On April 14, the Latinx Students in Business and Leadership Club led a trip to Harvard Business School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management.
15 participants had an “exploratory experience” where they could sit in on a class, go on a campus tour and meet with students at each respective university, said Ben Hokenson ’24.5, co-president of LBL. The trip was open to anyone that identified as Latinx, not just club members, Hokenson said.
Hokenson first reached out to HBS and MIT last August to start planning the trip. Upon arrival at HBS, participants met with student ambassadors to learn more about the business school.
In an HBS class, trip members were able to participate in a case study on Nokia, said Ishan de Campos Unni ’25, trip participant and club member. He added that he appreciated that the classroom was decorated with flags from all the different countries represented by HBS students.
“I’m from Brazil, and (it) was really important for me to see the representation from all parts of the world,” he said.
HBS classes are organized into cohorts of around 90 students, which makes it so everyone “knows each other pretty well,” said Tania Gutierrez Espinosa ’24, LBL co-president.
Cohorts are intentionally made with students from different backgrounds with varying viewpoints, which creates “rich” classroom discussions, she said.
Trip participants also learned about the various professional backgrounds that HBS students had before going to business school, from engineering and technical banking to bartending, de Campos Unni added.
“It was a really interesting mix of people, and (the class) was really well guided by the professor who knows (every student) and how they can contribute to the conversation,” de Campos Unni said.
At the MIT Sloan School of Management, LBL members met with the school’s director of D&I and “a few students from their Hispanic business club,” Hokenson said. Gutierrez Espinosa said it was helpful to hear the students talk about their “non-traditional” journeys to MIT.
The group went on campus tours at both schools. De Campos Unni felt that the student-led tour and information session at HBS was “super helpful.”
At MIT, the group had a private information session organized by Hokenson to learn more about the school’s admissions process, financial aid and programs of study. The group then went on a campus tour led by a Latino student. In comparison to the tour at Harvard, Gutierrez Espinosa appreciated how the MIT tour was more “personalized” to the group.
Reflecting on the trip to both business schools, de Campos Unni said, “I feel like (there) is this … closed view of what the world outside of (Brown) is going to look like” but many of the students attending the business schools had “super unconventional trajectories.”
He also added that the trip “opened” his view on business school and showed that the “environment” of a business school contributes to students’ success.
Gutierrez Espinosa said she is excited about the possibility of the “relatively new” club, which was founded in 2021, going on more trips in the future.
“It was good to get really close with people from all different (years),” de Campos Unni said.
“A lot of people were left very inspired” by the trip, Hokenson added.
