Goldman Sachs to Harvard as a Queer Black Woman | Chandra Sahu

In Episode 9, we meet Chandra Sahu, an MBA Candidate at Harvard Business School (HBS). From growing up in Michigan to launching her career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, Chandra shares all that she's learned along the way - opening up about her identity as a queer Black woman navigating corporate America and business school.

Beyond Harvard is a platform sharing the stories of students at Harvard University - uncovering who they are at Harvard and beyond. 

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Connect with Chandra:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/csahu1/?isSelfProfile=false
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chansahu/

Credits:
Host: Rashana Weerasinghe
Guest: Chandra Sahu
Videographer / Editor: Yaoming Duan
Location: Harvard Spangler Center

00:00-2:00 Intro
2:00-5:16 Growing up in Michigan
5:16-7:35 Journey to College
7:35-8:02 Choice of UMichigan
8:03-11:04 Starting at Goldman Sachs
11:04-14:17 Reflections from Goldman Sachs 
14:17-19:37 Leaving Goldman Sachs
19:37-22:14 Joining a Startup
22:14-24:57 Moving into Product Management 
24:57-32:18 MBA Journey 
32:18-37:35 Experience at Harvard Business School
37:35-40:40 Post-MBA
40:41-45:13 Rapid Fire with Rashana *

Disclaimer: Beyond Harvard is an independent platform. All views are our own.

#podcast #harvard #harvardbusinessschool #mbajourney #mba #queer #blackwoman #goldmansachs #harvard #beyondharvard #students #studentlife #interview #career

Transcript

0:00

I did not want a baby and a startup at the same time. Like, no way, no-how. I want to operate in the real world. I want to build something that my grandma can understand. You're doing that while working from 9 a.m. to 3 or 4 a.m. for six days a week. A banker can spot a double space in anything. Welcome to the Beyond Harvard Podcast. I'm your host, Rashana Wearsinga, a graduate student at Harvard University. On this week's episode, we meet Chandra Sahu, a second-year MBA candidate at Harvard Business School. Chandra shares her experience working in investment thinking to technology and what it's like being back in the classroom. Take a listen as we learn more about who Chandra is here at Harvard and beyond. Enjoy. Chandra Sahu, welcome to Beyond Harvard. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I am so excited to have you, Chandra. When we first connected in the fall, I was struck by how deeply reflective you are and all of the learnings that you've shared with me. And so I wanted to have this conversation to learn more about your journey and to hear more of the reflections and um to maybe set the stage for our audience, Sean. You grew up in Michigan, you went to the University of Michigan, you studied business, and then you started your career at Goldman Sachs, and then you were in Pinterest for a bit, working in in technology, and now you're graduating from Harvard Business School in a couple weeks. Yeah. So I I want to get into all aspects of your journey, but maybe you can take us back, John. What was it like growing up in Michigan and sketch the route for us in terms of how that led you to the person you are today? Yeah, it's funny, actually, like the other night, right before bed, for some reason I was reminiscing on like really vivid memories of being in high school and early adolescence and it coming from a place of gratitude. And I think what I was remembering about that time was like I was really lucky to grow up in a relatively suburban but very diverse area. So um there was not necessarily like one way of being that was expected, one majority. Um Detroit as a city is a very black city, and then the suburbs around Detroit are also really unique in their makeup, like um Dearborn has a very specific uh population that cannot really be found outside of the Middle East or in America. Um and you know, you have other just like black suburban areas that are unique to um Michigan and the Midwest. So I think I grew up like very much in community, um, but in a diverse community where I got to understand difference as just like part of the fabric of life. Um that's a very rich insight. Like you almost learn to kind of lean into that, it seems like. Yeah, for sure. I'd also I'd done a brief period in LA with my family when I was um in elementary. So we like moved in second and third grade and then moved back to the city. And so for me, my early years, I like moved every year of elementary. Um, and when we lived in Detroit, those schools were all entirely black. When we moved to LA, the first school that I went to was um folks of lower socioeconomic status, a lot of immigrant families. Um, and then the second school that I moved to, my sisters and I were the only black students in the entire school. And so very quickly, at like a young age, I was having to navigate really different environments. And when we moved back to the Detroit area to a suburb, the suburb that I ended up living in for most of my life was this like really rich, diverse ecosystem that I think is a level of diversity you don't typically get even in American suburbs and other spaces. Um and Detroit is this like scrappy comeback city in a lot of ways, and that brings an interesting fabric to the people and the way of being. So definitely early foundations of like knowing how to navigate that difference, or like not even thinking