May 20, 2012 is the official date of commencement activities for conferring the MBA degrees at Darden. On that date, we will have been students at Darden for 646 days. When asked in one of our final classes […]

It was almost exactly two years ago to the date that I hit the submit button.  As I rested for a moment behind my computer, I imagined my application zapping across the Internet — in scads of little 1’s and […]

Giants are sometimes made by stretching ordinary men and women under the right circumstances with the right tools. Those who study leadership can marvel at the powers that some people summon under challenging […]

To my great surprise, I recently found an elixir for modern automobile travel: a quick route along a scenic drive. For the first time in a long time, I was able to enjoy my journey, traveling along wide-open […]

My cohort and I traveled to China in September 2011, on a trip that was a core part of my MBA coursework. For years, I had been reading about the growing Chinese economy, the advances the Chinese had made in manufacturing and the robustness of their businesses. Indeed, upon landing in Beijing, I was in [...]

My first anniversary of matriculation at Darden is at hand. I remember this because I got married on Friday, August 13, and strangely I never forget that date. From the time I started my Darden journey until now, I am exactly one year older, one more year married and one more year a father to [...]

“Trust the process.”  This is the mantra of Darden. As we assembled as a class during the first week of school last August, many of our initial questions were greeted with the response, “trust the process”.  As we wondered aloud about the classes and schedule to come over the next 21 months, we were told, [...]

  Suddenly thrust into the role of the CEO, you find yourself with your company’s most recent financial statements in hand.  As you scrutinize them, you spot some issues that trouble you.  You start taking notes, perhaps re-evaluating the financial assumptions, re-running the numbers, or comparing your company’s performance to the market.  You…[Read more]

Key to the experience of the Darden MBA are the times my cohort come together at the University.  These sessions in Charlottesville are, in the vernacular of the University, called “On Grounds”, honoring Mr. Jefferson’s appellation for the campus as “The Grounds.”  These on grounds sessions are a fundamental part of the engine powering the…[Read more]

One of the most generous gifts you can give yourself in a lifetime is a good friend. And one of the most generous gifts an MBA experience can give you is a great learning team. For the last six months, my learning team has prepared readings and cases together to get ready for classes.  We collectively [...]

The transformation. I mentioned this concept in an earlier post, but I wanted to expand on it a little more. To me, this transformation represents the fundamental value proposition of a highly rated Executive MBA program. These days, we are bombarded by “makeover” ideas and “makeover” shows. All over the TV and Internet, people are [...]

As an executive student, we all try to balance our day jobs, our MBA studies and our lives outside of either.  The MBA for Executives at Darden is a full-time, 21-month long marathon, molded to fit around a full time job.  It’s intense; it’s designed to provide the students with the same MBA as the full-time students [...]

Most people call me the “Happy Lawyer! J”, my eponymous job title as an in-house lawyer at a well-known media and high technology company. I have been a lawyer, happily, for 15 years, and have experience in a wide variety of legal work over that decade-and-a-half, from litigation to regulatory work to transactional work. Prior [...]