UVA Darden was honored to host alumni, current and prospective students at UVA Darden DC Metro for an insightful panel about professional development. A joint event with Darden Admissions and the Career Center, the evening brought together women in all stages of their MBA journeys.
Senior Associate Dean Yael Grushka-Cockayne moderated the panel of four Executive MBA graduates and one current Part-Time MBA student.
Meet the Panelists:
Meghan Azevedo (EMBA ’18), VP, Director of Strategic Marketing Initiatives, T. Rowe Price
Jessica Block (EMBA ’20), EVP, Factor
Sandhya Chhabra (EMBA ’17), Owner/Physician, Albemarle Endocrinology PLC
Stephanie Galen (Part-Time MBA Class of 2026), Commercial Development Manager, Nestlé
Tiffani Moore (EMBA ’16), Manager, Federal Housing Finance Agency
I often have students that don't know exactly what they want to do. This is a process, and it doesn't end. You don’t have to find that job or transition by the time you graduate. The program hopefully gives you not only the community but the tools to continue thinking about it beyond the graduation date, and we hope to leverage some of the resources to achieve those goals.
Five highlights from the panel
1. Confidence
Sandhya Chhabra (EMBA ’17) didn’t know exactly what made her tick, but as an intellectually curious person, she knew an MBA would “open new doors.”
“I had run a big business, I had led a P&L, but I didn’t quite have all the tools to make me confident in saying I can do this, but I need help or expertise. Darden was super helpful in that way.
I live in Charlottesville and couldn’t look at other schools because I was running my private practice. Darden let me explore another side of my brain. My practice was busy and flourishing, and although I’m not an entrepreneur by definition I knew I wanted more.
I didn’t need an MBA from a
professional advancement perspective, because I was in solo private practice, but I needed it so I could understand what the rest of my journey was really going to look like. I finished in 2017, immediately started doing some consulting for the UVA hospital, and then the pandemic hit, and that consulting sort of fell by the wayside. But I was able to fully pivot back to being a clinician, and I had a greater level of confidence than I might have if I hadn’t gone to Darden.”
2. EQ vs. IQ
Tiffani Moore (EMBA ’16) credits the Learning Organizations course to successfully navigating collaboration in her daily work.
“I actually kind of grimace when people say empathy and EQ are soft skills. In order to do any job, you must have those, and they are hard, particularly when you don’t want to hear what people have to say. What I learned in that course has been a guide post for me of late, and it’s really important.
Darden puts the period at the end of this sentence: ‘What I was able to do before was good, but now I’m great.’
I don’t have a problem with boasting about that, because that’s what this program teaches you to do, and it’s not an egotistical way. What I learned in that course has helped me in dealing with people, and that’s the part that you don’t always learn how to do.”
3. Take what you learn in the classroom into the real world.
Stephanie Galen (Part-Time MBA Class of 2026), came back to school to learn how to speak the language of business.
“I would like to thank Marc Lipson and Finance I. It was a very fulfilling class for me, and it exactly what I meant when I said I came back to learn how to speak the language of business.
I very closely in my current role with our finance co-pilot in a business development unit. I now feel like I fully understand what’s going on, and understand the context of the decisions that I need to make on a daily basis.
It also helps me to understand how to think about the problems every day. Like any industry, CPG, there’s a lot of moving pieces and a lot of unknowns. Classes like Decision Analysis gave me the framework to understand how to make the decision, how to weigh the trade offs, and really feel confident in the direction I’m moving.”
4. Support moving foward
Jessica Block (EMBA ’20) had nothing short of a chaotic time while completing her MBA. When things in her company started to shift, the Darden Career team helped her market herself in a new way.
“I was running this big organization, a big piece of the company, in the midst of my Darden process. The CEO that I had followed left, and it was clear I had completed my arc there and it was time to go out on my own figure out what’s next.
At the time, I didn’t have the capacity to think about a massive career change. I had a little child, she’s slightly larger now. But this gave me the opportunity to think about what the culmination of my experiences and skills meant to the broader market. It was very helpful to interact with a lot of people giving you feedback, where sometimes it’s hard to read the ingredients from inside the bottle.
Jen Coleman and other resources could look at what I had done and suggest next steps. That was a helpful and supportive process for me in going out and marketing myself in the way that I wanted to be seen. I was taking all of what had come before and wrapping it up to tell a particular narrative that I thought would be helpful for me in getting my next role.”
5. Trust the process
Meghan Azevedo (EMBA ’18) values not only the tangible skills an MBA has given her, but the relationships with fellow students and faculty that came out of the experience.
“There is a Darden mantra that says, ‘Trust the Process.’
I was never a good process truster. I want the answer now, let’s go. Let’s get to the end. I have now learned to trust the process. It’s an intangible experience learning to trust the process, and learning to enjoy the journey. I think we all miss our Darden days, but there is so much about just letting it play out that I have been able to carry forward in my career that’s been super helpful to me.”