about it really as something that needed to be navigated, it just became what I knew. Um, and I think that did inform a lot of the way that I've moved through the world and through my career, in that I am pretty intentionally trying to figure out how to put myself in different spaces all the time. Like, I think there's something so rich about being able to connect the dots and build a bridge. So I probably attribute a lot of that to the early stuff. Wow, and you chose to also stay in Michigan for for undergrad. Yeah. So it seems like that was that part of the reasoning why you wanted to stay? Well, it's so funny. I like applied to 13 schools and they were kind of all over. And I looking back, didn't have like a clear plan for applying to colleges. I was applying to things that were like state schools like Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Minnesota, and then I was also applying to the like Ivy's, but with no previous college prep. Like nobody from my school went to Ivy's. One girl from my graduating class did. So that was just kind of like, sure, throw it out there. Yeah. And what I where I really wanted to go was NYU. I knew that I'd probably study business. So my top was like living in New York. And part of the reason that I'd applied to all these schools was that I was a dancer. So I wanted to be a dance minor or a double major. Okay. I danced all kinds of styles: ballet, jazz, tap, lyrical, hip-hop, like hip-hop was actually the one I did the least. Okay. Um, but yeah, I like a lot of my hours in high school were like you go to class, and then from about 1:30 to like 10 p.m. I was dancing, typically five days a week, and then some on the weekends. So another version of my life that I saw was being a dancer and like being a starving artist. Um, so a lot of the schools that I've named, Wisconsin-Madison, Minnesota, have great dance programs. And so I was doing this dual like, what do I care about? What do I want to do? Um, I got into Stern at MIU, and I also got into Ross at Michigan, and this was when they had a pre-admit program. So it was like a very small class of people who would know as graduating seniors that they would be able to study business. Everyone else had to come to the school and then apply. I think it's since changed. But I was like, I'm not staying in Michigan, no way. And then when the acceptances came, I remember, I think I was in New York, um, and the acceptance for NYU came in, and I was excited, and my mom was like, that's so great, who's gonna pay for it? And I was kind of like, oh, like, you know, in my head when I was applying to all these schools, I was like, I would take on any loans to figure it out, yada yada. Like, that's not how nobody is giving an 18-year-old $300,000 of loans, like, and um, it was just a non-option. And it's like out-of-state tuition. New York State is to be able to do that. And I would have to live in New York. Yeah. So that was so the choice of Michigan was really like, it's an excellent school. Um, it was in-state, and at the end of the day, it ended up being the best option, and I still got to study dance, and Michigan has an excellent, excellent arts program. So especially at the end of the day, I'm like, it was the perfect decision for me. Um, and I ended up in New York after school. So I think everything is shaken out the way it should. And let's we can get into that piece. So once you graduated from Ross, you started at Goldman Sachs, then you worked both across the technology group and the consumer retail group. And what was it like working straight out of undergrad in New York City at Goldman Sachs? What was that experience like for you? Yeah. I had done um a couple of summers actually at Goldman in college. So my freshman summer I did at PwC and I was in the Detroit office. So um I got to stay with family and see family, and that was great. And then sophomore summer was the first summer that I lived in New York and worked at Goldman. I was in the real estate group at that point in investment banking. Um, that's a smaller group, so it was great to be able to have a more intimate connection to more of the folks in the group. Like I got to know more people, I got to understand the group's dynamics. Um, and I had a really great mentor who was a VP in that group, who was also a queer woman. So that was an awesome introduction. And junior summer, um, one of the other interns who had been in real estate and myself, we both moved to consumer retail. So he and I ended up knowing each other um through the whole Goldman journey, which is awesome. So after graduation, moving to New York and working at Goldman, it wasn't net new. Um, but the transition to full-time was very different than internship. Like even beginning to understand what it means to not get a summer break for the first time ever in your life. It's so painful. Was a reckoning. Um especially when you're in New York City, too. And it's perfect. It's like I want to move top. Exactly. So it was interesting. I think I loved that I was working with really smart people. I am a perfectionist. I liked that there was a certain level of excellence that was required and was driven. It's like part of the culture you're saying, yeah, for sure. But um to it was definitely to an extreme. I I hadn't really worked or thought about what it would mean to work in a client service business. Um in banking, for a lot of what you do, it's like you're