Student Profile: Exploring Complexity

Henry Silver '12
Captain, SOM Hockey Team
Post-MBA position: Goldman Sachs

I'd been working in finance for three years and I needed to branch out. I knew Yale SOM would make me step outside my comfort zone. The integrated curriculum pulls information from across the business disciplines and really helps you gain a new perspective. By the second year, everything converges and you end up with a broad base of skills and knowledge.

Outside of SOM, I took a class at Yale Law School, which I loved. It was called "Hedge Funds and the Law." The professors were fantastic. I also took a couple of classes at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Yale has so much to offer, and moving between the schools is seamless.

There's a very diverse student body at SOM, which helps us all explore the complexity around any given issue. Students with differing frames of reference allow us to see that there are multiple ways of looking at a problem and often multiple issues that we're dealing with. It teaches you how to leverage the resources around you and gain an appreciation for how most problems are not simple open-shut situations.

I'm a career coach for the SOM Career Development Office, so I've learned to appreciate our students' diverse strengths. Part of what the CDO does is help students with widely differing backgrounds clarify the complexities of the job market and figure out what they're most interested in doing. Yale attracts a lot of top employers interested in hiring our students, and it's incredibly rewarding to see the students you've helped getting these great jobs.