10 Military Veterans To Watch From The Class Of 2019

Stephane Manuel / U.S. Army / Northwestern (Kellogg): Think you have a big load on your plate? Imagine being Stephane Manuel. A West Point grad, Manuel gained a lifetime of leadership experience in five years.

As a Platoon Leader, he orchestrated a 35-member bomb clearance team – one with a 100% success rate that earned him a Bronze Star. A year later, he served as a Battle Captain, where he was responsible for the defense of Bagram Airfield, home to over 18,000 people. This earned him another Bronze Star. Still, his success was hard-won. “My team included military and civilian personnel from the Cezch Republic, Georgia, Nepal, Afghanistan, and the U.S. I had to quickly learn how to lead in an environment with language barriers, cultural clashes, and lots of rocket attacks.”

At Kellogg, Manuel is pursuing an MBA coupled with a Master’s of Science in Design Innovation. He describes the school using terms like “camaraderie,” “collaborative,” “diverse,” and “global.” His best advice for landing a spot in a program like Northwestern? Carefully choose the stories you use in your essays and interviews.

“Your favorite moments of your career may not be the ones that best highlight your unique attributes and convey fit for a school,” he argues. “Spend time researching the school’s values, and choose stories that highlight how you have shown those values in your own way.”

Joseph Maier / U.S. Army / Columbia Business School: In a first impression, Joseph Maier comes across as a mix of John Wayne and James Bond A Green Beret, Maier describes himself as an “adrenaline seeking veteran with passion, perseverance and grit” – a guy who once turned a skydive into a scuba dive.

Peel back a layer or two and you’ll find a humanitarian who uses commerce as a means to promote calm. That was true during his service in Afghanistan. He understood winning the peace took far more than pushing out the Taliban. For Maier, personal freedom goes hand-in-hand with financial freedom. That’s why he began working closely with the villages to re-build their infrastructure and provide business tools and expertise to their people.

“Knowing that Afghanistan relies heavily on its agriculture as a driver for economic stability and growth, I consulted with the village elders to facilitate the growth of the local agribusiness by rehabilitating irrigation canals. These changes enabled greater quantity and better quality of crops which allowed the Afghan government, under the guidance of USAID, to connect the farmers with access to financing as well as organize international trade.”

Turns out, such generosity was reciprocated when Maier applied to Columbia Business School. “I had the fortune of meeting an overwhelming number of students during my application process who were eager to help me due to a ‘pay-it-forward’ mentality,” he notes. “Most of these students had been in the same situation, had been helped, and felt it their duty to return the favor. I will undoubtedly be ‘paying-it-forward’ myself.”

To read 30 profiles of military veterans who joined top MBA programs last fall, click on the links below.

DON’T MISS: SAVVY ADVICE FROM MILITARY MBAS IN THE CLASS OF 2015 OR  THE PIONEERING MBAs OF THE CLASS OF 2019