Business School Students Win NJBIA Women's Leadership Awards

Melissa De Cunto and Nalan Kus, both seniors in NJIT's Martin Tuchman School of Management, are recipients of this year's New Jersey Business & Industry Association's Rising Star Award.

"NJBIA's Rising Star Awards honor students who have demonstrated a passion for their career path, academic success and a commitment to their communities during their undergraduate careers," association CEO Michele Siekerka stated.

Both students are the first Highlanders to win the award in its 11-year history. Both are dedicated to their fields and highly involved in campus life outside of the classroom, noted Oya Tukel, MTSM dean who submitted the award nominations. Another similarity is both have parents who inspired them - De Cunto's family owns a luxury car service, and Kus' father worked for NATO.

De Cunto double majors in business and cyberpsychology. She hails from Hopatcong and chose to attend NJIT along with her twin sister Giuliana who studies architecture. She plans to stay at NJIT for graduate school, pursuing an M.S. in management with a concentration in business analytics. She even works four campus jobs and is involved with several clubs and organizations.

For De Cunto, the award is "showing that I can do anything I want if I set my mind to it, and it helps me do what I want after I graduate, which is to create my own company," she said. Her dream is to lead a publishing company highlighting neurodivergent authors. She's working toward that goal by also taking courses in entrepreneurship, the law, and marketing.

"I'm neurodivergent. I have a learning disability, so I always assumed I couldn't do anything because that's what I was told when I was younger," she said. Now, "Everything I've been doing is about trying to learn how to start a company and the psychology aspects - because you need to know about people, you need to understand behavior in business, then marketing and entrepreneurship."

Kus studies financial technology. She began at NJIT as a computer science major, but had a chance to meet Tukel. Both are from Turkey and both appreciate the juncture of business and technology. "Which introduced me to financial technology," Kus explained. "And it just clicked more with me. You have a social part of your job. Meanwhile, you can also be a software developer as well, because it's a mixture of two important elements in the world - money and technology. So I thought it had a really good future."

In becoming a Rising Star, "It's like a reward for the community service that I've been doing since my high school years," when she created a young leaders group at that time to introduce her schoolmates to business leaders. "It just reminds me that I should be continuing what I'm doing with community service, leadership and creating opportunities for students that are struggling with their career paths or their overall journey of life."

Now at NJIT, Kus is president of Tukel's student advisory group. She shared an example of their work, in which students were concerned about a prerequisite course that they felt was not the best choice for financial technology majors. They brought this concern to a curriculum committee's attention, and alternative courses are allowed now.

"Melissa and Nalan embody resilience, leadership and service," Tukel said. "Their Rising Star awards show how higher education shapes true community leaders."

They'll receive their awards at the NJBIA Women Business Leaders Forum on September 17 in Somerset. Students from Berkeley College, Bergen Community College and Rutgers University are also award winners this year.