Preparing for the C-Suite
A Harvard Business School Healthcare Alumni Association Q&A with Elaina Shekhter, EPAM’s Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer.
Elaina Shekhter, EPAM Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer.
Elaina Shekhter is EPAM’s chief marketing and strategy officer. She leads EPAM’s Global Marketing and Strategy, working to integrate a variety of functions that significantly influence the company’s strategy, positioning and global brand.
She has held several leadership roles and has led variety of EPAM’s go-to-market functions. Shekhter is a board member for Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Audigent (which is now part of Experian), Sigmaledger and the MACH Alliance, a group of independent tech companies dedicated to open, best-of-breed ecosystems. She holds an MS degree in Information Systems and BS/BA degrees in Economic Theory and Political Science from The American University.
EPAM Systems, Inc. is a leading global provider of digital engineering, cloud and AI-enabled transformation services, and a leading business and experience consulting partner for global enterprises and ambitious startups.
Q. With over 34% of the Harvard Business School’s (HBS) MBA class coming from the consulting/private equity/venture capital sectors1 and nearly 37%2 joining these verticals upon graduation; what are the compelling reasons for students to instead pursue a general manager career track?
A. Shekhter: As an alumna of a Big Four consulting firm, I can appreciate how HBS students can become enamored with joining these sectors, but my challenge question for them is, did they join a school known for its general management program to give advice to others, or to actually make strategic decisions?
At several consulting firms, the operating model is focused on billable hours, utilization, and influenced revenue. In contrast, pursuing a general manager track can provide a plethora of different pathways to an executive role where there are a variety of performance metrics beyond utilization.
Be it a start-up where you are creating something from nothing or leading a Fortune 500 transformation where you are accountable for the eventual outcomes. These types of career paths seem more logical for students who selected HBS for their top-ranked general management training.
As general management roles often include top-line revenue remits, such experiences can help build a narrative for people as they navigate today’s dynamic hiring market. As LinkedIn pointed out earlier this year, even elite business school students are facing a challenging job market.3
Finally, HBS students should consider the potential value that they can generate as general managers in terms of job creation. When I started with EPAM nearly 25 years ago, we had 250-plus employees.
Fast forward to 2025, and EPAM now provides employment for more than 61,000 employees across 55-plus countries and regions. As we strive to become the most globally geo-balanced talent company in the world for AI-native digital business services,4 it is exciting to work for a company that was recently ranked 25th on Glassdoor’s 2025 best places to work list.5
Q. With so many potential pathways on the journey to a C-suite role, what are your top three recommendations for students to pursue in order to achieve their corner-office aspirations?
A. Shekhter: First, brace yourself for the hard work on the journey to a C-suite role. While 80- to 100-hour workweeks are often touted as badges of courage for professional services roles, people often then assume other jobs are easy. What people fail to recognize is the level of intensity involved with making C-suite decisions on a daily basis. As I have shared in the past, “actions or inactions have consequences, and sometimes, you will not be given a second chance to amend them.”6
For S&P 500 firms like EPAM, the decisions made can have a huge impact on our employees, clients, and shareholders. In particular, C-suite executives are often making deterministic decisions in a probabilistic environment, and this refers to the practice of using fixed, certain decision-making processes in situations where outcomes are uncertain or random.
Second, seek side projects that can help uncover new ideas and spur true innovation. As I shared with you back in 2019,7 I have collaborated with and continue to collaborate with Ben Franklin Technology Partners, which, since its inception in 1983, has invested in more than 4,500 technology-based companies and boosted the state’s economy by more than $25 billion.
Through investments in client firms and spinoff companies in Pennsylvania, it has helped generate 148,000 jobs.8 These types of long-standing engagements and more recent ones have fueled my capacity to help drive innovative approaches to solve business problems.
Securing tangible business value is especially important if an idea is to be sustainable. With the continued exaggeration by some pundits of AI’s potential, it is crucial to create solutions that generate new revenues9 and/or reduce costs.10
Finally, invest time to build personal relationships with other people. Having led EPAM’s Global Business Development unit, I can honestly say that business is built on personal relationships and professional reputation. And remember to give your time with no expectations of a return.
About the Author
Michael Wong is a Part-time Lecturer for the Wharton Communication Program at the University of Pennsylvania. As an Emeritus Co-President and board member of the Harvard Business School Healthcare Alumni Association as well as a Contributing Writer for the MIT Sloan Career Development Office, Michael’s ideas have been shared in the Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review.
References
1. https://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/class-profile
2. https://www.hbs.edu/recruiting/employment-data/Pages/default.aspx
3. https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/mba-grads-struggle-to-find-work-6514329/
5. https://www.glassdoor.com/Award/Best-Places-to-Work-LST_KQ0,19.htm
8. https://benfranklin.org/about/
9. https://www.epam.com/services/client-work/procter-and-gamble-swiffer
10. https://www.epam.com/services/client-work/leveraging-ai-to-boost-operational-efficiency-with-dial
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