yourself: I spent 6 days camping and climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

Undergraduate School and Degree: BA in Public Health Policy from University of California – Irvine

Where did you work before enrolling in business school? (List Company and Role)

• The Health Trust in San Jose, CA: Program Coordinator for Senior Peer
• GenapSys (Biotech start-up) in Redwood City, CA: People Operations
• Global Brigades in Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Public Health Program Coordinator

Where did you intern during the summer of 2017?

I worked at Totohealth, a mHealth social enterprise in Tanzania focusing on customer financing, supply chain operations and product development for maternal and newborn care.

Where will you be working after graduation?

A consultant with Edenbridge Health — Looking to bridge access in healthcare innovation and delivery in emerging markets through sustainable strategy and operations.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: I was recognized as a 2017 Hero of the Year, a nomination made by MBA peers in making the most impact in Questrom community. This award stemmed from my initiatives as a representative for the Questrom Graduate Council, where I worked to mediate and develop partnerships for curriculum development between students and faculty. I was an active proponent with the school’s Social Impact Alliance in advocating for academic and industry infrastructures to support non-traditional business careers in social impact and public sectors. This resulted in being selected as a student representative for the MBA Program Development Committee, a faculty and staff entity that oversees MBA curriculum development.

Additionally, I support Global Ventures Consulting Club to organize an annual consulting trip to Guatemala, serve as MBA Admissions Ambassador, and strategize on various initiatives with the Social Impact Alliance and the Diversity and Inclusion office.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? The most thrilling moment of my time at Questrom has to be the culmination of my Module 3 team experience. During this module, MBA student teams work with real clients to solve a business challenge that their company is facing. Our project was to define the City of Boston’s role in the growing autonomous vehicle market. Our team started off as a bunch of strangers from all over the world – Thailand, China, The Netherlands – and ended up as the most unified team to win the Best of the Best competition against all the cohorts. It was a draining yet exciting conclusion to wrap my first year at Questrom.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? My most significant achievement that drives me today is when I realized my commitment to community building. My first official job out of university was a time of relevance in launching me towards a career in healthcare partnerships in global health. I spent 14 months in and out of rural communities in Honduras to understand and improve health infrastructure needs in underprivileged, low-resource settings that we otherwise define as poverty. The people I met were not poor or unhappy; in fact, they always had a smile even though they did not have basic access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene with alarming rates of deaths caused by diarrhea and water-borne illness. They say that “brilliance is evenly distributed, opportunity is not.” I developed internal community and external university student partnerships that used their brilliance to build public health and education opportunities resulting in 105 homes with clean cooking stoves, toilets and concrete floors. The momentum created for social, health and development changes through community building has left intangible impacts to all involved. It is a momentum I hold onto to bring people together from all corners for social change.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? My favorite professor had to be Janelle Heineke for Operations and Technology. Prof. Heineke breathes the balance of a commitment to student excellence and creating effective and efficient operations. I am naturally an organizer and she taught me the frameworks to execute the organizing in the classroom, business setting and the Questrom community.

What was your favorite MBA Course Mark Philip’s course on Drugs, Diagnostics, Devices was the most pleasant surprise in the nerve wracking of cold calls encompassed into a MBA course. It pushed on both the hard and soft skills in strategy needed to drive the most difficult decisions in the complicated web of healthcare.

Why did you choose this business school? Questrom stood out in its people, programs and most of all where I could find and build my community. Questrom has propelled my journey in healthcare and innovation in emerging markets in Boston and beyond.

What is your best piece advice to an applicant hoping to get into your school’s MBA program? Beyond your initial research, it’s key that you talk to people and hear the real experience of being a student or alumnus of the program they are a part of. Whatever advice you get from people, always take it with a grain of salt. Most of all, look at the values and skills you want to develop and gain.

What is the biggest myth about your school? Business school is perceived as a competition-driven student community that thrives in sexy careers in consulting, venture capital and investment banking. I learned very quickly that the business mindset is nurtured and needed in all organizational settings and Questrom prides itself in having a diversity in business practice in private, public and combination sectors alike.

