Gafar Shitta-Bey

Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business

Hometown: Dublin (Ireland)

我在学一点汉语 (I’m learning a little bit of Mandarin)

Undergraduate School and Major: SOAS University of London – Economics

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Bank of Ireland – Pricing Associate

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Carnegie Mellon’s MBA curriculum and programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? The personalized leadership development aspect aligned perfectly with my long-term goals. Also, the program is flexible enough to add courses from other departments.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Carnegie Mellon? Checking out the cool new inventions at the Swartz Center! Duolingo came out of it and I have used that app religiously.

The Tepper MBA is known for intensive one-on-one coaching and personal development. What area do you hope to strengthen during your two years in business school and why? Decision making – throughout my career, there will be points where I will have to make decisions without all the information I need. Building a framework to help in those situations will be crucial.

The Tepper MBA is also known for being highly data-driven Why does the program’s focus on quantitative analysis and decision-making appeal to you? How have you been able to leverage this approach in your career so far? As a pricing associate, my role was all about data analysis, convincing senior stakeholders on what course of action to take was the bread and butter of my previous role. I have seen firsthand how useful this skill is, and continuing to develop it is a top priority.

Looking at your recruitment, what was the moment when you realized Tepper was the right program for you? Why? Every single time I interacted with someone from the Tepper school, from students to alumni to staff, I left feeling rejuvenated and like I’ve learned a bundle of new things. That feeling never left, so picking the Tepper school was pretty easy for me.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: Going live with a new savings product price point and watching new balances flow in to the deposit book. It was a hard target to reach for external reasons but it was achieved without complications – I got a free donut out of it!

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