Walsh Kang

New York University, Stern School of Business

“Bach and Daft Punk aficionado; Strava dabbler and Citi Bike evangelist; Korean-American in Brooklyn.”

Hometown: Shrewsbury, MA

Fun Fact About Yourself: I have perfect pitch and grew up playing four instruments (piano, viola, guitar, bass).

Undergraduate School and Major: Boston College, BS in Finance

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Deloitte Consulting LLP, Consultant

What excites you the most about living in New York City and how do you see it enhancing your learning experience? New York brings the world to a single city. Not only does that make this city an unending source of great restaurants, but it also attracts every kind of person from every kind of discipline. I am excited to meet and get to know professors, alumni, and classmates who are leaders and experts in all fields.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of NYU Stern’s MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? I chose to pursue an MBA to challenge my current way of working and thinking. My colleagues who are Stern alumni have all spoken about how the classes like “Doing Business in…” global immersion courses, professional clubs, social clubs, and experiential learning are all ways that Stern meets students where they are at — to actualize change in the way that fits them best.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at NYU Stern? It was the opportunity to interact with, and learn from, both blue-chip Fortune 50 companies and innovative startups, in New York City. Here, coincidences and overlapping networks are to be expected. Working with a startup and participating in Endless Frontier Labs at Stern is especially exciting. I want to work with a company focused on a world-changing innovation and help founders engender the change that they visualize for the world. These founders are choosing to incubate their ideas at Stern and I’m excited to help.

What does EQ (Emotional Intelligence) mean to you and when have you seen its value in your career? To me, EQ is compassion. It is the compassion to understand what my colleagues’ or clients’ motivations are. It can also be the compassion to stop and consider how my friends’ days are going and what might make their days better. In my career, as in life, I want to find the common ground between everyone’s needs and motivations — holding compassion and EQ first has allowed me to see that small teams and large programs require human connections before the real work can begin.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: I helped two life sciences companies execute a merger of equals in three months. Given the speed at which both companies’ board of directors wanted to close, I was given a significant role designing the go-forward merger strategy, from blueprinting to execution. My colleagues trusted me, even though I was relatively new to the company, to manage relationships with VPs and SVPs experiencing the most disruptive transaction of either company’s history. I empathized with clients in daily one-on-one calls about the major changes happening in their companies and designed two in-person workshops to ensure that our deal’s thesis was reflected in every leader’s integration planning. From necessity, I became a trusted advisor, to both my colleagues and to my clients.

What is your unique quality that will enable you to make a big contribution to the Class of 2026? I hope to be someone that can find a connection with any classmate – to hear of others’ passions and dreams, to provide someone with a fitting restaurant or book recommendation, to get excited about the Boston Celtics or my friend’s next travel itinerary.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into NYU Stern’s MBA program? Know how you find success with others — your leadership style. There is always something to learn from others, and how you incorporate those learnings into your actions becomes the way in which you lead others. Keeping that style at the center of your story creates a through-line threading together all your well-earned accomplishments.

DON’T MISS: MEET NYU STERN’S MBA CLASS OF 2026