I focused a lot of my energy in learning from team projects, classroom discussions, and my peers that I did not take advantage of learning more directly from the profusely resourced Questrom faculty.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? A cohort mate I met on my first day here. Not only did they turn out to be part of my first team project experience at Questrom, but became a friend that welcomed me to Thanksgiving in New England and became an ear to understand the polarization of current events and politics. Coming from a progressive privilege and mindset from Silicon Valley, I could not comprehend the volatile political climate that split the country in half. In a time where Americans are constantly being divided in polarizing spectrums, this cohort mate and I made the stride to lean in and understand each other’s perspectives, frustrations, fears, and hopes for how great America is and continues to be. I admire this classmate because they hold a minority conservative perspective in a largely progressive urban area but actively chooses to advocate and share their values.

Who most influenced your decision to pursue business in college? First and foremost, it was my parents, who taught me patience and resilience in finding my American dream. In trying to find it, I worked in both private and public sectors, but could not figure out sustainable ways to bridge the two sectors together. My previous employers and organizations ultimately influenced me to seek better ways to scale delivery and success in a complex multi-stakeholder healthcare system.

“If I hadn’t gone to business school, I would be…back home in Silicon Valley building partnerships between the affluent tech sector and their communities to solve real-world health and development challenges instead of the latest app craze.”

If you were a dean for a day, what one thing would you change about the MBA experience? I have learned that changes in higher education are long and tedious and meaningful curriculum changes are not feasible within one day. Instead, I would create an MBA student experience where discussions around policy, regulations, and personal value systems from U.S. and international perspectives are encouraged. Not only would this get people out of their comfort zones, but also allow them to better understand polarized spectrums and diversity in the workforce today to be better business leaders for tomorrow.

What are the top two items on your bucket list? My top 2 bucket list items are actually my grandfather’s bucket list items (it took me a while to explain the concept to him): 1) Read and translate his memoir from Hindi to English; and 2) Donate his memoir to my local childhood library in California.

In one sentence, how would you like your peers to remember you? Inspiration to lean in and listen to the other side.

What is your favorite movie about business? My recent favorite movie would be The Intern with Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro. It exemplifies the needs of a multi-generational workforce to appreciate and learn from different types of success.

What would your theme song be? “Soy Yo” by Bomba Estereo

Favorite vacation spot: Eating, hiking and driving through Big Sur, CA

Hobbies? In the brief spare time I find in graduate school, I love finding new tea shops, museum exploring and the best tacos in town.

What made Parul such an invaluable addition to the class of 2018?

“Parul has been an absolute joy to have in our MBA program. She is regularly recognized by her colleagues as someone who has had an influence on them during their program. In fact, a number of students have stated that they wouldn’t have been able to get through the program without her friendship and support. She is an amazing leader who has mastered the skills of being a great listener and someone who is not afraid to have the tough conversations. She pushes her classmates to discuss the issues of the day and enlightens classmates to seeing issues from multiple perspectives.”

J.P. Matychak
Associate Dean of Student Experience & Services

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2018 MBAs To Watch: Dalia Rinaldi, Boston University (Questrom) - Poets&Quants

Dalia Rinaldi

Boston University, Questrom School of Business

“Pragmatic idealist working tirelessly to leave the world better than she found it.”

Age: 35

Hometown: San Francisco, CA

Fun fact about yourself: I am a certified yoga instructor and have taught mindfulness practices to incarcerated women in New York.

