Bard MBA Careers: Curated Individual Development with Lenore Kantor

Students choose the MBA in Sustainability at Bard not only because it's consistently ranked the #1 MBA program in US, but because they want meaningful careers creating a sustainable future. Our program is uniquely focused on helping graduates have impact at scale in the world of mission-driven business and non-profit management.

Bard's career advising process is led by Lenore Kantor, and is centered on an Individualized Career Planning (ICP) processs.  The personalized ICP approach is critial because Bard MBA's pursue careers across a broad range of industries (finance, fashion, food, energy, waste, non-profit) and functions (consultants, entrepreneurs, project and client management, marketing, analysts).  Given this rich diversity of career directions, each student meets individually with Lenore's office each semester to build a career strategy.

“The career process helped carry my Bard MBA experience from the classroom to a new workplace,” says recent graduate Emily Robichaux.  “With Bard’s guidance and support, I crafted a mission-oriented career goal, reframed my professional narrative, and began interviewing for leadership roles in a new industry that would previously have been out of reach.”  Robichaux leveraged the Bard career opportunities to take a position as Director of Finance and New Product Development at Groundswell, a DC-based company focusing on providing solar power to low-income households. She has since advanced to the role of Director of Climate Partnership Lending at Amalgamated Bank.  

Kantor also offers monthly workshops on topics including Career Visioning, Salary Negotiation, Interviews, Networking and Resume and Linked In construction.  And her office also publishes a monthtly career tips guide, "The Bard Card", including links to current job openings from the Bard MBA internal job board. 

Beatrice Ajaero came into the Bard MBA with a law background, seeking new directions for her career. Inspired by the entrepreneurship courses, Beatrice used her MBA capstone course to develop a business vision centered around West African cuisine. "The Bard MBA gave me the skills, the experience and the space to experiment that I needed to start my own business", she says. After graduation, she opened a new restaurant called Nneji in Queens New York, reviewed here in the New York Times. She is also heading up an urban development project in Buffalo.

Students build their professional network by gaining access to sustainability leaders through our student-run podcast—The Impact Report — and many guest lecturers. Students are also assigned professional mentors each year they are in the program. And in Bard's unique, individually mentored MBA capstone, students work one-on-one with a faculty advisor to develop future careers as purpose-driven entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs. mission-driven managers or sustainability consultants.

 Alistair Hall relied in the Bard career advising procress to land a position as consultant in Power & Utilities with KPMG in Los Angeles.  Hall says that “The Bard career program provided with the right questions and focus for approaching my career search. It empowered me to shift from blindly submitting resumes online to thoughtfully networking and identifying opportunities at organizations
that resonated with my goals."  

Bard MBA graduates join more than 500 alumni/ae working in the sustainable business and environmental policy fields. If you're still considering, or even not sure how to choose an MBA program, view our Look Book to explore career opportunities and the Alum network. Links to other articles about our graduates career success are here. 

Do you want to learn more about how you could become a leader in a sustainability focused field? Check out our full resource, How to Become a Leader in Sustainability, today!