Originally from India, Ritu Deswal (FTMBA ‘26) came to Darden after four years with ZS Associates working in their Strategy & Transformation team. At Darden, she serves as VP of Careers & Alumni Engagement for the Darden Student Association (DSA), a Board Fellow with Charlottesville-Albemarle Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (CASPCA), a Second-Year Coach, and VP Events for the Global Business & Culture Club. She and her family are passionate about street dogs, caring for 15 of them back home. After interning with Kearney’s Private Equity Group in New York, Ritu plans to return to the firm full time post-Darden.
Could you share a bit about your personal and professional background, and what led you to pursue the MBA at Darden?
I’ve always been a “business kid.” My interest started at thirteen, when I helped my father file government tenders online. I was the only one in my family who understood computers, so I naturally became the bridge between our small business and a rapidly digitizing Indian ecosystem. That early responsibility shaped how I learned to problem-solve, adapt quickly, and take ownership long before I knew those were business skills.
Pursuing a Bachelor of Commerce (as “business” as a degree can get in India) felt like a natural next step, and after graduation I joined ZS Associates, a healthcare consultancy. Consulting exposed me to complex, ambiguous problems and cross-functional collaboration, work that felt energizing and familiar, echoing the way I’d grown up navigating challenges.
What my Commerce degree and early career didn’t give me, however, was a global perspective, an understanding of how business principles shift across cultures, institutions, and policy environments. I chose Darden to build that broader lens and to learn to think like a general manager rather than a functional specialist. The MBA has stretched me in exactly that way, pushing me to look beyond frameworks and into the human, cultural, and systemic factors that shape business decisions. Experiences like the Darden Worldwide Course to Finland and Estonia have been especially impactful, expanding how I think about innovation, governance, and the many different ways countries and companies build prosperity.
What were you hoping to learn or experience by joining DWC Finland & Estonia? Did the experience confirm or challenge your expectations?
Much in line with why I chose Darden for my MBA, what immediately drew me to the Finland & Estonia DWC was the chance to understand how two nations that appear similar from afar could evolve so differently, economically, culturally, and politically. The program opened with a grounding overview of both countries’ histories up to the dissolution of the Soviet era in 1991. That context fundamentally changed how I interpreted everything we saw afterward, from how (and why) Finland built a strong welfare state to how (and why) Estonia placed its bets on digital infrastructure and radical transparency (I won’t give away the “Why” secret for next year’s class :P).
What surprised me was how the learning extended beyond understanding just these two countries. The course closed with a thoughtful discussion on whether Finland’s and Estonia’s models could be exported elsewhere. It’s tempting to look at Estonia’s 100% digital adoption, for example, and assume other nations could simply replicate it. But even a country of fewer than 1.5 million people took nearly 25 years to reach that level of digitization.
The experience didn’t challenge my assumptions about how fast transformation can occur; instead, it challenged my perception of what lies beneath that speed. What looks like rapid progress from the outside is often the result of decades of consistent policy choices, cultural alignment, and societal trust, foundations that make the “quick” part possible.
What stood out to you most about Finland and Estonia — culturally, personally, or professionally? Were there any differences that particularly surprised or inspired you?
Finland is famously ranked the “happiest” nation on earth, and like most people, I expected that to show up visually, in noticeably cheerful faces or an overt sense of optimism (I may have been naïve in this expectation). But when we arrived and walked through the streets, that was not what I saw. In fact, during our very first briefing, I asked about this contradiction: how can a country be the happiest if people don’t appear outwardly expressive?
The answer was honest and refreshingly straightforward. Finland is not the “happiest” country so much as it is the most content. Content with how their society functions, content with their pace of development, and content with the balance they’ve created between individual privacy and collective trust. That nuance reshaped my understanding of what well-being can look like across cultures, not loud joy, but quiet stability.
Estonia, on the other hand, felt noticeably more carefree and expressive. There was an energy and lightness to the way people interacted and moved through their day, perhaps reflecting its youthful identity as a modern digital republic. The contrast between Finland’s calm contentment and Estonia’s spirited optimism was one of the most memorable cultural differences of the program, and it pushed me to rethink the many ways a society can define, and display, happiness.
Can you share a specific experience or moment from the course that deeply resonated with you?
One of the most memorable experiences for me was the traditional Finnish sauna followed by a plunge into the icy Baltic Sea. It was definitely not on my bingo card for the year (though I probably should have expected it when visiting the capital of saunas).
Standing at the edge of the water, I felt a kind of anticipation I am not used to. I am someone who often leans into discomfort in my academic and professional life, but doing so in such a visceral, physical way felt completely different. The plunge (even if it wasn’t much of a plunge for me to be honest) was shocking, hilarious, and unexpectedly freeing. It resonated with me because it captured a theme of my year since moving to the U.S.: saying yes to unfamiliar experiences and allowing them to reshape how I see myself and the world around me.
How did this global experience influence your understanding of what it means to be a global leader or decision-maker?
Culture is such a buzzword. We hear about it constantly in business school, we read case studies about it, and we convince ourselves that we understand it. But do we, really? This DWC made me realize how often we intellectualize culture without truly experiencing the ways it shapes behavior, expectations, and communication.
Being in Finland and Estonia brought that abstract idea into sharp focus. Small, subtle moments, like learning that Finnish professionals generally prefer not to be interrupted during presentations because it breaks their flow of thought, made me understand how easily a well-intentioned gesture in one culture can be interpreted differently in another. Our company hosts were incredibly gracious and responsive to questions, but they also helped us see that this preference is part of the wider cultural context.
It made me rethink what it means to be a global leader. It’s not just knowing facts about a country; it’s having the humility to observe before acting, the curiosity to ask why people work the way they do, and the flexibility to adapt your own style when necessary. This experience reminded me that global decision-making starts with cultural empathy, not just the version we read in textbooks, but the kind you develop by being present, noticing the nuances, and letting them shift your perspective.
How do you plan to apply what you learned in Finland and Estonia to your future career or leadership journey?
I walked away from this DWC with many takeaways, but the most meaningful ones for my leadership journey are:
(i) Appreciating differences, not just acknowledging them.
The program pushed me to ask different questions. For example, can a cultural or structural difference become a strength in a new approach, instead of an obstacle in the current one? Seeing Finland and Estonia lean into their unique histories, rather than trying to emulate larger nations, reminded me that effective strategy is rarely about copying; it’s about alignment between who you are and what you are trying to achieve.
(ii) Developing a more compassionate, contextual lens for every country — including my own.
Coming from India, I naturally found myself thinking about home: our scale, our population, our constraints, and our opportunities. But somewhere along the way, the comparison expanded. I realized it’s not just India; every country is operating within its own context, history, limitations, and aspirations, and we rarely empathize with that nuance in the present day. It made me appreciate that outcomes shouldn’t be compared without understanding the journey behind them. Every nation is solving its own “equation,” and this experience helped me view global development with far more empathy, curiosity, and respect.
(iii) Recognizing the power of long-horizon thinking.
One of the biggest lessons from Finland and Estonia is how much their present-day success stems from decisions made decades ago. It reminded me that meaningful change often looks sudden only because years of groundwork made that “sudden” moment possible. As someone building a consulting career, this reinforced the value of balancing quick wins with patient, systems-level thinking.
Together, these takeaways will shape how I approach my career: with more empathy, more context-awareness, and a deeper appreciation for the long arcs that shape progress around the world.
