Student Profile: The Right Approach

Santiago Ferrer '10
Pre-SOM: Finance Officer, United Nations
Post-MBA Position: Boston Consulting Group

I worked in the public sector before SOM, spending five years at the United Nations. I got some amazing experience, including peacekeeping operations, where I negotiated agreements between the UN and the member states for all the military and civilian equipment that goes into peacekeeping missions. I traveled all over and, by the time I was 24, had a permanent contract that guaranteed me a job through 2042.

But I felt I had plateaued. I came to see the private sector as the best place for me going forward. I decided to go to business school and since I see myself having a career that covers both the public and private sectors, I wanted a school where I would be part of a community that would be involved in both. It’s amazing how Yale fit all my criteria so perfectly — a great school where I’d not only gain the skills I needed, but also a place where the focus is on creating leaders who understand how the world really works.

At my summer internship, the head of the New York office of BCG asked where I was from and when I told him Yale SOM, he talked about how much he loved recruiting from here because we’re different from other schools. We’re taught to think differently. We look at problems broadly, rather than from a single angle. It seems like common sense, but it’s not the way other programs train their students. I’ve seen, in my own career, how there’s no such thing as a public sector problem or a private sector problem. More and more, the lines between sectors and industries are blurring. It takes leaders with the right approach and understanding to confront these issues.

Interviewed on March 25, 2010.