DAVID MARCHICK; DEAN, THE KOGOD SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AT AMERICAN UNIVERSITY; BA, UC SAN DIEGO (‘88); MA, LBJ SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN (‘90);JD, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY (‘05).
When people ask me about the value of business school, I think about it like this: it’s about what type of business school you choose. Not all business schools are created equal. At the Kogod School of Business, where I’ve been the dean for nearly two years, we are constantly pushing the envelope and the expectation for what a business school education can deliver.
What do I mean?
Having the opportunity to invest millions of dollars of real money in the market by participating in one of our student-run investment funds. Meeting the CEO of your favorite local company (hi, Cava!) because we brought their leadership to campus to speak. Learning how to use artificial intelligence in your classes to ensure you’re ahead of the curve when it comes time to apply for jobs.
Every opportunity presented to you is an opportunity to learn, grow, succeed. And it is my mission as dean to present every student with as many opportunities as possible.
I’m passionate about this because I see exposure to innovation as a prerequisite for success in the real world. Not every Kogod student studies finance, but the opportunity to invest university funds in the market puts the power to learn a meaningful skill in their hands. Not every Kogod student wants to become an entrepreneur, but the opportunity to learn from successful small business owners and founders teaches them resilience and tact.
I think about the lessons I’ve learned from people in my own life who are innovators. My good friend and mentor David Rubenstein taught me to surround myself with people who are smarter and better than I am, because it’s an opportunity to learn. My colleague Tommy White, who runs the Veloric Center for Entrepreneurship here at Kogod and has built five companies, taught me to take risks, because doing so is an opportunity to succeed. (He won’t mind me saying that of those five companies, not all of them succeeded – but the risks were worth the gain for the ones that did!). Perhaps most meaningfully, our school’s namesake, the inimitable Robert Kogod, taught me to lift others up as a mission in life, because service to others is an opportunity to better oneself.
I think these innovators would agree with me: It is the access to opportunity and the desire to benefit from it that really sets people up to succeed.
My advice to students, then? Take every opportunity. Innovate. Sometimes fail. But ultimately, succeed.
