First MHO Graduate Ashutosh Goyal
By Laresa Lund
Friday, October 9, 2020
By: Laresa Lund, Fall 2020
- LAMP’s new major, Management + Human Organization, offers students the chance to study business through a Liberal Arts lens, full time
- International student Ashutosh Goyal (MHO BA, Spring 2019) is the major’s first official graduate
- Goyal was attracted to the MHO major by its flexibility and interdisciplinary nature
Sitting in a psychology class during his sophomore year at Indiana University, Ashutosh Goyal noticed a LAMP sticker on a classmate’s laptop. He asked her about it, and that very same day he looked at the Liberal Arts and Management Program website. Reading about the new Management + Human Organization major, something struck a chord.
“I was immediately smitten with the flexibility the major offered,” Goyal explains. “It had everything I wanted to study and more. The next thing I remember was sitting in Director Rebecca Spang’s office wanting to switch majors.” At the time, he had been majoring in Economics, but had interests ranging from sociology to philosophy, religion to management. He found it difficult to satisfy all his academic interests within a single disciplinary framework and wanted to take more interdisciplinary classes, like Professor Spang’s LAMP seminar, “Luxury, from Mortal Sin to Market Sector.”
“After [the luxury] class, I would call my mother and tell her all of the new things I had learned.”
Goyal had been interested in questions big and small since high school. “I had this phase where I would question each and every thing. I wanted to learn more about the human brain, feelings, God, workplace motivation, Plato, etc. Unfortunately, the Indian education system has a limited scope, so I was not able to study these topics as much as I wanted to. Moreover, because of the breadth of these topics, I did not know where to start.” Through his studies at IU and through the MHO major, Goyal says he was able not only to study these concepts, but also apply them to his life and future work.
Goyal feels like his experience in the MHO major allowed him to think about topics in a richer and more critical way. He compares his experience of studying Business and Morality to his friend’s experience of taking business ethics courses in Kelley: “One day we were discussing our courses and I thought that what he was studying was not ethics in its entirety, but rules and regulations. In my case, I was learning not only about business ethics, but also how to relate course content to my life, and my other courses and to the world around me. I was thinking critically and creatively which helped open both my mind and heart.”
This education has real-world applications for Goyal, as he now works as the Director of Finance and Procurement for Ananta Hotels and Resorts and Radisson Jaipur City Center in India. He is also starting his own commercial and retail laundry chain, Lavender, which provides upscale laundry and dry cleaning services to hotels and households that do not have their own laundry services.
In his jobs, Goyal has to understand not only business fundamentals, but also how to manage a diverse team, how to market his company, how to turn a profit, and how to do all of that within an ethical framework. During the pandemic, Goyal and his team have created new marketing strategies for their hotel chain, including a pivot to “staycations” and “workstations.”
Goyal’s involvement with the MHO major also introduced him to like-minded students. “I met a lot of LAMPers from different fields with different aims and ambitions. I’d call my classmates citizens of the world,” he says. “Each and every one wanted to change the world and make it a better place. They had unique perspectives, and the best part was that they were great listeners in and outside of class. They were transparent as they spoke about how they felt, even when there was disagreement.”
He looks back on his time at IU and in the MHO major fondly, and is glad he changed his course a few times along the way. “I always thought that I wanted to study in New York, Boston, or LA. My high school advisor insisted that I should consider IU as one of my options. I remember seeing videos on YouTube. Two-hundred-year-old campus with greenery everywhere. Amazing college spirit with some fantastic majors. I made up my mind that I wanted to study in a college town,” he remembers. “Now that I think of it, IU did ‘fulfill its promise.’”