Why CEOs have Liberal Arts Degrees

Some of today's top CEOs were history, political science, sociology, chinese and music majors in college. They are leading global airline, chemical, healthcare, pharmaceutical, and financial companies, among others. There are very practical reasons for a Liberal Arts degree, and Samanee Mahbub (Brown '18) thinks the reasons are crystal clear.  Let's hear it from her. 
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A “Practical” Liberal Arts Degree

“Samanee, what on earth are you going to do with a history degree? I’m not sending you to college to become a historian.”

Those were the words my mother told me when I mentioned the idea of switching from the ever so pragmatic economics major to my newfound passion in studying the past. Not exactly resounding support.

As a college student in this technological era, I’ve felt the constant burden of having to pursue a “practical” degree. My uncle pushes engineering. My brother insists I take computer science. My dad says if I don’t like STEM, then economics is the best option for a woman who wants to pursue business. Yet my mind doesn’t light up the same way in microeconomics as it does learning about the overlapping women’s movement, anti-war movement and civil rights movements of the 1960s.  

Educating myself about the fall of the Roman Empire may not provide direct, transferable skills to the corporate office, the quirky startup, or any particular field of work. But I argue it gives me something even better: critical thinking skills.

Critical thinking skills. Quite the buzzword these days. The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking defines it as an “intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” I have a much simpler and arguably, more relevant definition: the ability to rationally use a mental toolkit to analyze a situation with which one might not have had previous experience.

History provides me with this mental toolkit. Through my classes, I’ve been forced to question the intentions of authors of primary sources, understand biases present within my readings and even my professor, observe the tone of speakers in context to their audience, and seek out further information to support the claims I make when I write my history papers. Now let me change some of the words in this paragraph and show you how my history major will prepare me for the business world.

Through my classes, I’ve been forced to question the intentions of [investors who want to pursue a particular M&A deal], understand biases present within [reports that do not recognize key factors that affect a company’s growth], observe the tone of my [interviewer] in context [of my interview], and seek out further information to support the claims I make when [I recommend a company to diversify their revenue streams in order to save their bottom line].

The situations I study in history are different, but as seen above, the skills used are the same. History, philosophy, sociology, or any liberal arts degree will not prevent me from pursuing a career in business. These disciplines provide me with a tool kit to navigate any situation I am presented, and in my opinion, make me a better employee.

So I’m going to take that Shakespeare class (or maybe not), I will learn about Karl Marx’s theory of alienation, and I’m going to delve further into Middle Eastern history. These are my passions. Even though they don’t directly align with my career aspirations, they will not take me out of the game. A career advisor once told me that those who pursue liberal arts majors and enter finance, consulting or technology are not the exceptions. They are the norm.

Therefore, I urge everyone who loves the liberal arts to pursue their passion. These pursuits are not lost in a world where STEM is rising. You will succeed because of the thinking skills you’ve acquired. And if you’re still not convinced, just remember, the CEO of Goldman Sachs is a government major.

Samanee Mahbub is originally from Bangladesh but has explored over 19 countries.  She's dreams of leading her country out of poverty.  While in high school, she started a 50-student organization supporting Acid Survivors Foundation to help rehabilitate burn survivors of acid attacks.  She is now the core programming director for the Brown Entrepreneurship Program and Head of Design for The Intercollegiate Finance Journal.  She's spending the summer in Dhaka doing microfinance. 

Seriously, How Can Standardized Tests Teach Kids About Uncertainty?

I had a fabulous time being interviewed by Nick DiNardo of Meet Education Project about my educational and professional path.  Thank you, Nick!!

To Move the World, Show, Don't Tell

Rexy Josh Dorado is changing the world by living stories, and then telling them.  Here's his story - with lessons for the C-Suite to the street.  Please read, listen and do - and tell that story.
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As a child, all I wanted to do was build things: Lego buildings, clay monsters, web forums, video games.  At the core was a hunger for new possibilities that came alive with each new thing I dreamt up.