Undergraduate School and Degree: BA, English Literature, UC Berkeley & MA, Modern Art and Critical Studies, Columbia University

Where did you work before enrolling in business school? Chief of Staff to the US Regional Head at Russell Reynolds Associates, a leadership consulting firm with 47 offices globally.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2017? MBA Associate, Pharmacy Team Evolution at CVS Health

Where will you be working after graduation? Rejoining CVS Health as an Advisor in Pharmacy Operations, with a mandate to improve both customer and colleague experience. The scale of the company creates some really exciting opportunities to impact thousands of lives.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

• VP Finance, Questrom Graduate Internship Fund
• BU on Board Fellow
• TA for first-year MBA Economics
• Deborah Scott Dawson Fellowship for Women in Business
• Questrom Hero

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? The Questrom Graduate Internship Fund mobilizes our MBA community to fund students pursuing unpaid or underpaid social impact internships. As operational head, I led the transformation of this scrappy student group into a professional fundraising institution, recruiting an Advisory Board, producing our first-ever Annual Report, and pitching to major alumni donors. This year, we hosted our first-ever annual Impact Week on campus, with over 80 students pledging to “Donate a Day” of their salary to the fund in June. Together, these efforts will triple the amount of funding raised in previous years, allowing more students to sustainably pursue work in social enterprise, the public sector, and nonprofits, locally and globally.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? At CVS Health last summer, I conducted ethnographic research in the retail pharmacies to identify key drivers of field management turn and churn. The qualitative insights were intriguing, but didn’t provide a real business case for change. In order to quantify the business impact of these challenges, I ran a correlation study, tracking field manager tenure against district performance. I found that districts with supervisors in role for 3+ years showed a statistically-significant performance lift on KPIs critical to the bottom line.

It is easy for business leaders, especially in retail, to forecast the impact of cost cuts, but nearly impossible to project ROI for employee satisfaction. As a business student, I was excited to have found a compelling way to use data to support an intuitive reality.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? I took two different strategy courses with Paul McManus, a “Master Lecturer” at Questrom, which means he’s a real business practitioner, not a PhD. McManus heads up the concentration and has taught every graduate strategy course on the syllabus, to full-time, part-time, and executive-MBA students. He is a fast talker and packs every minute of class with valuable insights—he doesn’t waste time. From my first introduction to Porter’s Five Forces to “modified Shakespeare” (Who is likely to be found guilty and punished although innocent? Who is likely to be honored although uninvolved and why?), he has put more tools in my tool belt than any other MBA professor.

What was your favorite MBA Course? Negotiations! It is one of the most celebrated classes at Questrom, with a famed assignment where you go around asking for things in hopes of collecting “No”s. The surprise discovery is that people really don’t like to say “No,” and you can often get more than you would have thought just by starting a conversation. The course is built on strategies for creating shared value, which I find especially critical given the current political climate.

Why did you choose this business school? Visiting campus, I felt an immediate sense of belonging. I remember sitting in on a class where a guest speaker was conducting a live case study in social impact investing, and it was my first exposure to that type of business model. I was hungry to learn more, embraced by this warm and welcoming community of people using business principles in service of something greater than money or power.

What is your best piece advice to an applicant hoping to get into your school’s MBA program? Be your genuine self. Questrom students are down-to-earth, open, and curious about themselves and others. This is not the kind of place where you have to impress people with your achievements or connections to stand out—the community will celebrate you for your work ethic, service orientation, and commitment to self-discovery.

What is the biggest myth about your school? I don’t know if there are a lot of “myths” about Questrom. It’s a humble place and we are known for rolling up our sleeves and playing well with others. The curriculum’s intense focus on teamwork makes sure that remains true year-after-year.

What was your biggest regret in business school? I wish I had gotten involved in more case competitions earlier in the program. This fall, I was on the team that placed second at the National Human Capital Case Competition at Vanderbilt, and it was an amazing learning experience with great corporate coaches. Nothing teaches you to think on your feet like 30 minutes of Q&A with executive judges! That is serious preparation for the real world, where you will have to defend your recommendations to senior leaders every day.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? KC Caine, a dual-degree MBA/MPH, is one of the social impact interns we funded through the Internship Fund last summer. This fall, she has helped pitch the project to major alumni donors. KC is probably ten years younger than I am, but she knows exactly what she wants to do with her life. I am consistently blown away by her depth of knowledge, poise, and determination, not to mention that she is putting all of this to work in service of improving health outcomes for populations around the world. By the time she is my age, she will have demonstrably changed the world.

