Meet The MIT Sloan MBA Class of 2017

Lisa Conn

Lisa Conn

 

MIT Sloan School of Management

Hometown: Laguna Beach, CA

Undergraduate School and Major: New York University, Social & Cultural Analysis

Employers and Job Titles Since Graduation:

National Organizing Director, FWD.us

Eastern Director, FWD.us

Campaign Manager, Mike Bonin for Los Angeles City Council

Regional Field Director, Obama for America – Florida

Regional Field Organizer, Obama for America – California

Recalling your own experience, what advice do you have for applicants who are preparing for either the GMAT or the GRE? Preparing takes much longer than you expect! Give yourself two shots. Take as many practice tests as possible. Try to take the GMAT (or GRE) before moving on to the other parts of the application. If you’re like me, and enjoy telling a story, you’ll sit there at the library with your GMAT books and your laptop and always be drawn toward the application part. If you’re not like me, you may want to study for too long and not give the other parts of the application proper attention. Focus fully on the test. Then move on.

Based on your own selection process, what advice do you have for applicants who are trying to draw up a list of target schools to which to apply? Every school is different, and it’s all about the approach to learning and the people you will learn alongside. Online research and admissions literature can only tell you so much. For me, the key was to try to talk to students and alumni on the phone or in-person. Here’s my best advice.

  • Based off of your initial research, make a broad list of schools that match your overall goals.
  • Add color to your list by having informational interviews with students or alumni. Your network is bigger than you think it is! And this is a good way to get in the habit of tapping into that.
  • When you have these conversations, don’t worry about impressing them. Try to get to know them as people. Ask them how they think, how they learn, what they were looking for in a program, what kind of environment they work best in, what was the best class they took, and why. Ask if they know anyone with your background or interests from their class – and then ask for an introduction to that person! Your goal is to try to talk to as many people as possible to understand the real soul of the school.
  • You’ll find yourself identifying personality threads. Some will appeal to you, and some won’t. Be honest about that with yourself, and narrow down your list to 3-5 schools from there.

Your MBA is just as much about advancing your career as it is about advancing yourself as a person,  leader, and teammate. The people are the heart and soul of that.

What advice do you have for applicants in actually applying to a school, writing essays, doing admission interviews, and getting recommenders to write letters on your behalf? Be yourself. You don’t want to go to a school that doesn’t get you, and there are so many components of the application (essays, recommendations, interviews) that it’s tough to tell a story that isn’t truly yours.

You want to go to business school for a reason. You have a compelling story to tell and there are schools out there that truly fit. Stay true to that. The alternative will be obvious to admissions committees, and you could risk joining a class that won’t help you grow.

What led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA? MIT Sloan is a uniquely good fit for me for three main reasons.

Sloan is innovative and entrepreneurial. After I earn my MBA at Sloan, my goal is to start companies that expand the role of technology in politics. I’ve spent the last five years working in politics, most recently as a founding staffer and the National Organizing Director for FWD.us, a political advocacy organization started by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and others. While at FWD.us, I teamed up with two developers to build a technological solution to a problem that my team just couldn’t solve any other way. I am exited to infuse everything I learn about starting your own company and technological innovation through Sloan’s E&I track, the E-Center, and other world class entrepreneurial resources. MIT has been teaching entrepreneurship since 1961 and a timeline of its long history of innovation covers an entry wall in Sloan’s main building on campus. MIT is also one of the top three universities for producing female founders. Inspiring. I want to be part of that legacy.

Sloan is collaborative. The number one thing that I have learned about myself and my learning style is that I work best in collaborative environments. I’ve never designed a successful program without the input of my colleagues, and I’ve never seen a good idea grow and scale without sitting in a room with others workshopping it. My sense of self is constantly tested and refined while working on teams; I can identify my relative strengths, watch the way my ideas are received, and solicit feedback. The best part of collaborating is you are constantly learning, and therefore, improving. Sloan, its faculty and its student body, understand this; the program focuses on hands-on collaborative projects.

Sloan is global. Up until this point, my experiences have been somewhat America-centered; American politics, American problems, American solutions. I need a global perspective to take my contributions to the next level. Sloan’s large international study body and programming will help expand my worldview — and will give me friends to visit all over the globe!

(Bonus) The feeling was mutual: Not only did I think Sloan was the perfect fit, but I could tell instantly in conversations with past and present students – and during my admissions interview – that Sloan got me, too. We clicked. This was critical.

What would you ultimately like to achieve before you graduate? I have written on a piece of paper on my refrigerator in Cambridge with the following: “What does the world need? What is missing that would make the biggest difference?” There isn’t one answer. There is probably a collection of smaller answers, but these are the questions that will guide my time at Sloan. Before I graduate, I hope to answer these questions, build the relationships, skills, and perspective to implement whatever solution I come up with, and have the time of my life in the process.

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