From Soviet STEM Parenting to MBA Debt: A Career Transition Story

Part 1. Asian Parenting by Two PhDs and Choice of Profession

One day in 3rd grade I came home with a 3 in math. In our grading system, 5 is glory, 4 is ok, 3 is “you barely passed”. The level of disappointment on my mom’s face was… profound. I think she questioned her motherhood, her career, possibly the future of our genetic lineage. That day I realized a fundamental truth: being an all-star student is much easier than surviving the emotional aftermath of a low grade.

Growing up with two low-middle-class PhDs - one in Non-Euclidean Geometry (Holly Smokes! And I still can’t spell it) and the other in Genetic Engineering (the “easy” one that I followed) - meant STEM was not a choice but a default setting. My parents came from a world where a PhD was the holy grail. Success. Stability. Dignity. The whole package. My mom made good money in Soviet times because a PhD literally doubled your salary. Naturally, this convinced my dad to finally get his too. But when the Soviet Union collapsed and the free market had its brief chaotic debut, two PhDs suddenly found themselves at the bottom of the food chain.

My mom, the strategic mastermind of the family, triggered two massive plot twists. First, she decided the land of the free was calling. We moved to the great town of Cleveland in the early 90s, where my dad got invited to work at the Cleveland Clinic and my mom briefly lived her best life as an “American housewife”, taking care of 3-year-old me, learning English, and attending computer courses (very forward-thinking of her). Those were my most colorful childhood memories.

Everything shifted in 1996 when my parents chose to move back to Russia. The country was at an inflection point. Deep in crisis. My mom remembers frozen lecture halls where she taught in fur coats because the heating was off for weeks. Public transport shutting down because no one could afford tickets. The economy basically turned off.

PhDs no longer paid, so my mom reinvented herself by joining a real estate company that, for reasons unknown to humanity, advertised roles specifically for PhDs in STEM. That’s where she learned the rules (and unspoken rules) of the real estate jungle, plus negotiation, salesmanship and how not to lose your mind in the wild west of post-Soviet capitalism.

Fun fact: she kept teaching at the university for the “respectable” label. And meanwhile, I grew up absorbing the generally accepted notion that sales is somehow beneath us. Joke’s on me - I work in sales now. And moreover, by choice. Let me tell you, it pays well not because it's “compensating” for lack of respect, but because negotiation is an actual art. Hard to master, but incredibly powerful. Another fun fact: I’m planning to get out of sales asap, but that’s a story for another time.

Part 2. Primary Specialty and the “Maybe Business Isn’t For Me” dialogue

It hit me in my early 30s that my parents always thought I was pretty average. I had spent my entire childhood believing I was special because they let me do a million activities and praised my efforts. But where it mattered - math, physics, chemistry - I was mid, even as the top student in my class.

Another family rule: one must get a higher education in STEM. Non-negotiable, only within STEM. Literature? Nice try - it doesn’t pay the bills. Journalism? Not in this country. Languages? You can learn as many as you want, just don’t make a career out of it because it’s not scalable. Over the years this softened, and to my shock, blogging eventually made it into the “acceptable professions” list according to my dad. Jokes on me again - I am now to prove it.

Given my skill set, we went through STEM programs and selected biology because it required the least math and chemistry. The choice was purely by exclusion. Biology didn’t inspire me; it was simply the one thing I had a chance of getting into, and it allowed the possibility of moving abroad - exactly what my parents wished for me.

I never truly enjoyed science, certainly not to the extent some of my most gifted classmates at university did. Lab work was sometimes interesting, but often painfully boring. ELISA after ELISA after ELISA, Western Blot after Western Blot. The curriculum I had during my masters was decades behind. We got a tiny glimpse of modern biotech from alumni who started a PCR service and a GFP engineering company, but most of my education was memorizing outdated material and listening to professors obsess about chromatin folding (still traumatized, urgh).

Then came the Washington, DC moment. In 2010, I went on a two-month exchange at George Washington University with a Russian professor who covered my travel with a US grant (because on my country’s side the money “disappeared”… classic). I stayed with my parents’ network of immigrants who had left Russia and never looked back.

One night, a couple drove me home from an expat gathering. Their child had just gone to Michigan State to study economics. The dad, who had transitioned from biology to business after moving to the US, casually asked me if I could imagine doing something similar.

I was honestly shocked. I replied, “I don’t know anything about business. I don’t think I’m made for that. I don’t think it’s for me.”

Years later, I kept replaying that conversation so many times. Why did I say that? Because I was raised by Soviet-era academics who lived in a world where entrepreneurship and markets simply didn’t exist? No wonder I assumed business was something “other people” do. But that shouldn’t have been an obstacle, right?

Fast forward to finishing my PhD. I had learned at least one thing: academia would never give me the life I wanted. A decent apartment in Paris. Holidays without counting pennies. Supporting my parents. These were not wild dreams, just normal adulthood. Impossible in academia.

