Tell us who you are and what you do?
I’m halfway through my first year at Columbia Business School, where I’m enrolled in their full-time MBA program within their Social Enterprise Program. I’m also working as a development consultant at New Visions for Public Schools, usually from 10 to 15 hours a week, and am working on smaller projects at other nonprofits. Before New Visions, I was Associate Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at the national office of Big Brothers Big Sisters, and prior to that, I was Director of Development and Marketing at Eighteenth Street Development Corporation in Philadelphia. At New Visions, I focus on fundraising for new products in our policy and research arm. Much of that is packaging and pitching new ideas to our funders in a persuasive way.

You recently left a full time position to go back to school. What made you decide to make this change?
I really look to my former bosses and mentors for advice on what skills they use on a day to day basis as nonprofit leaders. At Big Brothers Big Sisters, I had the opportunity to work closely with senior management, several of whom had MBAs and/or extensive backgrounds in the for-profit sector, and I saw how much they drew upon their finance and marketing skills. The Social Enterprise Program at Columbia was also very attractive to me. While there are courses specific to nonprofit management offered, the principles of social responsibility are really well-integrated throughout the curriculum, and growing their nonprofit/social enterprise offerings is a big priority for the school’s leadership. The director and staffers of the program are terrific too!

It was definitely the right time for me - I recently got married, moved to NYC, and knew I wanted to do this before beginning a family. Additionally, I’ve already worked through a similar crunch - I did ~15 hours of consulting a week for a while after joining Big Brothers Big Sisters. It meant a 7 am - 3 pm base workday with BBBS and then 3-6 pm elsewhere, but I found it invigorating and a great base for networking.

You go to school full time and work as a contracted consultant. Tell us a little about those experiences.
The first semester of business school is intentionally tough - I had about 20 hours of in-the-classroom time with about 15 hours of reading and take-home assignments a week at a minimum. I’m hoping the second semester will ease up a little! My coursework includes topics like corporate finance, accounting, marketing, statistics, and strategy - all taught from a very data-driven perspective, so you have to be able to digest a lot of quantitative data and think mathematically. On one or two afternoons a week, and Fridays, I go in to New Visions and work on various fundraising projects. One of the toughest things for me to work out was that because of my schedule, I wasn’t able to be as "external" as I had previously been - for example, I’m pretty much impossible now to reach on the phone during the day, so I really had to become much more reliant on email than face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) contact than I prefer. I also try to do one or two networking, one-to-one meetings a week with people I haven’t met yet, and that takes more time than you might think (though it’s important!).

What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered balancing your school work and your consulting work?
There’s a saying at MIT that you have three ways to spend your time and you can only pick two: school, friends and sleep. If you’re going to work seriously, and especially if you and your peers are being advised not to work or take on an internship, you have to drop something, period. At business school, there’s a fair amount of time built into the schedule for corporate recruiting - going to events, informational interviews, and the like. I’ve been able to balance my schedule relatively easily because I realized early on that I wouldn’t be able to take the time to go through the rigors of corporate recruiting - nor did I want to. For the kinds of positions I want after school is finished, my time is much better spent at New Visions and talking with others within the nonprofit sector.

What advice would you give to someone who is considering going back to school? To someone who is considering going to school full ime while working at the same time?
Let’s say you’re planning on working 15 hours a week. Talk to your peers - what are they doing with that time that you’ll be spending at work? Are they studying, or networking, or not using their time effectively? What is it, exactly, that you’ll be giving up?

Working part-time can also really ease the financial burden of school - my husband is also in school right now, so that’s definitely a erious consideration for us. Many of my fellow students are going onto very lucrative careers - and I’m not! - so I’m much more wary about entering into debt for the cost of living than they are. If you’re weighing part- vs. full-time school, really dig and see if there are differences in the quality of the courses.

Besides school, what sort of professional or personal development and/or resources have you accessed to help you further your career goals? I’ve done some coursework in Raiser’s Edge to become a better "power user." I’ve also stayed very active as a Harvard alum in helping their undergrad public service center, the Phillips Brooks House Association, grow and thrive.

Any parting words?
Look at the hard skills you’ll gain from a school or program, and weigh them against the cost of postponing full-time employment. Be prepared to be disciplined.