Rohit Bhalla

Emory University, Goizueta Business School

“Motivated, adventurous, creative, and passionate leader that thrives to make a difference and add value.”

Hometown: Mumbai, Maharashtra – India

Fun Fact About Yourself: I am a certified firefighter.

Undergraduate School and Major: Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Marine Engineer.

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Assemblage Entertainment Pvt Ltd, Production Manager.

What makes Atlanta such a great place to earn an MBA? People and culture really attract me. With its enriched diverse communities, abundant green spaces in the city, award-winning restaurants, and rich history, Atlanta guarantees a pleasant, natural life. Over the past couple of years, Atlanta has been the fastest-growing metro area in the United States with majority of fortune 500 companies headquartered here. It is on track to become a key hub for tech startups in the coming years and would be considered as the next generation Silicon Valley. Atlanta is also organically booming in various other industries like Real Estate, Media and Entertainment (called the “Hollywood of the South”) despite inflation and recession concerns. Earning an MBA provides a realm of diverse career opportunities for aspiring MBA graduates.

Aside from your classmates and location, what was the key part of Emory Goizueta’s MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you?  I strive to add meaningful value to my daily interactions and aim to become an effective and empathetic leader. I believe Goizueta’s diverse and immersive MBA will uniquely position me to achieve my goals through its world-renowned faculty, focused coursework, and a plethora of opportunities. Being part of this incredibly close-knit community with several esteemed and deeply involved alumni will help open doors to create value in my areas of interest. Differentiated initiatives like Goizueta IMPACT and Global Experiential Module (GEM) provide a comprehensive learning experience with real-world applications.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Emory Goizueta? The Goizueta Consulting Association and Goizueta Technology Association excite me the most and being part of these clubs provides me the opportunity to spend the next two years solely focused on developing myself professionally and expanding my network. Coming from a non-traditional background, I have been able to successfully navigate through various challenging and volatile assignments across the maritime, consumer durables, and animation and visual effects (VFX) industries. These clubs provide a diverse platform to learn from, to inspire and be inspired by, and build lifelong relationships that would help me grow professionally and personally.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: Startups offer an exceptional opportunity to learn quickly and make an impact. Being a key contributor to the strategy team in an animation studio start-up, I was challenged to devise and implement a business continuity plan amidst the COVID-19 lockdown to safely resume work. Operations were disrupted, leading to delayed deliveries for clients thus impacting our revenues. Additionally, the morale of the artists who form the backbone of our organization was deeply affected given remuneration challenges leading to severe discontent and attrition. I worked on establishing a work from home (WFH) model, which was a novel concept for our workforce.

Movement of capital-intensive equipment, management of contracts, government permissions, and technical assistance to enable lift and shift models ensured seamless migration to the WFH model.  In collaboration with the IT team, we were also able to migrate to cloud-based infrastructure given the data-intensive operations, providing business agility. Finally, a phased re-opening methodology across remote operations was implemented by a shift-based fully vaccinated workforce returning to office. Collaborating with multiple business functions in the face of adversity to establish new yet efficient ways of working in the new normal was a fantastic learning experience and the biggest accomplishment in my career.

What is one thing you have recently read, watched, or listened to that you would highly recommend to prospective MBAs? Why? I recently read a book called Wait, What? by James E. Ryan, which was recommended to me by our Dean Brian Mitchell. I would highly recommend it to prospective MBAs. As an individual, we want to be successful in business and life, and it is of utmost importance to spend time asking the right question rather than getting the right answer.

The book is based on the wildly popular commencement address by the dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, the art of asking good questions. A good question inspires good answers and invites deeper understanding between people. The book talks about five essential questions that reflect on the aspects of understanding, curiosity, progress, relationship, and attention to important things in life. The questions highlighted in the book will help everyone lead a fruitful life.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Emory Goizueta’s MBA program? The only advice I would like to give to prospective students is to never give up. The process always seems impossible until it’s done. I urge the students to take out the time and invest in finding out who they are and what their story is and let it come out naturally. Find out whether Goizueta’s seven core values (Courage, Accountability, Integrity, Rigor, Diversity, Team, and Community) resonate with yours. This will not only help you build a base for your application but also help in preparing for the next steps of the interview process. Try to find out what your calling is, understanding the school makes it easier to achieve your post-MBA goals, and the best source to learn about Goizueta is by connecting with current students and alumni