What if the ladder you've been climbing is leaning against the wrong wall? 

Most of us were handed a blueprint for success. Climb the ranks, check the boxes, keep moving. But what happens when you're excelling on paper and still feel completely hollow inside? According to Gallup, 79% of professionals are operating on autopilot, present in body but absent in purpose. For high-achieving professionals in leadership, that disconnection rarely looks like falling apart. It looks like crushing every goal while quietly burning out from the inside. 

In this episode of The Fuqua Show, host Aaliyah Brown sits down with Julia Korn, Executive Career Coach, Business Insider "Most Innovative Career Coach," and founder of the Women's Leadership Accelerator, for a conversation that challenges everything you thought you knew about ambition, success, and what it actually means to thrive. 

Connect with Julia:  

• LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliakorn/  
• Women's Leadership Accelerator: https://juliakorn.com/wla  
• Speaking reel: Julia Korn Speaker Reel 2025  

What we unpack in this episode: 

•  Breaking Up with "Should" How one word quietly hijacks your mental health, your decisions, and your sense of self, and what to replace it with. 
• The Burnout Myth Why you don't have to set yourself on fire to rise. Julia reframes what sustainable, skyrocketing career growth actually looks like. 
•  Your Internal Board of Directors Mentors versus sponsors: why the distinction matters more than most people realize, and how to strategically build both into your network. 
• The "Team Fuqua" Mindset How genuine human connection, not just networking, becomes the most powerful career accelerator you're probably underusing. 

Whether you're early in your career, mid-pivot, or leading teams while secretly wondering is this it? Julia's framework for finding your "magical zone of genius" will challenge you to stop optimizing for other people's definitions of success and start designing a career that's unmistakably yours. 

If you've been waiting for a sign to stop living by internalized obligation and start leading with intention, this is it. 

Host: Aaliyah Brown 

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Follow The Fuqua Show: [Instagram] | [LinkedIn] 

For more information on the Duke MBA experience, visit fuqua.duke.edu/admissions.  

This is a student-run production. The opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not reflect the views of Duke University or the Fuqua School of Business.   

On this episode of The Fuqua Show, we sit down with Gil Vazquez (Class of '26) for a masterclass in resilience, gratitude, and the audacity to bet on yourself. Gil’s story isn't your typical polished resume; it is a raw look at what happens when the institutions you rely on say "no," and you refuse to accept it. 

From his early years moving from Puerto Rico to the U.S. with his professional horse-jockey father, to losing and fighting to regain a Division 1 track scholarship, Gil has always had to forge his own path. We trace his journey through an eight-year military career as an Army engineer deployed across Europe and Africa. He details a pivotal crucible: fighting a toxic military bureaucracy and reaching out directly to a general to secure his exit from the armed forces to care for his ailing mother. 

Now a full-ride scholar, an incoming leader in strategy and finance at PepsiCo, and the founder of Built Different Running Company (BDRC), Gil shares how almost losing his MBA opportunity fueled a profound dedication to servant leadership. 

In this episode, we cover:

• Navigating life and assimilation as a first-generation college student to immigrant parents. 
• Bouncing back from lost scholarships, injuries, and being kicked off his team to achieving an undefeated Division 2 cross-country season. 
• The sobering reality of military leadership, taking accountability for a team, and advocating for yourself against a broken system. 
• Fostering community through the Fuqua Run Club and launching his new entrepreneurial venture, BDRC. 

In this episode, we explore what it means to truly use business as a force for good. We sit down with Jessica Yinka Thomas, a proud Fuqua alumna (MBA '04), the Director of the Business Sustainability Collaborative at NC State University's Poole College of Management, and a founding force behind the B Academics movement. 

Jessica shares her fascinating life of "redirects." She takes us through her early years growing up across Miami, Nigeria, and Senegal, and explains how her background in mechanical engineering led her to become one of the first product designers at the educational toy startup Leapfrog. We discuss her pivot from corporate toy design to studying social entrepreneurship at Duke, her double life as a novelist penning social justice thrillers, and her groundbreaking work integrating the B Corp framework into higher education to create applied learning opportunities for students worldwide. 

Key Takeaways from this Episode:

• Global Perspectives: How a childhood spent in West Africa profoundly shaped Jessica's approach to innovation and global economic development. 
• The Leapfrog Ride: The thrilling—and exhausting—experience of designing interactive learning toys while helping grow an early-stage startup into the third-largest toy company in the U.S.. 
• Embracing the "Redirect": Finding clarity after burnout through a six-month backpacking journey in Australia and reading The Artist's Way. 
• Championing B Corps: The creation of the pioneering NC State B Corp Clinic and the scaling of B Academics into an independent global network of over 2,500 members. 
• The Team Fuqua Ethos: The power of collective action, lifting others up, and remaining honest about your core values as you build a career. 

