Johnson School student Tangwena Nelson keeps a Business Week journal

By Linda Myers

Fourteen months ago, Tangwena Nelson's life became an open book -- literally. From Montclair, N.J., he is one of 35 current business school students nationwide chosen by Business Week to share online their innermost thoughts about the MBA experience.

Tangwena Nelson used the resources of the Johnson School's Parker Center for Investment Research for his Immersion in Investment Banking. The center, in Sage Hall, replicates a Wall Street trading floor. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

Since August 2000, he has posted six lengthy personal journal entries on the web site www.businessweek.com/bschools/mbajournal/ on why he decided to leave a fast-rising career at American Airlines to enroll at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, how he survived the tough first-year core courses and intense summer internship and, most important, why Reginald Lewis is still the man he most wants to emulate.

"You may have never heard of Reginald Lewis," Nelson wrote in his journal, "but he has been one of the motivating forces behind my decision to attend business school. His determination to succeed in the face of adversity has long been an inspiration for me."

A self-made business-savvy multimillionaire who died in 1993, Lewis engineered a leveraged buyout of Beatrice International Foods in 1987 that was, at the time, the largest buyout ever of an international firm. That, perhaps, is why he is smiling on the cover of his top-selling autobiography, Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun (John Wiley and Sons, 1994), which tells the full story.

While Nelson did not name Lewis directly in his MBA essay, its clarity of purpose led Natalie Grinblatt, Johnson School director of admissions and financial aid, to share it with Business Week, which then invited him to participate in the journal project.

Nelson initially applied to MBA programs in 1995 while working in marketing at American Airlines soon after graduating from Howard University. He included a letter of recommendation from the company's CEO, a man who hardly knew him, because he thought it would impress business schools. "The schools felt otherwise," he wrote, with some humility, in his MBA journal. He was turned down by two and wait-listed by a third. "My ego took a bruising, but looking back, I realize I had no business applying then."

Like his role model, he came up with another way to succeed and soon moved up into a series of increasingly responsible positions at American. None of them, however, tapped into the Reginald Lewis part of him.

The airline did offer him a chance to travel often to South America, where he made friends and learned Spanish. In 1999 during an extended stay in Quito, Ecuador, he helped one acquaintance put together a business plan. While he had long been fascinated by capital markets, this was his first direct exposure. "It was an 'aha!' moment -- the point in time when I discovered what I truly wanted to do with my life," he said.

Perhaps with the ghost of Reginald Lewis hovering nearby, Nelson came up with a bold vision for his future: to link venture capital funds with businesses in emerging capital markets in places like South America, the Caribbean and Africa. The work would challenge him intellectually, tap into his passion for new cultural experiences and allow him to help people on projects that make a difference.

His first step was to gain both the credential -- that MBA -- and the training to follow his dream. "I now have a true purpose for school (a factor that I've since learned carries a lot of weight in the B-school application process)," he wrote.

Nelson looked for a business school that offered the training he would need and was small (Howard had been too big). "In my research I stumbled onto the Robert A. Toigo Foundation (RTF) fellowship for students embarking on a financial services career, post B-school." Recipients of the highly competitive fellowships, offered through 12 select business schools, among them Cornell's Johnson School, gain credibility in business and can network with senior managers on Wall Street who are RTF alumni, Nelson noted.

The Johnson School had the right size and programs plus a highly international student group. After a visit, Nelson wrote: "Not only was I impressed with the school's new facilities, which include a state-of-the-art financial research center, but I was sold on the students I met. They had a unique mix of smarts and humility, plus diverse backgrounds."

This time, he asked business associates who knew him well to write recommendations, and he offered details on specific projects and assignments he had completed while working with them. Conveying a picture of himself in the requisite 400 words in the essay part of the application was a challenge, he said. So was waiting to hear whether he had been accepted and had qualified for the fellowship.

"I had been given a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne and had saved it for the right celebration. I would go home every day, look at the bottle and then sift through my mail." As in turns out, he got the good news from the Johnson School in a voice mail message and never opened the champagne, "but I reveled in my acceptance and the adventure I was undertaking."

But the first semester was a blur. "On occasion, I was pushed to my physical limits" by "dreaded all-nighters and 8 p.m. review sessions. Without the supportive and close-knit environment I experienced, it would probably have been miserable."

Recruiting for summer internships was in full swing before the second semester began. But once again, Nelson found the school's small size and culture of camaraderie to be an advantage. "Second-year students have generously shared their experiences with the process and recommendations," he wrote. The extra help plus his own clear sense of direction led to a few offers. He settled on a job with Banc of America Securities in New York because it offered him the chance to work in both debt and equity.

With the internship decision out of the way, he was able to focus more on his coursework, an "immersion" or intensive course of study in all aspects of investment banking. "I'm guaranteed another hard-hitting semester, but it should be equally, if not more, challenging and gratifying than the first," he wrote. Later he commented: "The subject matter is terrific and the faculty are incredible masters of their fields." In addition, "teamwork has been the unofficial theme, in support of the tons of papers due. This week we worked around the clock to complete final projects that included a financial research report on a company of our choice and a strategy study on an industry."

At the end of his second semester, Nelson was flying high. He wrote: "It has been a milestone year for me on multiple fronts." But later, immersed in his 14-week summer internship, he noted: "The hours have been brutal. I've gotten no more than 4.5 hours of sleep on a given night." Still, he was gaining knowledge. "I am currently in high-yield capital markets, possibly the hottest space in banking right now, at one of the top institutions."

This fall Nelson signed up for an even more punishing course load to be able, perhaps, to spend his spring semester abroad and gain more international exposure. While his goals have not changed, his perspective has. Recently he wrote: "My experience has exceeded my expectations, and I have gained a broader, yet intricate understanding of a wide range of business principles. I liken it to someone who begins as a basketball fan in Row 333, Section C, of the arena and who, a year later, is on the floor playing with the likes of Michael Jordan. I now have an insight into what it takes to be ... a Reginald Lewis."

His words will remain on the Business Week web site for other prospective Reginald Lewises to see. Surely Nelson's role model, were he still around, would smile at that.