Hear how an HBS MBA helped Vicky Tsai, founder of Tatcha Cosmetics, and Brooke Carter, Product Manager at Grammarly, gain their entrepreneurial skills and reflect on the impact of their HBS experience.
Allison Mnookin is a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration in the Technology and Operations Management (TOM) Unit at the Harvard Business School. She currently teaches the TOM and FIELD Global Immersion courses in the required MBA curriculum. In addition, she co-leads the HBS Startup Bootcamp.
Ms. Mnookin brings two decades of experience as a technology executive for successful cloud and business software companies. She most recently was CEO of Quick Base Inc. and currently serves on the company’s Board of Directors. At Quick Base, Allison was responsible for setting the business strategy and overseeing a client base of more than 500,000 business subscribers, including more than 50 percent of the Fortune 100.
After a decade of working in the corporate world, Vicky (MBA 2006) found herself deeply unhappy and embarked on a search for a simpler, more authentic approach to life. She began to travel, eventually finding herself in Kyoto. The people she met in Japan taught her an entirely new way to think about beauty. To care for the skin is to care for one's health, because skin is the body's largest organ and reflects our stress, our diet and our environment. Instead of constantly going to battle with their skin, they consider it with gratitude for all the incredible work it does for us.
Their belief that beauty comes from a beautiful heart and a beautiful mind inspired “Beautiful Faces, Beautiful Futures”, Tatcha’s program for supporting girls’ education around the world in partnership with Room to Read, a leading nonprofit organization that works towards world change through children’s education. Every single Tatcha purchase helps fund education for an incredible girl around the world. We just passed the milestone of funding two and a half million days of school—something that the entire Tatcha team is humbled by.
When she traveled to Japan, she found herself healed in the truest sense of the word. The beautiful ingredients and timeless rituals she was introduced to calmed her skin; the kindness and mindfulness of the people nourished her soul. Creating Tatcha was my attempt to bring a small piece of Japan home with her — she often calls it her love song to Kyoto.
Brooke Carter (MBA 2019) is a Product Manager at Grammarly, a Series B startup focused on improving written communication. Before HBS, she spent time as a management consultant at Oliver Wyman and in Product and Strategy at Medable, a digital healthcare startup. During her time at HBS, she co-founded a consumer fintech startup with a classmate. Brooke brings experience in entrepreneurship, product management, strategy, and growth.
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