Are people born ‘Wicked’? Or do people have ‘Wickedness’ thrust upon them?
This Fall, Wicked: Part One, the major motion picture adaptation of the famed Broadway musical Wicked, will take its galactic marketing forces and a $145 million production budget to return my favorite story to the center of the cultural zeitgeist. As a brand new HBS student, I wonder: is business school….wicked? And, as the Broadway show’s opening line goes: “Are people born wicked? Or is wickedness thrust upon them?”
For those unfamiliar, the show is a prequel to Dorothy’s story in The Wizard of Oz. It follows the journey of a green outcast called Elphaba (who would later become the “Wicked Witch of the West”) and the “practically perfect” Glinda (also known as the “Good Witch”) when they meet by chance at Shiz University. When Elphaba gets to school, she is enraged by the inequality she witnesses in the land of Oz, motivating her journey to find the all-powerful “Wizard” who can fix it.
You may ask, Will, what does any of this have to do with HBS? Like Elphaba’s hope for the Wizard, I, too, hope HBS will give me the tools to rewrite the future for the better. After months of working through the application process, I relate to Elphaba when she sings “The Wizard and I,” reflecting on transforming “this weird quirk I’ve tried to suppress or hide” into a “talent that could help me meet the Wizard.” I spent so much time articulating who I am and why an MBA made sense in my application that by the time I got in, I understood Elphaba’s sentiments, dreaming of how her life would change when she sings, “Cause, once you’re with the Wizard / No one, thinks you’re strange / No father is not proud of you / No sister acts ashamed.” Her dreams now have a chance to come true, and as a newly minted HBS student, so do mine. As I begin this MBA program, I am as hopeful as Elphaba. Harvard Business School must unlock worlds of possibility for me, right? I can almost picture the Elphaba in me singing from the John W. Weeks Footbridge, believing that my hard work is over, my daydreams are destined to come true, and my pain will go away merely because I made it here. Phew.
However, when Elphaba finally meets the Wizard, she learns he himself is wicked. Leveraging propaganda to maintain power, he perpetuates the exact problems of inequality she had hoped he would fix. Feeling betrayed, Elphaba speaks truth to power, calling the Wizard a fraud. Meanwhile, Glinda, her “perfect" roommate, tries to persuade her to apologize to the Wizard to maintain the status quo in Oz. Elphaba sings, “I’m through with playing by the rules of someone else’s game,” in the iconic song, “Defying Gravity,” during which she learns to fly, a symbol of following her values even if doing so comes at “much too high a cost” (like being labeled “wicked”). So, what will I do when I find out that simply getting into HBS is not a golden ticket to an easy life? How do I, too, learn to fly here? I bet Elphaba would tell me I am looking for power in all the wrong places. A university itself has no real power, she would argue, encouraging me to get past the hot air of prestige and have the humility to dare to do what I believe in, especially when everyone else disagrees, accepting the costly sacrifice. Easy.
When the facade fades and reality sets in at HBS, while on a lonely late-night walk home after receiving another job rejection email, I hope to remember what sustained Elphaba to get to her next chapter: her unexpected friendship with Glinda. Despite their polarizing differences, these two witches are paired to be roommates at school. Petty disputes bring out the worst in each of them, leveraging each other’s insecurities to belittle and dismiss. One of my favorite scenes is the school dance, where Glinda gives Elphaba her ugliest hat in an attempt to further her status as an outcast. In front of all of her classmates, Glinda sees her roommate raw, vulnerable, and alone, wearing the embarrassing hat she gave her. Instead of laughing with the rest of her classmates, she somehow changes her heart and mind and leans in and asks Elphaba to dance.
This small act sets afire a trajectory of the seemingly impossible: turning an enemy into a friend. It all comes full circle in the final song before the finale, where Elphaba and Glinda sing “For Good,” a duet that begins with, “And we are led / To those who help us most to grow / If we let them.” I cling to the phrase “if we let them” as a reminder that none of this happens by chance, but becoming friends with the people I judge or who judge me comes from a willingness to learn more from the other. At HBS, I hope to defy my own predicaments and seek friendship with those I would least expect: those who grew up oceans away from me, hail from different industries, call me an old millennial for liking Harry Potter, and even if I can muster the courage, those who like cats, too.
No, I do not believe anyone is born wicked, but I believe the inevitable wickedness of life will be thrust upon us, even here at business school. It is wicked that we cannot do everything every day and must choose a path and close doors. It is wicked that we will spend time falling in love with life at HBS only to be forced to say goodbye one day. It is wicked that the promise of our future will find a way to betray us, and our hearts will be broken by expectations from companies, faculty, and, yes, even friends. And yes, it is wicked that Ubers can cost that much, too.
When wickedness comes for all of us over these next two years, Wicked tells us we have a choice: either hoard power out of fear like the Wizard or give power away with courage like Elphaba. I wish we could all remember how lonely it is to pick fear and close off, compete, and divide people by believing that the world is against you and only you. Instead, I hope we take the harder, more impressive, fulfilling path. The one that takes courage to stand up for your values but equally takes seriously the idea that the people most different from you may one day be your best friend and teach you about a new side of yourself. Being lucky enough to be changed “for good” starts by getting to know those who challenge you most, and that’s the way of the wicked.
HBS Class of 2026, let’s have a Wicked good time.
Will Hennessy (MBA ’26) hails from New Canaan, CT, where he watched his first TED talk in Ms. Steidl's high school poetry class. Inspired, he eventually spent seven years working at TED Conferences, building a new podcast network media strategy, and most recently serving as the Director of Special Projects. Outside of work, he loves teaching courses in the outdoors and cares deeply about the power of friendships and K-12 public education.