Raj Das, Class of 1993
Concentrations: Finance and Multinational Management
Hometown: Manhattan, New York
On his time at Penn
Raj was involved in Model United Nations for all four years, Security Council Junior and Senior Years. He was also in the Ivy League Model United Nations and UPenn Model United Nations. Additionally, Raj was a member of the finance, entrepreneurs’, and management clubs.
On his JWS Experience
From Day 1, Raj and the class of 1993 were the second inaugural class with Dr. Bill Whitney. There were 40 individuals who were able to get to know each other really well. With JWS, he could count on “fairly small classes and lifelong friends” with whom he took classes. Raj describes 1989, when he first went to college, as the “dinosaur age, with no computers aside from a few Macs.” He says most of the work was done through fax messages, without email or texting. There was a lot more face to face interaction and engagements, he reflects. Raj mentions that he has fond memories of that time and misses that world, but that there are “so many ways now to connect with folks that were not available back then.” There was no forum through which to reach out to people. 10 years after that time period came Facebook, which was revolutionary at the time. Raj reflects on a special time, “Having a core of friends from JWS that could always get together to call upon and just a close knit group because we were together, there was a sense of comradery...some of my best friends are still JWS classmates.” He reflects on his experience at Penn and Wharton, happy to have had the opportunity to take exceptional classes in finance, management, marketing, and accounting, to learn the fundamentals of business and how the business world truly operates. He discusses also that international relations, sociology, and literature courses were enriching experiences during his time at Penn. The skillsets he gained at Wharton have “come in handy over the years.”
On his Career Trajectory
Raj shares his very nontraditional career background. He tells me about his 15 years of IB, running big media tech franchises, and how he was CFO of a large publicly traded company. He mentions his time doing many acquisitions, starting his own management consulting firm, and learning more about the data analytics and digital world. One holistic experience for him was his early investment banking career, which exposed Raj to every facet of the business world. He acquired countless tools that have served him well over the years, even when he switched careers. He has had much exposure to the senior level business world. Raj reminds me, however, that he is by no means advocating IB is the only path, but he does believe it benefitted his career early on.
Advice for Current JWS Students
“Use your talent to do good in the world you live in. Think about many stakeholders and not just for the pursuit of money and a nice house, which is all fine. Why can’t we have so many more folks join Biotech companies from Wharton or try to solve this Covid puzzle?”