In honor of International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating Booth women far and wide. In our first installment, we give a shout out to the 2Ys—intelligent, talented, ambitious and wise, they all add a tremendous amount to the Booth community.
I wanted to highlight a few for their unique backgrounds and impressive involvement in and outside of Booth. Please reach out to TBE with any nominations of your own, we’d love to feature them on our Instagram page throughout the month!
Holly Smith is a 5thyear resident in Cardiac Surgery, who has taken a brief pause to pursue a Booth MBA. To say that she is making the most of this experience is an understatement. In addition to taking classes, she is a 2-time TA for Professor Scott Meadows and a Manager of Cardiac Surgery for a Booth affiliated medical startup, ExplORer. In her free time, Holly has been learning to climb (is currently at an 11+ level) and is training in Krav Maga, a popular self-defense system. When asked what motivates her, she shared, “I am motivated by a desire to have an impact. On a personal level I am motivated by exploring new things and by looking for ways to constantly grow and improve. Years ago, a mentor told me that the most growth happens when you put yourself in situations of discomfort. I try to seek opportunities to do this—big and small.” Post-MBA, Holly plans to complete her residency and integrate clinical practice with a leadership role in her organization. She would also love to explore opportunities with healthcare innovation.
Inbar Goodman wears many hats. Among them, she is a lawyer, full-time MBA student, and a mom. She is currently a co-chair of three student groups: Corporate Management and Strategy Group (CMSG), Health Care Group (HCG), and Mothers at Booth. And there’s more—she is active in Economies of Scale (Booth’s acapella group), participated in NVC, and is one of the leaders of BoothRight and of last year’s Healthcare trek to the West Coast. On her motivation to stay active in the community, Inbar said, “One of my goals coming to the program was to develop my leadership skills, and I believe that sitting in leadership-related classes is not enough to do that. Second, I wanted to pay-it-forward as a second-year student because I knew how much the help I received from others benefited me as a first-year.” Asked about how she balances it all, she also shared, “The most valuable lesson I learned so far is that juggling multiple things also means that you are not giving 100% attention to each of them all the time—and that is perfectly fine.”
Marwa Darkhabani has an incredibly inspiring story. She is a Syrian refugee who came to the US on a Fulbright scholarship. She moved here with her life savings of $1,200 and after pursuing a master’s program, worked several jobs from movie translation to non-profit refugee work to tutoring, ending up in private equity fundraising in NYC for four and a half years. Her hard work and dedication are mirrored in her Booth experience. Marwa was a LEAD facilitator and has recently made a name for herself as a host of weekly International Movie Nights. The screenings give students the ability to learn about a new culture from others in the class (read more about it here). The idea for movie night was driven by her own curiosity about other cultures and has been among her favorite Booth experiences, “The best part of the US experience is meeting people from all over the world and learning about them.” Of her experience to date, Marwa shared, “I define myself as an independent woman who took a flight from Damascus in 2011 by herself… I truly believe the US was a land of opportunity for me—there was a lot of hard work and long nights, but it was definitely worth it.”
Hind Hassan is easily among the most engaged students on campus. To get a sense of what’s on her plate: she is currently the Gargoyles Cohort representative on the Graduate Business Council (GBC), where she plans social events for her classmates. Through GBC, she leads the LPF Committee, serves on the Diversity & Inclusion Committee, and manages Booth Voices. Hind is also an African American MBA Association Co-Chair and is organizing the DuSable Conference, which is the longest running student-led conference at Booth. And there’s more: she is an Admissions Fellow, helping to shape the next class at Booth and, of course, is a member of our Booth Experience student blog team. To top it all off, Hind is currently TA’ing for Scott Meadows’ Commercializing Innovation Class, where she gets to mentor a group of his students and help them learn about venture investing. On why she wanted to get involved she said, “I wanted to get involved in the Booth community in a thoughtful and purposeful way. I try to leverage the knowledge and resources I have access to from one activity to enhance another club or organization.”
Evelyn Morfin has had a pretty busy second year. Since Fall Quarter, she has been interning at a new private equity impact investing fund called 4S Bay. She works 20+ hours per week and also partakes in sourcing and due diligence trips, traveling so far (during the academic quarters) to Honduras, Mexico, California, and Texas. And if that’s not enough, Evelyn also helped organize the Navigating the Gray conference as a co-chair and has been an active member of Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Group, African American MBA Association, and Hispanic American Business Students Association . Asked about what this month means to her, Evelyn shared, “As a Chicana (An American woman of Mexican descent), to me Women’s Day is a reminder that it is my privilege and responsibility to continue the work of other strong Mexican American women like Dolores Huerta. I believe Booth has given me the tools to do this through a career in early stage investing and although it can be challenging to balance it all, my understanding and loving family, friends, and partner have empowered me to use my voice for change.”
