Meet Fordham Gabelli’s MBA Class Of 2022

AN INTERVIEW WITH DYLAN MOSENTHAL

What can you expect on the horizon at Gabelli? What has the school done to mitigate the impact of COVID on MBA programming? How does the school leverage its New York City locations to help students gain experience and land jobs after graduation?  Recently P&Q posed these questions to Dylan Mosenthal, Associate Director of MBA Programs. Here are his insights in what makes Gabelli such a profound educational experience.

P&Q: What are the most exciting new developments at your program?

Mosenthal: “We are proud to announce three new STEM concentrations in the FTMBA program: FinTech, Information Systems, and Accounting Analytics. With STEM fluency increasingly becoming an essential tool for business in the 21st century, all Gabelli MBAs will have the opportunity to gain the data comprehension and quantitative analysis skills necessary to be successful in post-MBA careers.

Over the past few years, we have been integrating augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) into the full-time MBA student experience. During the “AR/VR Challenge,” full-time MBA students leverage these tools to analyze data sets and deliver recommendations in “mixed-reality.” Throughout this experience, students develop skills across three core AR/VR technologies: six-dimensional graphing functions, hologram-based business presentation, and kinetic voting.”

P&Q: What are the two most unique or differentiating features of your full-time program? How do they enrich the MBA experience?

Mosenthal: “Community is a foundational principle and distinctive feature of the Gabelli School of Business. Small by design, the Gabelli Full-Time MBA Program provides students with the unique opportunity to build substantive and intimate networks with their classmates and receive personalized attentional from faculty and staff. Our location in Midtown Manhattan allows that community to extend into and beyond New York City, where they can engage with Fortune 500 companies across multiple sectors and industries. With nearly 10,000 Gabelli alumni in the New York Tri-State area, Gabelli full-time MBAs are not short on powerful engagement opportunities to enrich their professional development.

Another signature experience in the Gabelli’s Full-Time MBA experience is “Gabelli Launch,” a comprehensive enrichment experience that begins with an intensive pre-term onboarding and continues throughout the duration of their MBA experience. During the pre-term portion of Gabelli Launch, students participate in leadership and communication development training, comprehensive career development strategic planning, and complete an intensive project-based, global applied learning project. Throughout their first year, the launch experience continues with Gabelli Plus enrichment activities which focus on ethics, social innovation, leadership, and career development.”

P&Q: How has COVID-19 impacted your business school?

Mosenthal: Like all business schools around the world, COVID-19 presented unique circumstances that pushed our community to adapt quickly. Throughout the summer, faculty and staff went back to being “learners” and engaged in training to ensure that students could continue to achieve their desired academic and professional goals in ways that continued to be rigorous, but flexible enough to support their needs. Most courses were delivered in a hybrid format while student services/engagement and career development and shifted to virtual. While the modality in which student engagement may have looked different than years past, our faculty and staff went to great lengths to ensure that the quality of the student experience never suffered. We are using these experiences to help us plan for the future of graduate business education which will take a multi-modal approach.”

P&Q: You are in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. How does Gabelli leverage this advantage to provide students with educational advantages and career opportunities?

Mosenthal: “By living and studying in the heart of the business capital of the world, students have unprecedented access to the vast number of companies and executives in New York City. Our students regularly engage in corporate visits, industry specific panels with seasoned working professionals, and guest-speaker series featuring some of the most influential business leaders in the world. Additionally, with more than 10,000 Fordham alumni working in the New York Tri-State area, students can interact with a vast network of executives who are passionate about changing the global environment and helping current Gabelli MBA students land jobs. From a cultural perspective, New York’s economic and social diversity provides our students with the global mindset, the values, and the vision that they seek out, and which will help them use business create a better future.

From an academic standpoint, many of our elective courses are taught by working professionals who are leaders within their industries, allowing students to gain a real-life perspective on a variety of business topics.”

P&Q: Fordham is a Jesuit school. How does the full-time MBA program incorporate Jesuit values and teaching through the curriculum?

Mosenthal: “The Gabelli Full-Time MBA experience revolves around the “Business with Purpose” philosophy that stems from our values as a Jesuit institution. Simply put, “Business with Purpose” means that we want to train mindful business leaders who are passionate not only about making a profit, but also making an impact on their communities and society. Gabelli students want to develop business acumen and become agents of societal change, and beyond the students, this philosophy is a part of our identity, from the board of trustees and administration down to the faculty and staff. For example, we are one of the few MBA programs to include a mandatory ethics requirement within the core curriculum. Also, the consulting trip that takes place during Gabelli Launch requires students to consult with nonprofit organizations that have a social mission, an experience that shows our students how business can make a positive impact on society.”

