An unexpected journey

Carolina has always felt like home to Connor Cooke (BSBA ’18, MBA ’24).

Cooke comes from a long line of Carolina graduates, including his grandparents, aunts and younger brother. His parents, Julie Brogan Cooke (BS ’92) and Philip Cooke (BA ’90), met in Chapel Hill when they were students.

He often traveled with his family from Summerfield, North Carolina, to Chapel Hill for football and basketball games. One of his favorite memories is playing football with other kids in the quad.

“I grew up at UNC,” says Cooke. “I definitely feel like here is where I have always been.”

As an undergraduate, he found communities across campus – including UNC Club Tennis, helping propel the team to USTA Tennis On Campus National Championship matches in 2016 and 2018, the latter as club president and team captain. Cooke was a member of The Hill Political Review and the Alexander Hamilton Society, both non-partisan organizations spurring his passion for disseminating unbiased news and inspiring him to minor in public policy.

In his junior year, Cooke spent a semester abroad studying economics at the National University of Singapore (NUS), which proved to be one of the most important decisions of his life. It’s where he met his future wife, Farisha Ishak (MBA ’24) before being admitted to UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Undergraduate Business Program.

Ishak and Cooke celebrate graduating from the Full-Time MBA Program in May 2024.

He’d return to Singapore — and to Ishak — after graduation. And four years later, when he returned to Chapel Hill to enter UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Full-Time MBA Program, it felt like more than home. It felt like family.

“What everyone says about UNC Kenan-Flagler is true,” says Cooke. It’s collaborative and welcoming. People will go out their way to help you. That’s never going to change.”

The big move

Life was good in Singapore. He began his professional career there after graduation in 2018 through a six-month work-holiday visa.

While looking to break into consulting, he secured a part-time position as an admissions consultant at Aureus Consulting, helping Singaporean high school students apply to the world’s top law and medical schools. He eventually joined CBRE, first as a business analyst in the workplace strategy team and then as a senior client consulting manager in the regional advisory team.

His personal life was good, too. Ishak’s family opened their doors to him when he moved back to Singapore, providing he support network he needed while 9,800 miles away from home. Ishak and Cooke shared similar interests in business and policy. Ishak graduated from NUS in 2019 and went on to work as an operations manager at a market research firm and then as a program manager at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy while continuing a successful singing career.

Then just as their careers were taking off, the COVID-19 pandemic locked down Singapore in March 2020. Cooke and Ishak were engaged and stuck to their June wedding date, marrying via Zoom in Ishak’s living room, with family, friends and the officiant participating through multiple video feeds.

As much as they enjoyed their lives in Singapore, both felt it was time for a change. Cooke missed home and wanted to explore different business fields. So did Ishak. His mind immediately went back to UNC Kenan-Flagler.

“I had a great job. I was learning a lot. I was still excited about consulting,” he says. “But we were both still figuring out what we wanted to do long term. The Full-Time MBA Program felt like the right move for both of us. We wanted room to explore but also have that sense of community. UNC Kenan-Flagler checked all the boxes again.”

Back to UNC

Cooke’s business experience and world view expanded while in Singapore, and both widened even more in the UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Full-Time MBA Program.

He enrolled in sustainability and entrepreneurship courses, intrigued by dynamic, untraditional business fields where he felt he could make lasting impacts. During his second year in the program, he led the Careers with Impact Forum, the Net Impact club’s annual sustainability conference in partnership with the Ackerman Center for Excellence in Sustainability, and interned at the RTP Angel Fund through the Business School’s Venture Capital/Angel Intern course. He participated in the Venture Capital Investment Competition  and co-founded a startup, Take10, with classmates through a new artificial intelligence entrepreneurship course taught by Professor Mark McNeilly.

“What everyone says about UNC Kenan-Flagler is true,” says Cooke. “It’s collaborative and welcoming. People will go out their way to help you. That’s never going to change.”

Another priority was building his leadership, management and networking skills. Cooke pursued multiple industries, including consulting, marketing, sustainability, corporate strategy and finance. By the end of the first year in the program, he had secured a summer consulting internship with Teneo, a global CEO advisory firm based in New York City.

“I realized that I didn’t need to change to be successful in the MBA Program or even in my career,” he says. “It was more about developing or amplifying my own attributes to learn how to operate as myself in different environments. At UNC Kenan-Flagler, there is definitely a lot of space to do your own thing, which I feel is probably the most important thing to do in an MBA Program, having those options for experiential learning.”

He also pushed himself to take on leadership roles. He became a project leader in the STAR (Student Teams Achieving Results) Program, which gives students invaluable experiences working on solutions to real business problems assigned by corporate partners, and became a STAR Ambassador in his second year. He joined the Business Communication Center as a consultant, helping MBAs, undergrads and PhDs with resumes, cover letters, essays and interviews. He took on career club leadership roles with the Consulting Club, Net Impact Club and the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club.

Allyship was a priority, too, and he found it through several MBA student clubs. Cooke served as vice president of both the Carolina Disability Alliance and Muslims at Kenan-Flagler, co-founding the latter with Ishak and others. He had seen that UNC Kenan-Flagler valued a strong culture of community. He pushed himself to contribute to the community – and learned that he could accomplish a lot more than he expected.

“That’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned while getting my MBA — you just got to go for it,” he says. “It’s easy to do that because everyone here is motivated to succeed and everyone gets the support they deserve, and they need. Everybody had different leadership styles, and during my time here I always felt like I had assurance from others and reassurance for myself that I could lead and connect with people in ways I hadn’t before.”

Cooke’s return to UNC Kenan-Flagler also gave him one last chance to represent UNC in tennis. UNC and Duke University MBAs square off yearly in the Blue Cup, a multisport competition. UNC MBAs had last won the Blue Cup in 2016.

The Blue Cup was tied 20-20 and his match would decide everything. On Duke’s courts, Cooke got the win — and helped bring the Blue Cup back to UNC — in a third set tiebreaker. It felt like a redemption for Cooke, as his Club Tennis days ended with a loss at the 2018 national championship.

“It was an extremely special experience,” says Cooke, “and I can’t believe I was so lucky to have it.”

He’s ready for his next experience. Cooke’s first post-MBA job is a return to Teneo. It was the type of role he was looking for, joining a comparatively small U.S. team of 30 consultants with entrepreneurship on his mind.

“In the end, getting an MBA meant that I had a fully realized sense of where I wanted to go in my career but also a deeper understanding of what’s important to me, who I want to be in business and what I value the most as a person,” he says. “That’s something I’ll always be working on. There is a culture of giving back at UNC Kenan-Flagler. On my cover letters, one of the three qualities I put was ‘conscientious drive.’ That is something that’s core to what I try to do, and what I felt was a big part of UNC Kenan-Flagler.”