Student Profile: Achieving Goals

Jamila Amarshi '11
Co-leader, Education Club
Post-MBA Position: Level Playing Field Institute

I worked for Human Rights First, focusing on fundraising and event planning. I also volunteered at a number of places, mostly working on art projects with kids in juvenile detention centers and schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx. I really enjoyed this work, and wanted to find a graduate program that would allow me to use the arts as a way to approach social change. I got a master's in education but also saw the benefit of an MBA. I view the education degree as a way to understand what I want to do and the MBA as how to implement it.

When I interviewed at other MBA programs, people didn't understand why I wanted to go to business school. Not only did people at Yale get it, my interviewer said, "You should talk to this person and this person." The school has the resources to help me achieve my goals.

I've loved all the opportunities I've had at Yale. I've been a leader of the Education Club and SOM's chapter of Net Impact, which has allowed me to hone my leadership skills. And I participated in the Global Social Entrepreneurship course, where we worked for months with an organization trying to make rural villages in India self-sustaining by creating village-based outsourcing centers where villagers can get jobs. We spent a week on the ground, and it was really rewarding to balance the theory we learn in the classroom with a client-focused project with real-world implications.

Now I know I can go into an organization and really make a difference, and ultimately make it much more effective.

Interviewed on January 31, 2011.