Meghana Dwaraka

Boston University, Questrom School of Business

“Can start organizations more easily than I can remember to feed myself.”

Fun fact about yourself: I speak 5 languages.

Hometown: Bangalore, India

High School: Indus International School

Major: Economics and Business Administration

Minor: n/a

Favorite Business Course: Strategy, Innovation, and Global Competition- because it taught me how to think

Extracurricular Activities, Community Work and Leadership Roles During College:

Extracurricular and Community Work

Founding Team, Taggd (selected for Innovate@BU Summer Accelerator 2018)

Founding Director, Boston University 180 Degrees Consulting

Teaching Assistant, Management Communications (Questrom)

Member, Allocations Board

Chief of Staff, Boston Model United Nations

Choreographer, Boston University Jalwa (Indian Fusion Dance Team)

Stage Manager, Wandering Minds (Theatre Group)

Peer Leader, Boston University Community Service Center Afterschool Program

Tutor, Fenway High School

Volunteer, Iowa Homeless Youth Center (during Alternative Service Break)

Awards and Honors

Individual

Boston University Presidential Scholarship

Intel Youth Scholarship

Dean’s List

Beta Gamma Sigma Honors Society

Team

2016: Placed 3rd, 1st, 2nd and 1st respectively at four consecutive national dance competitions

2017: Placed 2nd at a national dance competition

Where have you interned during your college career? (List Companies, Locations and Roles)

1. PriceWaterhouse Coopers, Sydney, Australia
   Clients & Strategy Intern
2. Swasti Health Catalyst, Bangalore, India:
   A UN-affiliated public health nonprofit
   Consulting and Marketing Associate
3. Dojima LLC, New Jersey, US:
   A fin-tech company addressing derivatives reforms using modern technology platforms.

Financial Client Analyst

Where will you be working after graduation? I will be working on international development projects through Swasti Health Catalyst as a Global Health Fellow. I will also continue working on the company I founded in the US that enables collaboration and resource sharing between nonprofit organizations.

What company do you admire most? Patagonia. Because it is driven by passion and purpose and is inseparable from its mission- something I truly resonate with.

What did you enjoy most about your business school? Working with a team to create a business plan for a product idea that we came up with. This experience not only helped me understand my strengths and weaknesses as a team player but also helped me learn what it takes to create a product that meets customers’ needs and how to successfully sell it to them.

What advice would you give to a student looking to major in a business-related field? Invest your time in building relationships with your professors and fellow students. The network you build in business school and the lessons you learn from their experiences and expertise will be more valuable that the lessons you will learn inside a classroom.

“If I didn’t major in business, I would be majoring in or studying…International Relations because it would have made a good alternate gateway to pursuing my international development goals.”

Who most influenced your decision to pursue business in college? I knew when I was 18 years old that I wanted to start a social impact enterprise while I was still in undergrad. In order to best prepared to do so, I made the decision to pursue business in college. The business acumen I developed, as a result, came in handy when I founded Taggd, a platform to enhance nonprofit partnerships.

Which academic, extracurricular or personal achievement are you most proud of? Establishing and running Boston University 180 Degrees Consulting, a student-led social impact consultancy, is certainly one of my proudest achievements because it led to immense personal growth, while allowing me to give back to socially conscious students and organizations. I was not only able to help nonprofits operate better and maximize their impact, but was also able to mentor fellow students who want to make a difference in society and give them a platform to apply their skills while doing so.

Which classmate do you most admire? I admire my friend, Dharmesh Tarapore, for his insatiable intellectual curiosity and zest for life. Dharmesh was a Computer Science and International Relations major. During his undergrad, he not only published a paper that has been cited over 50 times to date but also established a million-dollar startup. He built a robot to do his laundry and even taught a 400 level CS class straight out of undergrad. Dharmesh is a pilot and made me fly my first ever plane. He is constantly to pushing his boundaries to learn more, do more, and experience more. He is unafraid to go out of his comfort zone, making him one of the most interesting people I know.

Who would you most want to thank for your success? Any accomplishment of mine – big or small – would not have been possible without every single person who helps form the well-oiled machine that is my life. My parents gave me the freedom to pursue my passions and ample room to make my own mistakes, which shaped me into the person I am today. This is so rare to find in Indian families and was a foreign concept in the conservative household in which they were raised. My friends supported me every step of the way and reminded me to keep going especially when the going got tough. My mentors and professors believed in me and created opportunities for me that I may not have otherwise found on my own. The communities that inspired me to work towards social impact, the people I have danced with, those that I have worked with and even those that I have had my biggest disagreements with – everyone taught me something and if even one of these pieces was missing, the machine would not have worked and success would not have been possible.

What are the top two items on your bucket list?

• Publish my writing
• Dance on all seven continents (4 down, 3 to go)

What are your hobbies? Dancing, Writing, Playing guitar

What made Meghana such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2019?

“Meghana is the brightest and most accomplished Questrom undergraduate that I can recall. In December she completed a double major in Business and Economics. She earned academic honors (Beta Gamma Sigma, Magna Cum Laude), published an article on climate change, and was selected as a teaching assistant. She conducted summer internships in Bangalore and Sydney, addressing sophisticated business issues with PWC as well as the social challenges of clean water and homelessness.

Meghana’s extracurricular accomplishments and service activities are just as impressive. Meghana founded the BU chapter of 180 Degrees Consulting, a student-led consultancy for nonprofits. She also co-founded a social venture focused on advancing nonprofit partnerships that were selected for the Innovate@BU Summer Accelerator.  Meghana was the captain of BU’s competitive Indian fusion dance team that finished third in the national championships in 2016. She was a lead tutor at Fenway High School.  Meghana is proficient in five languages. She was my student in the course Leadership and Management of Social Enterprises and she wrote the best paper I’ve read in the eight years I have taught that course. In that paper, she developed a robust and well-focused marketing strategy for a curriculum on global education and cross-cultural understanding.

Meghana is mature, professional, personable, enthusiastic, and idealistic.  In all of these ways, I believe she represents the highest ideals and aspirations of our school.”

David Stolow
Senior Lecturer
Co-Faculty Director for the Social Impact Program