Leland+ Content Library

How to Build a Strong MBA Application from Start to Finish

Starting an MBA application can feel overwhelming when there are so many moving pieces and no clear roadmap. This session is for applicants who want to understand how to approach the process from start to finish with a thoughtful, structured strategy. You’ll learn how to evaluate your profile, build a strong school list, and develop a cohesive narrative across essays, recommendations, and interviews.

Find Your Fit: Where to Apply to Thrive

Where you apply can shape your growth as an engineer as much as the offer itself. In this session, you’ll learn how to evaluate companies by stage, team structure, tech stack, and culture to identify where you’re most likely to thrive. We’ll cover how to align your strengths and goals with the right environments and build a focused, intentional application strategy.

Why Do Companies Acquire?

Explore the strategic reasons behind acquisitions—from growth to market entry—and what makes them succeed or fail.

Covering the Three GMAT Principles of Exponents

Struggling with exponent questions on the GMAT? This session will break down the three core principles of exponents that form the foundation for many Quant problems. In this interactive workshop, Leland coach Hadi H. will guide you through each rule, show you how they appear on the test, and teach you how to apply them with confidence under time pressure. You’ll also leave with targeted practice strategies to strengthen your understanding and boost your accuracy outside of the session. ​Hadi H. is a top-ranked GMAT Focus tutor with a 770 GMAT score and over 200 successful students worldwide. A London Business School MBA alum and cofounder of A1 MBA Consulting, Hadi brings 3,700+ minutes of GMAT coaching experience, an exceptional track record of client score improvement, and deep expertise in helping applicants earn admission to top business schools including Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, INSEAD, and LBS.

Columbia Sample Essay – Why CBS is the Right Academic and Personal Fit

An essay blending personal connection and professional ambition, outlining how Columbia’s dual-degree program, NYC location, and inclusive community align with the applicant’s goals as a mission-driven entrepreneur.

HBS Example Essay – Leading Through Loss and Building a Cross-Cultural Bridge

A powerful essay recounting how the author stepped up after a mentor's sudden passing to lead high-stakes negotiations between German leadership and the Russian government, highlighting resilience, cultural fluency, and emergent leadership.

UChicago Extended Essay – A Letter to a Bicycle and a Changing Neighborhood

A creative response to UChicago’s choose-your-own prompt, written as a heartfelt letter to a shopkeeper’s bike, exploring themes of community, technology, and personal impact through storytelling.

Map and Activate Your LinkedIn Network with Claude [5/13/2026] (Recording)

You have hundreds of LinkedIn connections you've never done anything with. In this hands-on session, we'll turn your exported LinkedIn data into a working professional CRM in Notion — no automation tools, code, or technical setup required. Using a Claude prompt, we'll categorize your top contacts by relationship tier, industry, and relevance, then drop everything into a pre-built Notion template so you know exactly who to reach out to, when, and what to say. You'll also get a read on what content resonates with your specific network, which feeds directly into what we build in the next session. Pre-work: Request your LinkedIn connections export at least 24 hours before the session (Settings → Data Privacy → Get a copy of your data). LinkedIn emails it within 24 hours and it only takes 2 minutes to request. Outcome for attendees: A populated Notion CRM with their top LinkedIn contacts categorized into tiers, a suggested next action for each, and a content resonance analysis showing what topics will actually land with their network. Session pre-requisites: Claude account & Notion account — free is fine 🙂

Product Recruiting AMA with a PM from LinkedIn, Uber, and a Startup

Hear insights from a Product Manager from LinkedIn, Uber, and a startup! Get your questions answered on product recruiting, career paths, and breaking into top tech roles.

