The Unexpected Adventures (And Many Roles) Of An NYU Stern MBA
Marc Ethier
13 min read
The Unexpected Adventures (And Many Roles) Of An NYU Stern MBA
Peter Egziabher graduates from NYU Stern this month; he has already taken steps toward a new career, beginning a highly exclusive fellowship with the Hollywood Radio and TV Society. Courtesy photos
Higher education really is a ticket to anywhere. In Peter Egziabher’s case, it has been a ticket to everywhere.
Egziabher has a bachelor’s in history from Harvard College and a JD from NYU. He’s been a licensed attorney, voting rights advocate, and cybersecurity analyst; partner in a VC firm and law clerk for the NBA; intern with McKinsey and PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Congressional Democratic Caucus. He’s worked on both coasts in the U.S. and around Africa. Living in New York, he teaches Spanish at a community organization in Chinatown and tutors undergraduates in City College.
Later this month, Egziabher will graduate with an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business — and that, he hopes, will prove to be the biggest springboard of all, serving as a catalyst for an entirely new direction in his wide-ranging career: into a role as a creative executive in the film industry. As he ends his B-school journey, Egziabher has taken a big step by beginning a highly exclusive fellowship with the Hollywood Radio & TV Society.
“I’ve had a lot of adventures, put it that way,” he says.
A NEW LAWYER IN A WORLD OF CHALLENGES
The Unexpected Adventures (And Many Roles) Of An NYU Stern MBA
Peter Egziabher: “For someone who wants to know how an MBA can help them, I’d encourage them to take a step back and think about what do they want regardless of degree”
Most MBAs from top B-schools find work in consulting, finance, or tech (yes, tech, even in 2023). A few go on to work in media and entertainment. None, so far as we know, has ever followed Peter Egziabher’s path, which involves … well, all of the above, and a lot more.
A native of Los Angeles, from a young age Egziabher wanted to study the law. Fate and opportunity intervened — temporarily. Earning admission to Harvard as an undergrad, he graduated with a BA in history, then followed an opportunity to work in Africa, becoming a consultant in Nairobi, Kenya doing technology, social change, and business strategy work.
But the lure of the law remained, and in 2014, Egziabher returned to school after earning admission to NYU’s School of Law. While there he worked with both the NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the law school’s Reproductive Justice Clinic; he also briefly served as a law clerk for the National Basketball Association.
A promising legal career seemed imminent. But by the time Egziabher graduated with a JD in 2017, the world had changed significantly.
“I graduated into the Trump administration,” he recalls. “I was slated to be a tax adviser. I studied tax law. I decided to do a fellowship instead to get people registered to vote automatically using software — something that brought together my technological and legal training.”
Egziabher did two fellowships in fact, through Rutgers Law School, where he helped local communities assert their civil rights, and for the Brennan Center for Justice, where he worked with officials, elections administrators, and advocacy groups to enact Automatic Voter Registration in more than 30 states. He helped challenge voter suppression in federal court, and advised agencies on implementing AVR technology.
“I saw that you could actually make an impact,” he says. “It was my first real job, and I saw that you could really make an impact in the world using technical tools and business tools.”
ANOTHER, BIGGER PIVOT
Feeling that he still lacked those business tools — but also contemplating another career change — Egziabher began to mull a return to school to get an MBA.
“I ended up in law school because I had wanted to be a lawyer since I was a kid, and I thought that lawyers can make good business people,” he says. “So I didn’t intend to stay within the law for very long, but I wanted to get the law degree and get the legal training. And I wound up doing civil rights work.
“But after a few years of doing that, I realized that I really was still passionate about history. It was something that I never knew I could turn into a career, because I don’t come from a background where people become historians or intellectuals. So I thought if you have a history degree, you have to go to law school. It’s the only logical outcome. But after living in the world and seeing two different careers, I realized there’s a field called public history that I was really passionate about — that you could be a historian without having to be a professor, which really appealed to me. And public history takes place in museums and libraries and archives, traditionally.
“So I came to Stern thinking I would use an MBA to maybe run museum or run an archive. I actually registered for night classes at CUNY in public history, and I realized, ‘OK, this is right for me. Let me try to figure out what I can do in history.'”
But another pivot was in store.
“By being at Stern and taking classes related to entertainment, I thought, ‘OK, here’s something I can do where I can bring history to the public on a much larger scale than a museum.’ And I can make social change which I’m really excited about, but I can do it through stories and through ideas. I don’t have to go to the courtroom. I don’t have to lobby legislatures like I was at the Brennan Center. I don’t have to do the work in technology that I was doing. I can just focus on storytelling and empowering creators. I’m a former history major with a passion for sharing historical narratives. I’m looking forward to helping audiences better understand themselves and their society.”
The Unexpected Adventures (And Many Roles) Of An NYU Stern MBA
Peter Egziabher: “An MBA is giving me the kind of rigorous, structured thinking around business that I need. It also gives me the flexibility to explore careers in a way that you don’t have when you’re in a conservatory, like a film school”
ONLY 5 CANDIDATES SECURE AN EXCLUSIVE HRTS FELLOWSHIP EACH YEAR
How much can a Stern School MBA student learn about the entertainment industry? A great deal, as it happens. Over his last three semesters at NYU, Peter Egziabher immersed himself in the world of TV and film, taking classes at NYU’s Film School, networking with professors, and doing a consulting engagement with the NYU Production Lab, an office that incubates film ideas and empowers young filmmakers at NYU. Starting last September and continuing this spring, he interned with Macro, reviewing scripts, offering notes to screenwriters, and hearing pitches of new TV series and films for the Los Angeles-based production company that creates and finances all manner of creative content with the voices and perspectives of Black people and people of color.
