E#2: The Shocking Truth About Post-MBA Life with Harvard Grad Rafaella Mazza

People just want to show that their lives are perfect. They got the perfect job and partner and apartment in New York, and they're so successful. And it's not like that. Most of us are struggling. Many people don't like their jobs and, and, you know, so I just feel like, have that grace with yourself, check in with yourself, do the things that are healthy for you. Do therapy. You know, connect with the good, good friends and just, like, be patient and keep moving forward. Foreign.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to MBA Golden Buzzer, where we go beyond just getting into business school and talk about things that really matter. Today we're going to talk about what happens next. What happens after you finish the MBA that you spent so long preparing for and applying for. I'm your host, Ellen Wallis, and today I'm joined by half of Maaza, an HBS alum who's here to pull back the curtain on the realities of life after an mba. Most applicants, we find, spend years kind of planning the applications, stressing over test scores, and crafting the perspective essays. But very few stop to ask what happens after graduation and what's it really like to step back into the job market, navigate big career decisions, and adjust to kind of these obvious personal changes as well that come with such a transformational experience. In this episode, Hoffa is going to share her biggest surprises, toughest challenges, and the lessons that no one tells you about life after the mba. So, Hoffa, thank you so much for, for sitting down with me today. Before we dive in, can you give me kind of the quick version of your background? Where'd you do your mba? What'd you think you'd be doing after? What are you doing now?

Thank you for the time, Ellen. I'm Rafa, originally from Brazil. I'm an agronomic Engineer, went to HBS Class of 2023, and I work remotely for an ag tech startup. I live in Miami. I think career wise, I'm doing something very similar to what I thought I would be doing and actually what I wrote down in my application, which would graduate work for a startup in ag, tech and sustainability. But I thought I would be doing it from Brazil and I'm doing it from Miami, so I think that's the biggest shift.

Before you graduated, what did you assume that post MBA life was going to be like, and how did reality compare to that?

I think that was a very, very scary moment in my life. Just that uncertainty of, you know, what is going to change, what is going to remain, the friends that I'm going to be close to and I think that kind of guided even the decision of which side city I was going to move to. I definitely thought I was going to hang out more with my Brazilian HBS friends who are here, but they are consultants so they travel a lot, they work a lot, so it's, it's hard to, to see them. I also started a very different lifestyle than I had during business school. So I work out a lot. I just ran a half marathon. I go to CrossFit at 6am I wake up at 5am I go to bed at like 8.30pm so that's a massive change that I didn't necessarily anticipate to be that way. Like this. Personal habits, fitness habits and then just like how much my business friend, business school friends would be a part of my social life. I think that's a little bit different. But it gave me the chance to really stay connected with people like virtually in a way. There are friends that I talk to every day on WhatsApp from HBS and FaceTime and kind of supporting each other across, you know, different countries or cities and, and also gave me the chance to build community with non MBA business school kind of friends, which I think is also very valuable.

And you mentioned kind of that you're planning to go back to Brazil, but now you're in Miami.

Yeah.

How did you make that decision? How did that come about? That's a big choice to make.

I think I realized I could do things differently than what I had planned. Planned. Like I had the potential to, to change my life and that I just realized that maybe I wanted something different than, you know, what I wanted back in 2020 when I applied. I do think a big part of it was being in a relationship. At the time, which became a long distance relationship between Brazil and the US and then broke up, was like, wow, now I can really do whatever. And I was like, I'm just going to stay in the US for a year and then I'm going to move back to Brazil because you know, that's where I'm from. But then, you know, visa worked out a life here, you know, and community and I feel more at home in Miami. You know, the things I know, the things I do, the people I know versus how I feel when I go to Sao Paulo and I'm like, I don't want to live in Sao Paulo again. Like I feel safer in the US I feel like it's like kind of the usual things that may make people want to stay in the US And Miami makes it easy to Go back and forth if I need to. It's not terrible like the flights. So it was a personal choice of like lifestyle again. Like, I live by the water, I can go for runs. Like, I don't think I would get that maybe in Rio. I love Rio. But also I feel like maybe, you know, personal security, I don't know, like safety. I don't know how to best express that. It's a little different. And even though I think it's the most beautiful city in the world and I'm going in two days for Carnival, but yeah, I just built my life here and I, I just see my life here career wise, different opportunities if I'm here and then salary wise, also different. So I feel like once you start, you know, I made a decision for a gap year and then it's like, oh, actually I want this to be more than a gap year. I wouldn't be able to make that decision, you know, when I graduated. So I was just deciding for like smaller chunks of time.

And do you think that's the way that works the best to kind of do it for post mba, to test it out? You know, don't feel like you have to have a five year plan. I'm going to stay in the US for this long.

I feel like a lot of friends did have or do have something closer to like a five year plan where they're like, I'm going to do this job for this long because usually they go to jobs that are high paying, like pay way more than mine, but also they work way more than I do and don't really control their schedule or their priorities. So yeah, I feel like it depends on the person, but for me it was less stressful to break down the decision to, I'm gonna try this. If it doesn't work, I can always move to my home country and start over. Because I feel like recruiting wise, I think it would be less hard in Brazil. Like, I feel like I have like the network that I already have there and the HBS degree is definitely unique there. Whereas in the US there's a lot of HBS grads. So it's almost like I wouldn't say plan B, maybe a plan D for me, but it's good to have that, you know, like if things go wrong, visa wise, job wise or whatever, like, I could do that, but if I have the opportunity to try something different, that's what I want to do for now.

So at what point in your job search during the MBA did you say, okay, I'm going to look for US companies and how did you start to kind of move in that direction?

What was your strategy I feel like from the beginning I realized that probably the only thing that would make sense in Brazil would be consulting because at that point I was really thinking numbers like salary versus student debt. I applied to both McKinsey and Bain. I had offers from both for the Sao Paulo office and I was comparing that to other things I could do in the US I think for during the first year of business school I thought I was going to take one of the consulting offers so I could be in Brazil for my summer but then there was like there are so many career events in your first semester second semester there was one from BlackRock and I was just curious about what they were doing with climate and I applied and I honestly interviewing so sure I was not going to get in I got in and I was like well might as well try for a summer.