As a freshman violinist with Dartmouth’s student orchestra, Elizabeth Shribman noticed a couple of older students who not only played instruments but also seemed to be making things happen.
“They were the student managers,” recalls Shribman, now chief of staff with the San Francisco Symphony. “They were both seniors, so I said, ‘When you graduate, could I give it a try?’ And they said, ‘You can start immediately.’ So I started managing the Dartmouth Symphony my freshman fall.”
She was hooked. By her junior year, she had planned the orchestra’s first-ever tour to Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. After graduation, she was offered a two-year deferred enrollment to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Smitten by the Czech Republic during her Dartmouth orchestra tour, she requested an extra year’s deferral while planning concerts and booking international tours for the Czech Philharmonic.
When she finally enrolled at GSB, her career focus never wavered. “The entire basis of my application was that I wanted to work in orchestra management,” says the Pittsburgh native. “I went through the whole program with that in mind, shaped my experiences and course selections around that, and it’s what I’ve done since I left.”
About Elizabeth
Hometown
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Education
MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business (2015)
Dartmouth College, BA, Music (2010)
Professional Experience
Chief of Staff, San Francisco Symphony
Concert Planning and International Touring, Czech Philharmonic
Current Profile
Was there a particular event or moment when you realized an MBA could make you a better steward of a big arts organization?
I was given strong advice from a mentor that a business degree would better equip me for challenges and would give me the skills and tools I needed to interact with people and organizations.
Why do you feel so committed to that path?
I had an existential crisis when I realized in March of my senior year of high school — I was already into Dartmouth — that I wanted to have a career in music and wanted to be a violinist. I was really grappling with if I should withdraw my acceptance to Dartmouth and take a year off, practice, and apply to the conservatory so I could study to become a professional musician. I ultimately decided to go to Dartmouth.
Why?
I was pretty certain that the best I could do would be to get into a mediocre conservatory, and I would probably come out a mediocre violinist and have a mediocre career. But I knew I could get a really good education at Dartmouth. I didn’t know that orchestra management existed. So, I just put my faith in believing that some other path in music would expose itself to me and I could find a way to make a more meaningful contribution than my abilities would allow as a sole operator on the violin.
Was there a specific moment you recognized the path you wanted to follow?
What really hooked me was planning the [Dartmouth] symphony’s first-ever tour. I campaigned for approval from the college and tried to put the money together from the college and external sources, and planned the whole thing. Two years later, my junior winter, we ended up going to Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. It was transformational for the orchestra and for me personally. I learned you could have a career managing orchestras, and I could make a more meaningful contribution to exposing others to classical music.
Why did you apply to Stanford GSB?
The GSB ethos and approach struck me as open-minded and actively welcoming to students with non-traditional backgrounds and non-traditional management aspirations.
How’d you spend your deferral time?
I fell in love with the Czech Republic. I applied for fellowships to do a year in musicology in Prague and ended up getting a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship. I decided to go knock on the door of the Czech Philharmonic to see if I could work for them for free as an intern.
That’s bold.
It took a while to persuade them because the concept of internship doesn’t really exist there in the same way. As my Czech became more fluent, my internship transitioned into a full-time job, and I ended up staying for three years. I transitioned my whole life more fully into Czech. I think I was useful to them because I spoke Czech but also had fluent English, which is how I ended up doing international touring and working with concert presenters and agents.
Any advice for others considering deferred enrollment?
Certainly, for college seniors, which was my situation, I would absolutely recommend deferral. It would have been hard to go from college to business school with no experience in the professional world.
Are you still involved with GSB as an alum?
The Admissions office connects me with some of the arts-focused applicants and admits, and I call those people and encourage them to attend and answer their questions.
What was the most valuable lesson you took from GSB that impacts your day-to-day decision making?
On the quantitative side, I didn’t know anything about finance or financial modeling, which I now use in my job every day. I would not have been able to talk my way into a job as a financial analyst, which was my first role at the San Francisco Symphony, if I hadn’t just gone to business school, and I would not have moved into the Chief of Staff role if I didn’t have the financial skills
And on the qualitative side?
That’s a little squishier. There’s a lot of coursework at Stanford about interpersonal influence that has been really useful to me, thinking about how to work with different kinds of people, how to use different tools with different people, how to influence situations and outcomes, and how to work effectively with a broad range of people.
Did any specific courses help in that regard?
Paths to Power. The lessons I took from that course have been extremely influential in my career since it taught me about building a network. That’s not something I was doing proactively before Stanford. We had to do a project that took a concept from the professor’s book and find a practical way to apply it to our lives. I made a list of all of the people who were influential in my industry whom I wanted to meet and started reaching out to them and forming relationships with them. I have maintained that practice throughout my career. I’ve learned so much from some really incredible people who have devoted their lives to orchestra management, and I don’t think I would have been so methodical about it had I not taken that class. Some people get a yucky feeling about networking, but Paths to Power taught me a healthy and positive approach.
You previously mentioned mentors. Tell us about them.
One mentor was executive director of the Washington National Opera for many years, but more recently, he co-founded a new organization called Advisory Board for the Arts. Another was a direct product of my Paths to Power project. A mentor I already had introduced me to the CEO of the Pacific Symphony. He’s since become one of my closest mentors. He is very wise, and every conversation we have is thought-provoking and helpful.
Is there something specific about those two that you’d like to emulate?
Orchestra management is a very intense business. You work a regular work day, but then there are concerts, evenings, weekends. Our days are so hectic, and it’s easy to get caught up putting out fires — and attending a million concerts on top of it. It’s easy to neglect the rest of your life. They both model an ability to be extremely committed to their jobs and the field while also nurturing their lives outside of work.
You were a global study trip leader during your time at Stanford. Where did you go and what did you take away from that experience?
I helped lead a Global Study Trip to Poland and the Czech Republic. I took the lead on the Czech side because that culture meant a lot to me. Sharing it with GSB classmates was interesting. When I worked there before the GSB, my experience was so arts-centric. It was educational for me to plan business meetings in other industries, which wasn’t an overlap with my previous life there.
