His Parents Emigrated From India. Now This Stanford MBA Makes New York Times Marriage Page

Abhishek Gupta’s parents emigrated to the U.S. from India in the late 1970s. That momentous decision has allowed their son, now 39, to live a young life that fulfills the promise of the quintessential American Dream.

Gupta went to the elite Phillips Exeter Academy for high school, graduated from his bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University, where he was a member of the Lampoon satirical magazine. He landed a job at Bain Capital and then went to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business for his MBA, graduating in 2011.

Gupta used his MBA to launch and scale a Florida-based home health company to a dozen branch offices, more than 250 employees, and $25 million in revenue before he ultimately sold the firm. In 2015, he moved to Uber where Gupta became the global head of strategy and planning in San Francisco. Four years later, he moved to New York to become Vice President of global operations for Kustomer, a fast growing CRM business.

And to cap off his American Dream journey, now Gupta has gotten married to a woman who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and received a law degree from Yale. His wife, 32-year-old Katherine Clark Harris is the director of the Reimagine New York Commission, which is focused on the state’s pandemic recovery for New York’s governor. She had been a senior aide in the Treasury and State department for the Obama administration in Washington.

A STANFORD MBA’S LOVE STORY IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

Their love story is vividly told in today’s The New York Times, something very few couples can expect.

Now an operating partner at Boldstart Ventures, a technology investment firm in New York, Gupta met Harris at a holiday party in New York nearly four years ago in 2017.

“The first thing I remember about Kate was her big, gorgeous, beautiful smile,” he told the Times. “She also seemed incredibly energetic and thoughtful.”

‘HE HAD THIS CONTAGIOUS LAUGH THAT JUST FILLED UP THE ROOM’

Harris apparently was equally impressed. “He had this contagious laugh that just filled up the room,” she said. “It really put me at ease.”

It took him just two days to ask her out on a date. Gupta impressed her again by selecting one of her favorite restaurants in Manhattan’s West Village. “I later found out he had done his homework and asked mutual friends about the places I enjoyed going to,” Harris told the newspaper. “I really appreciated that.”

Soon, the pair began a long-distance relationship from New York to San Francisco that lasted one year, before they were both in New York. In January of 2020, just a few months before the coronavirus struck, they moved into a Manhattan apartment together.

‘DON’T BE AFRAID OF CONFLICT. WE’LL ONLY BE CLOSER FOR IT’

“When we had a few fights early in our relationship,” Harris told the Times, “he just sat down with me and said, ‘Tell me what you’re really thinking, don’t be afraid of conflict, we’ll only be closer for it in the end.’ For me, that was really the turning point.”

Engaged on Feb. 2, 2020 in Cambridge, Mass., the couple married June 12 at the Reform Club in Amagansett, N.Y., before 60 guests, including the bride’s 100-year-old grandmother.

DON’T MISS: MEET STANFORD’S MBA CLASS OF 2021 or THE FIVE MYTHS OF INDIAN APPLICANTS TO TOP MBA PROGRAMS