How my MBA scholarship paved the way for a start-up career in the US

I wanted to build on my foundation in consulting and accelerate my career growth. The main goal of the MBA was to discover exciting new career opportunities and position myself for a change in career. The MBA helped me rebrand myself as a professional with an entrepreneurial mindset suited for startups.

The AGSM MBA programme provided me with access to a variety of different events and exposed me to different career options. I discovered my passion for start-ups by attending tech events and other social engagements. Being president of the Entrepreneurship Club gave me the licence to host events on behalf of AGSM and build a community for entrepreneurship and start-ups that generated a lot of interest and gained popularity in my MBA cohort.

I think having that diversity in the programme was quite important, not just gender diversity but also diversity of culture, age, and background. 

At that time, I had only been exposed to consulting; it was fantastic to have people in the cohort from the military, from media, from government, from different countries that I would not have had exposure otherwise.

One of the best outcomes of the MBA are the connections with my cohort. They are a great asset. If I ever have a question about an industry or field, I am not familiar with, I can confidently reach out to one of my cohort members.

That is another thing I really appreciate about AGSM: the full-time cohort is quite small, so you get to know everyone and develop deep connections throughout the programme.

The scholarship was a key reason for choosing AGSM as it provided me with financial independence, as well as the opportunity to gain a balanced exposure to Australia and the US by going on exchange to Wharton and working for a start-up in New York. 

I wanted to get experience at a start-up while at Wharton for my exchange. I found out that many high growth US based start-ups have business operations teams. I felt like I had the right operations skillset so pitched myself for an internship at a real estate data startup company. 

It was incredible how much I was able to learn in a period of three months. In the start-up environment, they throw you in the deep end on different projects. During my time there, I set up a framework for managing goals. I established OKRs to help the leadership in setting, tracking, and managing goals. It was a big responsibility for an intern, to implementcompany-wide systems.

I enjoyed what I was doing. It was a role where I was working on a range of projects, with a variety of deliverables. The internship provided an environment of ownership of deliverablesand the ability to influence business outcomes in a tangible way.

Based on my performance, the internship turned into a full-time job!

Absolutely. In my current role, I helped facilitate the leadership off-sites with my manager, thinking about the long-term strategy of the company. I went back to the strategy course that I did at AGSM and pulled out the frameworks we would use like the Three Horizons Model and the Playing To Win framework. Pulling those out and helping the leadership team fill in the blanks is an example of directly applying the MBA learning on the job!

Yes, I have two bits of advice. 

First, it is important to score well on the GMAT and create a compelling application. I personally wanted to give myself the best chance at the scholarship, and so I did the GMAT a couple of times. The GMAT can be attempted a second time if you feel you could achieve better results, especially as it is a requirement for the scholarship.

Second, your application requires a compelling story telling technique that highlights your unique experiences. I highlighted not only my work in consulting, but also my experiences outside my professional life. I drew out how those experiences have made me the person I am today and represented that in an authentic fashion. Authenticity helped build my case for the scholarship.