My son Francesco was 3 months old when I started at HBS in August 2014. In the winter break of my EC year, my little daughter Giulia Maria was born. Francesco was 2 and a half and Giulia Maria was 8 months old when I started my job at Microsoft in Silicon Valley right after graduation.
Since my husband and I were starting a family at the same time I was starting my MBA, I applied only to schools that met the following two criteria:
Located where my husband would have been able to relocate with his job;
Was a top school. Since we were moving out of our home country of Italy (and literally out of our lives) our financial, emotional, and time investment had to be very much worth it.
HBS matched both criteria, and when I got accepted, I simply had no doubts. Three years post-graduation, I have never thought once that I could have made a better choice, and here’s why.
ATCHING AMY CHU, M.B.A. ’99, stride through Midtown Comics in Manhattan’s Times Square is like watching a queen visit the heart of her realm. The staff know her, of course. She looks up a few graphic novels by writers she knows, then heads upstairs to search for some of her own back issues, breezing past posters of characters she’s written for DC and Marvel: Wonder Woman, Deadpool, Red Sonja, Poison Ivy, Green Hornet.
At 51, Chu is an established comics writer, working for the biggest publishers on some of the biggest titles in the business. She’s living any comics nerd’s fondest childhood dream. It just was never her dream. As a kid, Chu hadn’t wanted to be comic-book writer—or any kind of writer. She certainly never planned on telling stories about antiheroes in spandex or metal-bikini-clad warrior babes for a living.
In fact, before 2010, the closest she’d come to writing a comic book was creating a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation in her old life as a business consultant. “It’s not the same,” she says now. “No one says, ‘I was so moved by your PowerPoint presentation.’” But perhaps there were clues to Chu’s destiny in her early life. Born in Boston, she went to high school in Iowa, an experience she now describes as “fairly traumatic.” Chu was nerdy and shy and one of the only Asian kids in town, and her dream was to play soccer. Only one problem: her school didn’t have a girls’ team. When the school district forbade her from trying out for the boys’ team, Chu’s parents sued and won under Title IX. She joined the boys’ team. But the first time she stepped onto the field to play, the opposing team walked off en masse—forfeiting the game as a political statement, rather than face a female opponent.
She remembers the experience as mortifying. But it stood her in good stead when she eventually made it to Wellesley College, where she completed a double degree in East Asian studies and architecture, in a joint program with MIT. “You sue under Title IX,” she jokes. “That’s a really great thing to get you into a women’s college.”
My decision to pursue entrepreneurship, often referred to as a lonely path, partly stemmed from the flexibility to create an environment compatible with my preferred style of working – quiet, intentional, and thorough.
How do you know if an MBA is right for you? Hear directly from these 2+2 students on how the MBA has benefitted them so far.
The 2+2 Program is a deferred admission process for current students, either in college or full-time masters programs. It is comprised of at least two years of professional work experience followed by two years in the HBS MBA Program.
Upon graduation, admitted 2+2 students spend a minimum of two years (maximum of four years) working in a professional position in the public, private, or nonprofit sector. We encourage students from STEM and humanities disciplines to apply, but the 2+2 Program attracts accomplished students from all fields of study.
But how do you know if an MBA is right for you? Hear directly from these 2+2 students on how the MBA has benefited them so far.
Erica Santoni, MBA 2019 and co-president of the Women’s Student Association (WSA), had doubts about applying to Harvard Business School. Learn how the application process was the first of many transformations in her life, and more about her experience in pursuing diversity in the classroom and the workforce.
