Meet Georgetown McDonough’s MBA Class Of 2024

Big advantages and big plans. Cutting edge curriculum and value-based thinking. Honing the mind and nurturing the spirit.

Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business operates on many levels. Its Jesuit teachings compel MBAs to use their talents to pursue excellence, and take action. McDonough’s global outlook trains students to respect differences and champion inclusion – always weighing the long-term impact of their decisions for the greater good of all.  That means being a servant and a life-long learner, someone who personifies God’s love through example.

FOCUSED ON WHAT TRULY MATTERS

Reflection and engagement, critical analysis and creative problem-solving – those are the hallmarks of the McDonough MBA, one of the world’s most ambitious graduate business schools. A P&Q Business School To Watch in both 2022 and 2023, McDonough has staked an ambitious vision. That starts with sustainability. The school has added new degrees and over a dozen courses in the field – not to mention partnerships and projects with scientists, business leaders, and policy makers through its Business of Sustainability Initiative. With sustainability emerging as a business essential, McDonough MBAs have gained an edge in the marketplace, says Prashant Malaviya, McDonough’s vice dean of programs, in a 2022 interview with P&Q.

“All CEOs are talking about it, and it is clear in talking to the senior leaders about sustainable business issues that they’re genuinely trying to learn. They’re trying to figure out, ‘How does this apply?…What is clear is that sustainability and sustainable business practices have tremendous opportunity for innovation and creating competitive advantage, rather than making sure, ‘Let’s not break any laws.’”

That’s just the start of McDonough’s forward-thinking mission. In recent years, the school has launched a mentorship program that pairs roughly half of its students with alumni to help them in areas like school-life balance and personal growth. In the coming five years, McDonough also expects to emerge as a leader in faculty research, with particular emphasis placed on global problem-solving. Along the same lines, McDonough will apply this research to its Fields of the Future programming, which will expose students to the most innovative practices addressing key areas (with globalization and sustainability being among the first topics rolled out).

ACHIEVING MORE TOGETHER

Indeed, the global aspect of McDonough’s programming and culture rank among its biggest strengths. MBA deans and director rank the school among the Top 3 for its International Business curriculum. At the same time, McDonough is one of the few Top 20 American programs where international students constitute the majority of the class. In fact, McDonough offers a joint degree with Georgetown’s famed School of Foreign Services, which is just a short walk from the school. This mindset lends itself to a more cosmopolitan student like Aniroodh Shankar, a first-year MBA and a surgeon-turned-consultant at Bain & Company. When he was four, he left India, ultimately studying medicine in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Over his career, he has found collaborating in diverse groups provides a tremendous advantage.

“I have seen first-hand that global diversity leads to a variety of opinions and viewpoints,” Shankar explains. “These viewpoints are vital when it comes to approaching and solving problems, whether a medical diagnosis or a hospital expansion strategy. Therefore, I think that instilling this global mindset, widening the exposure of the individual student, and nurturing a breeding ground for diversity can push us to become better problem solvers and future leaders of business.”

Shankar’s McDonough classmates have enjoyed similar experiences. As a banker, Renzo Morales Miraval organized study tours where financial institutions held exchanges and shared best practices on everything from commercial models to risk management. The result: participants retrofitted these ideas to innovate in their own markets. This same principle holds true in the military too, adds Daniel Macdonald, a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Officer.

“It is incredibly important because complex problems often require trusted partnerships. Our world is becoming increasingly globalized. Exposure to global diversity gives students critical experience working with dynamic teams, which I believe many students may experience at one point in their careers. Personally, I learned several valuable lessons partnering with NATO where I observed this firsthand. Our team could not have been successful without support from multiple countries and we made it a priority to integrate and synchronize our efforts to ensure our common goal was achieved to the highest standards.”

A SMASHING SUCCESS AT RALPH LAUREN

Achieving these standards by leading a company of bomb technicians, Macdonald says, proved to be his biggest achievement. “As the company commander, you have a significant amount of responsibility not only to accomplish professional goals, but also to be personally responsible for the welfare of your soldiers. I deeply cherish this experience since I was able to work with the Army’s most unique and skilled soldiers. Although stressful at times, this opportunity afforded me the ability to draft my own vision, create a plan, and observe these plans to fruition.”

Among the Class of 2024, you’ll find students who’ve made an impact across the globe. Renzo Morales Miraval rooted out bottlenecks at the International Finance Corporation, boosting loan productivity by 25%. In the Philippines, Hannah Isabella P. Chan worked as a director in the country’s Office of the President, where she drafted policies and executive orders such as creating a single agency covering guarantee finance that became accessible to a quarter of a million people. By the same token, Gabriel Sanchez once forged an alliance between his arena and Colombia’s largest health insurer to vaccinate 10% of Bogota’s target population during COVID. Despite seemingly-insurmountable odds, Sanchez spearheaded the financing to build a concert arena in Medellín before that.

“This was challenging because most cultural infrastructures are built over state-owned areas, as the land cost makes these projects unviable. I managed to secure the land for the project through a 30-year long-term lease signed with the Colombian government to construct the first concert arena in Medellín. This development will surely benefit Medellin, a city that is having a cultural and tourism activity boost.”

Kilandra Bass gained an appreciation of cultural differences and product positioning as a student studying abroad. Here, she was tasked with launching a product in the Indian market. Her team pitched Go-Gurt, a yogurt alternative sucked out of a tube, as an alternative to the traditional Dahi product served in the marketplace. Turns out, Go-Gurt was also competing against long-held beliefs regarding how Dah should be consumed. It was a misunderstanding that Bass didn’t make at Ralph Lauren. Working as a project manager, she handling the firm’s customized “CYO” (Create Your Own) clothing where customers had the freedom to choose their garment and options (i.e. monogram or patch) online.

“I was able to see this project through from inception to launch on Ralph Lauren’s US/EU/APAC sites to help improve the customer experience,” Bass adds. “This resulted in a 7% global increase for digital in Q1 ’18. This project solidified that I want to participate in creating products and experiences with the consumer at the core.”

A HELPING HAND

Then again, Yuliia Kravets, a communications manager at the Ukrainian National Bank, has gone beyond customer experience. After Russia invaded Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, she worked to find homes for displaced families. “Residing in Kyiv, I often communicated with refugees who had lost everything: their homes, relatives, and businesses. Within a year, I co-founded the Donbass Assistance Group, which has provided financial and psychological help for people fleeing from the east. Over the period from 2015 to 2021, we helped over 100 families find their new homes and settle into a foreign city.”

Before enrolling at McDonough, Dayina E created Northeastern University’s impact investing fund, a student fund devoted to funding “mission-driven companies” in the social and social and environmental space. As a civil engineer, Gabriela Mayer helped lead the construction of New York City’s Kosciuszko Bridge. At the same time, Joshua Linhart produced the second-most profitable restaurant in the Four Seasons Americas chain in 2019.

“After cleaning up internal systems used to collect sales data, I used the data to develop a menu engineering initiative with the culinary team to increase the profitability of the menu and conduct quarterly sales training programs with staff. It was exciting to see how data could be used to transform the business and make it more successful. This experience is ultimately what led me to pursue an MBA.”

Next Page: An interview with Prashant Malaviya, Senior Associate Dean of MBA Programs

Page 3: Student profiles from the Class of 2024