I didn’t come to Wharton to become a founder. I came to see if I could stay one.
In 2019, I began my career in private equity before joining the founding team of a media startup. I later served as chief of staff to PepsiCo’s former CEO. Amid these roles, I launched South Asian Trailblazers, a podcast highlighting South Asian leaders. By 2023, this passion project had burgeoned into a media platform, a community, and an executive advisory agency. It had become a company — my company.
I came to Wharton to see if what I was building had legs and if I could commit myself to this business in the next chapter of my life. In the months since my graduation, I’ve found myself confronting a crucial question that’s only grown sharper as headlines and hot takes cast doubt on the value of an MBA: As a founder, did I find my Wharton degree was worth it?
Returning to My Roots
Attending business school in your late 20s is like visiting your childhood bedroom. After college, the constant that is school disappears, and the shift to working life uproots parts of your person that defined you for two decades. Wharton invited me to reunite with that version of myself. It reawakened my love of storytelling and writing, of mentorship and leadership, and of the beautiful intersection between liberal and practical arts. Through Wharton Storytellers, I coached classmates for slams and remembered why I fell in love with media in the first place. Serving as a William P. Lauder Leadership Fellow pushed me to reflect on the leader I wanted to be, not just on campus but for my collaborators and clients. Sharing lessons from our Negotiations course at a local prison reminded me how much I value tangible impact — something I’d miss if I were to leave my business for industry.
I got comfortable with being uncomfortable again, because there was always a new stretch experience around the corner, including traveling to a new country and sharing a deeply personal story in front of 200 classmates. The sheer number of hats I wore daily also encouraged me to embrace my multi-hyphenism. Sure, I was a founder. But I was also a storyteller, strategist, and student. Reconnecting with this fundamental version of myself reminded me not just of what I wanted to do, but of why I wanted to do it.
Translating Ideas to Income
Wharton also offered me the freedom to openly explore how to translate my passions into income. While South Asian Trailblazers began as a podcast, I started building an agency soon after I arrived on campus, leveraging my past experiences to provide advisory services to the very same executives I’d spent years interviewing. In Negotiations with lecturer Gus Cooney, I learned to structure client contracts and retainers, navigating deals in real time under his tutelage. Professor Emilie Feldman’s Mergers and Acquisitions course offered me a road map, showing me how even startups like mine could prepare for an exit.
Don’t get me wrong: Commodifying my passions felt unsettling at times. But as I became better resourced and educated, I developed conviction on my path forward. I was no longer building a business on raw belief.
Proving Them Right
I’ve often chased success to prove people wrong after they’ve doubted me or put me in a box. Wharton gave me a gift: the will to succeed to prove people right.
There were founder friends — Alexis Barber WG25, Samhita Karnati WG25, and Michiel van Zyl WG25, to name a few — who shared the unique student-founder experience with me. There were also champions and cheerleaders: classmates who stopped me in the MBA Cafe to laud a recent episode or tell me to keep going; friends who, when I was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, organized a surprise celebration for me overnight. Professors such as Adam Grant and Claudine Gartenberg pushed me to build this business full-time. That belief and care from classmates, professors, and mentors was omnipresent, and it continues to lift me up and inspire.
The Wharton network also became a proving ground. I found kinship in alumni willing to support my endeavors, from Sandeep Acharya EAS03 W03, founder of health-tech startup Octave, to Dilawar Syed WG02, former deputy administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration. Both have appeared on my podcast. That support is a privilege unique to this community.
A Welcome Transition
Since graduation, I’ve encountered newfound burdens alongside the lifting of old ones. But I’m also creating with more clarity and speed than ever, and that feels validating to someone pursuing the unstructured path of a founder. I wasn’t this excited after college, because I didn’t feel aligned with my higher calling. Today, I feel I am. Wharton afforded me the capability and resolve to translate my past and passions into my future.
I never knew I’d feel this way. At times, I wondered if Wharton might be one of the few immersive life experiences where I wouldn’t feel grateful, sentimental, or sad in the end. What a joy it’s been to prove myself so very wrong.
Now, when people ask, “Was B-school worth it?” I just laugh. Of course it was. Not because Wharton made me a founder, but because it gave me the conviction, community, and clarity to keep on being one.
Simi Shah WG25 is the founder of South Asian Trailblazers and a 2025 Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree for her work.
Published as “Was My MBA Worth It” in the Fall/Winter 2025 issue of Wharton Magazine.
