An Alumni Spotlight on Ruchi Nanda ('13)
As an immigrant from India, Ruchi Nanda (’13) was raised in Naperville, Illinois her entire life. Knowing that she interested in the corporate world, Ruchi was attracted to Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences where she majored in economics with a minor in cognitive neuroscience. In early 2011, Ruchi attended a Student Agencies reception at Stella's in Collegetown and instantly
knew that SAI would be the perfect way to gain first-hand experience in business and management outside the classroom. Following this reception, Ruchi applied and was hired as Campus Promotions General Manager.
Along with her two colleagues in Campus Promotions, Ruchi and her team focused on the consulting arm—more specifically, companies that were recruiting on campus. She devised strategies for companies to market effectively to attract Cornell students to their information sessions. One of her most memorable experiences with Student Agencies was when CP worked with Macquarie Bank, an Australian multinational investment bank and financial services company. Together, they constructed a Monopoly board game tournament for Cornell students where the winner received an internship with Macquarie in the summer. According to Ruchi, “Summer analyst recruiting was quite competitive, so receiving an internship through a win in a board game like Monopoly was attention-grabbing for many students.” Due to the success of this event, Ruchi was awarded the Seth Higby Award for Excellence in Management at the annual John Thomas dinner from CEO Dan Kathan. Not only did Ruchi enjoy working under Dan’s guidance, but she also made lifelong friendships with her co-managers, Calvin Lai (’15) and Felix Tabary (‘15).
Despite this success, Ruchi did face some challenges during her time as CP manager at Student Agencies. Despite the fact that CP was able to succeed in their efforts with the Monopoly tournament, the other businesses within SAI were outperforming CP. During that time, Hired Hands and Big Red Shipping and Storage were exceeding their budget while CP was just reaching theirs. Furthermore, when a local business asked CP for a challenging graphic design, Ruchi learned to reach out for help and deliver the customer something that exceeds their expectations rather than tackling on a task that she was unfamiliar with doing.
After graduating in 2013, Ruchi worked as a Banking and Capital Markets Senior Associate at PwC where she developed and managed business strategies and technology implementation for global financial services institutions. She excelled at PwC given that she was able to apply the business skills that she learned at Student Agencies. During her last year at PwC, she decided to obtain her MBA at Columbia University Business School. In our discussions with her, Ruchi stated that it was extremely interesting to meet Student Agencies alumni in business school. It was a “really interesting talking point to be able to say that an undergraduate student worked as a general manager of their own business,” Ruchi says.
With the organization and time-management skills Ruchi learned while at Student Agencies, she was able to handle a part-time job as a full-time student. While studying as an MBA candidate, Ruchi worked as the US News Content Partnerships Associate Partner Manager at Twitter where she learned the media business. After graduating from Columbia Business School in 2019, Ruchi was hired at Microsoft as the US Capital Markets Industry Solutions Manager, driving the strategic growth of Microsoft’s Capital Markets business. Until this day, she thanks Student Agencies for setting her up for success throughout her professional career thus far.