Who most influenced your decision to pursue business? I was pregnant with my first child when I was admitted to Questrom. We didn’t know if we would have a boy or a girl, but I knew that if I had a daughter, I wanted her to grow up seeing my career as evidence that she could pursue whatever she wanted in life. Equally importantly, if I had a son, I wanted him to grow up with deep respect for women and mothers in the business world. We ended up having a boy—Rafi is a toddler now, and comes to class with me once in a while when daycare falls through. Being a working mom isn’t easy, but he inspires me to be my best self every day.

“If I hadn’t gone to business school, I would be…getting a PhD in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. I’m a thinker, and I wanted an academic “time out” in which to explore my place in the world, to figure out where I could have the greatest impact and be most satisfied. In the end, the MBA was more efficient and more versatile than a PhD, and more aligned with my ultimate goal of being a leader and changing the status quo.”

If you were a dean for a day, what one thing would you change about the MBA experience? I would sponsor more conversations about balancing work and family, for women and men in the program. Most full-time MBAs don’t have children yet, but a lot of women in my class have approached me confidentially to ask about trade-offs between motherhood and their careers. Unfortunately, a lot of driven young women still feel like they have to choose between work and family. That choice costs humanity, because ambitious, engaged women build society through both family and work. This isn’t just a conversation for women, though—young men pursuing their MBAs need to see and hear from male executives who are proud to shoulder a fair share of household responsibilities to support their partners’ career trajectories.

What are the top two items on your bucket list? 1) Studying yoga in Pune, India with the Iyengar family; and 2) building a nonprofit organization to drive fundamental changes in the US criminal justice system, particularly in the area of corrections—one will clearly be easier to achieve than the other!

In one sentence, how would you like your peers to remember you? A servant leader who inspired others to be their best selves.

What is your favorite movie about business? Glengarry Glen Ross – though it’s a bit dated at this point, with salesmen being dealt stale leads typed on index cards – it provides a textbook case in how not to motivate people when driving for results. The film is a cautionary tale for any leader who thinks they can rely on threats rather than inspiration to get their teams to achieve business goals.

What would your theme song be? “Mountains to Climb” by Jahdan Blakkamoore, a Brooklyn-based reggae artist. It comes off the 2010 album Babylon Nightmare, which I think is the most inspiring reggae album since Bob Marley’s Catch a Fire. This song makes me feel strong enough to do anything.

Favorite vacation spot: Any seaside town in Liguria, Italy.

Hobbies? Yoga, reading, playing LEGOs with my son.

What made Dalia such an invaluable addition to the class of 2018?

“Dalia is an influential leader and has worked to advance several causes while at Questrom. First, she has worked tirelessly to enhance the profile of our MBA Internship Fund. She and her colleagues have developed an organizational structure, new fundraising avenues, and metrics to advance the fund and the program. In addition, Dalia has been an advocate for women’s issues while in the MBA program. She regularly meets with fellow students about balancing motherhood and school, as well as balancing work and life without compromising ambition. Dalia is admirable, an influencer, and a great role model for our MBAs.”

J.P. Matychak
Associate Dean for Student Experience & Services

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2018 Best MBAs: Matthew Warshaw, Boston University (Questrom) - Poets&Quants

Matthew Warshaw

Boston University, Questrom School of Business

“A compassionate, data-driven leader, building community and challenging the status quo.”

Age: 33

Hometown: Wellesley, MA

Fun fact about yourself: I have played drums and percussion ever since I was a kid – most recently in a Weezer cover band in Washington, DC.

Undergraduate School and Degree: Colby College; BA, Government

Where did you work before enrolling in business school? Before coming to Questrom, I worked in Washington, DC. Most recently I served as a Project Manager at Evoke Research and Consulting where I worked on-site at the Veterans Benefits Administration, helping them streamline their benefits processing capabilities.

