David Mantilla

It’s not every day that you can meet the person your business school is named after. Tonight I met David Tepper at an on campus networking event. At the event there were several other notable figures, but David Tepper is probably the most recognizable name in the crowd. He was friendly, approachable, and a strong supporter of his alma mater. A GSIA (now Tepper Business School) alum, he recollected how Professor Ken Dunn (now Dean of the school) would distribute handwritten lecture notes every day in class on the ground breaking research he was working on (back in the early 80s). Those notes were on derivative trading, which was an emerging field at the time.
The networking reception made me think about my experience to-date at Tepper. Am I maximizing my time here? I decided to sign up for Corporate Finance and Venture Capital / Private Equity classes for the spring minis. I figure, I should know my quant stuff if I decided to come here in the first place. These classes will take me out of my comfort zone (marketing, entrepreneurship) and I think it’ll make me a more well-rounded MBA overall.