My Decision to Pursue an MBA (Reflections): 1 Year into the Programme <PART I>

This is a two-part reflection on my MBA journey—one year in.

Part I follows my return to Malawi after my UN mission in New York, and the decision that led me back into academia.

Part II explores my first year at Michigan State University (Broad College of Business)—what I’ve learned, what I’ve unlearned, and what I wish more aspiring MBAs knew before they started.

With care,

— Ntha

PART I: Rooted

New York City

I met Aury on a spring day in 2022, just a few weeks after I had moved to Manhattan, New York City. I was on my way to the NYC Pride Parade—my friends had invited me to meet them on the Lower East Side. It was my first time returning to that part of Manhattan since moving out after my initial sublease in the city.

As I was trying to find the entrance to the train station, Aury—being the people person that he is—noticed I looked lost, and offered to help.

“You seem lost,” he said.

“I am lost,” I responded.

We laughed about it, and he guided me onto my train, which also happened to be the train he was taking. We had a good chat, and he told me that he worked in the night life industry.

As we got closer, he learnt about my work with the Ntha Foundation. Aury is someone who is INCREDIBLE at drawing synergies, and connecting people. He introduced me to a completely different circle—people in tech, consulting, media.

That is how I met Heather. Heather wasn’t just brilliant; she was intentional. She worked for Google in NYC, and we quickly became the best of friends. Living in New York, you quickly learn that the majority of young people in the city do not have ‘real jobs’. A lot of people are freelancing—managing creative and exciting careers. As an international public officer, real jobs are most of what I have ever known, and in the space of figuring it out, I was seeking out friends with similar experiences.

Heather became my first friend with a ‘real job’. Learning about her work made me for the first time consider that I, too, could work for Google (aka Private Sector Big Tech). That maybe I didn’t have to stay in international organizations forever.

Maybe there was more.

We had conversations about visas, global hiring, what it means to be a citizen of the world with ambitions that don’t always fit into a UN framework. I started wondering: What if I explored other industries? What if I positioned myself differently?

I started applying for jobs, sending my 7 page UN resume to private companies in the US. I did not fully know then, the nuances of US corporate hiring as I do now.

MBA Tours

Somewhere in that curiosity, I saw an Instagram ad, inviting me to an MBA tour in the city. I signed up.

I walked into that event as I was completing my first Master of Science in Entrepreneurship. So part of me was like, Do I even need this?

As I listened, I realized the MBA wasn’t just another degree. It was a bridge—into new industries, new language, and new possibilities. A few schools followed up after the event, and I ended up visiting a few—including Rochester, Columbia, NYU, and Harvard.

But before these, I had flown out to East Lansing for Michigan State’s Diversity Preview Day, and it became a benchmark of comparison.

It was at the Broad College of Business that something in me shifted. I fell in love with the energy, the people, the space. The very new and flashy Minskoff Pavilion, and it felt… absolutely right.

After the tours, I took a breather. November was all about enjoying New York City—soaking in its energy and reflecting on what I wanted next. By December, I decided to head back to Malawi for some rest and recuperation. It was a return home, a moment to pause and reflect on what was ahead.

While in Malawi, it hit me: my chapter in New York was winding down. My UNDP contract was nearing its end, and something inside me said it was time to wrap up my life there. I stood at a crossroads. I could prepare for the GMAT and apply to higher-ranking programs later, or I could seize the opportunities already before me. Two universities had offered me a GMAT waiver: Rochester and Michigan State.

So, at the end of January, just before leaving Malawi, I applied to both MBA programs. Returning to New York, I began settling back into my routine—wrapping up work, discussing the end of my contract, and waiting for the admissions decisions.

The first decision came from Michigan State. I was admitted and received an offer. Rochester placed me on their waitlist. Stanford, on the other hand, sent a rejection. I wasn’t admitted.

In the midst of these decisions, my contract was winding down, and I was preparing to return to Malawi. I incorporated the Ntha Foundation in the US on the 6th of March, 2024, and we started planning the launch event. A day after my last day at the UN, I attended Harvard’s Diversity Preview Day. It was insightful, but it didn’t sway my heart. I committed to attending the Admitted Students Day at MSU a week later, and I fell in love yet again.