Prior to Evoke, I worked in a number of offices at the US Department of Defense. I served as a Defense Fellow for two and half years, working in the Secretary of Defense’s cybersecurity policy, legislative affairs, and speechwriting offices. After my time as a Defense Fellow, I served as a consultant to a government cybersecurity training program.

I began my career in Washington, DC at the US Department of Commerce where I served as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Commerce, Dr. Rebecca Blank.

My first job out of college was serving as a Regional Field Director on the Obama-Biden Campaign in 2008.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2017? I interned at Dell as a MBA Marketing Intern (Marketing LDP). I was placed with the Federal Field Marketing Team where I assisted the team in creating custom messaging for the federal client.

Where will you be working after graduation? I will join IBM as a Market Development and Insights Senior Analyst in New York City.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

Questrom Graduate Council: First Year Representative (2016-2017), President (2017-2018)

Leading the organization and execution of “Can We Talk?”, a forum for students to discuss political and social issues (Spring 2018)

Consultant to local non-profit through the school’s Link Day program (Spring 2017)

Consultant to local start-up through BU’s partnership with MassChallenge (Spring 2017)

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I am most proud of my work managing the Questrom Graduate Council from goal setting through execution.

As President of the Questrom Graduate Council, I worked with my team to develop shared goals and a vision for our year together. We brought in an outside facilitator and spent a number of sessions trying to vocalize what our role was within the business school and the impact we could have here. As a group, we decided to focus our energy on two key areas: creating more interactions among students in different programs and with different backgrounds and streamlining communication to students from staff, faculty, and clubs.

Over the course of the year these two goals informed how we spent our time and money. When clubs requested funding, we made sure they were using the new Questrom Common app to communicate and that they were reaching out to all graduate students, not just full time MBA students. We carefully tracked participation rates across programs to understand how to create events that attract students from across the graduate business programs.

These goals not only informed our day-day-day operations, but also helped us understand where we could innovate. At the beginning of February, we launched the first Questrom Graduate Council newsletter, alerting students to all of the events and activities we help sponsor, making our meetings more accessible to other students, and celebrating the great work others are doing. I worked directly with one of our Co-VPs of Marketing and Communications to get the first issue out.

In March, leaders from the Questrom Graduate Council and across the school will be hosting “Can We Talk?”, an opportunity for students to come together and discuss current events facing Questrom community and the broader business and non-profit communities we hope to lead in the coming decades. I have taken an active role in organizing this event, from working with catering and finalizing the event space to facilitating discussions among the organizing group to clarify the goals of this event.

Both of these achievements, creating a newsletter and putting together a “Can We Talk?” event, are great in their own right. But what I am most proud of is that they were deliberate activities that aligned with our stated goals and vision for the Council. They were also complete team efforts. Instead of me trying to take on all the work myself, I worked with members of the Council and student community to achieve our goals.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? As an MBA Intern with Dell’s Federal Marketing team, I was asked to help articulate the Dell Technologies value proposition to our federal government clients. To do this, I created a “point-of-view” document outlining how our products and services could meet specific government needs. However, as the summer drew to a close, I felt like there was more I could be doing, a better way to help articulate the Dell Technologies value proposition. I had spent hours on the company’s intranet reviewing PowerPoints and product guides. But the most persuasive form of communication I saw that summer, actually came from the corporate education team. They had created a number of whiteboard videos to clearly explain the three pillars of the Dell Technologies strategy.

I reached out to the employee tagged as the project manager for the whiteboard videos. In the course of only a few weeks and no budget, I asked the project manager if he could help me make my own whiteboard video. He was kind enough to offer his help. I then storyboarded and narrated the video. He fancied up the graphics and put the whole thing together and the video was a hit when I presented to the company CMO and the Federal Advisory Board.

No one had asked me to create the whiteboard video and certainly no one expected it from me. But I thought it was important and advocated to my manager and others in the organization and then managed the project through to completion. Through this experience, I saw that I could clearly analyze a problem, identify a path forward, and create a solution.

I recently received an email from the former Vice President of the Marketing Talent at Dell asking how I made the video. She is now in a different office, but clearly the effectiveness of the video stayed with her.