juggling 10 balls, and they say just don't drop the glass ones, but like nine of them are glass, right? And so you just you're you're put in an environment that is unlike anything else, honestly. I think. Um there are other roles in finance that are also intense, but I think the client-serving nature of banking paired with the intensity of finance and transaction timelines and negotiation, like um, it was a lot for somebody who was 21 and trying to figure out what it meant to be a black queer woman in New York and how to adjust to working for the first time and learning the culture of this place that was also quite different from Michigan, like University of Michigan, and also the way I'd grown up. Um, and when you when you intern, you don't fully get an get an appreciation for what that's going to mean and how unique and specific the culture is. So there's a lot of learning. Yeah. I'm curious to know what did you learn both professionally and personally during during your time there? Yeah. Professionally, I think this is going to sound silly and to some people maybe arbitrary, but um a banker can spot a double space in anything. Like if someone has clicked the spacebar twice, I see it. I see it in like publications, like that's the kind of thing where your associate is like, there's a double space in the footnote. And that that was the nature of the level of attention to detail on every slide and every piece of work. And you're doing that while working from 9 a.m. to 3 or 4 a.m. for six days a week. Um, so it ingrains in you a certain level of like, I can achieve near perfection most of the time. It's expected of me. Um, and kind of an appreciation for like the balance of perfection or the balance of organization and being able to manage client relationships and all those things. I think like I was able to show up in spaces with peers or professionally, kind of beyond my ears because of that training ground. Um, that also has a downside. Like it's a double-edged sword to be working that much under that kind of pressure. And I was somebody who was a dancer growing up. I was really into like feelings, like how people connect to each other, how we understand and support each other. Um, and so there were a lot of parts of me, because I spent so much time in this professional zone of my life, which is one muscle to practice and flex, I was really, really missing some of the other parts that make me whole and make me who I am and how I can best show up to serve others. Um so it was taxing on my mental health, on my physical health, my emotional health was really all over the place. I like started therapy for the first time in banking about a year in, which was great. And I've been with that therapist for years since. Um but yeah, the intensity is something that is really, really difficult to manage. And, you know, frankly, I it it's not healthy for people to be working that much for really, really extended periods of time. Um, so yeah, it's a little bit of give and a little bit of take. And I learned how to understand where my limits are. Um, I think there are times where it's pushing you and pushing you, and it's a worthy push, and you grow because you understand that actually you can operate at that level for whatever amount of time. And there are times where it's pushing you, and you have to be able to listen to yourself and understand that it's a push too far, or it's time to step away, or there are new boundaries you need to set. Um, and the machine, whether that's banking or teaching a classroom, like will take from you what it can get. So understanding how to read yourself, know what fills you, and set your boundaries is incredibly important no matter where you are. And I think that I learned that through trial by fire at Goldman. Yeah, and I I just want to touch on the intensity piece. I mean, when you you said you're working from 9 to 4, that's not 9 to 4 p.m. That's 9 to 4 a.m. And I'm curious to know, Sean, there was there a moment where you realized this isn't congruent with with my values and and what I care about. I mean, definitely I ended up leaving. Um I so I was at Goldman for two years, and part of the reason I was there so long was I had kind of specific learn learning goals for myself, like the kinds of deal experience that I felt like I wanted to be able to leave saying I had achieved, or I don't know. There was just I I could tell that it wasn't time to leave yet, even though I really wanted to, because it ultimately was not gonna be the right fit for me. Um and I decided to leave when I hit a point where honestly, my body was more of the signal than my mind. It was like I had had periods of time that were more intense and less. So the more intense periods are like, you know, it's 9 a.m. to 4 a.m. and it's six days a week. The less are like it's 9 a.m. to one. Like it's still maybe midnight. I mean, if I was done by 11 p.m., it was like, I'm gonna get a drink. Like it was crazy. 