CA: Dee Leopold is credited with bringing a previously unheard of degree of transparency to the admissions process? I know you’ve had your hands full settling in these past few months. Are you as committed to transparency going forward?
CL: Absolutely. It wasn’t that long ago that I was an applicant myself, just five or six years ago. So I very much see myself as a beneficiary of the transparency that was a hallmark of Dee. I benefitted from understanding what was happening in the admissions office when I hit submit. I wanted to know how applications were read, who read them, how many times.
Being on the other side of that I can very easily remember the anxiety that a process likes this entails, so I am very committed to relieving as much anxiety as I can. Transparency is key to that. I fully intend to keep up the Direct from the Director’s column. And I’ve spent these past several months out on the road being as transparent as I can, encouraging prospective applicants to know that we are going to provide as much insight into the process as we possibly can.
CA: What challenges does the MBA program face, in terms of recruiting the next generation of leaders to help shape the world we live in?
CL: I think our mission as an admissions team is to support this broader mission of the school—to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. Our part is finding those folks, letting them know the incredibly transformative experience they can have at Harvard Business School, helping them imagine themselves in an HBS classroom and then showing them the steps they can take to get here.
We think of this as our outreach portion. We hold events around the world as well as programs on campus. You may know about our Peek Weekend program. It was remarkable. This spring was the first time I was part of the program, which drew 150 or so college sophomores and juniors from STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) backgrounds, from women’s colleges and from family businesses to spend three days on campus.
These are people for whom business school may not have been on their radar, but they are exceptionally strong in their backgrounds. I was just roaming the halls and talking to people—mostly just observing. But I talked to many who said, “I had this preconception of what business school or Harvard is and now I have a much better idea.” We do things like Peek, Summer Venture in Management for rising college seniors, the 2+2 deferred admissions program for students in college or full-time master’s programs—these are all an effort to help us find that next generation of leaders.
Then, very purposely, when I was coming into this job and working with the team on how to devote my first few months, I decided I wanted to spend a lot of the time on the road. I wanted to know what are students thinking about, what alternatives do they have, what do they imagine they will get out of business school, and how close to reality is that? I’ve traveled to China, South America, throughout Europe and the United States—next I head to Mexico. As I meet with prospective applicants around the world, I want to learn about their careers to date, what’s on their minds, what kinds of things they are hoping to get out of the experience.
It has been a little bit of a road tour, but we see that as huge part of our mission—to get the word out about the transformative experience you can have at Harvard Business School.
CA: With Wells Fargo recently in the news, how do you seek out a candidate’s integrity and moral compass, to help ensure you provide opportunities to those who will use them for the better?
CL: This is something we think about a lot. We are not just looking for people who are talented and smart but who have strong morals and are interested in making a positive difference in the world. We are really looking, in the application, to get to know the person from top to bottom. We’re not just looking at their resume, but at what motivates them, what has guided them in the past.
The interview, of course, is the place where we get to dive deep. The interview for us is not a standard list of questions that we rattle off to every applicant or something we farm out to our alumni to do on our behalf. We take them incredibly seriously, and we use them carefully to assess what kind of leadership, morals, sense of community would this person bring to HBS.
Each interview is tailored. We will read the application in full before we sit down for the interview, and there will usually be two or three areas where we want to go deeper. But then a person might say something that is so intriguing that we end up spending lots of time on that.
CA: Speaking of the interview, HBS is one of the few schools that conducts “non-blind” interviews. What are you seeking in the interview, that perhaps is harder to discover from other areas of the application?
CL: I have been in so many interviews on the other side where someone has my resume and we are just bouncing along the surface of the resume. Here at HBS, we are trying to get to know a person beyond the resume. Sometimes a resume is a starting off point, but sometimes it’s something you wrote about in your essay or something a recommender might have mentioned. Here again, we are trying to understand candidates’ abilities as a leader, what kind of member of the community would they be—so the interview is not about staying on the surface but going deep. And, it’s a conversation.
CA: What do you see as the most crucial traits of a leader?
CH: It’s too hard to boil down to a couple of sound bites because leadership means a lot of different things, and that’s what people come to HBS to learn about. I will say that it is decidedly not just people with “leader” or “president” in their titles. Leaders are people who are interested in others and who want to make a positive difference.
One of the things that I learned here as a student about leadership is that a good leader knows how to listen very well. In the case method there are 90 people in a classroom, and I have never more actively listened in my life than in an HBS classroom. “What is she saying? What context does she bring?” Going back to consulting after HBS, I was an entirely better leader and much better with my clients because I am a better listener.
CA: A leader leaves a legacy. What do you aspire your legacy to be, after you exit this leadership role?
CL: I’m not thinking about that right now. I don’t think this is about me. I think it is about the school, and I feel honored to play a part at this great institution that I feel very lucky to have been admitted to and very lucky to have attended.
CA: Do you anticipate making changes to the application process in the next year?
CS: I have the great fortune of walking into an operation that is very well run, by an extremely talented and experienced team, so I don’t foresee any big changes. Of course, we are always looking at how do we make it better, how can we relieve as much anxiety as we can, what information can we share—so as soon as those opportunities come, we will take action. But I see no big changes to the process in the near term.
CA: Do you have Dee on speed dial?
CL: Laughs. Dee played a major role in the creation and implementation of the 2+2 Program. It was previously a responsibly that was shared among many people in this office, and now she is running it soup to nuts. To that end, Dee and I have a weekly one-on-one meeting just like I have with all of my direct reports. But you better believe I am asking her other questions as well—it’s not just questions about her work on 2+2. She is just this incredibly experienced and steady hand, and I am fortunate to be able to partake of her wisdom little by little.
In case you missed it, check out our recent Real Humans of MBA Admissions piece for a little insight into Losee the real person.
