Co-presidents of Business Oriented Women, Kyra and Akshatha

Left to right: 2013 graduate Akshatha Kommapalati, Flavia Faugeres and senior Kyra Socolof pose at a Business Oriented Women (BOW) meeting. Faugeres, the Chief Marketing Officer of Burger King, attended one of BOW’s events.

As a member of Business Oriented Women, I had spent the entire first semester of my freshman year wondering how senior Kyra Socolof and 2013 graduate Akshatha Kommalapati, the co-presidents of BOW, made everything look so smooth and effortless. As successful and ambitious women with jobs already secured, they also managed to run BOW—a pre-professional business organization for undergraduate women at Duke. To me, they are two of the most impressive and “celeb-worthy” women on campus.

Originally from Westchester, New York, Kyra is a senior majoring in Public Policy and minoring in Economics. She joined BOW the spring semester of her freshman year and dove straight in.

“BOW is my biggest commitment by far,” she said. “It’s been really exciting to be a part of it, and to see how it’s grown in the past couple of years.”

BOW is composed of women who are interested in business—whether that means finance, consulting, marketing, technology or management. Members not only have access to upperclassmen, alumni and mentors that help them navigate their academic and professional careers, but they also get to attend events and talks by important leaders in the different industries of business. Past events have included coffee chats with a Morgan Stanley Managing Director, a trip to Banana Republic for business casual clothing, and resume workshops.

Although still an active co-president of BOW, Akshatha graduated in fall of 2013 and is currently developing software at Microsoft. A double major in Computer Science and Economics, Akshatha had to be pushed to join the BOW executive board.

“When I was a freshman, I was all about getting a good network, getting good connections, getting that job,” she said. “However, now I realize that BOW (or any organization) is all about self-exploration. It’s about finding your passion.”

Kyra echoes that belief.

“BOW brings a sense of community,” she said. “Its biggest assets are the women in it who might not have found each other without it.”

For both women, confidence is the biggest skill they have taken away from BOW.

“The confidence that you gain extends beyond the community of women,” Kyra said. “You gain confidence and a presence in life.”

Akshatha, too, noted that BOW gave her the confidence she needed to be herself.

“Confidence helps a lot,” Akshatha said. “I was one of those people who was always in my shell. When you are forced to be forward in a good way, you discover what you can learn from other people.”

Freshmen, sophomores—and even some juniors and seniors—are plagued by thoughts of “the future” and “what you want to do.” Through their work with BOW, their studies at Duke and actively discovering their “passion,” these two women have identified their paths.

Kyra has a job with JP Morgan after graduation and would ultimately like to work in healthcare. She credits a Documentary Studies and Public Policy course taught by Dr. John Moses, assistant clinical professor, as the fuel for her passion.

“I love healthcare and would like to explore the business side, maybe hospital management,” she said.

Akshatha is already working at Microsoft, what some would describe as a dream job, but she would like to work “on the interface of business and technology.”

“In the beginning, I started out on the engineering side to ‘speak their language,’ but I would love to go back to business school and see the business strategy side,” she said.

Akshatha stresses believing in yourself and pursuing fields you are uncertain about.

“Growing up, one of the things that I’ve been critical of myself for is that I am afraid of failure,” she said. “Computer Science was something completely foreign to me, and it let me prove to myself that I can do this, and I stuck with it.”

Although both of their careers at Duke have been labor-intensive and difficult—requiring hard work and determination, they both highlight the importance of “getting out of the library”.

“I don’t know how to say this in a less cheesy way, but try to meet people you wouldn’t have normally met, and go out and make more friends,” Akshatha said.