11 p.m. 11 p.m. The whole day is gone. And and and keep in mind, it was COVID and it was winter in New York. I was in a room the size of like a walk-in closet. I had a small IKEA desk, and so the the width of my room was a slender dresser, the small IKEA desk, and my bed. And I just literally rolled out of bed into my desk chair and I was there for like whatever, 16, 18 hours a day. Oh my goodness. Um in the backdrop of a lot of other things happening in COVID, of this like supposed reckoning with race in the nation, and people, I mean, loved ones, my grandfather passing like from COVID alongside other um conditions that we weren't aware of. And you know, it was just a lot. And I think that when the time came that I had been promoted to associate and I'd gotten my bonus, and I look, I could look at the two years and say, have I done what I intended to do? And the answer was yes. And I always knew that finance was not the long term for me. I wanted to be an operator. Um, I had a day, a series of days really, where it was like my my body was sending the signal that it was no longer ready to be in that environment. And, you know, you have conversations with yourself and your body where you're navigating, like, okay, this is a level of stress I actually can tolerate. My body is freaking out, but it's gonna be fine. I'm gonna do some breathing or I'm gonna like write myself and it's okay. And this was just a period where something clicked in my mind that was like, oh no, it's time actually, the body is making the decision, not my head. Um, and by allowing myself to listen to my gut and also listen to some people close in my life. So I called my parents, I called an advisor from an organization I had worked for and volunteered for a while. I think I called others who were like in my professional sphere as mentors to gut check, like, you know, is it am I just freaking out? But it's gonna, but this is a typical hurdle. And all of those folks just demonstrated their confidence in my ability to make the choice and to navigate the world after it. Because I was gonna be leaving without a job offer in hand. I just was like, I just had hit a point where I recognized it was no longer for me, but I didn't know what that would mean for the rest of my time. Um, and it was really quick. I felt, I felt that it was time to go. I had those conversations, and I called my staffer potentially that day. It might have been that afternoon. Um, and he was like, hey, take a few days, come back to me on Friday. So I did. I took a couple days off, and I in that time I was like, I know that this is the decision. Um, I don't want to prolong and make it harder on the teams or myself, and so that was that. And I feel like having the support of your network and people close to you is empowering in making that. For sure. How decision. I don't know that I could have done it without some of the reassurance that it was going to be okay. And and for that, so to be honest, I remember I was getting coffee with a friend, and their mom came by our coffee. We were chatting, and I mentioned that I had left Goldman, and she's kind of like, Well, what are you gonna do? And I was like, I actually don't know, I'm figuring it out. And she, I could just read, like, oh my god, this girl's crazy. What is she thinking, you know? And I it is very unique and lucky that my parents and my mentors are the kinds of folks who are able to see it's gonna be okay, not because you're gonna get another job that's necessarily going to be a rocket ship, even though it would wind up that I was very lucky, yeah, but because like they know me and what matters to me, and they knew that my life would be built in a way that satisfied me by making a decision that was true to me. So and so you left Goldman and then you you joined a startup that eventually got acquired by Pinterest. Um I'm curious to know before we get into more of your time here and and your NBA experience, I'd love to know, Chandra, what was it like working coming from investment banking and then working in product management at Pinterest? What were some of the differences there just professionally with what what your difference is like? Yeah, and so it the in-between the startup was actually like a a huge part of my uh general professional outlook and development. So the startup was called the yes, and I joined that after Goldman in kind of a it was like strat, finance, ops, a little bit of work with like technical PMs, like a little bit of everything. Um so that was my first foray into being an operator. And it helped me to understand that the the way that the pieces come together and also how, you know, I had worked with problems that were important to huge, huge companies at Goldman. And all of a sudden I was working really close to the C-suite of something that was much smaller. Um, really experienced management team, so they had seen what it meant to be successful at something at scale. Um, and yet they were trying to build and nurture this brand new thing. And I had a manager who had an incredible sense of the way that systems work together and the way that financial models are a tool for predicting that or making decisions in a way that I hadn't thought about modeling at Goldman. Like at Goldman, you're given assumptions and you plug them in. When you're an operator, you're really thinking strategically about how your decisions on how you change those assumptions are going to impact the model and how long the company has to be around. Um, and so it's just like there's a relationship between the financial model and the actions you're taking that is really rich. And I learned for the first time, like actually what the power of modeling was, even though I've been doing it for two years at Goldman. Wow. Um, so that was an incredible foundation, and and that manager was was really instrumental in my the way that I thought