As those of us here in the United States attempt to work off hearty Thanksgiving meals, some are still reflecting on the things for which we’re thankful. In that spirit, our Fridays from the Frontline post today comes from Nikita Sunilkumar, a first-year MBA student at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
Sunilkumar, a California native who worked as a production engineer at Boeing before business school, entered Kellogg as part of a record-breaking class made up of 43 percent women. As she shares here, she took part in an eye-opening exercise as part of the school’s Women’s Business Association led by Kellogg Professor Victoria Medvec, one designed to help participants recognize and appreciate the remarkable talent of their classmates. Our thanks to Sunilkumar for sharing her thoughts—and for business schools across the globe working toward gender parity.
The following post was republished in its entirety from the Inside Perspective, Kellogg’s full-time MBA student blog.
It’s a statistic that has floated around since orientation and pre-term, but I think it bears repeating: the Kellogg class of 2017 has a record percentage of female students, and at 43 percent of an incoming class of 492, those students are poised to make a big impact. I had a chance to feel this impact quite viscerally when I walked into the Allen Center a few weeks ago for the first annual Women’s Welcome Event hosted by the Women’s Business Association (WBA).
All the spectacular diversity among my classmates was on full display. Bright voices and smiles filled the room as greetings were exchanged between old friends and new. Introductions were made among those from vastly different professional and personal backgrounds in a cacophony of accents and languages, and the somber black suits of a stereotypical business meeting were replaced with a riot of color and style.
I would have been hard pressed to find any one characteristic to fully define the group around me, at least until Professor Victoria Medvec stood up to lead us in an exercise. She noted that women often don’t voice their own accomplishments in business settings as often as men do, and challenged each of us to introduce ourselves to the student seated alongside us by emphasizing our unique strengths.
Prof. Medvec reconvened the group and asked students to highlight their neighbors and share these accomplishments with the whole room. As each student spoke up, it became clear we were all united by a common theme: talent.
Among our ranks we have highly accomplished managers, consultants, bankers, scientists, veterans and other professionals, and each person at that first WBA meeting is someone I can’t wait to get to know better over the next two years. Certainly part of my motivation is wanting to build a strong professional network among my peers, but I’m mostly excited about being around the kind of people I met at the Allen Center that day: friendly, enthusiastic and generous about sharing their successes while promoting and supporting each other.
As the weeks have passed I am happy to say that my initial impressions have only deepened: the Kellogg culture is truly “high impact and low ego,” as promised.
Each new conversation reveals something interesting or admirable about a classmate or a faculty member; questions for information are never ignored and offers to share more are always forthcoming. There is no shortage of inspiration, from second years and the many projects they have undertaken within and outside the Kellogg community, to the faculty and administration, who clearly share a high regard for each other as well as the work that they do.
As the days pass, I find that I hardly notice how many amazing women are part of the Kellogg community, and I’m impressed by that most of all. When so many business and institutions struggle with creating a culture of inclusion, the fact that it seems so effortless at Kellogg is both uplifting and inspiring. I look forward to doing my part in keeping this particular Kellogg ‘tradition’ alive and well for future students.
