Zicklin Grad Students Inspired by Viola Davis at Harvard Business Review Anniversary Party

L to R: Hoover, Augustus, Vasconez, Meyers, Prof. Melaku, Gressin, Obasi

When the Harvard Business Review celebrated its centennial recently, Assistant Professor Tsedale Melaku, PhD (Narendra Paul Loomba Department of Management), was invited to the event by her HBR editor. That wasn’t surprising, as Dr. Melaku frequently publishes in the magazine. But she didn’t expect her editor to extend the offer to seven students from the Zicklin School.  

It was quite the plum invitation. The event, held on March 7 at Jazz at Lincoln Center, featured a string of A-list speakers, including actress and producer Viola Davis; international human rights attorney Amal Clooney; former IBM chief Ginni Rometty; Ian Bremmer (founder of political risk management consultancy Eurasia Group); Rich Lesser (global chair of BCG); and best-selling business author Marcus Buckingham.  

Melaku first invited two doctoral candidates she advises—Anthony Meyers and Onyeka Obasi. But she wanted to include some MBA candidates too, so with the help of Interim Dean Paquita Davis Friday, PhD, and the Graduate Career Management Center’s Justyn Makarewycz, Melaku reached out to a group of Full-Time and Evening MBA candidates to see who would be available to attend.  

After one invitee had to cancel because of a last-minute conflict, six Zicklin students attended the HBR party with Melaku: four MBA students—Blake Augustus (MBA, ’24), Laura Gressin (MBA, ’24), Paul Hoover (MBA, ’24), and Gonzalo Vasconez (MBA, ’23)—in addition to doctoral candidates Meyers and Obasi.  

“I felt very lucky to be there,” said MBA student Laura Gressin. “I come from the Dominican Republic and being in that room with so many people I aspire to be was powerful to me.”  

MBA candidate Gonzalo Vasconez appreciated the opportunity to network with other MBA students and with executives from various companies. But his biggest takeaway was a line from Viola Davis’ speech: “She told us, ‘Never let anyone define who and what you want to be,’” Gonzalo said. “She urged us to do as she did with her acting career—find out what we want to become and pursue it without letting anybody influence us to change that.”  

“Opportunities like this, which take us out of the classroom and put us in a space of learning with scholars working to positively impact the business community, are essential to the learning experience,” declared Anthony Meyers, a second-year doctoral student whose research focuses on organizational behavior. “The questions the speakers were asking—What does it mean to be a role model? How do you address conflict?—are as applicable outside the workplace as they are within it.”  

For her part, Melaku was humbled at how appreciative the students were. “They were so grateful to be invited to the event,” she said. “But what’s the point of being a professor if not to share these experiences with students?”  

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