about building businesses in the future. And the CEO, Julie Bornstein, was also just this powerhouse person to learn from as a leader, um, as a woman who'd had a really amazing career in consumer and in tech. So that foundation allowed me to help sell the business to Pinterest and then figure out what I wanted to do. And I had really strong sponsors in Julie and Richard, my manager, to be able to do something that's really hard to do, which is move into product. Um To move into like consumer product with no product experience is tough. People will often say that it's harder to get your first job and product than it is to get any of your future roles that you'll have. It's just a strange role. Um when I did get the role, I think that the biggest adjustment working in something where you're an investor or uh an advisor or you know, finance, strategy, these things where you have to have an answer. Product is all about actually being hypothesis driven, like learning to say, this is what I believe, this is why, this is how I'm gonna test it, and here's how I'm gonna measure whether I was right or wrong. And if I'm wrong, that's actually actually like really interesting and rich information that's gonna inform the next experiment. And so there's this culture of failure, really culture of learning that was just entirely different from the kind of learning or development you were doing in the other roles. Um, and it taught me how to think differently and how to uh have more humility in my professional life and my professional approach. Like you have to accept that when you set the hypothesis out, your expectation is that it could be right or it could be wrong, not that it will be right. And almost a totally different skill set than what's typically required in IB. Totally. I mean, working with engineers was like a game change. Working with engineers and user research and design, it's like empathy. Yeah, I mean, you can see the the cultural differences so clearly, and it makes sense. People gravitate toward the way that their mind works. Yeah. Um, and to be a PM, you get to be at the center of that and trying to. I mean, again, to the to the point I made earlier about always trying to put myself in positions where I'm bridging or where I'm in really different environments. I think you look at the microcosm of the EPD triangle, which is eng product and design, which is maybe changing with AI, but um, and that is like the ultimate challenge of bridging. You know, design wants one thing for users, and user research has done all the research to tell you exactly what users want. And then Eng is like, we can actually do 23% of that. And you figure out where to make the trade-offs and how to make everyone feel comfortable with them, um, and how to like give everyone the reassurance that you're still moving in the right direction while humbling yourself to know that you might not actually know the direction. You gotta put it out there and let users tell you. Yeah. So super interesting. And it's also like how do you galvanize without sometimes authority, right? Because you're trying to motivate different groups that might have differing interests. Yeah. And so that's that's fascinating. Um, I want to get into your time here, Chandra. You're pursuing your MBA, and I want to know a little bit, I guess beforehand, I'd want to know a little bit more about what was the choice to come to business school, and how did you maybe backwards rationalize the pursuit given that there is an opportunity cost, right? Of taking on a two-year program and then stepping back for the workforce for a bit. Yeah. Um, let's see. So I studied business undergrad, as I as I mentioned, and so I had like some idea that maybe I would get an MBA in the future because I was in communities where like that was what people did, or I could see leaders who I worked with who had gone to get their MBA. So it was something in my field of vision that made sense potentially. Um, so you know, early on I was thinking about when I might go if I go or what I'd be looking for. I actually applied to a lot of the early admin programs, my senior year of college, and didn't get in. I actually interviewed for Harvard and didn't get in then, which is honestly a blessing because I would have probably well, I would have been at my two years at banking and I would have said, I'm ready to go, let me go to business school. And what I would have been able to bring to this environment would be incredibly different if I had come straight off the back of banking versus working in a startup and working in product at a large tech company and really being able to have clarity on some of what I was looking to get out of the experience. So, like that was a blessing in disguise. Yeah. Um, and at one point I thought I was gonna get a JD MBA or an MPP MBA. I entertained all sorts of things for it. Like ready to do three years. So I thought both my parents are attorneys, and so I was like, I just was like, oh, I think when you go to law school, you have to think so differently from being in business. And again, to the point of building bridges, I was like, what if I build my mind muscle in the law way and the business way? What ended up happening was I looked up one day and I was like, oh, I'm 25, 26. Yeah. I knew that there were some big picture things that I maybe wanted in the future. Yeah. I wanted to give myself a chance to try to start something