Listen now to discover how to harness your own life's redirects and leverage business to drive positive change!

What does it look like to move through an MBA with both strategic clarity and genuine heart? In this episode, host Aaliyah Brown sits down with Elisabeth Scott: second-year MBA, future Kearney consultant, and a leader who has never treated ambition and authenticity as opposites. 

Elisabeth's path spans global supply chains in the power tool and sports industries, a GATE trip to South Africa, a tea ceremony in Kyoto, and the helm of Fuqua's InnovateHER conference. Along the way, she's collected hard-won lessons about knowing where to focus, when to say no, and what it really means to build community on purpose. 

Inside the Episode: 

• The Operational Pivot: Why Elisabeth moved from the "visible, measurable" world of supply chain to the diagnostic landscape of management consulting. 
• The "Should" of Ambition: A candid look at whether ambition and authenticity are truly in tension and how to navigate "the rooms you weren't supposed to be in." 
• Global Perspectives: Lessons on leadership and communication captured from the streets of South Africa to traditional tea ceremonies in Japan. 
• The Power of Community: How serving as a COLE Fellow and a Student Representative to the Board of Visitors shaped her view of "Team Fuqua." 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisabethmscott/   

Host: Aaliyah Brown 

Subscribe: [Apple Podcasts] | [Spotify] | [YouTube] 

Follow The Fuqua Show: [Instagram] | [LinkedIn] 

For more information on the Duke MBA experience, visit fuqua.duke.edu/admissions.  

This is a student-run production. The opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not reflect the views of Duke University or the Fuqua School of Business.   

In this episode, host Sam Shain sits down with Jon Valdez to discuss his transformative journey of self-discovery, identity, and leadership.

Jon shares his story beginning with his early childhood in Miami's Little Havana with his Cuban immigrant family, to an abrupt move to rural South Carolina. He opens up about the bullying he faced, the pressure to hide his authentic self, and the challenge of navigating his intersecting identities as a Latino and a queer youth in a conservative environment.

The conversation shifts to a major turning point when Jon moved to Washington, D.C.. There, he finally felt safe to come out, build a supportive community, and meet his partner of ten years, Lucas. Jon details how his desire to make a broader impact ultimately led him to Duke's Fuqua School of Business. At Fuqua, Jon transformed into a proud, visible leader, serving as the President of Fuqua Pride and on the cabinet for the American Latinx Management Association (ALMA).

In this episode, we cover:

• Moving from the bilingual city of Miami to rural South Carolina at age seven.
• The struggles of middle school, dealing with slurs, and eventually finding representation through media.
• Coming out to himself and his family, and finding his chosen family in the nation's capital.
• The modern love story of how Jon met his partner, Lucas, and how they navigated the MBA journey together.
• Why Jon chose Duke after MBA Pride weekend and his mission to make the campus more inclusive.
• Jon's post-grad plans to join DaVita's leadership development program in Chicago.

Tune in to hear a powerful testament to the reality of "Team Fuqua" and the beauty of bringing your authentic self to every space you enter.

In this episode of The Fuqua Show, Marketing Chair and first-time host Jade Tsai interviews Shafiq Motiwala (MQM ’25), who grew up in Karachi, Pakistan and traces how his parents, sister, and a formative economics teacher shaped his passions for economics and teaching. He recounts playing cricket, learning to DJ in undergrad at LUMS, and pursuing diverse ventures after graduation including leading a construction project in Northern Pakistan, teaching economics at his former school, launching a tea import business (Easy Enterprises), and co-founding a coworking space in Karachi. Shafiq explains why he chose Duke’s 10-month MQM to build data and AI skills and join the Team Fuqua community, and describes creating the Azimuth independent-study internship after another internship fell through. He reflects on international student challenges, Fuqua social life and events he hosted as student engagement chair, and shares recruiting advice after landing a senior business analyst role at Capital One. 

Connect with Shafiq Motiwala: linkedin.com/in/shafiqashfaq

More about the episode: 

• Host: Jade Tsai http://www.linkedin.com/in/tsaijade 
• Listen to us on: [Apple Podcasts] | [Spotify] | [YouTube]
• Follow The Fuqua Show: [Instagram] | [LinkedIn]

This is a student-run production. The opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not reflect the views of Duke University or the Fuqua School of Business.  

