Lea D. Poquerusse
MBA 2016
- Hometown: Paris, France
- Pre-MBA: Energy consultant in Boston and then Dubai.
Lea D. Poquerusse
Post Graduation Goals:
Role at the intersection of strategy and operations in a company with a fantastic culture and with a mission I care deeply about!
Favorite GSB Memory So Far:
Global institutions class taught by Condoleezza Rice in beginning of fall quarter. During the class, I pitched a course of action for a foreign affairs issue involving Russia and Estonia.
Monday
05:00am
I woke up early to write my Electronic Business group project. Business school is teaching me to be time efficient. Parkinson's Law: a task expands to fill the time you have allocated for it.
06:00am
I met up with Yubing, one of my best friends from China, to go grocery shopping for a small group dinner we are organizing. We have similar international backgrounds and from the start we have enjoyed many meaningful conversations about life. We haven’t caught up in a while so grocery shopping followed by a quick coffee was perfect.
07:00am
I rehearsed my Strategic Communications class midterm presentation (that I’m giving at 10am). I’m loving the class as it combines a fine balance of frequent practice and theory!
08:00am
I met with Rebecca Chopra, an advisor at the Career Management Center. I am self-sourcing my summer internship and she’s been a good resource for helping me define my strategy and connecting me to GSB alumni.
09:00am
My classmates and I delivered our midterm presentations in our strategic communications class. I chose to do mine on happiness and had a “star” moment in which I handed out The Happiness Project journal by Gretchen Rubins to each and every one of them. My presentation went very well!
11:00am
I helped organize admit weekend along with GSB staff and other MBA students. This past weekend was the round-one admit weekend and it is wrapping up with a BBQ. I enjoyed speaking with recently admitted students.
12:00pm
Met up with Annissa and Neha, my two group members for our Electronic Business class. We put the final touches on our report due tomorrow.
12:00pm
During today’s Microeconomics class we discussed risk. It is a small class with a great atmosphere. We do a lot of simulations in class – including playing with real dollars to help us understand game theory!
02:00pm
In my Data & Decisions (D&D) class, we are covering the beginnings of regression and we just got our midterm grades back.
05:00pm
Yubing and I cooked dinner for our Small Group Dinner. The GSB has this great program where students host dinners for each other and are matched with guests through a lottery-based system. Hosting costs are covered by the GSB. It is a great way for us to get to know our peers in a more informal setting than the classroom and get to a deeper level of understanding.
06:00pm
I love hosting Small Group Dinners. If the group is small enough I like inviting them into my Schwab room since it’s cozier than the common spaces. The group consisted of some of my section-mates from fall quarter.
08:00pm
Monday evenings between 9 - 11pm are my favorite time at the GSB! Two first-year MBA students share their story for 45 minutes each. The majority of our class crowds into our common room to eagerly listen to their stories. This activity creates a strong sense of community at the GSB. After TALK I head to bed.
Tuesday
06:00am
I don’t have class until 10am so I spent the first two hours of my day catching up on e-mail (I typically get 100+ e-mails per day, as most communication is done via email at the GSB) and doing some homework. I tried to advance my progress on homework as I won't have much time to work tomorrow.
08:00am
I took advantage of the gorgeous day by going for a run around campus. (I love California weather…winter here feels like summer where I grew up in France!) I’m training for a triathlon so I’m trying to exercise on a daily basis, although I must admit it’s challenging to exercise regularly given all the exciting things competing for my attention at the GSB!
09:00am
I had a two-hour finance class today during which we learned about debt, equity, and optimal capital structures.
11:00am
The GSB has a program called “Global Management Immersion Experience” which is a 4-week work placement in a country in which you haven’t spent much time. I’m interested in working in South East Asia over the summer and this program would be a great fit with what I am looking for. GSB staff covered logistics during this lunch session.
12:00pm
I met up with a GSB staff member who works at the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. She wanted to gather feedback from current students on their experience using the CES. The school cares deeply about maximizing students' positive experiences so these kind of surveys are common.
01:00pm
I had a Skype interview with an organization for a summer internship.
02:00pm
For my Data and Decisions class, we are doing a final group regression project for GSB alumni who work in different organizations. My 5-person team and I met to prioritize our preferences for group projects.
02:00pm
I met up with a handful of friends to go to the airport for Vegas FOAM, an evening-long party with both first- and second-year MBA students in Las Vegas. Students dress up in 70's gear and a space is rented out. It is a once in a lifetime experience.
Thursday
05:00am
Before my 8am class, I spent some time preparing for an in-class discussion on a Commerce Bank case, and I picked up a package at front desk – such sweet staff!
07:00am
On my way to my first class on HR for start-ups, taught by Hayagreeva Rao, an engaging and interesting professor who regularly brings in the case protagonists. The discussion during today’s class centered around the culture of employee empowerment at Commerce Bank.
09:00am
In finance class, we are still learning about optimal capital structures. I am very excited about understanding important concepts in finance that had previously been foreign to me (given my chemical engineering background).
11:00am
As on most days at the GSB, there are many events competing for my presence…a BBL by McKinsey on how to present data most effectively, a BBL on summer management internship funds, or a 1:1 lunch with a close friend I haven’t seen in a while. I chose to meet up with my friend Matias and ate outside.
12:00pm
At the end of fall quarter I was assigned a Personal Leadership Coach, a second-year MBA student who is part of the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows Program. My coach Kevin and I get along very well and I have felt like I could be very open with him from the start.
01:00pm
Data and Decisions homework - I am teaching myself how to code in R for my D&D class as our next assignments need R to be solved! Frankly, I enjoy coding as it brings me back to my engineering undergrad days!
03:00pm
As I’m trying to decide what type of role I want to go into when I graduate, I’ve scheduled several phone calls with GSB alumni to ask them a couple of questions on their professional choices and career paths. I had a super phone call with Lindsay Smith, who has a similar background as me. She was very willing to open up and share tips with me. I hung up feeling very motivated and energized!
04:00pm
I met with 3 other first-year MBAs, Masira, Dave and Matt, who were part of the same Leadership Laboratory squad as me. The squad is a 6-person team that takes the class Leadership Laboratory together, an experiential learning class in which we discover our preferred leadership style through role playing and feedback. We spent a lot of time together last quarter and I try to reconnect with them regularly.
05:00pm
My background and some of my interests lie in the energy field. The Stanford and GSB Energy Clubs organized a 20+ energy company networking night for Stanford students. Since I’m interested in the field of energy I attended and had great conversations with, among others, individuals from Nest, SunEdison, and Opower.
07:00pm
I met up with my Data and Decisions team to go over the homework problem due tomorrow. We had a very efficient meeting and actually finished a couple minutes early!
08:00pm
I went to workout at the gym, a 5-minute walk from Schwab (part of my effort to train for the triathlon).
09:00pm
I caught up on some e-mail before crashing.