I applied for everything I could identify as a leap: L’Oreal R&D internship, Sanofi project management, marketing roles in local biotechs. Nothing. If you want to have a good laugh, check out the CV I was sending out in one of my pinned reels.

And then… the car episode that changed my life. The car we bought while being broke and living in the east of Paris (don’t ask, we had our reasons). The car cost us EUR 10k that we didn’t have and the debt haunted us for years. With a Swiss salary I later paid off my MBA loan easily and still wonder why I didn’t borrow more at a 0.95 percent rate. See? I really needed that MBA.

We got into a habit of driving the car somewhere every weekend to practice our driving skills. So, one day, the Pasteur Institute Career Services forwarded an invite to HEC Paris MBA open doors day. The campus was a 45-minute drive away - a perfect distance for the weekend ride.

I went.
I listened to Bernard Garrette, then dean, and Andrea Massini, his successor, give a lecture.
I looked around.
And I thought: this is the world I want to be in.
Not the lab. Not publish or perish. Not 2-year contracts.

A world with opportunity. Money. Ambition. Movement. Sense of urgency. And potential.

During the break I approached an HEC alum who offered application coaching. I was terrified and introverted, but I forced myself to ask for his contact. I ended up paying him 5k (negotiated down from 8k because, well, poor scientist) to help me prepare for the GMAT and build my story.

We used my patented vaccine technology as the angle: I needed business skills to spin off a startup, and HEC had an entrepreneurial track and a program aimed at people who never touched upon business topics. The vaccine tech barely worked, but I truly believed the story back then. And so did the school. These were 1,5 transformative years that opened the world to me. A ticket to life. And friends for life.

People ask me how I chose HEC among all other MBA schools. Unlike most people who do proper due diligence before making such a big investment - I didn’t.
I stumbled into it because I owned a car I could barely afford. See? I really needed that MBA to learn to take calculated risk. Luckily, back then my gamble paid off even without a business case, but now I’m wiser.   

Part 3. The Second Job and What All of This Taught Me

Fast forward, the MBA gave me a way out of academia into Strategy in corporate settings with a leading automation company in Life Sciences. Ironically, we had one of their robots in my lab but it never occurred to me to use it. Mind you, I still mentioned it in my cover letter, guess that worked. After 3 years in strategy and M&A (mergers and acquisitions), I was invited to lead the Genomics Product Management and Applications team, grew it from 4 to 10 talented people, and worked closely with R&D, Marketing and Sales. Ultimately, I transitioned to one of the biggest players in the industry and into… drum roll… a glorified sales role: key account management of 3 top pharma companies on behalf of 10+ companies under the holding group. The Dr. title traveled all that way with me but obviously, I needed to combine it with my newly acquired business skills and, most of all, learn on the job. “Learn” is a soft word, it’s more like drinking from a fire-hose. And it never stops. And I LOVE IT! 

Here’s what I learned:

• A PhD is valuable, but no longer enough. It’s the baseline, if needed at all. Disputable, I would say. Depends on your ambitions and career goals.
• A specialty degree still matters. STEM gives you the breadth of opportunity. An a solid foundation that you know what you’re talking about.
• The real superpower, however, is STEM plus BUSINESS. Not for landing the first job (that’s always a high energy barrier to overcome), but for career growth afterwards: it can become exponential.

As you can tell, my own achievements come from a combination of my parents’ advice, conversations with random strangers, dumb luck, ambition and stubbornness, but if I had to turn it into a strategy I now firmly believe in, it would be this:

STEM degree plus business experience equals a future with exciting career paths, financial security, and a privileged lifestyle.

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Part 4. Practical Ways for YOU to Get There With a STEM Degree

You basically have 3 choices.

1. Full-time MBA
100k plus. Big loan. Big transformation. Worth it if you can swing the timing and financials.

2. Part-time MBA
Less immersive, harder schedule, but still incredibly valuable. And less risky / more affordable obviously.

3. Go directly into industry*
Even with only an MSc and no real experience, you can enter R&D or Sales. I have plenty of examples in my network. Once you’re in, you can pivot into Field Applications, Product Management, Marketing and more.

*And yes, you can invest a tiny fraction of an MBA in my premium materials to understand these industry roles that I mentioned, translate your academic experience, and get templates that actually work. If you want to make the leap directly into Product Management, FAS, R&D, and Sales role – do invest in learning about them through my Career Toolkits. They will give you all the necessary insights and save you a lot of effort and time.

Whatever you choose, investing in your education pays off. Don’t take it from me - Warren Buffett said that.

Conclusion and Advice

If you’re thinking of transitioning out of academia:

• Talk to people who already did it. Message them on LinkedIn and ask for 10 minutes. I guarantee you - you’ll get at least a 10 percent reply rate. If not, send me your message - I’ll need to see what you wrote.
• Use my materials to increase your odds in life sciences. They’re built from exactly this journey. I hired into these roles during over a decade, so these insights are straight from the oven.
• Apply strategically. Not widely. Strategically. Again, using tailored industry-facing applications that I can help you craft.

Your background is precious raw material. Add business skills and it becomes a career machine.