My EMBA Journey

Patrick Kuhse, Former International Fugitive and Convicted Felon, Addresses HBS Students - News


Patrick Kuhse first started to feel dissatisfied at Arizona University. The Iowa country boy joined a fraternity where he confronted the painful contrast between his plain ordinary roots and his friends' wealthy families. Despite growing up in a "very tight family unit" Kuhse began to believe, "I didn't grow up so good."As he began to comprehend the power of wealth, envy and desire captured Kuhse's consciousness until he began to feel entitled.Wasn't he just as deserving, after all, of all that wealth as his friends? As he lived and traveled with his fraternity brothers, the desire to become wealthy eclipsed everything that had ever been important to Kuhse, including family. Finally, too impatient to wait until graduation, Kuhse dropped out of college and went to work as a salesperson at a securities firm.During his first few weeks in his new office in New York City's Chrysler Building Kuhse remembers thinking, "These people are obsessed with money - they never sleep!" His new peer group was filled with 50 to 60 "hard chargers" and "type As.""I thought I had finally died and gone to Heaven," he said