Suchi Patel

New York University, Stern School of Business

“NYC MBA operating and investing in applied AI across startups, venture, and enterprise tech.”

Hometown: Leesburg, Virginia

Fun fact about yourself: My 2019 ESPN March Madness bracket scored a 99.3%.

Undergraduate School and Degree: University of Virginia, B.S. in Biomedical Engineering, Minor in Computer Science

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Credera, Manager in Technology Consulting / Data Practice

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025?

MBA Associate @ Private Single Family Office (NYC) and Venture Fellow @ Lynx Collective

Also have done in-semester internships at New York Angels (Spring 2025) and NTTVC (Fall 2025 -> Present)

Where will you be working after graduation? Joining an early-stage company delivering custom AI strategy and engineering

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

• Co-President of Private Equity and Venture Capital Club (previously Chief of Staff)
• Previously on the board of Entrepreneurship and Startup Association
• Career Mentor to four first-year MBAs

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? As Co-President of Stern’s Private Equity and Venture Capital Club, I’m most proud of how we made venture more accessible for classmates who didn’t come in with a pre-built network in the industry. I helped revamp our VC bootcamp to teach the real ins-and-outs of the industry, bringing in investors from my network to make it practical and current. The most meaningful part has been translating that community-building into real outcomes, including helping peers connect with founders and investors and land internships at startups and VC funds. It reflects what I love about Stern: people genuinely want to help each other win.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? Before business school, I worked on a healthtech analytics-as-a-service product that became foundational for how I think about the human challenges of building technology. I was on the engagement end-to-end, from an initial design and discovery phase where we translated ambiguous needs, through multiple implementation phases, to ship the first version. I’m proud of it because I learned an incredible amount in a short time: how to lead engineers, how to ship innovative technology in complex enterprises, and how to build stakeholder trust that turns a one-time delivery into a durable partnership.

Why did you choose this business school? I’ve been in NYC since before business school and knew I didn’t want to leave. Stern’s magic is that it’s in the heart of downtown Manhattan, making experiential learning a constant opportunity. Being steps from NYC’s startup hub in SoHo meant classes didn’t stay theoretical: founder meetings, investor conversations, and hands-on projects were part of my daily rhythm. Since arriving at Stern, I’ve been able to continuously build real-world reps through in-semester internships, ecosystem work, and experiential learning projects as I explored tech, startups, and investing. Stern’s location and culture made it easy to pursue opportunities while being immersed in a genuinely collaborative community.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Professor Michael North, who taught “Leadership” during orientation, is one of the best professors I’ve ever had. His teaching is thought-provoking, grounded, and deeply human, and the intensive set the tone for my entire MBA experience. The in-class exercises were remarkably relevant, surfacing the psychology of how people show up and collaborate on teams in ways I’d seen play out repeatedly in my career. His class pushed me to reflect on my own patterns and build a clearer vision for the kind of leader I want to be. I’ve also had the honor of being a teaching fellow for him twice since then, which has given me even more appreciation for the care he has for his students and the intentionality he brings to teaching.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? Tech and the City, co-taught by Professor Arun Sundararajan and Professor Albert Wenger, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures (USV), was my favorite course because it combined real intellectual rigor with direct exposure to how innovation actually happens. We were paired with USV portfolio companies for a semester-long project, so every framework we learned immediately had real stakes and constraints. Professor Arun brought academic depth, and Professor Albert has a rare ability to synthesize decades of investing pattern recognition into clear, first-principles thinking. I genuinely could have listened to them for hours and found myself leaving class in awe almost every time.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? Stern Sips, our weekly Thursday meet up, is my favorite tradition. A close friend of mine helped start it last year, and it quickly became the go-to way to end the week because it featured familiar faces and a low-stakes way to meet new people across years and programs. For me, it reflects Stern at its best: warm, collaborative, and genuinely fun.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? I tend to say yes to anything that feels like a learning opportunity (which is most things!). Coming into business school and recruiting across tech, startups, and VC, that approach led to a first semester of breadth over depth. I don’t regret the curiosity or what it taught me, but I was overextended and would have been better off being more realistic about my priorities. That would have helped me go deeper sooner and invest more quality time in the areas I’m now most passionate about. Learning to say no and protect my time better is still a skill I’m actively building, but Stern has given me the environment to practice it without losing momentum.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? One of the most impactful “case study” experiences for me was during our semester-long Tech and the City project. As a precursor to a possible new influencer marketing approach, we conducted fieldwork on how femtech apps might better support female athletes. We spoke with athletes and coaches, extracting insights through user conversations, observed behavior, and research. What made it meaningful was that the team trusted our work, and we were making recommendations that could genuinely shape the company’s direction. As a huge sports fan, it was a fun intersection of my personal and professional interests. It also reinforced a lesson I see play out over-and-over again in both product work and investing: generate and validate hypotheses with real users early, and build toward decisions people will actually adopt. It also reminded me how global and connected Stern’s ecosystem is. I later met members of our paired startup while I was in Berlin for another Stern experiential program.

