Arnab Roy Choudhury
Rutgers Executive MBA, Rutgers Business School
Age: 48
“Generalist by design. Synthesizer by instinct. Citizen of everywhere, rooted in purpose.”
Hometown: Springfield, New Jersey, by address. By lived experience, a citizen of two continents, four touched, and every culture that has quietly made me feel at home somewhere along the way.
Family Members: Married to a Superwoman, my wife, who makes it all possible. Father to Twin Bwoyz, who are my greatest sidekicks. And proudly serving as the family’s CTO: Chief Transport Officer.
Fun fact about yourself: Two decades, three countries, countless stories. I started my career in India, curious, wide-eyed, and unsure of what lay ahead. Then came Singapore. Then the United States, where I am rebuilding and rediscovering myself every single day. Each chapter has had its own flavor: India was spicy masala chai, warm, complex, and full of surprises. Singapore was creamy kopi, smooth, efficient, and quietly profound. The U.S. is bold black coffee, direct, ambitious, and never lets you sleep in. Through it all, people, places, and curiosity have been the constants that shaped everything else about me.
Undergraduate School and Degree: Bachelor’s degree in Business Studies from Delhi University (India) with a specialization in Marketing and a post-graduate diploma in Media Studies from Xavier Institute of Communication (India). Followed now by a Master of Business Administration with a focus on Strategy, Innovation, and Finance at the Rutgers Executive MBA. This is not because the credentials needed stacking, but because the thinking did. Being a generalist doesn’t mean knowing less. It means seeing more.
Where are you currently working? I am currently navigating a deliberate balance among three roles, each distinct and purposeful. As a Communications Advisor, my anchor client is the U.S. Soy Export Council, where I work at the intersection of global agriculture and strategic communications. Concurrently, I serve as the communications and social media voice for the Rutgers Executive MBA program. This role has grown the program’s LinkedIn presence by 665% in organic impressions and over 1,500% in engagement, driven by a 1,540% growth in clicks and 1,000% growth in comments, in just a few months. And in the true spirit of an EMBA cohort that builds together, I also support DeLintt Frontiers, a venture founded by my batchmate that unlocks unused land through short-term rentals. Three clients, three industries, but one throughline: the belief that clear, purposeful communication is what turns good ideas into movements.
Extracurricular Activities, Community Work and Leadership Roles: My career has never moved in a straight line, and neither has my commitment to giving back. Through IABC, I contribute to my professional community at the highest level. Most notably, I served as the Chair of the IABC World Congress, the premier global gathering for communication professionals. It is where I show up not for the credential, but for the conversation: to connect ideas across industries, borders, and disciplines in the way that only a room full of practitioners can.
Within the EMBA program, I founded and organized the Cohort Corner Pop-Ups. It’s an informal, intentional gathering built on a simple belief. Earlier this year, the Davos Summit talked about the “spirit of dialogue,” but that spirit doesn’t just show up on global stages. It’s practiced in small groups, by listening more than we speak, asking better questions, and staying at the table even when we don’t quite agree. Dialogue isn’t a conference outcome. It’s a muscle. These pop-ups were my way of making sure we kept exercising it, among other priorities.
It is a little early for the school awards, but I have been shortlisted for the Lewis H. Kerman Expedition Prize.
Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? My proudest extracurricular achievement has been creating a video testimonial series that is now becoming part of the program’s living history. I came into this program as someone who has spent a career telling other people’s stories. I thought I knew what that meant. Then I sat across from my classmates. They were the people I had studied with, debated with, and traveled to Japan with. I asked them what this program actually meant to them. That changed how I viewed it.
It was finding the thread of someone’s story, the moment that shifted how they see themselves, and the reasons behind the big decision. From there, it involved shaping it into something that honors both the truth of their experiences, and the weight of what Rutgers Executive MBA (EMBA) gave them: that is not just communications work. That is closer to a privilege.
These are not produced testimonials. They are windows into lives genuinely shaped by a program that took a chance on all of us. When this series goes live on YouTube, it will reach prospective students deciding whether to take the EMBA leap. It will reach future cohorts who will carry the same tensions we did, family commitments pulling one way, work demands pulling another, and the stubborn decision to keep going anyway. And it will reach the families trying to understand why their person gave up weekends, sleep, and comfort to be here. I am grateful for this opportunity to give back to the Rutgers EMBA that gave me so much more first. And it is something I will cherish long after I have graduated. Communication at its best doesn’t broadcast. It creates belonging. And sometimes, if we are lucky, it creates a record that outlasts all of us.
What achievements are you most proud of in your professional career? Two moments stand out across very different chapters. Early in my career, I was the account lead during one of the most significant crisis moments for a Big 4 client in India. The pressure was immense, the stakes reputational, and the margin for error nearly zero. Navigating that with strategic clarity under fire shaped how I think about leadership under uncertainty.
More recently, leading my EMBA Capstone team’s consulting project for New Jersey Entertainment Developers reminded me why range matters. NJED is building a new state-of-the-art movie studio and tourist attraction in New Jersey. Rather than deliver a conventional playbook, our team proposed “The Circuit,” a visionary concept where studio production becomes interactive with tourists, and tourists become interactive with gaming and esports events. This would drive revenue around the clock while creating up to 3,000 new jobs for the state. Professor Doug Brownstone wrote to our program director, calling the presentation among the best he had seen at Rutgers since he started. He also noted that the client had already said our thinking was making a real difference in their planning. That note meant more to me than any award. It was proof that strategic thinking, when it’s genuinely bold and genuinely clear, doesn’t just impress a room. It moves a project forward in the real world.