Vibe Coding For Beginners: What It Is and How to Start Today

Vibe coding is one of the most talked-about shifts in tech right now — and for good reason. Non-technical people are building real, functional software by describing what they want in plain language and letting AI do the rest In this 45-minute intro, we'll pull back the curtain on one of the most talked-about shifts in tech right now and show you exactly how non-technical people are using it to build real, functional software without writing a single line of code themselves. You'll walk away with a clear mental model, a live demo, and a concrete starting point. What we'll cover: *What vibe coding is (and why it's different from anything before it) *The three tools shaping the space right now: Loveable, Cursor, and Claude Code *A live demo so you can see it in action, not just hear about it *What you can realistically build, and where you'll still need support *Your actual next step to get started today Who this is for: Total beginners. No coding experience required, just curiosity and an idea you've been waiting to bring to life.

Your Master’s Application Roadmap: What to Do Early and Why It Matters

A strong master’s application starts long before deadlines hit. This session is designed to help you understand what to do early—and why those early moves matter so much. You’ll learn how to plan your timeline, prioritize key components like testing, essays, and recommendations, and avoid last-minute mistakes that weaken applications. Whether you’re just beginning to explore programs or getting ready to apply, you’ll leave with a clear roadmap and confidence in your next steps.

Authorship and Originality in AI assisted Essay Writing [10/30/2026] (Recording)

AI can generate content fast, but it is virtually impossible to preserve originality and authorship in AI-assisted work. People end up generating content that no one likes to read or watch. Even if it is sometimes creative enough and not generic, it is still not the author's unique original work. Prompt, context, harness, intent, loop- none of these engineering can solve this, as the work is open-ended. Creatives, or anyone interested in combining AI processing power and speed with human originality and authorship in content creation, can benefit from this lesson.

Fix Your Essay Before It's Read and Forgotten [8/18/2026] (Recording)

Most MBA essay drafts are competent and entirely forgettable. Learn what separates a safe essay from one that gets remembered by an admissions committee reading hundreds of applications a week.

Authorship and Originality in AI assisted Essay Writing [9/25/2026] (Recording)

AI can generate content fast, but it is virtually impossible to preserve originality and authorship in AI-assisted work. People end up generating content that no one likes to read or watch. Even if it is sometimes creative enough and not generic, it is still not the author's unique original work. Prompt, context, harness, intent, loop- none of these engineering can solve this, as the work is open-ended. Creatives, or anyone interested in combining AI processing power and speed with human originality and authorship in content creation, can benefit from this lesson.

Authorship and Originality in AI assisted Creative Work [8/14/2026] (Recording)

AI can generate content fast, but it is virtually impossible to preserve originality and authorship in AI-assisted work. People end up generating content that no one likes to read or watch. Even if it is sometimes creative enough and not generic, it is still not the author's unique original work. Prompt, context, harness, intent, loop- none of these engineering can solve this, as the work is open-ended. Creatives, or anyone interested in combining AI processing power and speed with human originality and authorship in content creation, can benefit from this lesson.

Scholarship-Winning MBA Applications: Profiles and Key Steps [9/7/2026] (Recording)

This livestream highlights what truly makes an MBA application scholarship worthy. Is it your GPA? Your GMAT score? Your professional performance or experience? Your extracurricular impact? This session walks through the most important factors at both the MBA and EMBA levels (they have differing criteria) and provides profiles of applicants who won top scholarships to schools like Stanford and Wharton. Viewers will learn how to demonstrate the needed credentials and qualities across essays, recommendations, and the résumé to make a compelling case. When your materials show your classmates will learn as much from you as from the curriculum, you become the kind of candidate top business schools want to invest in. Join this livestream to learn best practices and assess whether your application is currently scholarship-worthy or whether you need to take key steps to improve it.

Writing Online: Tips and Strategies for Getting Started [9/28/2026] (Recording)

In this livestream, participants will learn useful strategies for starting up their online writing projects. Whether participants are interested in creating a newsletter, a blog, or another kind of online writing project, participants will finish the livestream feeling more capable and prepared to 1) start their online writing project, 2) maintain a consistent schedule of releases that establishes their writing project as a serious personal endeavor, 3) define a specific niche for their project, and 4) build an engaged audience. To be clear, the strategies that will be shared in this session are applicable across various online writing platforms including Substack, Beehiiv, Medium, and more, so aspiring online writers will still find the session useful regardless of which platform they intend to use for their project.

