Lillian Lincoln Lambert, the first African-American woman to earn an MBA degree from Harvard Business School, addressed NSU students, faculty and staff on Feb. 21, at 10:30 a.m.
Her visit was part of the H. Wayne Huizenga School of Business and Entrepreneurship’s Distinguished Lecture Series.
Lambert spoke to a crowd in the Carl DeSantis Building’s Grand Room about the struggles she faced growing up in the segregated South and discussed how she defied incredible odds to become a successful business woman.
After graduating high school, Lambert left her hometown of Ballsville, Virginia — a small farming community located fifty miles west of Richmond — for New York City, where she worked as a maid. She said she made many mistakes there and took a long time to adjust to the fast pace of the city.
“The city was not ready for me,” she said.
Lambert later earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C.
She is now passionate about education, saying “If you get it in your head, no one can take it out. I went from growing up in a town of 200 to living in New York City, where I was working in buildings that had that many people in them,” she recounted. “The opportunities were endless, but it was hard to make enough money.”
With encouragement from a Howard professor, Lambert decided to apply to Harvard.
“Harvard rejected my initial application and I thought, ‘the nerve of them!’ So, I re-took the GMAT and applied again, and I got in.”
She became one of six black students and one of 18 females in Harvard’s 1969 class of 800. She asked the dean about the low attendance of black students, and she said that he replied, “We don’t know where to find them.”
The next year, thanks in large part to Lambert’s recruitment efforts — with help from her fellow classmates, 27 black students enrolled in the school. Lambert also helped create an African-American student union.
Still, the path to earn an MBA wasn’t an easy one, as Lambert had to actively fight against both racial and sexual discrimination.
“There was always an undercurrent of racism, but then again, people thought women shouldn’t be there — much less black women. It was there; I knew it was there, I dealt with it,” said Lambert, “The biggest lesson I learned was to not let society define you.”
The next Distinguished Lecture Series event is on March 21 at 10:30 a.m. in the Carl DeSantis Building’s Grand Room when businessman, author and entrepreneur Raul Pupo presents a lecture entitled “The Correlation between Service Management and Profitability”.
