Network Capital MBA Insights Network Capital

HBS Professor | INSEAD MBA | Author of Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage



In this podcast you will learn 

1. Specific suggestions to transform negative perceptions, bias and adversity into competitive advantage 

2. How to make a super awkward meeting with Elon Musk into one of the most productive discussions

3. Unexplored nuances of gender and accent when it comes to promotion and career advancement 



Laura Huang is a Professor at Harvard Business School. She has spent her academic career studying interpersonal relationships and implicit bias in entrepreneurship and in the workplace. Her research has been featured in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, and Nature, and she was named one of the 40 Best Business School Professors Under the Age of 40 by Poets & Quants. She is the author of Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage, and the creator of the Princess Heroes book series for young girls.



Previously, she held positions in investment banking, consulting, and management, for organizations such as Standard Chartered Bank, IBM Global Services, and Johnson & Johnson. She received an MS and BSE in electrical engineering, both from Duke University, an MBA from INSEAD, and a PhD from the University of California, Irvine.

In this podcast you will learn:

1. Practical insights from the INSEAD MBA experience 

2. What is it actually like to work at Amazon 

3. How and when should you leave a job you love to do something you are passionate about



Radio broadcasting, advertising agencies, Google, Amazon,... Christian Schoepke's career path has almost as much variety as his latest product focus: donuts. He left the sexy world of film licensing at Amazon's Prime Video service in 2019, only to find himself in-midst of barrels of hot frying oil on a London street food market. Holding an undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto and an MBA from INSEAD, Christian now combines his experience in marketing (agencies), negotiation (Amazon) and product development (own media company/Google/Amazon) to try himself on building a food brand, Little Didi's Donuts. Born in Germany, he moved to Canada at the age of 17. In 2002, he founded a Web-based agency with the world's largest roster of multi-lingual voiceover talent. In 2006, he co-founded a media production company that pioneered social media platforms and interactive video experiences. His work with Toronto agencies was featured on CNN, Buzzfeed and TechCrunch. And in-between the lines for when things didn't go as planned in his career, Christian dedicated himself to cleaning toilets and worked in construction.



In this podcast, Christian shares his journey that led him to make such a drastic life change, the shift in mindset required to move from a 'fun activity' to a 'business-building,' as well as how he approached risk in setting up his venture. 

In this podcast, you will learn:

1. Principles of career pivoting: fire-fighting to law to investing 

2. Actionable advice for cracking Harvard Business School MBA admissions

3. Art of reaching out and writing effectively 



Chia Jeng Yang 谢征阳 is a Principal at Saison Capital, a Japanese-backed fintech-focused fund (early-late stage, debt, fund of funds) that invests globally and in any vertical, but especially in emerging markets: Southeast Asia, India, LATAM, etc.



Previously, he was the 5th employee (Investment Manager/Country Launcher) for Antler, an early-stage VC/pre-team accelerator, and helped built Daraz, an e-commerce company that was acquired by Alibaba, in Pakistan/Sri Lanka for Rocket Internet. He is a consumer angel investor, with portfolio companies in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt, London and the US, and founded Shaper Impact Capital, a global platform for impact dealflow and startup support, currently in 20 countries.



His educational background includes a law undergraduate from Cambridge, and a deferred Harvard MBA. His previous work and writing (including topics on consumer investing) has been featured by CNBC, e27, Yahoo!, TechinAsia, etc.

In this podcast, you can expect to learn:

1. What Stanford looks for in their MBA applicants and what distinguishes successful applications 

2. Framework for formulating career goals

3. Art of decision making and the importance of saying no



Rohan is a student at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to Stanford, Rohan was on secondment to the Government of India, working at the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation. A chemical engineering graduate from BITS Pilani, Rohan worked with Accenture Strategy and volunteered with his university's startup network. He likes humor, running, and random trivia

In this Network Capital podcast, you can expect to learn the following:

1. The pros and cons of a career plan, especially a deep-dive on whether you need an overarching plan to succeed 

2. The principles of risk taking when it comes to career choices

3. The art of following curiosity with diligence and a sense of wonder 



Siddharth Jhawar works at Disney. He was a management consultant at Bain and a former Director at the Government of India, He is an alumnus of IIT Delhi, a CFA charter holder and Harvard Business School. You should also check out his standup comedy and his Harbus article "You Are Not Eligible: International Recruiting at HBS" - https://harbus.org/2017/23106/

In this podcast, we will learn about Pranav's path to Harvard Business School and explore why he decided to repivot his career after consulting, private equity and an MBA. 



Pranav is the Domain Architect and Vice President of the Large Scale Education Programmes at Educational Initiatives. He was a member of the development team of the Mindspark product, which is a technology-based, personalized and adaptive learning tool for Mathematics and Language. He led the operations of the Mindspark Centres in urban slums of Delhi and Mindspark’s subsequent deployment in government schools of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.



At EI, Pranav has also overseen various large scale student assessments done in Bihar, Haryana and Tamil Nadu and was invited by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to be part of the RMSA’s Joint Review Mission. Pranav has spoken extensively on various panels in India and the USA on various subjects such as student assessments, educational technology, and the critical need for a ‘Science of Learning’ as a pre-requisite to ensure students learn with understanding.



Prior to EI, Pranav studied Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and and finished an MBA at the Harvard Business School, after working at Boston Consulting Group and GTI Private Equity in USA and India.