MBA Voices: When Life Had A Better Plan

Five years ago, I had a plan. I grew up in Singapore and always imagined building my career there. In Singapore, the definition of success is the 5Cs: Cash, condo, car, credit card, and country club membership. I was going to work hard and collect the 5Cs along the way. It was a perfectly good plan.

Life, however, had other plans.

It was 2020, at the peak of COVID, and we were all trapped at home with a lot of time on our hands. The time made me reassess my career plans. I had always wanted to work in the consumer goods industry. I had figured that, with three years of experience, it was a good time to make a pivot. With an engineering undergraduate degree, I had gaps in the marketing and financial side of business that an MBA could fill.

I looked into various MBAs and ESSEC Business School stood out. It had a one-year program with campuses in both Singapore and Paris, with smaller, more intimate classes. During lockdown, I studied for my GMAT and applied. A couple of months later, I got the call. I got in.

There was one small caveat, however.

Since Singapore had strict COVID regulations, ESSEC decided it was not opening the Singapore campus that year. Everyone had to start in Paris or defer for a year. That wasn’t the plan, but who in their right mind turns down an opportunity to move to Paris? It was such an amazing opportunity to study and live in Europe.

I bought a Duolingo Premium subscription and started practicing: “Une croissant, s’il vous plaît.”

My MBA class had 40 students over 15 different nationalities. In the first week, we had a module where a professor had introduced us to Erin Meyer’s The Culture Map. It’s a framework that plots entire countries on scales like direct vs indirect feedback or task-based vs relationship-based trust. I remember being so skeptical. How could you reduce an entire country’s personality to a dot on a scale?

I have since moved to three other countries and I can now concur that Erin Meyer was onto something.

THE GIFT OF DISCOMFORT

I want to start off by saying: Emily in Paris is a lie. Assimilating into French culture is not that easy.

My first day in Paris, I was in a supermarket trying to check out and something went wrong at the register. I couldn’t understand the error message. I asked a staff member for help. She turned around and yelled at me in French, in front of everyone. I had no idea what she said, but I knew it was bad. I just wanted to disappear.

That was day one.

The first few weeks in Paris were hard in a way that no one prepares you for. You can’t understand any labels in the supermarket or announcements on the metro. Once, the metro stopped at a random station, there was an announcement and everyone around us started getting off. My friends and I looked at each other completely confused. Then security came in and made us leave. Turns out, the train had terminated there and we had no idea. We spent the next 20 minutes figuring out an alternative route to our destination.

Once I started embracing the discomfort, the city started making sense. I learned to pay close attention to context: what situation was I in, what would logically come next, what were the two or three things someone might need from me? It was a new kind of intelligence I hadn’t needed back in Singapore.

At ESSEC, working on projects with such a diverse cohort was a similar epiphany. It was frustrating at first because I didn’t understand how my classmates operated, why punctuality wasn’t as important to some, and why some were more sensitive to feedback than others. That’s when Erin Meyer came to mind. I started to change my approach and cater to each of my classmates in the way they were used to in their countries. Give direct feedback if they are French; sugarcoat it if they were British. That small shift changed everything.

Another lesson I learned at ESSEC was the power of networking and connection. They say that you should never dismiss anyone because you never know who they might know. I indirectly tested this theory.

I was still working on my master plan of going back to Singapore. One of my good friends, Cheryl, was working at L’Oreal Singapore, where she kindly made an introduction to HR there. What started off with a conversation about roles I could do after I graduated ended with HR referring me to talent acquisition in Paris – and landing me a dream internship in L’Oreal!

Once I was able to understand how the French work, I started to fully embrace the two-hour lunch breaks. It made me more flexible. I was able to see things from a different lens, open to perspectives I might not have considered before. As a result, I started toying with the idea that maybe the universe had better plan for me than I had for myself.

So, I moved to London.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

After graduating, my L’Oreal internship earned me an opportunity to work in the London office. The old me would have probably said no, that wasn’t the plan. However, something in me knew that I had to take up this opportunity. Anyway, moving to London has to be easier than moving to Paris right? I spoke the language!

