James Lewis

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College

“Writer, lecturer, and nonprofit leader, now focused on business strategy.”

Hometown: Westport, CT

Fun Fact About Yourself: I’m a huge fan of film noir. I’d live in a Humphrey Bogart movie if I could.

Undergraduate School and Major: Yale College, History

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Renew Democracy Initiative, Director of Programs

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. Tuck students and alumni are exceptionally bought into the school’s culture. I think it’s a product of Tuck’s location. Everyone that comes here made the decision to leave the city they had established themselves in and dive into a small school with a tight knit culture. We’re all starting from scratch, and people go out of their way to make the most of it.

After only a week or two on campus, someone mentioned in our entire class group chat that there was a rodeo going on about an hour away in Vermont. One hundred people responded that they were interested, so that same afternoon someone else called a few bus companies. The next day we had two school buses booked to drive us all there. It really set the tone for how students here strive to bring everyone together. This kind of thing happens all the time at Tuck. Whether it’s organizing parties, hiking trips, or apple picking, students are constantly creating opportunities to connect with one another and explore the Upper Valley.

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? As a history major in college, going to a program with a strong core curriculum was very important to me. I was sold on the fact that Tuck spends a great deal of effort designing and redesigning the core to make it relevant, meaningful, and engaging. It has allowed me to grow much more confident in foundational business concepts, even though essentially everything we’re learning in class I am coming across for the first time.

What I didn’t anticipate was how much the core curriculum would strengthen our campus culture. Most of the classes first-year students take are a part of the core. We’re all learning the same material, busy on the same nights, and taking the same exams. That level of shared experience helps create an esprit de corps across the school that would be hard to replicate otherwise.

What excites you the most about coming to live in Hanover? What is the one activity you can’t wait to do? I’m excited to learn to ski! It’s very popular at Tuck, given how close we are to so many ski mountains. For people like me who have never done it, there are lots of opportunities to take classes and learn. More generally, though, I am just excited to spend two years in the outdoors. I lived in New York City before business school and, like most people at Tuck, I was looking for a change of scenery for two years before returning to a city.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Dartmouth Tuck? I was shocked to find out that I really like data analytics. It could hardly be further from what I had been doing at work for the last few years, but the professor made it accessible and engaging. I’m looking forward to taking analytics electives over the next two years and building out this skillset.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: After graduating college, I spent a year at Johns Hopkins working as a research assistant and lecture writer for a professor focused on democracy. I ultimately left to join a new nonprofit, largely working on aiding the Ukrainian war effort. A few years later I had the opportunity to go back to Johns Hopkins to lead a January course on political dissidents around the world. That was deeply fulfilling as one of my dreams was to be a professor, but I had decided against pursuing a PhD a few years earlier. To still get the opportunity to work as a lecturer at a university, and at a much younger age than I had ever hoped I would, was a terrific experience.

What do you hope to do after graduation (at this point)? I plan to pursue a career in consulting, with a focus on the industrials sector. I spent a summer at an international cement producer based out of Athens, Greece during college, and I’d like to gain more exposure to related fields. Tuck’s strong consulting pipeline provides a perfect launching point.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Dartmouth Tuck’s MBA program? Admissions is looking for people who are excited to spend a lot of time with their classmates and make the most out of Tuck. Not every top business school is in a major metro area, but most are. People here have a reason that they chose to come and admissions wants to hear it. This is a small community, so buy-in matters. It creates a healthier, stronger community for the students and is one of the reasons our alumni are so involved.

DON’T MISS: MEET DARTMOUTH TUCK’S MBA CLASS OF 2026