IB Technicals 5: M&A and Accretion Dilution [9/29/2026] (Recording)

M&A applies valuation to a live decision: why a company buys another, what it pays, and what the deal does to the buyer. Building is slow and buying is fast. The catch is that the buyer pays a premium, usually twenty to forty percent over where the target already trades, so the deal has to create more value than the market already priced in. Synergies are the argument for that, and cost synergies are the only ones bankers count on. The question that carries the most interview volume in this block is accretion and dilution, and it comes down to one comparison: the earnings you are buying against the cost of the financing you used to buy them. Then the mechanics underneath, starting with goodwill, which appears the moment you pay more than book value. What we'll cover: - Why companies acquire, and why synergies have to exceed the premium - Cost synergies versus revenue synergies, and why bankers only count on one of them - Cash, debt, or stock: which is most accretive, and why - The P/E arbitrage rule, and the earnings yield trick that answers it in your head - Goodwill, and what happens when you write up assets for book but not for tax - The sell-side process, and selling to a sponsor versus a strategic Want to be done with the M&A block? I run a 90-minute mock interview, a full simulation and then rapid-fire technicals on whatever broke. Book a free 15-minute intro to see if it is a good fit. Part 5 of IB Technicals, a six part run on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Each night covers how the concept works and, more importantly, how to actually answer the questions on it, with the stories and details behind them. Each one stands alone, so jump in anywhere. I'm the founder of OFFERGOBLIN and ex-Centerview tech.

AMA...about writing, publishing, and promoting a book [9/8/2026] (Recording)

Most people who want to write a book have more questions than answers. This session is your chance to ask them. Bring whatever is on your mind about writing and publishing. Should you write a book? How do you choose between traditional, academic, and self-publishing? What does a writing partnership actually look like? What goes into a book proposal? How do you market a book after it's published? All of it is fair game. I've been a writing partner on 27 published books — most with Wiley — on entrepreneurship, startups, venture capital, and leadership. I serve on the Editorial Board of Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange (EIX), reaching 15 million readers annually. I have a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago and have published my own books with the University of Chicago Press. This session is free and open to anyone thinking about writing a book. Everyone who attends gets my Book Readiness Checklist — a one-page diagnostic to help you figure out exactly where you are in the process and what your next step should be.

Get Recognized at Work: 5 Steps to Document and Show Your Impact

Inside the 5‑Step Recognition Playbook This isn’t a fluffy checklist. It’s the exact process I use with senior women in tech to help them get promoted, become the obvious choice for big opportunities, and feel grounded in their own impact. You’ll learn how to: 1. Get out of the self‑doubt spiral. Use a simple self‑coaching model to separate “what actually happened” from the harsh story your brain is telling about you. 2. Choose a “10% better” thought. Stop forcing fake affirmations and find language that actually feels believable in your body. 3. Run a weekly Recognition Retro. Block 30 minutes, open one document, and build a running evidence file of your wins and why they mattered. 4. Turn wins into impact statements. Use my template to learn to talk about your work clearly in 1:1s, team updates, and reviews. 5. Design recognition that works for you. Clarify how you like to be recognized and how you want decision‑makers to see your work. This is for you if... ✦ You’re a woman senior IC or manager in tech and your work is strong, but your promotion timeline doesn’t reflect it. ✦ You feel behind compared to peers with louder self‑promotion, even when you know your impact is just as big (or bigger). ✦ You’ve tried “just speaking up more,” but it feels vague, cringey, or like one more thing on your plate. ✦ You want a concrete, repeatable way to see your own impact and talk about it without feeling like you’re bragging. If you’re tired of waiting to be noticed and ready to start designing your own recognition, this guide is for you.