Looking Back: Morgan Stanley Corporate Visit

Written by: Taylor Urisko
MBA Management, May 2018

On September 29, 2017, I heard Carla Harris, Vice Chairman of Global Wealth Management and a Senior Client Advisor, present “How to Win Your Way to the Corporate Suite” at the Morgan Stanley corporate visit. She was the best Executive Speaker I have heard at Hofstra! She has a tremendous amount of invaluable advice and pearls of wisdom from her 30 years of experience at Morgan Stanley.

           

I was extremely impressed by Carla Harris, by her presence, her speech, and her confidence. Her career advice was truly inspirational. As the Co-President of Zarb Women in Business and an advocate for women at all levels and industries of business, it is incredibly valuable to hear a woman speak, who has paved her own path to the top and succeeded in so many ways. My favorite pearls of wisdom that Carla gave us were: “Authenticity is your unique competitive advantage”, “Failures and challenges teach you things and they may be the only way you ever learn them”, and “Everything you experience is either a blessing or a lesson.”

           

One student asked how, with what he felt was unrelated job experience, he could break into the finance industry. He told her a little bit of background about himself and his experience, and Carla proceeded to role play an interview with him. She was him, and he was her, and it was a financial analyst interview.  He asked her, “So tell me about yourself” and Carla proceeded to introduce him so incredibly eloquently my jaw literally dropped. She highlighted so many transferrable skills and blew the entire room away with the two-sentence description about himself that she gave. The entire room gave her a standing ovation.

My advice to all MBA/MS students: get exposure whenever and wherever you can. Attend the Executive Speaker events, go on corporate visits and all of the other wonderful events that GBCS works so hard to host. They are such great experiences and you will always walk away with more knowledge than you walked in the room with. I’m so thankful to Graduate Business Career Services and Professor Luke Ng for setting up this incredible corporate visit.

I walked out of Morgan Stanley with six pages of notes and some great new questions and tactics to use on future interviews. If you would like to learn more from Carla Harris, you can get one of her books, Expect to Win or Strategize to Win. Safe to say I bought Carla Harris’s book Strategize to Win on the bus ride home!