“It’s been a journey. I’m doing everything,” Egziabher says. “I’m going to the Cannes Film Festival. I’m doing everything I can do at Stern.
“Stern gives you a lot of flexibility to chart your own path. And so even though most people do finance consulting, if you really want to work in entertainment, they have programs for that.”
His path toward becoming a creative executive in television and film got a major boost when he secured a fellowship with the Hollywood Radio and TV Society, a networking, education and mentorship association in the industry with more than 60 corporate members and thousands of individual members. He was one of five fellows chosen after a nationwide search, the first ever conducted by the HRTS, and will be matched with a mentor who is a senior leader in the industry.
“I think if I’d known about this career earlier on, I would’ve explored it probably much earlier,” Egziabher says. “But I think everything led me to this point.”
Q&A WITH PETER EGZIABHER, NYU STERN MBA & HRTS FELLOW
Poets&Quants: The Hollywood Radio and TV Society fellowship is a big deal. There are only five fellows named out of a nationwide search. What was it like going for this?
Peter Egziabher: They’re a major organization in the TV and radio industry, mostly TV. And this is the first year they’ve offered a fellowship where they did a nationwide search. There are two tracks. There’s the academic track and then there’s the young professional track. So they added the academic track. There are five people who are chosen, five students around the country. So I’m an HRTS academic fellow, one of five.
It goes from April to December, and it entails one-on-one mentorship by a senior leader in the industry. Just to give an idea of the kind of person who does these mentorships, my interviewer, whose name is Jordan Levin, was the CEO of the WB Network, and later became chief content officer of the NFL and executive vice president of Xbox Entertainment. And this is the person that interviewed me. And so this is the caliber person who’s going to mentor the people, the fellows.
Just looking at the roster of people who are honored at their organization events and who speak in the panels, it’s exciting.
What else does the fellowship entail? What will you be doing exactly besides meeting with this mentor? What are the parameters?
It involves attending events. It involves academic enrichment sessions. There are seminars and panels. Because it’s the first year, there’s not a history of fellowship that I can look into. So I think it won’t be until I really get started when I know exactly what it entails.
What lessons do you think others can take away from your journey?
It’s the kind of thing I had to lean into. When you go into business school applications, you think about, what do I need to say? How do I need to present myself? And once I really decided to put my best foot forward and emphasize my strengths — a lawyer, technologist, interested in history, entertainment — the more I spoke about these things, the more I saw people respond. Some people didn’t really know what to make of it, but I saw a lot of people responding positively. And opportunities came my way.
So now I have mentors at the film school. Now I have this internship at Macro because I reached out to people on LinkedIn and said, “You worked at Macro. I love their work. Can we talk about how to work there?” So the experience has taught me to think of my uniqueness as a strength. And Stern has been really welcoming in that way.
The NYU ecosystem has obviously been perfect for you, with the film school there and being able to take advantage of that.
And working with the Production Lab, working with renowned filmmakers, learning about the film industry. I’m taking a movie marketing class with this adjunct who started a marketing business. Stern gives you a lot of flexibility to chart your own path. And so even though most people do finance consulting, if you really want to work in entertainment, they have programs for that.
There’s an MFA/MBA program that combines with the film school, and I’m not part of the program, but I hang out with the MFA/MBAs. I made a good friend here who’s a creative executive, which is what I want to be, and he’s in the part-time program. So through the part-time program, I’ve met someone who’s mentored me and told me about this HRTS fellowship in the first place. So yeah, it brings people together and gives you the flexibility to try your own path. And just being at NYU in general and being in New York City has been helpful.
Where do you see the path taking you? You’ve got this big fellowship, but then you’ll be out of school, and what then?
So right after graduation, I’ll be at McKinsey where I want to do entertainment-related consulting work. McKinsey does a lot of work in the entertainment industry. When I interned last summer, I met a lot of associates and managers and partners who worked for entertainment clients. So that’s something that I’ll have to make happen, but I want to focus my work on entertainment there. And afterward, I’m interested in moving to the creative side, being what’s called a creative executive.
It’s unconventional for an MBA. Right now, I’m networking in the industry and learning about what paths might lead me there. And I think working at Macro is a big part of that — just understanding, talking to people about how they got there. Learning what they do for a living. This semester, I’m learning the business side and the creative side of being an executive. So I don’t know exactly how to get there, but I’m doing the fact-planning right now to learn that.
What would you say to someone about to apply to an MBA program — or maybe they’ve already applied, maybe they are in the process — but they’re in one industry and they’re not sure where they want to go? You could have a doctorate in pivoting! So what would you say about that, about maybe not being certain of how you will use the MBA? That’s a tough place to be for some people.
Yeah. I think the flip side of that is that many people think an MBA will give them answers. And then when they start the MBA, they realize it’s such a broadly applicable degree that they need to do some soul-searching. So I’d say regardless of what program you go to, what degree you get, you really have to know what you want. And it is easier to go in a certain field if you have a certain degree. If you want to be a lawyer, go to law school. But outside of a few fields like law and medicine and engineering maybe, it’s really about what would round you out as a person.
I think an MBA was a better fit for me than film school, even though it’s more common to go to film school if you want to do the work that I want to do. Because an MBA is giving me the kind of rigorous, structured thinking around business that I need. It also gives me the flexibility to explore careers in a way that you don’t have when you’re in a conservatory, like a film school.
So I’d say for someone who wants to know how an MBA can help them, I’d encourage them to take a step back and think about what they want regardless of degree. And then once they have that really strong sense of direction, then they’ll be able to figure out how an MBA can help them. Because it certainly can’t hurt, but it also can’t give you the answers. That can only come from yourself.