In middle school, this drive manifested in writing.  Among the first lessons that stuck with me was the classical literary rule: “Show, don’t tell.”

It’s a simple maxim, yet powerful in its consequence.  “Show, don’t tell” means focusing on vivid experience over exposition.  It recognizes a deep power in unspoken things.

It thrills me to see the social sector embrace the importance of storytelling.  And yet: as much as the field has learned to tell its story better, we’re still a long way away from harnessing the principles of storytelling not only to talk about change, but enact it.

What can we - in attempting to change society’s lived stories - learn from the art of telling stories?  What can social change learn from “show, don’t tell”?

1. How to connect the dots.

I’m the founder of Kaya Collaborative, a youth initiative to transform the global Filipino community into a support network for social innovation in the Philippines.  We run a summer fellowship that immerses young diaspora leaders in Manila’s social sector - then launches them back into their global communities to engineer this reconnection at scale.

Our program is part of the service learning field, which is in midway through a quiet but significant shift in identity.  Service learning often translated to communities being the backdrop of privileged volunteers’ savior narratives - marginal benefit at the cost of one’s dignity.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  

When done respectfully - when the goal is listening and partnering - service learning has the power to build empathic relationships and empower both sides.  To give light to communities who have been historically effaced.

Nadinne Cruz, a “recovering angry critic”, describes service learning as a path to a world where “the moral brilliance of communities everywhere... becomes central.”

At Kaya Co, we try to tell a new narrative of the Philippines that’s defined by strength and potential.  Great sentiment - but it never sticks until people see it shown, then learn to tell it to themselves.

Our world has never been so equally divided and interconnected.  Courses and texts that promote “global citizenship” only do so much.  Vivid, sensory, shown experience tells what cannot be told: in the moments between facts, in the textures of hands, and the sights that stick better than text.

2. How to unlock potential.

The Future Project is a movement to eliminate apathy in American schools by recruiting and mobilizing Dream Directors: intrapreneurs working full time to turn the dreams of students into reality - and inspire the entire school to do the same.

According to Andrew Mangino, TFP’s founder: “If we start asking young people (about their dreams and passions) and getting them to answer in the form of action, that’s what’s needed most.”

Andrew Mangino is an Ashoka fellow, part of the world’s oldest and largest network of social entrepreneurs. Over time, we at Ashoka have observed a common element in the lives of these pioneers: at some point in their youth, they realized that they had the power to make change.

This is what Brazilian educator Paulo Freire called conscientização, or critical consciousness: an understanding of the forces that shape the world, and the power that one has to play a role in that shaping.

This only happens through practice.  To build changemakers, let them build and make change.

Today, we’re inundated with messaging that tells us, yes, we can follow our dreams.  That only goes so far. One of the gravest injustices of the world is that too few have the opportunity to show themselves - not just be told - their true power.

3. How to lead the way.

At the start, Ashoka’s goal was to accelerate our fellows’ impact to the largest possible scale.  But the biggest mark we’ve left is more collective.  Over time, our fellows have shown the world so vividly the power of social entrepreneurship that the idea took on a life of its own.  A sector has emerged from so many imaginations sparked.

At Kaya Co, we turn our transnational goal into something that feels tangible by accelerating people, communities, and programs that have made it happen.

The Future Project’s Dream Directors act as role models to their students, and take on a project to change school culture as they guide kids through their own projects.  Collectively, they build a new picture of what American education can be.

Call it modeling, prototyping, “breaking ground.”  In the end, it boils down to showing, not telling, what is possible.  The world will follow.

Rexy Josh Dorado is a 2014 graduate of Brown University and a believer in the power of identity to spark change.  He is a Search Associate at Ashoka, the world's largest and oldest network of social entrepreneurs, and moonlights as the founder and leader of Kaya Collaborative: a social venture that aims to inspire, educate, and activate the young Filipino diaspora as a support network for citizen leadership in the Philippines.