I’m Kali Hailegiorgis. I am originally from Ethiopia, but have called Abu Dhabi home for the last year.
Stern at NYU Abu Dhabi is a unique place. It’s a very fast paced, exciting environment. The kind of people that are attracted to come here and study are a very specific, very interesting, very exciting, engaging group of people. So no day in the classroom is the same. No day can be boring or disengaging. I took these classes with lawyers, quantum physicists, doctors, business owners, and so people from all different backgrounds. And so as much as I was learning from my professors, I learned so much more from my cohort because they brought in a wealth of information and very diverse perspectives because of the very diverse walks of life that they came from. We represented 25 different countries, and beyond that, everybody was just so genuinely wonderful and welcoming and so warm. We’re always there for each other. So we created like such a beautiful, nurturing familial environment. So it genuinely felt like I was living in a building full of friends, and I didn’t realize how important these people were to me until actually saying bye to everybody made it so evident that these aren’t just classmates, they’re actually family now.
We have some of the best professors in the world, so it’s academically rigorous. It is intense. It’s a full time one year program. So it’s very go, go, go. You will be challenged. You will be taken out of your comfort zone. You will be in a very dynamic, diverse group, and you get rewarded with so much in terms of the quality of education, the dedication and passion that the professors bring to every single classroom is absolutely incredible and very infectious. Every networking conversation and part of every conference, everything that I read is “AI, AI, AI”. And I didn’t really feel like I understood what was happening. And so one of the classes I got to take was called ‘Introduction to AI and its Business Application’, taught by a phenomenal professor. It completely transformed the way that I use AI and interact with AI. And now I feel like I can have better intellectual conversations with people as well.
And in a time where AI kind of gets slapped on everything, including jobs. So you have to be like AI native, AI competent. You have to be able to integrate AI into the workforce and all of these things. I feel very effectively differentiated from the workforce, which was a very psychologically comforting thing to feel graduating and going into a very competitive workforce.
As soon as I started this program, I actually went to Career Services and I said, I want to go into Venture Capital. I don’t have a finance background, but this is what I want to do, so how do I make it happen? And they were kind enough to work with me in terms of how do I frame my transferable skills and my previous experiences in order to be able to bridge that transition and also helping me understand some of the questions I get asked in these interviews, who is part of the alumni network that I can connect with to have coffee chats with and to have referrals for different positions.
I actually got my job offer on the day of graduation, and since then I’ve been working as a Founders Associate at P1 Energy, which is a local startup.
Speaker
Kali Hailegiorgis, a Class of 2025 graduate of Stern at NYU Abu Dhabi One-year Full-time MBA.
In this video
Kali shares her experiences of the program, and what made it stand out. She talks about the diverse cohort representing 25 countries, with classmates from backgrounds ranging from law and medicine to quantum physics and entrepreneurship, and a close-knit community that felt more like family than a classroom. She also highlights the academic rigor, being pushed outside her comfort zone, and how an AI-focused course strengthened her confidence and capability in today’s workplace.
Kali also explains how Career Services supported her pivot into venture capital, helping her position transferable skills, prepare for interviews, and tap into the alumni network. She celebrates landing a role as a Founders Associate at P1 Energy, with her job offer arriving on graduation day.
