When Dr. Shaun Honig, WG’17, came to Wharton’s MBA Program for Executives in Philadelphia, he was thinking about making a move from medicine into venture capital.
An interventional radiologist, Shaun was helping to launch a medical-related venture and had recently patented a medical device. He saw Wharton as an excellent opportunity to gain the business knowledge, skills, and the network necessary to advance those projects as well as possibly move into VC.
However, as he took advantage of the dedicated career resources for EMBA students, Shaun realized that VC wasn’t the best path for him right now. Through career programming and one-on-one career coaching, he was able to refine his career interests and goals, utilize the Wharton network, and ultimately make a career change that fit with his years of experience as a doctor. He recently started a new job as site chair of radiology at Mount Sinai in Brooklyn, NY.
“Like many students who come to Wharton’s EMBA program, I was intrigued by the idea of finance and venture capital. However, through career coaching, I learned about the challenges of making that type of transition. The director of Executive Career Coaching in Philadelphia, Dr. Dawn Graham, helped me create a much better career plan,” Shaun said.
“She helped me think about opportunities that would make the field of medicine more interesting to me. With over 10 years of medical practice under my belt, we talked about how I can combine that experience with an MBA to advance my career and utilize my business education.”
3 Career Coaching Resources That Made the Difference
The Executive Career Coaching (ECC) team offers Wharton EMBA students a wide range of career management resources to help them assess and plan their career while they are in the program, and learn strategies and techniques that will allow them to effectively manage their career over their lifetime.
Three in particular helped Shaun determine his goals and next steps and secure the position of his dreams:
Networking
Dawn helped connect Shaun to Wharton alumni in the field of VC so he could learn more about whether it might be the right path for him. “Through those conversations, I learned that it would be like a VC approaching me to ask how to become an interventional radiologist. There is a pathway to do that, but it takes a lot of time and effort. That helped me refocus my goals on doing something different within my own field,” he said.
Career Day
These are held twice for students during the program. At the second event, which occurs at the beginning of second year, Shaun talked to recruiters about his options. He learned that there is a high demand for doctors in leadership positions, which helped him further clarify his goals within the field of health care.
Career Coaching
Shaun set up career coaching sessions with Dawn and got some great tips to optimize his resume and interviewing techniques. “My medical resume was seven pages long. She helped me revise and refine that to better highlight my business experience and goals,” he said.
How His Hard Work Paid Off
Through networking, Shaun connected with the CEO of Mount Sinai, who had presided over his medical school graduation. He set up an informational interview, which eventually led to a job interview.
Mount Sinai had taken over a hospital in Brooklyn and was looking for someone to run the radiology department. “I was very excited about this position, which expands my role as a doctor and enables me to make an impact on an entire department. It also requires the financial and management skills I learned at Wharton,” Shaun said.
In addition to his new role at Mt. Sinai, Shaun is also working on an application that shares images among radiologists around the world for a second opinion.
“This started as a class project, but my classmates encouraged me to pursue it as a venture and several are helping to get it off the ground,” he said. “This process has made me even more interested in working on the entrepreneurial and business side of healthcare and my Wharton MBA is providing the foundation to pursue my goals.”
“Wharton’s EMBA program helped me open and unlock a lot of doors that I didn’t even know existed. It gave me a framework to refine my long-term career goals and gave me more confidence to move forward in my career.”
— Meghan Laska
Posted: January 9, 2018
