Meet Washington Olin’s MBA Class of 2019

Naveh Malihi

Washington University in St. Louis (Olin)

Describe yourself in 15 words or less: Enthusiastic hardware engineer, ready to design the business chip of my life.

Hometown: Tel Aviv, Israel

Fun Fact About Yourself: I tell people that I rather take the stairs for sports but the truth is I don’t trust elevators.

Undergraduate School and Major: Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, B.S. in Electrical Engineering

Employers and Job Titles Since Graduation:

Intel: Validation Engineer in the Automotive project

IMI Systems:  Hardware Engineer

Israeli Defense Forces:  Reserve Duty

Product Manager

Team Leader and Class Commander

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: Forming a new department of reserve duties in the intelligence score containing ~300 reserve duties, including training and classification.

Looking back on your experience, what one piece of advice would you give to future business school applicants? Choose the program that’s right for you; don’t just go with the flow. I believe you will develop much more in the environment that suits you rather than in one that you feel you don’t belong.  

What was the key factor that led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA and why was it so important to you? Olin Business School is all about collaboration between the students in the program. Coming from a very competitive and self-studying bachelor degree, I felt that for the next step in my career I needed to learn from people, not just from books. Reading and hearing from former graduates about Olin’s diversity and cooperative environment made me decide with no doubt that this is the kind of program I wish to be a part of.

What would success look like to you after your first year of business school? For me, Success will be if I get to the end of the year after I took myself out of my own comfort zone. I intend to jump into the water in every aspect in which I feel most unconfident. If I succeed doing so, I would surely be on the right path to deal with every challenge coming my way in the future.