Dear Sternies,
We are so excited to ring in a new year of The Oppy! As co-Editors in Chief, our goals this year are to continue telling the stories of Stern’s incredible graduate community, from career ambitions, to unique hobbies, to opportunities for adventure in the great city of New York. Please read below for a welcome note from Phuong & Snigdha:
Phuong:
My name is Phuong Tran (pronounced fuhng, or you can call me PTran, as many fellow classmates call me), and I’m ecstatic to be a co-Editor-in-Chief this upcoming school year. I’m a Langone student with a background in neuroscience & behavioral health, having worked in project management in the behavioral health research, social impact, and law sectors, all at NYU since I graduated from Emory University in Atlanta. Since my specialties are a bit all over the place, I am pursuing consulting after graduation to continue to hop from one project to the next. Amidst all of that, I have always loved to write and tinker with website design, and I missed the boat on partaking in journalism in undergrad or in my career, so when the opportunity (no pun intended) came around to join The Oppy’s editorial board as part of the Tech team, I couldn’t say no. So if you’ve made it to the bottom of the monthly newsletters and saw those GIFs…you’re welcome, I did the very hard job of picking them out myself on WordPress’ newsletter template. I know! No need for applause.
In all seriousness, I especially love to meet people and understand what makes them who they are, from their career to personal values to special talents. It’s probably because I studied the brain and realized I shouldn’t be a brain surgeon, but would rather interview brain surgeons instead. Being a part of The Oppy has given me the ability to meet and speak to so many members of the Stern community. Since starting at Stern in fall 2020, many of these encounters were over Zoom, but we have high hopes for that changing this coming fall. In running exciting columns highlighting Stern community members in Stern Spotlight, Stern Somebody, The Graduate, and yes, Stern Singles, we hope to build The Oppy’s presence on campus to the point where people read the newspaper and realize just how incredible this student body is. We want you to be in the know about business, Stern, New York City, and the world, but we also want you to realize that you are in the midst of life-changing friendships and connections during your time here. There’s a reason we have so many alumni willing to share the trajectory of their lives after graduation – they have all looked back fondly on their time getting an MBA, and we hope to chronicle all corners of the MBA experience with our newspaper.
We also believe The Oppy is a club that is truly accessible to everyone on campus, because we have no specialty function other than including all facets of campus life and the business world. So Finance, Marketing, Tech, Culture, Sports, every race and gender, are all welcome to apply for a position on The Editorial Board or write and/or be featured to provide students the opportunity (ugh! I did it again) to showcase the Stern experience. This spring, we hosted our first collaborative event with Student Government and the Langone Student Government, Hot Off the Press, and hope to host many more in collaboration with other clubs throughout the school year.
We also hope to invite more students in the community to submit articles, and continue partnering with various poignant “NYU” bars and restaurants in the vicinity of campus. I believe there’s something in The Oppy for everyone at Stern, and hope we can continue its legacy and do it justice!
Snigdha:
A heartfelt ‘Namaste’ to every reader! I am Snigdha Srivastava, a Langone Spring ’22 student, currently working at Google as a Security and Privacy Control Test Engineer, and have a sprinkling of cybersecurity, electrical engineering (from NYU!), computer engineering and classical music in my background. People call me Snig, Snigs, Snigdha; I can answer to any of these sounds without a problem. My name actually means calm and rejuvenating in Hindi, so I thought I’d spread that abundance around a little bit (jk, who is calm and doing a Stern MBA?). I am singing at the top of my trained but humphed-on-by-my-cat voice at being selected as the Editor-in-Chief with the famous, the smooth, THE PHUONG!
Jokes apart, it has been an incredible first semester and just plain luck to have discovered such an incredible bunch of overachievers who are totally clueless about their awesomeness, i.e., The Editorial Board.
The Stern Opportunity vibed with me for three reasons:
- I could network not for the sake of networking but really bond with like minded people
- I could contribute to something that will outlive me and be useful to the community
- I could research and write whatever the heck I want
This was enough for me to dive in, and dive I did as AVP of Relations. The treasure I found was beyond my expectations. Over the years, The Oppy has come close to being an institution itself! Being the Editor-in-Chief of the Stern newspaper is an opportunity (sorry for the repetition of pun) to redefine, reimagine and scale up a sixty year old prestigious publication being nurtured by countless generations of Sternies. Needless to say, we are standing on the shoulders of many and I feel nothing but gratitude and admiration for each and everyone.
In the coming academic year, we want to scale up the newspaper to serve everyone – every kind of reader, author, researcher, every kind of interest and every kind of curious student. I hope to learn a lot working with Phuong and The Editorial Board. At the same time, I aim to create leadership opportunities not just for the Board but for every interested student. To that end, the newspaper will be partnering up with significant initiatives across the campus and the city, while maintaining the steady fan-following of Stern Singles, humorous opinion pieces and authentic emotions beautifully presented in black ink.
If you are reading this, please know that the Editorial Board is here to serve you and welcomes not just your feedback, suggestions and thoughts but your written pieces as well. Our Editorial Board is also expanding rapidly. If you’d like to be a part of this monthly magic, please apply here!
A well-repeated theme by professors at Stern is to do what you never did before and see where it can take you. The newspaper is that opportunity (sorry, this the last time!) for me. What is yours?
Yours truly,
Phuong and Snigdha
The Stern Opportunity Editors-in-Chief
