Stern MBA students can take advantage of a variety of experiential learning courses, including the Stern Consulting Corps (SCC) and Executive MBA: Consulting Practice: Process and Problem Solving. In these hands-on, for-credit courses, students learn to address complex, real-world business problems with actual companies under the advisement of Stern faculty. The projects—such as crafting an actionable business plan to bring a product to market or targeting opportunities for growth—are proposed by executives from partner organizations, who work with the student teams throughout the semester.

Kavita Kurella (MBA ’17), a graduate of Stern’s Executive MBA program who is senior vice president and director of product strategy and merchant services at Citizens Commercial Banking, in Boston, has sponsored several projects with Stern students.

One student who worked with Kurella on a convenience store/retail petroleum project, Xin Li (MBA ’25), recalled that she played a key role in guiding them through the complexities of the payment ecosystem. According to Li, "this foundational knowledge was incredibly helpful, especially since we had limited experience in commercial banking or payments. She also gave us the opportunity to present our final go-to-market strategy to senior executives at her company, which gave us great exposure and real-world feedback."

Siddharth Renganathan (MBA ’24), who worked on a project about artificial intelligence/machine learning for a commercial bank use case with Kurella, called his SCC experience learning structured problem-solving "transformative." "One of the highlights of the project was developing and presenting a slide deck to Citizens executives, an experience that not only enhanced our presentation skills but also provided us with a unique opportunity to see our work come to life in a professional setting," explained Renganathan.

Kurella recently discussed these collaborations with STERN BUSINESS.

Q&A with Kavita Kurella (MBA ’17)

How did you become involved with the program?

I loved my time at Stern, so as an alum, I’m really passionate about giving back and staying engaged. I’ve mentored undergraduates and I audit courses, so when I learned about the opportunity to sponsor projects with the SCC and Executive MBA students, it seemed like a great way for me to contribute, as well as for my company to benefit from the energy, intelligence, and different perspectives of Stern students who are considering a consulting career. I could bring my almost 12-year Deloitte consulting background and 12+ year Citizens corporate experience to the table, and the students bring their diverse experiences and objective, independent viewpoints. It’s been incredibly rewarding seeing the students go through the process and embrace the experience.

What are some of the projects you’ve sponsored?

Broadly speaking, they could be go-to-market strategies in a particular sector or a more horizontal trend, like identifying AI use cases that would be beneficial for the bank to focus on for our clients. To date, we have sponsored six projects with SCC and EMBA programs, plus one project with the Andre Koo Tech MBA Program and a capstone project with the Tandon School of Engineering. More specifically, my first project, in 2022, was with the EMBA consulting class and focused on market opportunities for distributed ledger and blockchain. Another project with SCC was a go-to-market strategy for our convenience-store petroleum-sector clients. The idea was to identify where Citizens could help our customers, whether addressing a pain point or helping them proactively to address a market trend. The team did an awesome job in identifying and prioritizing these situations based on the market opportunity and proposing partnership solutions we could build. Another project I did with Executive MBA students was in anticipation of possible federal regulatory changes in the cannabis industry. The task was to identify opportunities in the cannabis value chain for market strategies and potential partnerships so that we are prepared when that becomes federally legal.

Who comes up with the project ideas?

I do—developing ideas for growth is part of my day job. I typically submit three ideas for a project for every engagement, with the anticipation that one will be selected. In 2023, two of my three projects were selected, so I had two going concurrently with SCC.

What is your role while the project is ongoing?

As the sponsor, I am also the day-to-day contact with the team. We have weekly touch-point meetings, and I engage with them via email when they have questions. I’ve also had offline sessions for some projects to help them understand if they are not familiar with banking lingo and things like that. I’ve also helped facilitate interviews with my colleagues, our commercial bankers, who focus on a particular sector, and with a CEO of one of our clients. Typically the final presentations are in front of our leadership team on the executive level, so it’s clear that we have a vested interest in their work and take it very seriously. I might add that the Stern projects I’ve worked with are being put into action in conjunction with market appetite.