8 REASONS TO JOIN FORDHAM GABELLI

What are the best parts of earning an MBA degree at the Gabelli School? This is what MBAs, past and present had to say about the benefits of the program:

1) Intimate Class Size: “Aside from the prime location and quality curriculum, the small class size made the most sense for me. Each one of my classmates brings something unique to the table; having a small class size really enables us to get to know each other and learn from each other’s experiences. Not only does it lead to a more inclusive learning experience, as the professors are highly invested in the learning of each student, but there is also a sense of belonging and camaraderie where students put a priority on helping one another.”
Cody Smith (’22)

2) Jesuit Foundation: “As an aspiring ESG/ Impact investor, this mantra is extremely important to me. The school’s Jesuit foundations show in its teaching and application of business. Business is more than just maximizing profits… It is about maximizing all stakeholder value and looking to make the world a better place.  Fordham is leading the way in terms of its teaching and focus on sustainability (across all industries). For me, that was a huge factor in me choosing to study here.”
Billy Lange Hewlett (’22)

3) Future-Focused: “I wanted to be at a school that is focused on the future. To me that meant a focus on emerging technologies and concern about social impact and sustainability. I was researching blockchain around the same time I was applying to business school, and Fordham was the only school I could find where MBAs can receive a concentration in Blockchain. We have great classes on the subject taught by great professors including Benjamin Cole and Paul Johnson. Not only are the MBA program’s extracurriculars trying to bring exposure to emerging tech, such as AR/VR, but there are many events focused on social impact and sustainability, such as impact investing, the annual SASB conference, and innovation summits. Finally, I wanted to be in the heart of New York City and at a school with a large alumni network. Fordham checked all the boxes.”
Christopher Thurau (’20)

4) Faculty Engagement: “The most surprising thing is the level of genuine involvement that faculty and professors have in each of the MBAs that they admit to the program. We aren’t just a number to them. If I run into a professor in the halls, they remember your name and something that you said in class. I felt this from the beginning after getting admitted where the Dean even gave me suggestions for neighborhoods to stay in and tips for finding an apartment as a first time New Yorker. It shows that they care about their students and that everyone they’ve chosen to be here is hand-picked to continue to foster this warm community.”
Ayanna Egbarin (’22)

5) Support Beyond The Classroom: “I have been surprised by the number of educational opportunities outside of the classroom that Gabelli provides for students. Each week, there are several workshop sessions to further develop skills that will be used in our career. I have been impressed by the continual stream of opportunities that the school has provided, especially in a virtual capacity. It has helped me stay connected to the Fordham community outside of class and has helped develop skills further that I can use during my internship. Another aspect I was surprised about has been the incredible lecture series by our Marketing department. For example, there have been series providing deeper conversations about creating relevance for 100-year-old brands and recasting value in a recession. These lecture series have allowed me to continue learning about various aspects of marketing outside of class and I appreciate that the department continues to engage students throughout the year.”
Jessica Robinson (’22)

6) International Perspective: “Fordham’s Gabelli School has built internationality into their program with the orientation trip to Buenos Aires and the mandatory capstone project that will bring MBAs to London in their spring semester. There is even a London-based branch of the school right in Holborn, London that solidified their international presence even further. There were changes to those travels plans in 2020. Regardless, to me, the intention still shows that Fordham understands how important having a global connection is to everything that an individual or corporation does and made sure to incorporate it into their curriculum, student body, and values.”
Ayanna Egbarin (’22)

“For several years now, the MBA capstone project is a real-world consulting project that ends in a trip to Fordham’s campus in London. We are teamed up with real companies to help solve a business problem. At the end of the trip, we present our findings to the company executives. We spent a week in London hearing from different business leaders, touring cultural sites, and visiting innovative offices such as Bloomberg’s London office. The trip reflects GSB’s global reach and its focus on getting its students real-world, practical experience.”
Christopher Thurau (’20)

7) New York City: “Of course, GBS is in the center of the world. New York is boundless. There are countless multinational companies and many globally recognized business leaders. Being closer to them could help me gather in vivo powerful insights for my next career steps.”
Carlota Artigas (’22)

8) Academic Rigor: “The intensity of the program has definitely amazed me. I heard that the first semester would be hard, but I had not imagined that the course would challenge me in so many ways. The learning process has been fantastic; not only have I learned about the core subjects, but I have also improved my time management, prioritization, networking, and interview preparation.”
Leonardo Machado (’22)

What led the Class of 2022 to pursue an MBA? What do they enjoy most about their classmates? What was the biggest surprise about business school? Find answers to these questions and more by clicking on the in-depth profiles of current Fordham Gabelli’s MBA students below.

MBA Student	Hometown	Undergrad Alma Mater	Last Employer
Carlota Artigas	Barcelona, Spain	University of Navarra	Info Direct SL
Elainne Diaz	New York City, NY	Baruch College	Intesa Sanpaolo
Ayanna Egbarin	Bloomfield, CT	University of Virginia	Microsoft
Viktoriia Kolpashchikov	Yoshkar-Ola, Russia	Oil & Gas University	Gazpromneft
Billy Lange Hewlett	London, UK	University of Manchester	Goldman Sachs
Leonardo Machado	Sao Paulo, Brazil	Faculdades Oswaldo Cruz	Syngenta
Jessica Robinson	Columbus, OH	Xavier University	L Brands, Bath and Body Works
Andrew Roebling	Princeton, NJ	Rider University	Bank of America
Cody Smith	San Diego, CA	U.S. Naval Academy	U.S. Navy
Anmol Takhtani	Boston, MA	SUNY Stony Brook University	Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
Raizel Yap	Manila, Philippines	Ateneo de Manila University	BDO Unibank, Inc.
Zachary Hands	Milwaukee, WI	Ferris State University	Omnicon