This is how I went from New York Knicks to Army Ranger and Blackstone Associate

The transition from Army Ranger to Blackstone and student at Harvard Business School was abrupt, but it wasn’t my first career change. At 26 I left the NBA to become an active duty soldier after years of juggling basketball and the Army Reserves.

Blackstone’s Pre-MBA Internship for Veterans, MINT, helped me transition from the military to an MBA. My experience convinced me to return for a second summer internship and now, after graduating from business school, I recently started as an associate in Blackstone’s tactical opportunities division.

That’s how I went from playing center for the New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks to serving as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan and finally to my current job at Blackstone.

Basketball or military?

I grew up in a basketball family. My brother Mason still plays for the Phoenix Suns. But sports led me to the army. I vividly remember playing for the US national team in an exhibition game at a US Army base in Germany. The stadium was filled with soldiers chanting, “USA!”

It also took me to Duke, where I followed my two older brothers. In Mike Krzyzewski, the winningest coach in college basketball history, I found someone who understood basketball and the military. He was the captain of his team at West Point, and after serving in the Army, he was the head coach at West Point for a year before moving to Duke.

Coach K noticed my interest in the military and helped me understand that I didn’t have to choose between basketball and the military. One of his former players, now-retired Army General Robert Brooks Brown, convinced me that he could juggle ROTC and Duke basketball if he wanted to enough.

There were compromises: a game the night before would count toward my 5 a.m. physical training with ROTC, and I had to spend a summer training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, instead of going to the weight room with the rest of my teammates.

I don’t think it would have been possible without Coach K. He was so smart and driven, and I found myself a little disorganized and undisciplined. He and other ex-servicemen became role models. Very soon, I would also have the opportunity to be changed by the military.

Learn the power of teamwork

Duke helped me realize that I love being a part of something bigger than myself. One of my proudest moments was winning the national championship in 2015. My highlight reel makes it clear that I would never carry a team by myself, but with teammates like Jahlil Okafor, who I filled in for that season, I realized what I could accomplish some wonderful stuff.

My NBA the career began with the Knicks. I served concurrently in the New York Army National Guard while playing 21 games with the Knicks my freshman year. The next year I played eight games with the Milwaukee Bucks, but I realized I wasn’t going to set the world on fire as a basketball player.

The search for something bigger than myself eventually led me to the Army. In October 2018, I took the active duty initiative and became an infantry officer in the Army.

I was surrounded by such a high base of talent and athleticism in the NBA, and it made me a better version of myself by forcing me to focus on things that only I can do well. That sense of being challenged by the people around me led me to the prestigious Airborne School and Ranger School in the Army.

I wanted to be around people who would force me to grow again. I was constantly around people who were smarter, stronger, and faster than me, and I came out the other side a better version of myself.

I served in the 75th Ranger Regiment, a special operations wing of the Army, for two deployments to Afghanistan. I love those fellows. Their games weren’t on ESPN the way the Knicks were, but they’re some of the most characterful and charged guys I’ve ever worked with.

From the grassroots to the business school

Our regiment participated in the evacuation of Afghanistan in 2021. After that, we were stationed at a base in a stable part of the Middle East, not knowing if we would return to Afghanistan.

Some lifted weights, others played “Settlers of Catan,” while another group sat in the corner hammering away at their laptops. They told me they planned to apply to MBA programs. We all knew of other veterans who had followed that path and found success. It gives veterans time to change, learn new skills, and explore career opportunities.

We spent the next few weeks studying for the GMAT. If you asked me on the basis to define investment banking or consulting, I would not be able to give a good answer.

One of the biggest challenges was framing my military accomplishments in a way that made sense in my applications. The person reading this in a civilian may not appreciate or understand what I did, but I was able to lean on other veterans who have been through this before me.

I remember hours-long phone conversations with former Rangers, Green Berets, Navy Seals, and other veterans who didn’t know me but genuinely wanted to help me build my best app. I hope to pay this off one day.

Soon after, I found out about Blackstone’s MINT program on LinkedIn. The program gives veterans a taste of corporate life at the private equity giant the summer before they start their MBA, so I decided to give it a try.

My MINT practices

I believe Blackstone’s commitment to veterans comes from our leadership: Steve Schwarzman served in the Army Reserve, and Joe Zidle, senior managing director and chief investment strategist of Blackstone’s private wealth division, served as an Army reservist for eight years when he started your career . Zidle is now the executive sponsor of the Blackstone Veterans Network, which helps with the MINT program.

I was placed on the Tactical Opportunities team – a Blackstone fund that invests across asset classes, industries and geographies. I was put on that team because I asked for the widest possible opportunities to invest in the capital stack to compensate for my lack of experience.

I had to learn the language of finance, but my military experience made it easier. The military loves its acronyms and slang, and finance is no different. Once I got past the jargon, the underlying concepts were intuitive.

Senior leaders did not spend all day in their offices; they constantly came out to the bullpen to ask the most junior person on the team questions about current or future offers. I felt like I always had to be ready to speak my mind, which was a big change.

In the military, you often need to sit back, be quiet, and do as you’re told. Some veterans leave the service with impostor syndrome, which only gets worse when you start working in the corporate world and see how much faster others can be at the keyboard.

MINT helped nip that in the bud. I remember a senior managing director taking us interns into a room.

“Hey, at the next meeting, don’t introduce yourself as an intern,” he said. “You’re one of us now, and you’re all here for a reason. We want to hear your thoughts. Your rank doesn’t matter here; your thoughts are just as valuable as the next person’s.”

From Harvard back to Blackstone

The MINT internship helped me a lot to get through Harvard Business School. There aren’t many conversations about combat zones or playing at Madison Square Garden in grad school, so it was helpful to have real-world experience to draw on. Also, the financial modeling hours took the sting out of some of the classes that are notoriously challenging for students without a financial background.

Between the internship and the MBA, I’ve taken five accounting courses to improve my skills, and I still have more to learn.

But now I recognize that a race is a marathon, not a sprint. And I was lucky to have great people in this marathon. Like in basketball or the Rangers, my teammates make this hard work easier.

The following summer, I was back at Blackstone for the summer associate program. Those internships offered a pathway to a full-time position, and I was fortunate enough to receive an offer to return to the Tactical Opportunities team. I just started my full time role this month in New York.

Tactical opportunities constantly keep me on my toes. We could run a play for a cast and then switch gears. My team will say, “Marshall, scrap that. This time, we’re doing something completely different.”