D’Najah Picou

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College

“Highly effective, self-reliant, and with purpose, I strive to break barriers and empower others.”

Hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana

Fun Fact About Yourself: I moved eight times before I finished high school.

Undergraduate School and Major: University of Cincinnati, Marketing & International Business

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Walmart, Tech Finance Analyst

What has been your first impression of the Tuck MBA students and alumni you’ve met so far. Tell us your best Tuck story so far. My mother was giving a presentation about herself at her current company, and during that presentation she included pictures of her family. In one of the pictures, I happened to be wearing a Tuck shirt and Tuck alum reached out to her and insisted that I connect with them. They didn’t have a strong connection to my mother and had zero connection to me, but they knew I was going to Tuck and that was enough. This embodies exactly why I chose Tuck.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Dartmouth Tuck’s MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? It was the fact that this business school invests all its resources into the full-time MBA program. From the classrooms to the living situations (dorms, graduate housing in Sachem Village, and everything in between), this is a place that invites brilliant minds to fully dedicate two years to the program.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Dartmouth Tuck? I know this answer is given every year, but it has to be tripod hockey! It is one of the best ways to really immerse myself into the culture at Tuck. I also have always wanted to learn how to skate, and this seems like the most fun way to learn!

What excites you the most about coming to live in Hanover? What is the one activity you can’t wait to do? Hanover’s location excites me and scares me! I have never lived this far away from an airport (or a Chick-fil-A), but these two years are going to allow me to do some self-reflection about what I want out of my career as well as how I can best position myself to get there.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: My biggest accomplishment happened while I worked on the corporate development team at Walmart. I was a part of the deal team that helped Walmart acquire Even. This is my biggest accomplishment because this experience gave me clarity on what I want to do with my career.

What is one thing you have recently read, watched, or listened to that you would highly recommend to prospective MBAs? Why? I listen to The Wall Street Journal’s podcast The Journal and it delivers the biggest headlines in the news with a business lens. It’s only 15-20 minutes and I listen to it in the morning while I’m getting ready. It is such a fun and interesting podcast and they come out with new episodes every day.

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point and what do you hope to do after graduation? After my job at Walmart, I discovered that there were technical skills that I wanted to pick up to propel me to the next phase of my life. I learned through my role with corporate development that I really love working through deals and understanding how to act on a company’s strategic goals using resources from outside of the company.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? Emory Goizueta, Berkeley Haas, Yale SOM, UVA Darden

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Dartmouth Tuck’s MBA program? Make sure you know what makes Tuck stand out from other business schools, as it relates to you. Tuck will always have a special place in my heart because of the culture it works so hard to create. When you come to Tuck, you’re not just going for an education or a job, you’re going for a community.

DON’T MISS: MEET DARTMOUTH TUCK’S MBA CLASS OF 2024