Meet Georgetown’s MBA Class of 2018

Navin Thawani

 

Georgetown University, The McDonough School of Business

Describe yourself in 15 words or less: I’m my parents’ second favorite son. I only have one sibling. I don’t blame them.

Hometown: Toms River, New Jersey

Fun Fact About Yourself: I’m terrified of clowns. It stems from watching Stephen King’s “IT” without my parents’ knowledge when I was 9 years old. I wouldn’t go in the dark by myself for the two years after.

Undergraduate School and Major:  University of Delaware, Political Science

Employers and Job Titles Since Graduation:

Director, EMEA Collateral Management – Morgan Stanley (London, UK)

Associate/Director, North America Collateral Management – Morgan Stanley (New York, NY)

Analyst, Prime Services – OTC Derivatives Client Clearing – Barclays Capital (New York, NY)

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: With regard to career progression, I’m proud to have been promoted to a Director in the Collateral Management Division in the New York office at Morgan Stanley at a very young age, and to have been the company’s choice to manage our London division; however, my biggest accomplishment has been the impact that I’ve able to have on my employees on both sides of the pond.

By putting abundant emphasis on employee development, building trusting relationships with my staff, and creating value by taking individual strengths and motivations into consideration with each decision made, I’ve been able to have success in increasing team productivity, and, most importantly, helping others to build a foundation for future career growth.

Looking back on your experience, what advice would you give to future business school applicants? I recently read the transcript of a commencement address given by venture capitalist Fred Wilson to a New York City high school’s graduating class in which he stated that the secret to success in a person’s career comes down to three things — to “take risks, work hard, and get lucky.”  I’ve been a subscriber to the Wilsonian philosophy long before realizing that it was the Wilsonian philosophy.

Pursuing a full-time MBA is a risk. It requires a substantial amount of time and effort, as well as financial commitment. For most people, it requires putting aside good career trajectory for the potential of greater opportunity. Similar to any investment, thorough research needs to be done to best mitigate that risk. You need to find opportunity potential within a program that most closely aligns with your career aspirations, in both industry focus and geographic placement. The opportunities that will arise with each program vary significantly, and they may not always be so obvious by looking at the schools’ websites or combing through the blogs and rankings (no offense P&Q). I found many websites to be amalgamations of broad statements promising a better future by providing international experience, a foundation to be a leader of tomorrow, and a unique immersion learning experience. Those all sound great, but do they ring true?

If you’re considering a two-year full-time MBA program, you owe it to yourself to look under the hood of each program that you’re considering. If feasible, visit every school and speak to as many students and alumni as possible. I found current students to be the best resource, as they’re most in tune with the present realities of the program and are generally very forthcoming. From those conversations, you may just find a hidden gem that you would have never otherwise known to exist. If I hadn’t made the trip from London to visit each program on my list, I may have just gone to the highest-ranked program, which is pretty crazy considering how arbitrary the rankings can be. It’s ok to start your search with the rankings but make sure to end it with fit.

Also, make sure you give yourself enough time to put forward your best application possible. While that sounds obvious, I was surprised by the amount of time the entire application process took. Plan to take the GMAT or GRE multiple times. Even if you do as well as you hope to the first time, studies show that you’re likely to do even better the next time around. A higher score not only increases your chance of admittance, but for scholarship opportunities as well. Also, make sure to sit down with your recommenders early in the process to give them plenty of time to submit their letter before the deadline. Be authentic in your essays; don’t write what you think the school wants to hear.

Finally, once that arduous application process is completed and you’ve selected your school, you owe it to yourself to take a little break. However, don’t become complacent for too long. Start leveraging the network that’s now available to you because of your association with the program. Start engaging with individuals in industries that interest you and start building a network that can prove invaluable to your career search. Your .edu address can provide you with a certain level of credibility, or a sort of familial bond, in the case of alumni, that your .com address cannot.

As recruiting cycles start increasingly earlier and the competition continues to grow, you want to avoid being bereft with your approach. Attending pre-MBA networking festivals that facilitate visits to various companies and enable you to meet with recruiters and executives is an important part of making the most of your business school experience. Additionally, I believe that pre-MBA internships will start to become more the norm and less of an exception in years to come. The more effort that you put into the process early on, the “luckier” you’ll end up getting later on.

What led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA? While there were many reasons why I chose Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, none were more persuasive than the opportunities that were presented in my areas of interest, as well as the quality of people associated with the program at every level.

I had the good fortune of being accepted to a few of my target programs. However, I felt the greatest connection with Georgetown from early in the process. I developed a good rapport with our Assistant Dean of Admissions, Katelyn Rosa Stephenson, during her recruiting visit to London last fall. Katelyn exposed me to many new initiatives at Georgetown and also introduced me to a large contingent of Georgetown’s MBA alumni living in London, a few of whom became my best resources for information on the program while also welcoming me into Georgetown McDonough’s tight-knit community with open arms.

Additionally, Washington, D.C., is increasingly becoming a leading center for venture-capital investment, and the venture community recognizes the essentiality of retaining local talent – much of it lying within this program – for the continuance of its growth. This recognition has led to increased collaboration between the city’s businesses and school, which I found to be particularly advantageous for my career goals because of the unique opportunities it presents to someone who plans to work in M&A with an investment bank or a venture capital/private equity firm post-MBA.

Through the Georgetown MBA Venture Fellows Program, I’m able to spend a year with a leading venture capital or private equity firm while in school. Through the InSITE Fellowship, I’ll connect with a regional community of venture capitalists and like-minded graduate students from the other member schools – MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and NYU.  I was also able to start building my network early on while work along-side and learning from some of the most well-respected entrepreneurs in the region through the pre-MBA internship I found with help of the Georgetown network, working as an M&A Market Analyst at Advantia Health, an early-stage healthcare services company.

Finally, I returned from London to attend Welcome Weekend for admitted applicants last January. After meeting with Jeff Reid, the founding director of the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative, the current students, and my future classmates, I confirmed what I had hoped to find: For the next two years, I’d be surrounded by a diverse community of intellectually curious people who shared one common trait, which is the desire to have a deeper, lasting impact on one-another and on a program that has only scratched the surface of its potential, all while residing in the nexus between business and government.

Tell us about your dream job or dream employer at this point in your life? Working as an Oreo taste-tester for Nabisco.

What would you like your business school peers to say about you after you graduate from this program? That I was able to have a positive impact on each of their lives in one way or another during our two years together. And that if I didn’t accomplish that, that I was at least able to make each one of them laugh at some point, either with me or at me.