What business leader do you admire most? I’ve been a huge admirer of Alexis Ohanian since I first heard him speak at an event during undergrad at UVA. What’s always stuck with me is how he’s evolved from co-founding Reddit in his UVA dorm room to becoming both a returns- and values-driven investor. He uses his platform and capital to expand access and back underrepresented people in technology, media, women’s sports, and more. That combination of ambition, curiosity, and principled leadership is the model I hope to keep emulating as I progress in my career.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? One way Stern has integrated AI meaningfully is through experiential learning programs like Endless Frontier Labs (EFL). EFL is Stern’s hub for massively scalable tech and life science startups and includes a year-long companion MBA course where students are paired with startups across digital tech, digital health, life sciences, and deep tech. Many of these companies are AI-first, allowing us to work directly alongside founders building at the frontier. My experience supporting the product strategy of a seed-stage healthtech startup has been amazing. I’m seeing in real time what works, what breaks, and what it takes to move from a demo to something usable in the real world. Stern’s broader curriculum has reinforced that shift as well, including the school’s newly launched AI MBA specialization.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? I most admire my friend, Kelly Heinzerling. Kelly came into Stern with a unique background as a documentary producer and with the goal of entering the business side of entertainment, an industry that’s incredibly competitive and often sits outside traditional recruiting pipelines. Between her summer at Disney, her current in-semester internship in entertainment investing, and her role as Co-President of Stern’s Entertainment Media and Sports Association, she’s put in an incredible amount of work to carve that path for herself through hustle, curiosity, and genuine relationship-building. More importantly, she’s an incredible friend, and I’m endlessly inspired by her ambition and kindness.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? One item on my bucket list is to serve on the board of a nonprofit where I can apply my professional skills at the intersection of technology and impact to increase outcomes for causes I care about, whether that’s health equity, education, or community-building. The second is to one day be an adjunct professor, bringing real-world experience into the classroom the way many of my favorite Stern professors do. The classes that have shaped me most weren’t purely theoretical; they were taught by people actively building, investing, and leading, then translating those lessons into frameworks students could use immediately. I hope to have a career where I have something genuinely valuable to share, and where I can help students learn through that same kind of applied, intellectually stimulating teaching.

What made Suchi such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?

“As an administrator at Stern, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Suchi in various student experience capacities, and I can confidently say that she is an exceptional member of the Stern community.

Some of her most notable contributions include serving on multiple different student club boards. She is the co-president of our Private Equity & Venture Capital club. In her role, she has collaborated with different administrative departments in order to mentor her peers looking for roles in these spaces. She was also formerly on the board of our Entrepreneurship & Startup Association and further gave back to the community by serving as a Career Mentor to four students.

Beyond that I had the pleasure of traveling to South Africa with Suchi as part of one of Stern’s “Doing Business In…” courses. Suchi was such a vibrant part of that course and came to every class and company visit with thoughtful questions and a genuine curiosity to learn and understand. Her global mindset, embodiment of IQ & EQ, and ability to connect theory to practice were on full display. Through her thought provoking questions she enriched the experience not only for herself, but also for her other classmates. No matter where she is in the world – either in Stern classes or at a company visit in South Africa – she is always doing a great job of representing the Stern Community.

I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to get to know her throughout her Stern experience and I can’t wait to see where her natural curiosity and inquisitive nature will take her next. I am confident she will always make an impact as a leader in whatever she chooses to pursue.

Olivia Cannarozzi
Director, MBA Office of Student Engagement

 

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