Press "Enter" to skip to content

Stern and Family3 min read

photo(15)Kanishk Jain, MBA Class of 2014

I have been given this opportunity to write this article for the Stern Oppy because I survived Launch with my sibling, Kanika, as a Launch captain. It is indeed a great feeling to have a member of my family in the same program at NYU Stern, and more so because my sister is also my best friend, trusted adviser, strategy consultant and life coach. However, we are both part of the Stern family, and thus this article is as much about all members of the Stern family, as it is about direct family. We will all continue to be friends, advisers, consultants, coaches and so on and so forth during our precious little time at Stern and in the long after life in the real world.

Launch inspired me to think differently and to look through the fixed notion of my purported career track at the possibilities that would open up if the mirage were to fade. The one thing that stands out after the confusion, awe and fun of Launch week has settled is the diversity of the class of 2016. I am amazed at this true diversity, which is very different from my previous experience of the word, in which most international students came from limited regions of the world. Stern’s diversity beats probability and demographic distributions – in one week I have spoken to classmates from elsewhere in North America, Central-South America, the center-south of Africa, Australasia, the Middle East, East Asia, a certain little continent called Europe, and bridges between continents (Russia and Turkey) ! One week of Launch is not enough to get to know all 409 outliers, but as I discover the rest of my class I would not be the least bit surprised if I run into somebody from Antarctica. This diversity is the core of my Stern experience and will prepare me not only for the world of today (which was outlined in the lightning-quick responses of Ian Bremmer on the first day of Launch), but for the unforeseen shifts in business power centers as the world plods on beyond the end of our B-school years. We will always have classmates to reach out to and to help us get set up wherever the next metaphorical valley of silicon may spring up. Diversity in our class at Stern is not limited to geographical diversity and expands into many other dimensions of the matrix. For example, diversity in the past careers of classmates – I am fortunate to be in a class with a writer of two books in Korea, a stage actor, a professional musician, film producers, lawyers, educational and environmental consultants, a book publisher, and people from every traditional career background.

To tie this diversity back to the original intent of this article, my sister and I could not be more unlike in terms of our career choices, personalities and talents, in spite of growing up in the same house in a beautiful Himalayan lake town (Nainital). That in itself is a thesis against stereotyping. Post-Launch, it is an ongoing project and a trans-Himalayan sub-Saharan pan-Asian all-American meta-astronomical challenge to break free of everything that we assume about one another and find the unique characteristics that each one of us brings to the Stern family.

Mission News Theme by Compete Themes.