My career across India, Singapore, and the United States – spanning media, manufacturing, consulting, banking, cybersecurity, and global agri-business – has never moved in a straight line. But every crossing has been an accumulation. And that accumulation, that range, may be the most durable comparative advantage I’ve built.
Who was your favorite MBA professor? Professor Farrokh Langdana, without hesitation and with deep gratitude. During our 3-credit summer EMBA seminar in Japan, he offered an analogy I haven’t been able to put down: the trailing lights of a train. That light, he suggested, is not a signal that the journey is over. It is proof that the journey happened. Everything it left in us doesn’t fade with the light: the questions we know how to ask, the leaders we studied, the trust we built with people who challenged us. He taught me that uncertainty is not the absence of direction. It is the condition in which we choose one. I am profoundly indebted to him for helping me see that choosing Rutgers EMBA was a priceless decision, in more ways than one.
Why did you choose this school’s executive MBA program? That was easy. No program offers the combination of value, depth, and network that I felt I already belonged to from the first conversation.
But more than the program itself, it came down to three commitments I made upon entering:
(1) Presence over performance: Show up to understand, not to be heard.
(2) Curiosity over certainty: The most powerful thing you can say in any room is “tell me more.”
(3) Courage over comfort: History didn’t change because people stayed quiet.
The Rutgers EMBA program gave me the room to live all three.
Give us a story during your time as an executive MBA on how you were able to juggle work, family and education? The better question might be: Will there ever be a time we don’t juggle? Our attention is pulled and pushed in ways we didn’t think were possible, and that’s the price of progress. What the EMBA gave me wasn’t balance. It gave me better mental models for making hard choices. As I learned in International Trade, when we make the right strategic choice, we’re better off in the long run, even if the short run is uncomfortable. The phrase that kept coming back to me was, “Show up before you feel certain”. I’ve spent too much time waiting for the right mood, the right moment. Turns out practice is often the invitation, and the feeling shows up later. Sometimes fashionably late. I’m still figuring this out, honestly. But I’ve shifted from “what if it goes wrong” to “what if it’s interesting.” That shift made everything more manageable and more alive.
What advice would you give to a student looking to enter an executive MBA program? Come in as a student, not as an expert. We were admitted because of what we’ve done, but we’ll grow because of what we’re willing to unlearn. The most valuable thing in that classroom isn’t the curriculum. It’s the cohort. Treat every peer as a professor. Ask more questions than answers. And show up, fully and presently, because the compounding effect of real discourse, real relationships, and real challenge is something no online module can replicate. Also: start before you feel ready. The program will meet you there.
What was your biggest regret in business school? I didn’t get to spend more time with everyone. In a cohort this accomplished, every conversation is an unlocked door, and there aren’t enough hours to walk through them all. Every person carried a story, a passion, and a perspective I wanted to know better. That’s precisely why I founded the Cohort Corner Pop-Ups: I refuse to let the program’s end be the relationship’s end. The best chapters of this cohort, I believe, are still being written.
What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? The Rutgers Executive MBA didn’t just talk about AI. It put it in our hands. As part of the Class of 2026, we had access to a dedicated AI Certificate — “AI Prompt Engineering for Business Problem Solving” — designed by Professor Hussein Issa of the AIS Department. It focused on practical, hands-on skills using Gemini in real business contexts: crafting clearer prompts, refining outputs, applying guardrails, and making faster, better decisions. Beyond the certificate, we heard directly from industry leaders like CIO Nabil Ahmed, who brought an insider view of how organizations are actually integrating AI at work. Our Supply Chain and Marketing elective courses dedicate entire classes to understanding AI’s implications and its effective utilization.
But the deepest insight wasn’t in any syllabus. It was this: AI will continue to outperform in narrow execution. Our advantage lies elsewhere. I call it HEI (read HEY), the Human Edge of Integration: judgment, context, empathy, and the ability to hold complexity together across stakeholders who don’t naturally speak the same language. The best use of AI isn’t to replace that. It is designed to free us up for it. Let the tools handle the mundane. Save your human edge for what matters. HEY, what’s up? – Now, that’s a conversation starter.
What was the main reason you chose an executive MBA program over part-time or online alternatives? Presence. I needed to be in the room with people who had real stakes, real careers, and real perspectives. Online and part-time alternatives offer flexibility, but they often sacrifice friction. It turns out, friction is where the learning lives. The debates, the disagreements, the late-night case study sessions, the summer seminar in Japan, the Cohort Corner conversations: none of that translates through a screen. I didn’t want a credential. I wanted a transformation. And transformation is a contact sport. Rutgers EMBA excels at it.
How did you finance your EMBA and what did you do to make tuition and associated costs more affordable? Personal savings, which meant waiting longer than I might have liked, and choosing deliberately when the timing was finally right. That patience turned out to be its own kind of gift. I chose this program, this moment, and this cohort. They are a convergence of all things great. The cost was real. The return has been immeasurable.
What is your ultimate long-term professional goal? I want to operate at the intersection of my “comparative advantage”: the synthesis of range, cross-industry pattern recognition, and the ability to translate complexity across audiences and geographies. My career has crossed enough rooms: from crisis communications in India to cybersecurity boardrooms to global agri-business conversations in the United States. I’ve come to believe the most durable advantage isn’t deep specialization alone. It’s the ability to connect dots others don’t see. Long-term, I want to lead at that intersection: building institutions, shaping strategy, and contributing in ways that outlast any title. What I take with me, after all, is only that which I’ve given away.
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