This is the first of what I plan to be a semi-regular feature: interviews with people in the world of higher education, with an emphasis on admissions. This first interview features Yasuhiro Karakawa of the Cornell Johnson MBA program and I would very much like to thank Karakawa-san for his generously detailed answers to my questions about Cornell Johnson.
Yasuhiro Karakawa (Cornell
’12) currently has two titles. He is the Representative Program Manager of the Center for Sustainable Global
Enterprise at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate
School of Management at Cornell
University, and in addition to this he is an Admissions Officer focused on the Asia region for Johnson’s
Full-Time MBA program. Karakawa-san
was kind enough to answer my questions about Cornell Johnson admissions, as well as his own experiences as a student there. As Karakawa-san notes at the end
of this interview, he will be
participating in an official Cornell admissions event in Tokyo on September 24, 2012. This will be a great
opportunity to learn more about Cornell
Johnson and I strongly encourage readers to attend and ask their questions. Details and registration is
available here. More info about life at the Cornell MBA is available here.
The Cornell MBA
Why in the end did you
choose to do your MBA at Cornell?
For me,
the Three Ps of the Johnson school made me decide to join.
The
first P is the Program. I had a strong interest in learning about Sustainability.
Sustainability means dealing with social and environmental issues while
creating new business opportunities for global enterprises. Johnson had a very
strong Sustainability program in that it had opinion leaders such as Professor
Stu Hart who contributed to the development of the concept of BOP (Bottom of
the Pyramid) and Professor Mark Milstein who directs the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise. Also, at the
Johnson
school, we have the Immersion program in the second semester of the first year during which students choose their interest from amongst areas such as
Sustainability, Investment Banking, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, or Strategic
Operations and get involved with their projects for 4 months. This is a great
opportunity for students to apply what they learn at school to real-world
issues and this would be extremely helpful for students who want to get
meaningful internship opportunities during the summer after their first year with the aim towards changing their careers after graduation.
The second
P is the People. Throughout the process
of applying, I found students at Johnson were tight-knit and collaborative. Since
we have a relatively small student body of 280 students and also spend our time
together in the small community of Ithaca, when I was a student we got to know
each other well and build great relationships that will last even after graduation.
I could feel this great culture among students when I visited the campus and participated
in the class. And this was not limited to the relationships among students. At
Johnson, the professors are very approachable. For example, when I visited the
campus to learn more about Johnson, I happened to attend Sage Social, a casual
get-together held every Thursday. While enjoying casual food and drink provided
by the school, the students, professors,
and school staffs mingled and spent time together with lots of smiles. I met Professors
Stu Hart and Mark Milstein there and had a short but great conversation with
both of them. That was definitely a key moment where I experienced the great
culture of Johnson and enhanced my aspiration to join.
The
third P is the Place. I have a daughter who was 3 years old when I enrolled. Choosing
a great living environment was one of the highest priorities for me when it
came to selecting a program. Of course, the definition of ‘great’ depends on
the sense of values of each different person.
But for me, Ithaca was an ideal community in that it was safe, friendly,
and offered lots of both natural and cultural richness. My two-year stay in
Ithaca proved that this was the best community for us. Though away from New
York city, Ithaca was not a prototypical rural community. People were
open-minded, intelligent and liberal. My family enjoyed gorges and lakes in
summer and skiing in the winter. And since I was self-sponsored, the high
quality of life regardless of the affordable living cost was amazing.
Your Experience as a Student at Johnson
Can you tell us about one
class which had an impact on you, and that you would recommend to future
Johnson students?
One of
the challenging things at Johnson is that it’s so difficult to prioritize your
interests and choose classes among lots of great interesting programs,
especially since we are allowed to take classes from other schools at Cornell.
But let me dare to pick up one program. My most memorable class was the Immersion Program that took place in the second semester of the first year.
I chose
Sustainable Global Enterprise immersion. From January to May, students form up
a team of 3 to 4 members and work on real projects to deal with social and
environmental issues by collaborating with companies. In my case, since I was
interested in learning about how to develop practical solutions for BOP
business, I chose a project in which we were asked to develop a solution for a Danish
renewable energy company so that they could successfully launch their clean
cooking energy in the Mozambique market. They aimed to replace the widespread
usage of charcoal there used among 80% of all households.
We worked
as a real consulting team. In the initial phase, we clarified the goals and
real issues of the project with the client and developed a hypothesis while
applying the theory and knowledge we had gained in the classroom. Then, during
Spring break, we visited Mozambique to analyze the market (a trip sponsored by
the client). This gave us an invaluable opportunity to observe the local
consumers lifestyles and the market environment in an ethnographical way, and also
allowed us chances to talk with key players including distributors and
communication agencies. With those on-hands local insights, we refined the
short-term and middle-term marketing strategy to launch and scale out the
clients business and made a final presentation to the client executive at the
end of the project in May.
The
fact that I could go through all the practical process to develop the solution
itself was definitely a great experience. But what was more meaningful to me
was that this was not a class in which we were ‘taught’ the technical ABC.
Instead, this class was definitely challenging and stressful in some phases
because what we tried to do was develop a new solution that hadn’t existed in
the market until then. In other words, we could not follow successful
cases. Instead, we needed to discuss,
create, try, and refine the solution. This experience nurtured in me the
mindset that I would not be afraid of creating the new solution with an out-of-the-box
approach, and this will be a meaningful basis for my professional career.
What was your life like outside of
classes? How much did you get involved in student clubs?
