In Chapter 12 of 16 in his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, University of Pennsylvania graduate Slava Rubin answers "Why Did You Choose to Study Abroad in Belgium During College and How Have You Applied That Liberal Arts Education to the Choices You Have Made Since?" Rubin shares how he chose a Belgium school, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, over a Hong Kong school for his study abroad program. He takes several liberal arts courses, including Conjugal Sexual Morality with Priests, European Art History, Flemish, and The Evolution of the European Union. This, along with a Penn Film Study class, rounds out Rubin's Wharton undergraduate education before graduating and starting work as a management consultant.
Slava Rubin is CEO and co-founder of Indiegogo, the world's largest crowdfunding platform. Indiegogo empowers anyone, anywhere, anytime to raise funds for any idea—creative, cause-related or entrepreneurial. Prior to Indiegogo, Rubin worked as a management consultant. He earned his BSE degree from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: Why did you choose to study abroad in Belgium during college and how have you applied that liberal arts education to the choices you've made since?
Slava Rubin: My choices for where I wanted to study were, there was this really cool school in Hong Kong, which was very exciting to go to, there was a school in Belgium that I thought was cool, and then maybe I was looking at a school in South America, but really it was between this Hong Kong school and the Belgium school. Realistically, I just hadn’t had a lot of travel experience yet and kind of wanted to knock out Europe first and maybe I wasn't as risky with my moves or maybe I would have gone to Hong Kong.
I think also the Belgium was suppose to be a little bit easier and I wanted to have an easy of an experience as possible, but I took some really fun class. Conjugal Sexual Morality that I took with priests, European Art History, Flemish, all kinds of crazy stuff, the evolution of the EU (European Union). The closest thing that I took anything about a liberal arts class at Wharton, which was really just accounting and marketing and financing, was writing about film, which wasn't even a real writing class, it just watching movies and taking notes. So, it was definitely interesting to see that side of an education and I knew as I was consulting and as I was doing these corporate jobs that I still wanted to tap that other side of my brain.