More than five percent of current students in the Harvard Business School MBA Program have military backgrounds, representing all US Armed Forces branches as well as international service. HBS is grateful for these students’ exceptional leadership skills and for the unique perspective they bring to the classroom.
Here’s a look at three MBA student veterans.
Julie Guzman (MBA 2022)
On an early morning run in 2010, Julie Guzman noticed that the only other people active on her undergraduate campus were ROTC students practicing their morning drills. As the miles passed, she wondered if military service could be how she could serve her country—as a first generation American, she had always wanted to give back to the country that granted her family asylum when they fled Cuba in the 1959 communist revolution. She decided to give it a try, immediately fell in love with the ROTC camaraderie and structure, and served throughout her undergraduate years.
Joshua Scott (MBA 2023)
Joshua Scott first set foot on the HBS campus as a freshman at Harvard College in 2011. As a fellow in the PRIMO program, he was exposed to the case method, research, and life as an HBS student, planting a seed of opportunity that he came back to following his service in the Marine Corps.
Born and raised in Hampton, VA, Scott grew up surrounded by the military—with Langley Air Force base, a myriad of Army and Naval installations and shipyards nearby, and parents, siblings, grandparents, and cousins in the Air Force, Army, and Marines. Military service was always a goal, but Scott did not take a typical road to either the Marine Corps or to HBS.
Ryan Solís (MBA/MPP 2022)
Ryan Solís describes his journey to the Marine Corps as one inspired by his father’s immigrant roots and the events of 9/11. The story of his father’s emigration from Mexico to the suburbs of Los Angeles, and his work as a ranch hand while attending high school, made an indelible impression on a young Solís. He was 12 when 9/11 happened, and he recalls it as a wake-up call that cemented his sense of obligation and desire to give back through military service. No one in his family had served in the military, so his parents were confused but supportive, he says with a laugh, and he enrolled in the Marine Corps upon graduating from Harvard College.
Now, as a joint degree candidate at HBS and the Harvard Kennedy School, Solís aims to discover new ways to serve his country and community through the intersection of business and policy—specifically defense technology, national security, and emerging tech.
This article was originally posted in Newsroom.