At
Johnson, I could see many students enjoy being members of the approximately 100 professional and cultural clubs at the school. This allowed them to get
the necessary knowledge and network for the careers they aspired to and helped
me enrich their lives through hobbies and sports.
As far
as I’m concerned, since I was prioritizing time with my family, I have to
confess that I was not so active in student clubs. I belonged to the Sustainable
Global Enterprise (SGE) club in which I played a role as a group leader for ‘Sustainable
Marketing’. For example, I organized on-campus seminars with professional
consultants or marketers who had done great projects in Sustainability. Also, I
was the President of the Johnson Japan Club, organizing a donation event for the
Tohoku earthquake and also I organized the Japan-Korea trip during the springtime.
Transitioning to Your New Career
Why did you decide to become a member of
the admissions team at Cornell?
There
has been only 1 -2 Japanese students every year for the last 5 or 6 years while
the number of students from Korea, China, and India has been rapidly
increasing. And I felt one of the main reasons why we could not secure a
certain number of Japanese students was that we could not successfully convey in
Japan the differentiated values of Johnson. It’s true that Cornell itself is a
very well-known name, but when it comes to the content of the MBA program, it’s
not well enough known at all. Since I used to work as a marketing and branding strategist
before going to MBA program, I felt that I could contribute to this great
community of which I truly enjoyed being a member as a MBA student.
In
addition, as I learned from the SGE immersion class, I was interested in
creating new value. In this case, what I mean is that I wanted to create a unique
professional career that others could not develop. This motivation drove me to
make a proposal to the school to establish a new executive education and
consulting program named the SGE Asia Program. This program aims to help Asian
companies (Japanese and Korean companies in the short term) develop new markets
by utilizing the expertise and network of the Johnson school as well as other Cornell
schools. That’s
why I get to work both as a representative program manager at the Center for
Sustainable Global Enterprise and an admission officer for the Japan market.
How would you describe Cornell's
strengths as a business school?
After
spending two years here in Ithaca, I have learned that the 3Ps are truly
Johnson’s strengths and are relevant to other students who choose Johnson. So, let me repeat that Program, People, and
Place combined make Johnson unique.
Another
strength is the wide network of Cornell alumni all over the world. Since
Johnson is the business school of Cornell, this means you can reach out to the
greater network of faculties and professionals of Cornell as a whole. The solid
Cornell network can help students in building a network for their job search,
new business planning, and so on. And this will be available as a great
resource in both professional and personal contexts even after the graduation.
In addition, if you
want to maximize your learning curve during the limited time of MBA program, I
recommend you to put yourself in an environment where you are the minority and
therefore have to learn how to manage. I found this particularly important to
me as a Japanese applicant to the program. Different from the schools where you
have a large number of Japanese peers and tend to behave in a group, you can’t
depend on other Japanese at Johnson because of the limited number of Japanese
there. In classes, for example, you have to expect to get cold calls when the
topic is related to Japanese companies and their recent struggles regardless of
their great success in the past. This should be challenging. But looking back,
I’m sure that this environment gave me the great opportunity to get the
survival skills such as being bold in communicating with other students and
building strong relationships actively with professors. In this sense, the fact
that we don’t have a large Japanese student body is another strength of
Johnson, I believe.
What advice would you give to applicants
to the program?
Whether
it’s a 1-year or 2-year program, you have to sacrifice lots of time and money
if you decide to come to a business school. These days we can easily access
information. If you want to get just the technical skill and knowledge of MBA,
there are lots of books and Japanese-based schools and online classes that are available
to you. So, you first need to ask yourself why you’ll dare to go to business
schools overseas. What is the ultimate reason why you need to go to business
school? What kind of professional and
personal career you want to pursue and how can each program fit to your goals?
Also, I
want you to think about how you want to contribute to the global community as a
leader in your professional and personal community. I know it’s important to
get a well-paying job practically, but at the same time, as a person who will
create new values to future generations, I want you to think about what is your
raison d'être and how you want to utilize
knowledge, experience, and network through your MBA in order to realize it.
Last but not least, I want you to be
bold and creative for your own life. It’s true that many MBA students think
going to world famous strategic consulting firms or investment banks is a
golden path as a professional career of MBA students. That is fine if it’s aligned
with your raison d'être. But don’t take the majority voice as yours since the
true value of the MBA is to get the mindset, knowledge, and network to realize
your own ideas. This applies to your MBA
selection process. Take your time to know about the differentiated values of
each MBA program and find the one that truly fits you. I’m sure that you may
feel attracted to applying for some programs without knowing so much about them
just because you know they’re famous MBA programs many students strive to join.
But what’s really important is whether you can envision a clear image that you
play a role as an irreplaceable member of that community and create your own meaningful
and unique story during and after that MBA program. How you spend your time during and after that
MBA program matters much more than how you get into the program.
With those things in mind, I hope that all
of you can enjoy the challenging but rewarding journey to apply for and gain
admission to the MBA program that is best for you and also that Johnson can be meaningful
to some of you. Feel free to contact me here with your questions. Thank you.
Yasuhiro Karakawa
MBA 12’, Johnson School of Management,
Cornell University
Representative Program Manager of Center
for Sustainable Global Enterprise / Admissions Officer
Please note: We will be holding the information session on
Sept 24 (2012) in Tokyo and providing the opportunity for you to
mingle with alumni in a casual manner. If you want to know more about our
program, personality and culture, please register from the URL below. Hope to
see you there!
John Couke
john.couke@gmail.com
