s an MBA student, Leng Lim found his motives and goals were questioned more than most. “People say, ‘You’re a priest? You’ve abandoned God for money?’ My response is, ‘Why is it OK for you to make money, but not OK for me to make money?’” he laughs.

Lim, a native of Singapore and a self-described “bookworm,” is used to being a little different. As a high-school student, he appreciated his country’s strong commitment to education even as he longed to experience other cultures. At age 18, he was given that opportunity through a scholarship to the Armand Hammer United World College (UWC) in New Mexico, a two-year high-school program that promotes international understanding among students from over eighty countries. “I met people who were very different from me, from the Soviet Union, South Africa, and Eastern Europe,” he recalls. “It was 1982, during apartheid and before glasnost. The experience was mind-blowing and heart-opening.”

After fulfilling a two-year military service requirement in Singapore, Lim studied international relations as an undergraduate at Princeton University, where Professor Cornel West, an acclaimed author of cross-disciplinary works on race and religion, was a key factor in his decision to enter the ministry. “West spoke eloquently about what communities needed to be, not just what they needed to do,” says Lim, who received an M.Div. degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1995 and who will deliver the graduate student oration at Harvard Commencement this year.

Before his arrival at HBS, Lim served the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in a variety of functions, from chaplain at UCLA and UC Irvine, to assistant rector in an inner-city parish, to working in a grassroots effort to educate the Chinese community about AIDS. Lim acknowledges that serving as a spiritual advisor and mediator can be emotionally exhausting, particularly when there are no easy solutions. “One can pray — but one usually cannot fix,” he observes. “The biggest part of counseling is to be present and simply listen. Human beings become better when they find themselves fully heard and recognized.”

This degree of openness is equally apparent when Lim describes the reasoning behind his application to HBS, where he has served as copresident of the Leadership & Ethics Forum. “It dawned on me that business was the biggest player in human society, and yet I had no understanding of it,” he says. “In addition to wanting to gain some important analytical tools at HBS, I realized that there was a fruitful internal journey to be taken by coming to a place where I was not acquainted with the way of thinking.”

For Lim, who has accepted a position at the San Francisco office of management consulting firm Marakon Associates and plans to continue his ministry as a prison counselor, that journey is clearly an ongoing quest. “Business is actually very spiritual because it relates to who we are and why we are creative and entrepreneurial,” he observes. “I hope I can continue to find some wisdom for myself about a powerful subject and share it with others.”

— Julia Hanna (send e-mail to the author)