Orit Gadiesh

"Alumni Perspecitve - Orit Gadiesh, (MBA´77) by Patrick Anquetil (NC), Contributing Writer, Harbus,  the independent  Student Weekly for Harvard Business School since 1937, issue date: 4/7/08  The material below has been reorganized and summarized from the above article.

Orit Gadiesh served in the military in Israel in the early 1970s and received a degree in psychology from Hebrew University.  She was accepted at Harvard Business School despite her language deficit, as one can read below.

A difficult start:

            What was your most memorable experience as a student at HBS?

            "I grew up in Israel and so HBS was my introduction to the United States. I did not speak English when I arrived. I             would  read cases with my dictionary. I still remember the first case: it was eleven pages including the exhibits and it             took me six hours to read. I was pretty desperate because literally every second word I had to look up in the dictionary.              And the  dictionary didn't give any business meaning to most of the words. For example, the dictionary described the             word "contribution" as being "something about giving to nonprofit organizations".  So reading the cases was extremely             time consuming. And then I would take my dictionary to the classes or to exams.  Exams were the worst. It would take             me three times as long to read an exam. I'd always sit in the first row and if it was a really long exam, I'd write at the             end.  "This took me three hours and twenty-five  minutes to read, but here's what I would have done had I had time to             actually run the calculator."

The outcome:

She graduated in 1977 as a Baker Scholar, which is the highest academic honor at Harvard Business School, given to the top 5% of the graduating MBA class.  She was also the recipient of the Brown Award for the most outstanding student in marketing. Immediately after graduation she joined Bain & Company.  She was elected Chairman of the company in 1993.  Forbes Magazine has ranked her amongst "The 100 Most Powerful Women in the World," and Fortune as one of the "Most Powerful Women in Business."