Kavitha Sivasailam, MBA ’11

Another milestone!

Cannot believe that the H1 part of my last semester at MIT is completed. For those of you who are not familiar with the MIT Sloan semester, it is divided into 2 halves, H1 and H2. Some of our courses run for just half a semester, either in H1 or H2.

The last week of H1 was a crazy one. It is always a mad scramble to finish up assignments and project reports. I finished up one course in H1 - System Dynamics ( the rest of my courses are full term courses).  The last home work in System Dynamics ended up to be almost a mini-thesis analyzing the rise and fall of an airline called People Express that existed in the 80s. Some of my classmates will continue the next part of System Dynamics in H2, which will get into more detailed system dynamic modeling.

We have a week of SIP (Sloan Innovation Period) after the end of H1 classes, which is a break from regular classes. SIP week is for attending short classes on a range of topics taught by faculty and guest speakers. An interesting SIP class I attended was "Ethnic Diaspora Networks" by Elena Obukhova. Prof Obukhova's research looks at the effect of returning Chinese migrants on the emergence of a semiconductor design industry in Shanghai. This is a topic of great interest for me , being part of the Indian diaspora in the US. We discussed about ethnic Diasporas and how they have contributed to the growth of high‐technology firms in India and China. The interesting takeaway from this class for me was to see how managers and entrepreneurs could take advantage of an ethnic diaspora to take their businesses global.

We are all on vacation this week for Spring Break. Most of my classmates are away on exciting treks and trips all over the world. Exactly one year back for Spring Break I was in Japan for the MIT Sloan Japan Trek, enjoying the sights and sounds of Japan and the incredible Japanese hospitality. The March 11th earthquake and subsequent tsumani and nuclear crisis have indeed been heart wrenching. I pray for the people of Japan, and for a quick recovery for this amazing country.

I look forward to a few more days of rest and relaxation , before I start H2. I will be taking Global Strategy with Prof. Obukhova in H2 and also attend to attend several conferences before I leave Sloan. More on that later!

 

Dinner with a CEO

Last week as part of the CEO perspectives class , I had the opportunity to have dinner with the CEO of a biotech company. Every week, a group of students from the class are invited to have dinner with the CEO before heading to the class discussion. This is indeed the highlight of the class as I discovered. The dinner is a great opportunity to ask the CEO questions about his company, career etc in a small, intimate gathering.

As this was my first introduction to the bio-tech industry , I did a lot of reading to prepare for my dinner. Before the dinner we have to submit a memo addressed to the CEO on how we think we can turn his company around! This was indeed a tall order for someone who knew pretty much nothing about bio-tech and its business model! Not sure how my memo turned out in the end, but the dinner was certainly very enjoyable. It was an evening filled with interesting questions from the students to the CEO, and I sure savored every bit of it, included having the CEO answer my question!

It  was indeed a C-suite week at Sloan as in another class I had the opportunity to hear from the CIO of large technology company. Mid-week we also had the former president of Fidelity give a talk to the Sloan community as part of the Dean Innovative Leadership series. I am going to miss all these amazing talks and speakers once I graduate!

This week I switch gears from attending talks to giving exams for my classes :-). I have a business law exam coming up on Friday which I trying to prepare for soon...