Student Life

My Day at a Glance

Year 2

  • With some friends at a lake in the middle of the desert during the Atacama Leadership Venture
    With some friends at a lake in the middle of the desert during the Atacama Leadership Venture
  • With friends at the Winter Ball
    With friends at the Winter Ball
  • My Ice Hockey Team - Wharton Wildmen
    My Ice Hockey Team - Wharton Wildmen
  • Western Line Dancing at the Wharton International Cultural Show
    Western Line Dancing at the Wharton International Cultural Show
  • Wharton India Trek over Spring Break.
    Wharton India Trek over Spring Break.
  • India Trek
    India Trek
  • Cohort Intl Food Festival
    Cohort Intl Food Festival
  • Lauder Party with an International Theme - Around the World
    Lauder Party with an International Theme - Around the World

Claudia Massei

Hometown: São Paulo, Brazil

Education: BS degree in Aeronautical Engineering at Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA)

Before Wharton: Strategy consulting at the Monitor Group (in Brazil, France and South Africa)

After Wharton: Clean Energy or High Tech

My Story About Me

The summer immersion program at Lauder is a good way of getting us to bond before meeting the rest of the class.


Deep immersion

In Lauder, you spend May in Philly taking classes, then we took off in groups of 10 to different countries for a summer immersion. In Philadelphia, it’s easy -- people know how things work. In a foreign country, people are put out of their comfort zone, and you really get to know them. You can see all of the personalities of the group. In Philly, you have two years to take advantage of everything. Abroad, you only have a month and people are more serious about what they want to get out of their experience. The summer immersion program is a good way of getting us to bond before meeting the rest of the class.

International community

My international economy and global economic electives were my favorite classes at Wharton as a whole. I have an engineering background, so it was interesting to analyze issues like how the frozen currency in China impacts the business climate. Or discussing how the invention of the printing press fostered development in the countries that adopted it early on. You’re also in class with 70 students who have probably visited more than 100 countries. I love to hear what it’s like to live and work in these countries. It’s enriching to learn about history and economics with all of these different points of view.


Passion and energy

I am very active in the Energy Club. I had worked on energy projects while consulting, and the industry has a heavy reliance on engineering, which is my background. I got involved by working on the alumni relations team, and then I became Vice President of Education for the club. Now I am current co-chair for the Energy Conference next October. It motivates me to work with people who are very passionate about energy. Even though I worked on energy projects, all of them were in oil, and they were very specific. I did not have a good picture of the industry as a whole. Thanks to my relationships with these people, I am much more knowledgeable.

Gaining self-knowledge

Thinking about how you behave impacts your success and your relationships with others. In the learning team 360s, when I give teammates feedback, I start to wonder how I can develop their strengths myself. When I think about their weaknesses, I wonder if they are things I need to work on. I’ve also done the Gettysburg Battlefield workshop, which focused on small-group dynamics, and the Art of Woo, a persuasion workshop. Both experiences gave me the chance to think about how I go about accomplishing goals, how I react to other people’s attitudes and actions, and how I respond to feedback.

Community building

All first-year cohorts participated in a program called Rebuilding Together Philadelphia, rehabbing homes in West Philly. Each cohort had a house we were responsible for, and people signed up to go on their free days during those four weeks. We got a to-do list on the first Saturday, and week-by-week we tracked our progress. It was a great way of being hands-on and seeing quickly the fruit of your work, and at the same time, make new friendships.