My Story: From Zimbabwe To A Stanford MBA

I’m most grateful for my family – that’s my mother, my father, my wife and my eight-week-old daughter. I met my wife in Zimbabwe 10 years ago. She’s working at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a chartered accountant.

I love being a dad, and I’m really lucky to have a good example to follow. I grew up watching my parents invest time in assisting friends and family to organize weddings and other social gatherings.

This spirit of “I am because we are” is deeply ingrained in my cultural heritage. My parents showed me that I should work toward my personal goals, but I should do things to help others achieve their own.

You should know what you want out of an MBA. There are many great MBA programs, but they each have a specific emphasis. Once you choose the school you want to go to, invest the time in your application process. It’s not just a matter of filling in the forms, ticking the boxes and handing in the application. It’s also not a matter of writing what you feel the admissions committee wants to hear, because I’m pretty sure they’re intelligent enough to read past that.

My application process made me really introspective about what I wanted to get out of the experience. I wrote an application that was really authentic to what I wanted to do. That made the process easier because I was writing about things that really resonated with me.

So for those who want to apply to Stanford, think really hard about what matters most to you and why. That should not only help get you into business school, but also serve as a self-reflection exercise that you can get a lot out of personally.

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