Wrong.

It was the same company but the culture was different. People ate at their desks. The feedback was sandwiched between compliments. I once walked out of a meeting presenting a dashboard to our marketing team. Throughout the meeting, all I heard were compliments and excitement, so I thought I had nailed it. Right after, I received an email asking when the next version would be ready. Turns out the feedback was so carefully sandwiched that I didn’t even notice the modifications.

Oh Erin Meyer, spot on again!

This was also my first role as a manager, with several interns reporting to me. I remembered how intimidating it felt to be the most junior person in the room feeling like your opinion doesn’t matter. I made a point of telling them: Only you know how to do your job, so trust your abilities. I also allowed myself to be vulnerable, sharing my own struggles and thought processes so they felt comfortable coming to me when they were stuck. Watching them receive compliments for their work was genuinely one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

In return, they taught me things no textbook could. Like the fact that “you alright?” is not a question and it’s just saying hi and that “legend” is the highest compliment a British person can pay you.

I was really enjoying my life in London. I had built an amazing community of friends who were also adapting to British culture, including going to pubs after work and tennis with friends on Sundays. For the first time since leaving Singapore, I felt settled.

Then, I met my now husband, Akhil. There was a tiny plot twist: he lived in California.

And I’m sure you can guess where this is going? Yes, I moved to America.

POWER OF CONNECTION

At this point, I knew better than to assume it was going to be easy. I picked the worst time possible to move to California, a month after the 2024 elections. Absolute political turmoil.

It’s okay, I had Erin Meyer. I knew what to do. I dialed up my presence on LinkedIn, made small talk with strangers, and went to every networking event I could find.

Nothing was working.

It was three months of endless job applications, mornings in cafes spent vibe coding and learning new skills, and long walks around Oakland’s Lake Merritt distracting myself with podcasts. I was starting to contemplate if I had made the wrong decision.

There was one opening where I was most hopeful, however. I made it to the final round. I was so close. Then, nothing. Ghosted. To distract myself, I decided to go shopping. I wandered into Sephora, and stood there surrounded by L’Oréal products – the very brand I had left behind in London. I started seriously questioning everything I had given up.

Countless long walks and many moments of self-doubt later, it happened.

The breakthrough didn’t come from the applications. It didn’t come from the cold outreach. It started from something I had almost forgotten about. When I was living in London, I had reached out to some people on LinkedIn living in the Bay Area. It just wanted to understand what the market was like and how best to position myself. I did not expect anything from those connections.

Turns out one of those seeds I planted months ago had blossomed into an opportunity. The CEO of my current company, Will, was one of those connections. He asked me to come over to the office for a chat. The next thing I knew, we were having lunch together and they offered me a job on the spot!

I was genuinely speechless. I’ve heard of this happening to people, but I never thought a lunch at Chipotle would turn into a job offer?

I am now based in San Mateo, working as an Implementations Manager at Bedrock Analytics, helping consumer goods companies onboard onto our software.

California really is the land of opportunity. The weather is amazing. The technology is unlike anything I’ve seen before. I still do a double take every time a driverless car is beside me on the street.

From “Ca va?” to “You alright?” to “How’s it going?”, ESSEC gave me the tools to navigate the world. Whether it is the cultural intelligence, the networking skills, or dealing with the unknown, I feel like I am finally where I am supposed to be. Our professors always told us that you should never dismiss anyone because you never know who might know. I understand that now. I’m grateful for all the seeds I planted over the years and everything that blossomed from them.

Five years ago, I had a plan and I’m so glad nothing went according to it.

P.S.: Erin Meyer, I’m so sorry I doubted you.

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Aswini Tara Akunuri is an ESSEC Business School Global MBA alumna (Class of 2022). Originally from Singapore, she has lived and worked in Paris, London, and now San Mateo, California, where she works as Implementations Manager at Bedrock Analytics.

DON’T MISS: MY JOURNEY AS A GLOBAL MBA STUDENT AT ESSEC

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