1. Hometown: Chicago, IL
2. Current city: New York, NY
3. Other institutions attended & degrees/graduation year: University of Pennsylvania: The Wharton School, MBA 2016; Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, Lauder Institute, MA, International Studies, 2016
4. Current Role: Principal, GroundForce Capital (Consumer-focused growth equity firm)
5. How did your career start and what are some highlights? I started my career in investment banking; first in London while studying abroad at Georgetown, and then in New York where I began full time work after graduating. Three of the companies I worked for in the early part of my career were global organizations that weren’t based in the U.S.; I was frequently working on cross border and multinational projects and with teams that were spread globally between North America, Europe, and Latin America. The SFS and IBD prepared me extremely well for working in these types of settings. Although I was in the private sector, my work was regularly impacted by public issues like international trade, currency, the flow of labor, and cultural and linguistic differences.
6. What is your favorite IBD memory? Marc Busch’s class came as close as possible to experiencing the kind of intellectual and entrepreneurial challenges I would later encounter in the real world, and I am extremely grateful for having had that exposure while at Georgetown. His course, along with the rest of IBD, offered me an opportunity to step well outside of the confines of the typical classroom. As an undergraduate I distinctly remember initially feeling overwhelmed by the intensity of the challenging standards that I was held to at IBD, even amidst the backdrop of the SFS curriculum. Learning alongside graduate students who had already spent years in the real world, I was able to build confidence about the many directions my career could take post graduation thanks to the IBD program.
7. How did your experience in IBD prepare you for your career? It was motivating and ultimately rewarding to get such detailed and personalized feedback from Professor Busch and others in the program on my work, knowing that this was a preview of what I might expect to see post graduation, and in retrospect I feel that my experience in IBD gave me an edge in the early years of my career. IBD was truly a level up in terms of the level of critical and strategic thinking required — there was often no right or wrong answer to any particular assignment, forcing you to innovate and come up with compelling arguments and solutions.