of my own, which was part of what had guided this path from banking to strategy at a startup to product. It was like all of those feel like tools that will be really helpful as a first-time founder. Um, and I continued to work in consumer tech because consumer is where I would want to, it's the space I would want to live in. So I knew that, well, so there's two things I knew. I knew that I wanted to try and give myself the opportunity to be a consumer tech founder, and I knew that I want to be a mother. And um this the latter is like the one thing I know pretty clearly, unwaveringly in my life. And what I hope to do is to be able to have the opportunity to carry. So that naturally puts some some limits on the timeline. The third thing I knew is that I did not want a baby and a startup at the same time. Like, no way, no how. Um, don't know how I would have done it. So then that led to the working backwards. It's like, okay, if I want to have a kid, at that time in my mind, I said by 20, 32. Now I would say, you know, by 35, 36. Like technology is amazing these days. Um, and I have so much I want to do. But the math then was, okay, if I want to have a kid by 32 and I also want to give myself a shot at starting something or being in this phase of my career where I can dedicate a lot to my career, yeah, then I want to graduate business school by the time I'm 30. Well, that means actually I have to apply now. And so I applied to business school in three months for the second round. Um, maybe four months, maybe at four months, I decided I'm gonna do it. And then I found what resources I was gonna use to prepare. And I'm just like heads down those three months, and like yeah, I just yes, and I think I know other friends who like were even more heads down for longer. Okay. I know myself, and I'm more of a sprinter than a marathoner. Okay, and I think that having a concentrated amount of time to think about who I am and what I want and how to portray that in an application. Um, and like even down to things like, you know, I took the um GRE. I think I took an early test and I was like, I'm fine with my scores in these three areas. I'm not trying to max on um overall score. I think that everything else will carry me, but there's this one area that I want to improve. Okay. So rather than doing a broad GRE prep course, I had private tutoring for that one area. And so I was just like very efficiency-minded in the way that I was gonna apply. And I knew in my head that I would have one more cycle. So I basically did the math, I would have two years that I was comfortable with applying. Beyond that, I just wouldn't go. I have friends who joke that they're happy they've aged out of business school. Um, and because everybody goes in this like 25 to 27, 28 window. Um, so yeah, so I just I ran at it. And um I still wasn't sure about going to HBS by the time Admitted Students Weekend came. And even after the weekend passed, I felt like it was the first decision in my career that I was just I was like, I actually don't know what the right answer is. Um is that like intuition? Why what's it sort of? That's what the hard, the hard part of not having the answer was is that I think so. When I got the job at the yes, for example, after Goldman, I knew that it was a much more like manifestation-minded, like, this is my job, I'm punching above my weight, but it's not going to matter. I'm gonna get it done. Um, same with moving into product at Pinterest. So it's just the first time that I've I didn't have this overwhelming, like, this is right. And I didn't want to move myself into something that was not for me. Um, but I was uncertain about the vibe that would be found at HBS. I, like I've said, I'm like a queer woman, I'm a black woman. I had lived my life in New York for five years, almost exclusively in queer community of color. Um, and that is not what Harvard Business School is. So, by a by a mile. So I just I didn't know if I was going to find what I needed to build a life for myself for two years here. I didn't doubt that I would learn a lot, but I just I was weighing the trade-off of like, what do I think I can achieve on my own without putting myself through a potentially really high level of discomfort versus what I can achieve going to this school? Um, and I can't exactly tell you what made me ready to say yes. Probably some of it was like, you know, I'd be crazy not to take the opportunity or this curiosity about what I would find, even if I was like scared of it. Um it kind of goes back to that fear, right? That you were always sort of seeking spaces that push you. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like I think that to some degree it was kind of like, well, I don't know. I'm not gonna let the fear stop me. So yeah, I'm curious too now that you're you're coming up on the end of your time here, how how have the expectations that you had coming into the program mapped to the reality of what your experience has been like here? Yeah, uh, it's something that I didn't recognize coming into the program is how American my perspective is. Um so a lot of the things I was afraid of in terms of what it would mean to be a black queer woman came from the perspective of having lived that identity in corporate spaces in America. When a school is 40% international, I think even the understanding of what blackness is and is like a is a totally different concept. And that's