Why did you choose this business school? I came to Questrom for the MSDi program. No other business program had the same mix of technical skills and traditional business training. Having grown up in Boston, I knew that BU had great relationships with local technology companies and thought the program would help me transition from the federal government into technology.

What is your best piece advice to an applicant hoping to get into your school’s MBA program? Talk to current students in a specific program that you are interested in. Questrom has done a great job of providing unique business programs in the health, technology, and social impact sectors. If you are interested in one of these fields, talk to a current student in the HSM, MSDi, or Social Impact program to understand what their experience is like.

What is the biggest myth about your school? A lot of students interested in technology believe they have to go out to Silicon Valley to work in technology. That is not true. Questrom does a great job exposing students to companies across the country where they can put their technology skills to use. While there is a student-led trek and a professor led seminar to Silicon Valley each year, students also find opportunities in technology at Boston based companies such as Wayfair and can work with tech start-ups based at MassChallenge. There are also a number of healthcare and pharmaceutical companies interested in hiring Questrom students to help work in their data analytics and IT modernization teams.

What was your biggest regret in business school? I regret not traveling more. Some business school students are in a new town every weekend. Being married, it was a little harder for me to get away with friends from school. However, traveling is such an important part of learning about yourself and forming deep connections with your classmates. Luckily, I recognized this before the end of the program and will be traveling to Paris over spring break with the school’s European Field Seminar.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Katie Manter. Katie was on my very first team at Questrom. We got along from the beginning despite attending rival colleges (I attended Colby and she attended Bates). The project hit some rough patches at times, but Katie was never afraid to calmly and clearly talk through what needed to get done. She kept the whole team on track and focused on our final deliverables.

In her second year Katie brought her work ethic and infectious excitement to BU on Board, a previously defunct organization that placed Questrom students on the boards of local non-profits. Katie turned around the program and personally recruited fifteen of the most talented second year students for the program.

Who most influenced your decision to pursue business in college? My former boss, Dr. Rebecca Blank, made me promise her that I would go back to school. I worked for Dr. Blank at the US Department of Commerce where we would often travel together and talk about our families. Every few months, she would remind me that I had to go back to school. She believed strongly that a graduate degree was necessary to succeed in the world today.

“If I hadn’t gone to business school, I would be…working for an organization to help recruit better candidates for elected office or to create fair congressional districts.”

If you were a dean for a day, what one thing would you change about the MBA experience?

If I were dean for a day, I would lobby the University Provost for more staff for the business school. The graduate business programs have added dozens of students over the years with no corresponding increase in staff. This means that each career advisor has more students to squeeze into his or her week. It also means that the unique MBA programs at Questrom (Health Sector Management, Social Impact, MS in Digital Innovation) have less resources to create the programming that is paramount to a positive student experience.

What are the top two items on your bucket list?

Visit the Tsukiji fish market in Japan.

Fly on Air Force One.

In one sentence, how would you like your peers to remember you? A passionate and caring leader who left Questrom better than he found it.

What is your favorite movie about business? Moneyball. I learned that there is no industry that should leave important decisions to the gut of a group of old white men. I am also a sucker for Jonah Hill.

What would your theme song be? “Waiting on the World to Change” by John Mayer

Favorite vacation spot: Portland, Maine. I proposed to my wife on an island in the Casco Bay harbor near Portland so it will always hold a special place in my heart. Portland has an amazing mix of good food, relaxing beaches, and walkable streets.

Hobbies? Drumming, Yoga, Hiking, Food, Traveling, Netflix

What made Matthew such an invaluable addition to the class of 2018?

“As the president of the Questrom Graduate Council, Matt has exceled as a leader. He has worked tirelessly to integrate all of our graduate students into the Questrom community. In addition, he has served as an outstanding representative of the student voice as we continue to enhance the student experience inside the classroom and out. He has been a great partner and his leadership will be missed.”

J.P. Matychak
Associate Dean of Student Experience & Services

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