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Article: Liz Zale, MBA student

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Liz Zale, MBA student

Educational Background: B.A. in English from Middlebury Career Background: Publishing and Consulting Current Status: Earning her MBA at Columbia Business School

Q: Did you decide to go straight into business school after college?

A: No, there was an eight year lapse after graduation [from Middlebury].  I was thinking about going to graduate school in English and decided to try the publishing field.  Business school was also in the back of my mind. 

Q: Where did you end up working?

A: I started at Houghton Mifflin.  When I got bored with just working, I also went to business school part time at Simmons, which is the only all-women's business school.  But I found that the experience wasn't challenging or rigorous enough.  The program was too regionally or locally focused.

Q: What was your next career move?

A: I moved to New York and worked as a consultant for a gay-owned consulting firm.  I worked primarily with magazines, including clients like Time and Adweek.  [After that] I worked independently for the same consulting firm from New Orleans.  While I was there I ended up working for a Baptist, family-owned publisher, which was a little crazy-and pretty interesting.

Q: Sounds like your career track hasn't moved in only one direction.

A: No, it hasn't.  After New Orleans, I moved to New York because People magazine called me.  They wanted me to work for them.  I worked there for about a year, got a little bored with it, and started thinking about business school.  But I wanted to stay in New York, so I applied to only one school: Columbia. 

Q: Did you stop working at People once you applied to business school?

A: No, because I had only applied - I didn't know if I'd gotten in! But while I was waiting to hear, I moved over to Teen People, which was still in development.  I worked on the start-up of that.

~ Q: But you did get in.  How do you find business school?

A: It was hard at first because I don't have a business background: I didn't exempt out of any core courses.  What I found most challenging wasn't the work or the time, but the kind of work.  I was also fearful that I was going to be the biggest freak on campus.  But I was pleasantly surprised to find a diverse student body.  You spend all your time with one group of people.  The incoming class is divided into clusters of 60.

Q: What do you mean by "diverse" student body?

A: Well, there were other queer people in my group.  And there were some very progressive people.  As an institution, Columbia prides itself on its diversity.  It is also quite international.  At one point, we had to do this project in a human resources group where we identified common criteria: How many people are of your age group, national origin, gender, background, etc.?  There weren't a lot of similarities - and there are even fewer now that I'm in my second year.  [Overall] I wouldn't say there is a "Columbia type." But there is an HBS type, especially for women, and there is definitely a Wharton type. 

Q: In business school, are you political by default-because of your sexual orientation?

A: I think so-because I'm not just out, I'm really out.  And I don't mean just being a lesbian, but also a feminist.  I've always been heavily involved in women's groups. 

Q: Are people responsive to that?

A: In general, people have reacted well to it [my sexual orientation].  It makes a difference how you present it; other people can hold that info over you if you're closeted.  You have to expend energy to set things up - I've pretty much been that way my whole professional life.  I came out about a year after college - and I've been that way ever since. 

One of the hardest things was going back to Middlebury and reestablishing my friendships from then until now.