In this episode of The Fuqua Show, host Aaliyah Brown sits down with Nikin Shah, the Founder and General Partner at Front Porch Venture Partners, to explore the intersection of operational excellence and strategic investment. Based in the heart of Durham, Nikin offers the rare and valuable perspective of a seasoned operator turned venture capitalist, drawing from his transformative tenure as Co-CEO of Polyzen. He details how he navigated the complexities of leading a family-founded medical device powerhouse through decades of scaling, ultimately culminating in a successful full-company exit in 2022. Now, Nikin is applying that hard-earned "operator’s toolkit" to reshape the venture landscape across the Southeast, utilizing a sophisticated hybrid model that invests both in top-tier funds and directly into high-growth startups. Throughout the conversation, we dive into the operational rigor required to prepare a platform for acquisition, the strategic "venture pivot" from the C-suite to the GP chair, and the evolution of a leadership style rooted in purpose and legacy. To round out the discussion on achieving a successful professional exit, Nikin highlights Patrick Ungashick’s book, Dance in the End Zone, as a fundamental guide for business owners looking to build a company that is not just successful, but truly exit-ready.

Connect with Nikin Shah: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikin-shah-9801885/  
• Front Porch Venture Partners: frontporchvp.com  

Host: Aaliyah Brown

Subscribe: [Apple Podcasts] | [Spotify] | [YouTube]

Follow The Fuqua Show: [Instagram] | [LinkedIn]

For more information on the Duke MBA experience, visit fuqua.duke.edu/admissions. 

This is a student-run production. The opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not reflect the views of Duke University or the Fuqua School of Business.  

Professor Scott Dyreng returns as the first repeat guest on The Fuqua Show; this time not to talk about where he came from, but where Fuqua is going.

Now serving as Senior Associate Dean for Innovation, Scott takes us inside the launch of Fuqua’s first AI-powered classroom, an experiment designed not to replace human interaction but to strengthen it. We unpack how AI is being used to analyze class participation, reshape team dynamics, and deliver more objective, actionable feedback to students and faculty alike.

Along the way, Scott shares what innovation really means in higher education, why human skills matter more than ever in an AI-driven world, and how Fuqua is positioning itself at the forefront of business education.

We also close on a more personal note, returning to the values that define great leadership: telling the truth, treating others well, and living a life you’ll be proud of in the end.

If you’re curious about the future of business school, or the future of work, this conversation is for you.

Host: Philip Coale

More information about applying to Duke's Fuqua School of Business can be found at https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/admissions.

Note: This is a student-run production. The opinions expressed in this podcast are the speakers' own and do not reflect the view of Duke University, the Fuqua School of Business, or any organizations mentioned.

In this episode of The Fuqua Show, we sit down with second-year MBA Eliot Digby-Jones, British Army veteran and medical services officer, whose career has taken him from Ukraine to Somalia and the early days of COVID response in the UK. 

Eliot shares how early exposure to medicine, adventure, and service shaped his path from studying biomedical sciences in London to leading high-stakes training missions abroad. Along the way, he reflects on navigating ambiguity in crisis environments, building trust across cultures, and learning that leadership is less about authority and more about people.

We also dive into his pivotal transition out of the military and into Fuqua; what drove the shift, how his experiences translated to healthcare consulting, and why he believes some of the most valuable leadership lessons come from the most uncertain environments.

Host: Philip Coale

More information about applying to Duke's Fuqua School of Business can be found at https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/admissions.

Note: This is a student-run production. The opinions expressed in this podcast are the speakers' own and do not reflect the view of Duke University, the Fuqua School of Business, or any organizations mentioned.

Sean Wilson, Daytime MBA and MPP alum from the class of 2000, joins The Fuqua Show to reflect on an unconventional path through Durham, Fuqua, public policy, and entrepreneurship. Sean shares how his early years in the restaurant industry, time at Duke, and experience in the tech sector eventually led him into craft beer advocacy and the founding of Fullsteam Brewery.

Along the way, he discusses helping change North Carolina’s beer laws through the Pop the Cap movement, building a business rooted in local agriculture and community, and what it means to create joy, belonging, and lasting impact through entrepreneurship. This episode is a thoughtful conversation about Durham’s evolution, leadership as an outsider, and choosing a life that feels meaningful over one that simply looks successful.

Host: Philip Coale

More information about applying to Duke's Fuqua School of Business can be found at https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/admissions.

Note: This is a student-run production. The opinions expressed in this podcast are the speakers' own and do not reflect the view of Duke University, the Fuqua School of Business, or any organizations mentioned.