MBA Insider Al Dea

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes
Breanna Atkinson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Kokada, whose mission is to create good-tasting and healthy food with ingredients from around the world. After her undergraduate career, she spent some time in consulting. She was inspired to pursue her MBA early on, and applied to Wharton while launching her first company. Another large influence has been in her time as an athlete, playing as a student athlete at Duke, and then going on to be a member of the Jamaican national women’s volleyball team. 
In this conversation, we discuss her journey as a student-athlete, developing her pitch, the value of an MBA for an entrepreneur, and the challenges of starting your own business. 
Links
Website Breanna’s LinkedInInstagram

Right now, many MBA students are in the thick of internship interview season, navigating preparing for interviews, finding opportunities and building relationships with hiring managers and recruiters all while managing all the other academic components of business school is no easy task! In this episode, Al Dea, walks through some common challenges that MBA students face during internship recruiting season, and provides some tips and best practices for staying on course and focusing on your own personal goals.

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes from 2023

This week, we’re flipping the format on the MBA Insider Podcast, with the help of a former guest and friend Eryn Schultz, and putting Al Dea (MBA Insider Host) in the guest chair. In this episode, Eryn, a fellow entrepreneur, talks to Al about his own entrepreneurial journey with building MBASchooled. Al spoke about his motivation for creating MBASchooled, why he recently left his corporate career at Salesforce to focus on his entrepreneurial journey, and what’s next for MBASchooled.

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes from 2023
Paul Millerd is an MIT Sloan MBA Graduate, and the Author of the Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story for Life and Work. Like many hard-working and driven college graduates, Paul entered the corporate world after college ready to work hard, achieve success and climb the corporate ladder. But through a series of events before and after business school, Paul ended up taking an alternative path, and evolving his views on life and work. Much of which is written about in his book The Pathless Path as well as his newsletter, Boundless.

During our conversation, Paul spoke about his career journey after graduating from MIT Sloan and with an MBA, and what ultimately led him to leaving his corporate career for a path of exploration, as well as the many learnings, lessons, and experiences Paul got along the way. We also spoke about his book, and the applications and insights that can be relevant to those who are reflecting on their career aspirations.

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes from 2023

Many MBA students cite that networking and building relationships are two of the most valuable parts of the MBA experience. But how does that play out, and how do MBA graduates cultivate their relationships with their peers and classmates during business school and beyond? In this episode, we spoke to three MBA alums, Margaret Nealon (USC Marshall, ‘22) Ethan Siegel (Owen, ‘22) and Jill Toner (UNC Kenan-Flagler, ‘22) about their MBA experience, and how the as recent MBA alums are using their relationships to develop personally and professionally after they graduate from business school.

Note: This is a replay of one of our most popular episodes from 2023

Christina Wallace is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, an HBS Graduate, entrepreneur and author.

In her most recent book, The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger Than Your Business Card, Christina makes the case for how employees are multi-dimensional individuals, and can re-think and reframe their relationship with their job and career, and to use portfolio and diversification theory to de-risk and explore multiple paths instead.

During our conversation, Christina spoke about how living her own version of a Portfolio life gave her the idea to start researching the book, and why we need a more expansive mindset around how employees can navigate their lives and careers in a more expansive and modern way.

She shares her perspective on how people who are not interested in a more traditional or tried career path, can use the portfolio model to find meaning and success, and she also makes the case, for how in the future of work, The Portfolio model can be a more expansive way for employees to manage their career in today’s modern world of work.

Links
The Portfolio Life: https://www.portfoliolife.com/