MEMtalks@Duke

Hey there,

Thank you for dropping by to listen to MEM Talks. We welcome you to our page, and hope you enjoy this podcast, which is brought to you on behalf of the Product Management Club of Duke's Master of Engineering Management program.

In the premier episode of the Fall'23 semester, our MEM students, Palash Kothari and Kunal Gupta, were in conversation with one of our distinguished Duke alumni from the batch of 2015, Mr. Tarun Thapar, a former MEM student who has risen through the organization, to the rank of a Product Lead at Amazon.

In our recent podcast titled, "From Blue Devils to Product Titans: Navigating Career Growth and Innovation," Palash and Kunal had the opportunity of delving into Tarun's journey, extracting strategies for career growth, and his career path toward making him a successful technology-business leader in the contemporary space.

Get to know more about Tarun and our students by connecting with them over LinkedIn:

1. Tarun Thapar - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarunthapar/

2. Palash Kothari: https://www.linkedin.com/in/palash-kothari/

3. Kunal Gupta - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kunal-gupta8/

If you found this podcast to be insightful, share it and spread the word, so that more people can gain the knowledge!

Stay tuned for more, and don't forget to follow us on our social media handles:

https://www.linkedin.com/school/dukemem/

https://instagram.com/duke_mem?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA

https://www.linkedin.com/company/duke-product/

In this episode, Janki Chandiwala talks to Professor Stephanie Knight about why students choose to pivot to the business side of things and what it takes to be a successful manager. Stephanie Knight is professor, entrepreneur and and executive coach. She teaches several courses at both, Pratt School of Engineering and Fuqua School of Business, with a demonstrated history of success in the management consulting industry. She is a Mechanical Engineer from Northwestern University who then went on to pursue her MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business who worked with McKinsey and Company for over 4 years in the past.

Listen to this podcast to know her views on young engineers moving forward to become managers and the advice she has to offer to become a good manager and a leader with a tinge of spring gushing.

Know more through:

Stephanie Knight's LinkedIn profile- https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-knight-9b0b3314/

Janki Chandiwala's LinkedIn profile- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jankichandiwala/

On today’s episode Noopur Vaishnav talks to Professor Robb Olsen who we are very lucky to have on our campus at Duke. He is an Engineer, Entrepreneur and Innovator  with experience working with Companies like P & G for over 30 years in largely influential positions  in which he directed and guided companies through their innovation processes and has over 40 patents. He has also played a large part in course design of innovation courses at top schools like Northwestern, Penn state and Duke. He is currently an adjunct professor at duke and is also working with the US  Military to help with their innovation processes. 

Linkedin of Professor Robb Olsen : https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbolsen

In today's episode we talk to a superior leader who serves with joy, gratitude, power and love - Prof. Allegra Jordan. Our guest for today has worked in 17 countries on five different continents in the fields of innovation, media, medicine, law, and post-war reconciliation, to name a few. She graduated with second-year honors from the Harvard Business School and has been named a "Top Executive under 40" in Austin, Texas, and Birmingham, Alabama. She is also a credentialed leadership coach, with a generation's experience in leading teams, coaching leaders and has authored several books on rebuilding the self with courage and hope. She is a superior leader, in the truest sense, whose purpose is helping other leaders flourish. She currently teaches Management and Leadership at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering.

To know more about Prof. Allegra, check out her website: https://allegrajordan.com/

Prof. Allegra's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allegrajordan/

Navya Adhikarla's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/asnbhhanu5

In this podcast we have our MEM student Narayanan Murugappan hosting Yash Choudhary and Heet Shah, talking about their journey from India to US and then landing their first PM role coming from experienced and inexperienced backgrounds respectively.

Both Yash and Heet work @ eBay as Product Managers but come from varied experiences. While Yash, a 2017 undergrad, comes from a tech background with more than 3 years of experience working as a Full-Stack developer, Heet, a 2020 undergrad, pursued his enterprenuerial interests during his undergrad and brought them to Duke, and Egosa is one such venture. Both of them started off at Duke with a unique background and landed at eBay for their first PM roles. In today’s podcast, we’ll speak about both of their individual experiences at Duke, and how it set them up for success in their new roles as Product Managers.

You can connect with them here :

https://www.linkedin.com/in/heet3598/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yash-choudhary/

In this episode, our MEM student Deekshit has a chat with MEM alum Dave Rodrian who is the General Vice President of Charter Communications , which provides internet services through its internet products, Spectrum that is used by 50M houses in the United States. 

This podcast covers about Dave's journey into Duke, his experiences at Duke and his career path towards making him a successful business leader. 

Get to know more about them here : 

1. Deekshit BN - https://www.linkedin.com/in/deekshitbn/

2. Dave Rodrian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/daverodrian/

Editing Credits - Prakruti PraveenKumar - https://www.linkedin.com/in/prakruti-p-kumar/

In this episode, our MEM student Avdhoot Sherkar talks to Jon S Rennie about leadership and why it matters. John was a Cold War submarine officer and ran a business in Corporate America for over 20 years, and is now the CEO of a startup. His books "All in the Same Boat" and "I Have the Watch" are Amazon Bestsellers. He also hosts the "Deep Leadership" podcast. Below you can find the links to his books and podcast.  

https://anchor.fm/deepleadership

https://jonsrennie.com/all-in-the-same-boat/

https://jonsrennie.com/i-have-the-watch/

This was an insightful interview that we know you will love.

In this first episode of MEMtalks, Deekshit, a first-year MEM graduate student has an in-depth conversation with the Executive director of the MEM program at Duke University, Prof. Luis Morales. 

The discussion revolves around the value of a MEM degree, the relevance of understanding business fundamentals for technical professionals, and a lot of experiences from the personal life of Prof. Luis Morales. 

To get to know more about the MEM program at Duke, follow us @dukemempdc on Instagram.