At the beginning of their MBA journey, after team assignments during their first week, five EMBA students met for dinner at Hotel Zaza. During the meal, they stumbled across something unique about their team: they were all born and raised outside the U.S. — India, Italy, Norway, Taiwan and Tanzania — and all of them spoke English as a second language.
It was a revelation. “We’re as diverse as we can possibly be, culturally and professionally,” Panthini Patel said.
“It was clear immediately, we were a team with very interesting backgrounds,” Bamrom Jonathan said. “We all had a lot to share and became very close immediately. We couldn’t wait to bring our families together.”
How teams are born
In the Rice MBA, cohorts in each program are made up of five-to-six-person teams that stay together for two years. When creating teams, the student program office tries to balance the mix by:
- Gender
- Profession
- Company
- Background, so teams include an international or veteran student
- Age, so all teams have the same average age
And then the work begins. For this diverse team of EMBA students, the work included food and family.
They met for dinners in different restaurants that represented each members’ culture, so the others could try new things. Stefano Capponi chose Fresco Cafe Italiano, not far from campus, on a Saturday after class.
“I’m from a big family where you have massive meals, spending hours at the table. And using the table to talk. The idea is that Italian food is simple and laid back but the ambiance is what creates the environment. That’s how I grew up.”
He wanted to show the richness of that life to his teammates. “Fresco is a small joint where you can’t make reservations; it’s always packed; there’s no table service, and you bring your own wine. When I brought the team, they were surprised by the environment. Like, what is this place? It’s not high end. But after the initial shock, they loved the food and the feeling. We stayed for three hours. It was great.”