not to say that I mean, there's colorism in plenty parts of the world too. Like, it's just to say that the the function of racism or the function of inequality that I was used to is different here. I think that I was afraid of specific kinds of trial and tribulation that had rules that I was familiar with navigating. So I felt like I was worried, but I was like, I know how to do this. I've done this before. And you come in, and actually, what you find at HBS is that life is much more guided by class than it is nationality or race. That was its own thing to get used to, the concentration of wealth. Socioeconomic. Exactly. Um, there is a lot of privilege in this institution, um, which is not inherently a bad thing. It's a different way of operating and to like to understand what it means to have socioeconomic class be something that is as the predominant guider of culture. Um so I think that what was humbling for me was I had my own ideas about identity that were potentially overinflated. It was easy for me to generalize about people based on my fears or things that I had experienced. And so it was easy for me to other myself from people and say, they're gonna feel this way about me because, or I'm not gonna feel comfortable in this space because. And what I found being in an environment that is just that forces you to be with so many different people, like the section environment of HBS, is you have to humble yourself. Like I had to recognize that I had actually put myself in a bubble for five years, spending all of my time with queer people of color in New York City. That's a different thing. And and I think it's allowed me to come into conversations with people who are different from me with a higher level of inquiry, even though I may have thought I was doing that before, because I lived in such a silo, it's hard to. I mean, I think it's audacious to think that you are the master of empathy or the expert question if you don't put yourself in spaces with people who are different from you. So HBS helped me to understand that I still wasn't there, that there's work to do in understanding people. So I'm curious to learn a little bit more about that, Chandra. You mentioned uh your peers and HBS is about this action experience. What have your peers maybe taught you about, or what have you learned just from your peers here here at the business school? I mean, the thing that is coming to mind now, because it's just the world that I'm immersed in, is the early stage stuff. People are really really curious. And I think something that a professor said recently that is a strength of the business school is that where others see challenge or inopportunity, I think that folks in business see opportunity. Like for better or worse, I think there need to be guardrails on arbitraging challenging times. But but there is like an interesting problem-solving nature to the lens that people bring to the classroom, to the business that they're exploring, and also to like our relationships to each other. Like I have really rich discussions with people on all sorts of topics. Um that has been a gift, and I've actually wondered like when I leave school, what am I going to do to intentionally nurture the level of both introspection and like engagement with different ideas that happens here that I don't think is easy to find in other places? Um so yeah, I love I love the case class format. I think it invites intentionally a lot of really um dissonant opinions. And in that, you get to try and learn a lot and stretch yourself to understand all the sides of the argument, all the sides of an issue, um, and also separate the idea from the person. So being able to ha have a comment in class that you really de disagree with, um, but being willing to go up to that person after class and figure out how to have the conversation around that disagreement in a way that's hopefully productive for everyone. So that's really insightful. Um, I'd love to maybe move in. We've talked about pre-MBA, Chandra, we've talked about your time here. I'd love to learn a little bit more about how how you're thinking about the future, Chandra, in terms of what you're looking to do post-MBA, the types of problems you want to solve, the spaces you want to be in. Yeah. Um, I love consumer, as I've said. I think for me, that comes from a couple of things. Um, one, I what makes me tick is thinking about the way that people work and how people can feel more belonging and connection to each other. Um, I'm a cancer, so it might come from that. I, you know, I was a dancer, so it might come from that. But there's just like, I think that's so often I've been in spaces and I and people have talked past each other and I've had a hard time understanding why. And so my mind works on ways to make people feel like they were considered in the design of something, or in the fact that a product is being offered that meets their needs. Like, all of those things are really interesting to me. Yeah. And I used to say, like, I either want to be in the really major moments or the everyday moments of people's lives. Like, I loved thinking about weddings, funerals, kids, things like that, or the small joys or things you pick up every day that are gonna impact the way that you move through the world, things as minor as a toothbrush, I probably won't make toothbrushes, but like, you know, that's the example that I give. So that's one reason I was