Two Malayalees, Shreya Anne Mathai and Parvathy Menon, stood out of  78 Indians among 950 students who won MBAs from the world’s top- notch Ivy League institution, the Harvard Business School, on May 24 last.  Both are practically non-resident Keralites having had their early education in Mumbai-Delhi and Indonesia-Singapore. Both have joined global firms with Shreya opting for the management consultancy  firm McKinsey and Company in Washington. She is only 26 and has many miles to go in her focus area of international healthcare.

Going through the listing of HBS graduates in the Commencement brochure, one could find that most of the Indian students had done their undergraduate studies in American Universities before arriving at HBS. A few belonged to Harvard itself. Those straight from India belonged mostly to the IITs or BIT. One came from the University of Oxford and two from the University of Cambridge.  Two Indians belonged to Canada. One scholar arrived from Punjab Engineering College.  Shreya belonged to the St Stephen’s College, Delhi while Jaya Deepa Rajan and Tarunika Tolani came from Lady Sri Ram College for Women, also in Delhi. In short HBS had more than a microcosm of India’s worldwide diaspora including their Dean and a number of  professors.

Shreya is the only offspring of a Malayali-Bengali alliance. Her parents  met in Pune while studying at the AFMC Medical College. Shreya’s father Surgeon Commodore (Rtd) Khalil Isaac Mathai, hailing from Kottayam, retired from the Institute of Naval Medicine, Mumbai and her mother Surgeon Commodore  Sheila Mathai is still serving there as Dean. Both have been honoured with VSM-Vishisht Seva Medal. While  Khalil is a neurosurgeon, Sheila is paediatric neonatologist. Both flew to Boston to attend the graduation ceremony.

‘’A life-time experience,’’explained Dr. Mathai of the ceremony and its early morning procession, presentation, speeches and luncheon culminated by a reception to new graduates and their guests in the evening in the open air. It was thrilling to sit under the sun-drenched lawn of birches, maples and pines in the four century old, 5000-acre campus where the HBS itself was founded 110 years ago. ‘’My greatest attraction was the incisive and inspirational Class Day keynote address given by Carla Anne Harris, an alumni of 1987, who is the vice chairman and managing director of the global wealth management company Morgan Stanley.’’

‘’During the last 31 years since my graduation, the world has changed greatly,’’ began Ms Harris in her mesmerising tone reminding one of the iconic talk show host Opra Winfry. ‘’The Dow was 2200 in May 1987 and has reached to 24000 yesterday. There were 30 companies listed then. Of them 13 have disappeared.  Amazon which was a mere bookseller then has grown to become a disruptive force for many industries. Berlin Wall fell. Apple was born, Google was founded. Nine Eleven happened. The country elected the first African American as President.

‘’Nelson Mandela was released from jail. Saddam Hussain was captured. Global warming went up its seams, artificial intelligence has started changing man’s life, populism and nationalism came to the fore. The divide between the haves and have-nots has increased. You need to have the will to change and the boldness to assert. Build up the relationships, Make mistakes. Misfortunes give you new opportunities’’ so went the nuggets of Carla’s gospel. She is an evangelistic speaker, a singer and an author.

Carla at the very outset greeted the HBS Dean Dr. Nitin Nohria, born in Rajasthan, educated in IIT Bombay and MIT’s Sloan School of Management, the first Indian to reach the pedestal. The Tatas have donated $50 million to build a beautiful Tata Hall in the HBS campus. Shreya’s parents stayed at a campus guest house nearby. Carla also thanked Prof. Lakshmi Ramarajan who introduced a case study on her strategies, innovations and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley to the HBS graduate students. Another Indian who made her mark at the graduation was Serrena Anand Iyer, raised in Greenwich, Connecticut and studied in Yale, who was chosen to make the welcome address to the freshers. She became a CFA and worked for Goldman Sachs before enrolling at HBS.

‘’This gadget—an Apple iPhone—was Shreya’s present to me when she passed her B.A.Hons in economics from Delhi’s St Stepehen’s,’’ beamed Shreya’s 85-year old paternal grandmother Anna Isaac Mathai who taught in Kottayam’s Baker Memorial High School before she retired as Head Mistress from Buchanan Girls HS. Her husband the late Isaac Mathai of Palathinkal (former Maharashtra Governor the late Dr. PV Cherian’s tharavad) served as manager of the State Bank of Travancore in Kottayam. In fact Dr. Khalil joined the Believers Church Medical College at Tiruvalla recently due to his desire to spend the weekends with his mother at the Skyline Apts in downtown Kottayam. Also to continue running the half a marathon every morning at 4.30.

Shreya is one of the early winners of the Young India Fellowship instituted by Delhi’s Ashoka University in association with a host of American and British educational institutions. She then served as Researcher for UK Aid’s Department for International Development. Cipla Ltd recruited her as Portfolio Lead Global Respiratory Business in 100+markets across the globe. This took her on global junkies to Japan, United Kingdom, etc.

For her Harvard stint, she had earned a high score of 740 in her GRE. HBS will not consider anyone scoring lower than 720. The two year course costs almost INR one million.  Shreya was a self financing student, half of the cost met by scholarship and the other half by student loans. A happy co-incidence was that she had Malini Bose, winner of the Young India fellowship along with her, as her hostel mate at Harvard. Malini was with the Harvard School of Public Policy.

Parvathy Menon, the other Malayalee MBA, has had her early education at Gandhi Memorial International School, Jakarta, Indonesia. Armed with a Singapore Airlines-Neptune Orient Lines scholarship, she did her graduate studies in electrical engineering at the National University of Singapore. Then she joined Unilever to be Customer Development IT Manager in Jakarta and Digital Marketing Manager in London and Singapore. While at Harvard, she worked as Google Marketing Solutions Intern in New Delhi.

Because of her schooling in the Bali Islands, Parvathy knows Bahasa as well as Hindi, English and Malayalam.  She is brilliant in project management, strategy and digital marketing, testifies her Unilever followers. She visited Louvre Museum in Paris along with her Pappa.’’We had the best jump in front of it,’’she wrote in Instagram where she posted the shot.

About 10,000 persons, graduates, freshers, parents, relatives and guests, took part in the Commencement festivities. Like everyone else, it was a family get-together for Shreya at Harvard. Saju Joseph of Hewlett-Packard from Washington and Shreya’s mother’s brother  Pradyut Samanta and his daughter Mrinalini (Cornel) from New York  graced the occasion.

‘’What did you get this time?’’ I asked Shreya’s grandma Ammu (Anna) who was visibly elated at her granddaughter’s newest accolade. ‘’I am waiting for her to come and give me a hug and a kiss on the cheek,’’ she said.