The New York City chapter of DinnerGrrls.org would like to thank DinnerGuest Anika Davis Pratt for joining us last night for dinner.  Anika was the source of a tremendous amount of advice and inspiration. Just by sharing her story of her own career development — from just after college to pursuing a graduate degree to planning the balance of career and family — she offered an encouraging example to her younger sisters.

Anika Davis Pratt, BA Harvard 1993
Senior Associate Director of Admission, NYU Stern School of Business

Anika began her career as an intern at Julliard, hoping to combine her knack for organization and her love for the arts. It worked for her; the pay didn’t. However, a combination of soul-searching and fortuitous timing resulted in her discovery that admissions work in higher education suited her incredibly well.

During her dinner, she shared both her experiences since Harvard as well as the admissions procedure for business schools, particularly NYU Stern.

She’s a self-dubbed liberal arts kind of gal, and wasn’t really sure what she wanted to do after college.  She did know that she had excellent organization skills and a love for dancing and the arts, so she found herself a “paid” internship with Julliard.  She loved it, but not the paycheck, so she began working at Ernst & Young with their recruiting efforts.  While there, she found that she really enjoyed corporate work but was bored after a couple of years.

At this point, she took a moment to reflect on her life and really think about which direction she’d like to take her career.  Her father was a professor, so she really enjoyed some elements of academia — but knew she wasn’t really interested in being a professor.

So she decided to work at an institution for higher education, and during an interview at NYU was tipped off by her interviewer of a master’s program that NYU offered.  She decided to enroll, and got her master’s while working for NYU.  Initially she was in the undergraduate admissions office, but now she’s the Senior Associate Director of Admissions at NYU Stern.

She finds that Stern’s efficient, corporate feel suits her perfectly.  While she does still get the opportunity to be on a campus and interact with students, she also gets to effect positive change in an environment that isn’t laden with bureaucracy.

Her biggest challenge has been managing people and finds that most of her work gets done before 9 a.m. and after 5 p.m.  Similarly, she is constantly considering whether she’d like to pursue a Director of Admissions job at Stern or elsewhere, or whether she’d like to have a baby and start a fund with her husband.  She admits that she doesn’t yet have the answer to this conundrum.

Overall, Anika’s infectious energy was a great way to re-kick-off the fall season of DinnerGrrls, and not just because she passed out helpful informational material for Stern.

Thank you, Anika!