interested in consumer. I think the other is like I don't really know anyone else in my life pre-college, and honestly, up through graduation, who will be in spaces like this, which is to say I want to operate in the real world. I want to build something that my grandma can understand. I want my best friend to be able to see my work and like get it and be able to talk to me about it. Like, I like that the kinds of things I want to build allow for me, actually require me to get feedback from a much broader set of people. For me, I wouldn't want to work in uh vertical market software or like you know, build an application for finance professionals because who would I spend my time with all day? Finance professionals. What percentage of that is the population? A very small privileged percent. I want to force myself, no matter what spaces I'm in, to have to have the humility to be meeting the needs of a much broader swath of the population. Um honestly, just to like stay grounded myself too. So those are the two things that anchor my reasons for being in commun in consumer. Um postgrad, therefore, I am working in product at a really early stage consumer company focused on self-understanding and connection. Um so it all adds up. So exciting! Yeah. Um we're we're nearing the the end of our segment here, Chandra. And so we're gonna close out with a little rapid fire with Rashand a moment. Um so I'm gonna have a couple rapid fire questions for you. Uh the first one, Chandra, is you talked about how much you like the art. Do you like to dance? Sing. I'm curious to know what's your go-to karaoke song? It's a very serious question. Oh my gosh, it's so serious because the sad thing is, every time I get to karaoke, I'm like, Chandra, how? How are you having to rack your brain again? Like you should have this on deck, especially when people find out I can sing. Forgot to mention that I sing as well. Um so most recently, what I've been using is Toxic by Britney Spears. It's actually a very difficult song to sing. It's not great. And it's like when you're really trying to hit the notes, which I'm really, because hey, because you heard I'm a singer, so I'm gonna sing. Yeah. The all the alternate, the new backprofit alternate that a friend pulled out at karaoke the other week was The Climb by Miley Cyrus. It's like a fan favorite, it's it's actually achievable, it's in my range. So that's gonna be the new one. I love it. That's a really good one. Yeah. Um all right, Chandra out. You you grew up in Michigan and then you've spent your most recent years in New York and Boston, Midwest or Northeast? Oh, Northeast. I mean, I'm no hesitation there. No, everybody in my life knows. I am so glad they are staying in Michigan so I can come back and visit. And home is home, but New York for sure. I love it. Um Chandra, biggest difference between pre-MDA Chandra and post-NBA Chandra. Ooh, I just feel I think I was confident before school, um, but that confidence was probably built on a mixture of what I had accomplished and things that I knew that other people valued. Okay. And post-MBA, I think that there's just a lot more internal confidence of like, there's no way I'm going to fail because what is failure? Like, there's a different orientation that I have to the way that I build my life. Um, I think part of that comes from the classroom and like being confident in my curiosity, and part of that comes in having seen myself through the two years and difficult times, and you know, seeing who I am on the other side of it. But yeah, I don't know. I'm I'm more grounded in ways that I didn't think I would be. So that's awesome. Um, my last question for you, Chandra, is we've touched on a couple different topics and and different parts of your journey. I'm curious to know what is one takeaway you would want the audience to leave within this conversation. Um I think a lot of people at HBS feel the pressure of comparison. Like when you have access to so much opportunity and you recognize that you're privileged to have that access, it is so easy to want to clamor for whatever you think is gonna be the most, the highest ROI way to cash out on that, cash out on that opportunity. And I think the like truly best thing you can do with your time at HBS is keep pressure testing what's right for you. Like go see what those options are. Sure, understand if maybe you want to make a complete left turn into something new because it makes money or because it's intellectually interesting, whatever. But like the muscle that I hope that people train over time is being able to see a shiny object and turn away from it because it's not for them. And that is what a lot of my time has been is reinforcing that, um, reinforcing like knowing who I turn to for difficult decisions. I was choosing between two job offers, and one was more the shiny object, and one was more uncertain. And, you know, because of the two years here and my time before, I was able to make the choice that was right for me. Um, so I hope that people listening continue to tune like how to understand their intuition and build, build communities and family that are going to help them see themselves when they can't and get after it. Yeah. I I love it, Chanda. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. You are you're so fabulous. Thank you for sharing your your nuggets of wisdom with us, and thank you for joining the podcast. Yeah, a pleasure.