Earlier this year, Dr. Eli Joseph made history as the youngest Black instructor to teach simultaneously at three prestigious universities – Columbia University, New York University, and UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). As of August 2023, Dr. Joseph has accepted an offer to teach at Dartmouth College (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute), making him the youngest instructor to simultaneously teach at four prestigious universities.
A selected number of students are lucky enough to graduate from either institution. Few educators are even luckier to teach these students at either instruction. However, Dr. Eli Joseph is one of the very few instructors to teach at both institutions at the same time. In addition to teaching at Columbia University and NYU, UCLA, he will be teaching at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Dartmouth College.
Despite his distinguished accomplishments, Dr. Joseph is no stranger to failure and rejection. In his lifetime, he’s been turned down by more than 1,500 employers, 30 colleges, and 75 scholarship foundations. He was denied admission to other elite institutions like Princeton, UPenn, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, and Brown University.
Back in 2012, Joseph received a letter of rejection from Columbia University. Today, he serves as an associate faculty in the applied analytics program at Columbia University School of Professional Studies.
Back in 2016, Joseph was also rejected by the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. Fast forward to today, he currently teaches graduate students at the NYU School of Professional Studies.
Additionally, he has seen thousands of rejection notices from various firms in finance, technology, and managerial consulting. Some of these companies include JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Google, Amazon, Facebook, BCG, McKinsey, Deloitte, and Bain.
Though Joseph experienced a plethora of rejections from various firms and institutions, he has successfully overcome various personal and professional challenges – including the recent loss of his older brother last year.
Through it all, Dr. Joseph used his failures to motivate him to succeed. He recently delivered two TEDx talks this past fall entitled “Time Is Your Biggest Competition” and “No Trace, No Case”. He has become one of the youngest members of the World Economic Forum Expert Network. In the near future, Joseph plans to collaborate with many other elite researchers on finding tangible solutions that can benefit companies from various industries, enhancing the welfare of both people and organizations across the globe.
Joseph earned his Doctorate in Business Administration from Felician University, becoming the first-ever graduate to complete the curriculum at the age of 24. He is the author of the book entitled The Perfect Rejection Resume: A Reader’s Guide to Building a Career Through Failure.