The Return

On the 15th of April, 2024, I returned to Malawi.

I had just completed my contract with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in New York—a chapter that shaped me profoundly. I had also just received an offer to pursue my MBA at Michigan State University, where I’d been awarded a partial scholarship. I had decisions to make, and closure to find. So I went home.

The day I landed, I went straight into programming. I met with the 2024 Cohort of the M’mawa Apprenticeship Programme—young people I had been mentoring since January. The programme, which I co-designed, is focused on preparing final-year university students across Africa for the corporate world. It was deeply grounding to meet them in person, to see the impact of a model I once dreamed up now fully in motion.

The next day, we hosted a delegation from the World Bank and Malawi’s Public-Private Partnership Commission (PPPC) at the Kwathu Kollective hub I had set up with my team. We were closing out a successful collaboration, and they were there to formally hand over the tech equipment we had secured through the partnership.

Twenty-four hours later, I stood before the entire United Nations Country Team in Malawi as one of three invited youth voices—and the only woman. The Resident Coordinator, H.E. Rebecca Adda-Dontoh had personally invited me to speak at their annual retreat. I spoke about innovation. About youth. About systems and possibilities. It was a full circle moment—returning to the UN space, but this time from the outside, in my own voice.

Immediately the day after, we hosted the inaugural CIDCON Africa in partnership with the European Union. A regional gathering designed to bring together creatives, tech innovators, and policymakers—it had been months in the making. We pulled it off with excellence. Media coverage. Government support. Strong panels.

I remember thinking: this was the busiest week of my life, and somehow, I still found peace in it.

Everything I had built over the years—my work in youth development, creative economy, public-private partnerships, and education—was unfolding all at once.

It felt like arrival.

The Slowdown

But after the cameras left, life slowed down.

I got my BMW Z4 out of my dad’s garage. Mice had eaten nearly all of the wiring. The mechanic essentially rebuilt it from scratch. And in a strange way, that’s how everything felt—rebuilding what once worked, reconfiguring what didn’t.

I spent a lot of time with my father. We were both grieving the loss of my mother in our own ways. I spent her birthday with him. It was our second one without her. There was a tenderness to that day I can’t quite put into words.

And in the stillness, something shifted.

I started looking around, asking questions: what’s next? Where does my growth live now?

The Ceiling

I had every form of support I could ask for. Institutional partnerships. Government buy-in. Private sector collaboration. International recognition. People knew me. They championed our work. They showed up.

But I was hitting the edges.

I realized that I had reached the height of what was possible for me in Malawi—for now. Not because I had outgrown the people or the purpose, but because I had outgrown the system’s current capacity to carry the scale of what I’m building.

So I made a few final moves.

I rented a property in Lilongwe to host the Gates Foundation (FPNN) media team for a reporting trip we had been planning in Malawi. We worked on a content trip that captured key impact stories across the country. The work was strong. Thoughtful. Global in its tone, local in its roots. It felt like a culmination of everything I had been trained for—content, strategy, storytelling, development.

The Invitation

And then came clarity. My bank, UNFCU—the UN credit union—offered me a $20,000 loan, which I had not applied for. A soft yes from the universe, in case I needed the support to return to school.

Then, the University of Rochester emailed. I had been moved off the waitlist. They were ready to offer me a 60% scholarship. Classes were starting. They wanted me to come immediately. I told them I had an offer from Michigan State, where I had a 40% scholarship. They said: we’ll beat it.

I took that offer and sent it to MSU. Asked them if they could match it.

They responded within 24 hours: Yes. That was my sign.

The Closure

I said yes to Michigan State. And in doing so, I closed a chapter in Malawi that I had spent nearly a decade building.

When I first left Malawi, I thought I’d be back in two years. That it was just a break from entrepreneurship. A change of pace. A little vacation in New York.

But this time, I knew: there is no coming back. At least not in the same way. Not because I don’t love Malawi—but because I love it too much to remain in rooms where I can no longer stretch.

And this time, I wasn’t leaving in search of clarity. I was leaving with it. For the first time in a while, I felt settled.

Not searching. Not scattered.
Just… rooted.