MBA graduate from Harvard, ex-JP Morgan and Uber employee calls herself 'dumb'. Here’s why

Woman with a Harvard MBA, who worked in top firms, shares her failures. (Image: bigsis.grace/Instagram)

MBA from Harvard, a career at JP Morgan, and a startup of her own, yet Grace Lee, 30, calls herself “dumb”. In an Instagram post that quickly went viral, the Class of 2025 graduate from one of world’s leading business school’s shared what she describes as her “museum of failure.”

Despite impressive academic and professional journey, Lee said she often felt behind her peers. She worked as an analyst at JP Morgan in New York City from 2017 to 2019, and later as a product operations manager at Uber from 2019 to 2020, before joining Harvard Business School.

“I am actually dumb. At JP Morgan, it took me 3× longer than everyone else to understand concepts. In one presentation, I told my teammates I’d handle the intro and the closing - as in, saying our names - because I couldn’t trust myself with actual content,” she wrote under her Instagram post.

Lee said a major turning point came when she was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 30. She explained, “Spent decades thinking I was just lazy and undisciplined. Went undiagnosed because I overcompensated - straight A’s, leadership positions, never late. Turns out perfectionism and anxiety can mask ADHD very well. Now I’m determined to make the 100 ideas racing through my head a superpower.”

She also spoke about the physical and emotional toll of building a startup while at Harvard. Lee said she invested $200,000 in the venture, grew it to 1,000 users, and even pitched it to Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary. Ultimately, she decided to shut it down. “Averaged 3 hours of sleep for a year. Woke up one morning covered in stress rashes that lasted a month. Didn’t tell anyone - I’d be ‘uninvestable.’ My body was screaming at me to stop and I just kept going,” she wrote.

Lee reflected on her career setbacks, saying, “I’ve been laid off or watched the company I worked at shut down 3 times in 5 years. Despite spending half my career at startups, I have exactly $0 in equity to show for it. My career batting average is literally zero.”

She also discussed her long-term health struggles, including weight fluctuations and knee problems, which made exercise difficult and created what she described as a vicious cycle. Lee shared her struggles with putting herself out publicly. She has recorded over 50 videos but only posted around 20. “The rest sit in my camera roll because I convince myself they’re not good enough,” she wrote.

Lee ended her post by saying she plans to openly discuss both what she has learned and what she is still figuring out. Her hope is that others might be able to “skip some of the s**t I went through”.

Social media users responded positively. One said, “Love love this!! I love failures, the experiences you learn from them is priceless.”

Another added, “Moral of the story: Ignoring yourself is surprisingly expensive. Eventually your body, your mind, or your life will force the conversation. There’s a strange freedom in realising other people’s opinions are temporary - but your own conviction is something you have to live with every day.” A third comment said, “We all gotta fail more to achieve more.”