MBA: The Fortune Elite's Preferred Degree

Outside of Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, Cornell and Stanford, no other business school has more than a single CEO among the top 100. The Sloan School at MIT has Ford Motor’s Alan Mulally, Chicago’s Booth has Chevron’s John Watson, Yale’s School of Management has PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, Berkeley’s Haas School has Intel’s Paul Otellini, and Wharton has Sysco’s William DeLaney.

While it clearly helps to have an MBA from a highly ranked school, there are a good number of CEOs on the list who smartly leveraged their degrees from second-tier schools. Consider Verizon’s Ivan Seidenberg, who earned his MBA from Pace University in New York, or AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, who got his MBA from the University of Oklahoma. Or take Fannie Mae’s Michael Williams, whose resume has an MBA from Drexel University in Philadelphia, and McKesson’s John Hammergren, who got his MBA from Xavier University in Cincinnati.

MBA CEOS OF FORTUNE 100 COMPANIES

School	CEO Alumus & Year	Fortune Rank & Company
Harvard Business School	Jeffrey R. Immelt, 1982	6. General Electric
Harvard Business School	James Dimon, 1982	13. J.P. Morgan Chase
Harvard Business School	Charles E. Haldeman, 1974	20. Freddie Mac
Harvard Business School	W. James McNerney, 1975	36. Boeing
Harvard Business School	Steven A. Kandarian, 1980	46. Met Life
Harvard Business School	Louis J. D’Ambrosio, 1992	57. Sears Holdings
Harvard Business School	Lynn L. Eisenhans, 1980	68. Sunoco
Harvard Business School	John B. Hess, 1977	74. Hess Corp.
Columbia Business School	Warren Buffet, 1951*	7. Berkshire Hathaway
Columbia Business School	Vikram S. Pandit, 1980	14. Citigroup
Columbia Business School	Robert J. Stevens, 1987	52. Lockheed Martin
Columbia Business School	James. P. Gorman, 1987	63. Morgan Stanley
Northwestern (Kellogg)	Gregg W. Steinhafel, 1979	33. Target
Northwestern (Kellogg)	Ellen J. Kullman, 1983	84. DuPont
Northwestern (Kellogg)	Thomas J. Wilson, 1980	89. Allstate
Cornell (Johnson)	Irene B. Rosenfeld, 1977*	49. Kraft Foods
Cornell (Johnson)	Mark Bertolini, 1984	77. Aetna
Cornell (Johnson)	Daniel R. Hesse, 1977	85. Sprint Nextel
Stanford	Miles D. White, 1980	69. Abbott Laboratories
Stanford	Jeffrey L. Bewkes, 1977	95. Time Warner
Chicago (Booth)	John S. Watson, 1980	3. Chevron
Texas-Austin (McCombs)	James J. Mulva, 1969	4. ConocoPhillips
Drexel University	Michael J. Williams, 1983	5. Fannie Mae
London School of Economics	Daniel F. Akerson*	8. General Motors
MIT (Sloan)	Alan R. Mulally, 1982	10. Ford Motor
Oklahoma (Price)	Randall L. Stephenson	12. AT&T
Xavier	John H. Hammergren, 1987	15. McKesson
Pace	Ivan G. Seidenberg, 1981	16. Verizon
New York (Stern)	George S. Barrett, 1988	19. Cardinal Health
Minnesota (Carlson)	John G. Stumpf	23. Wells Fargo
West Texas A&M	William R. Klesse	24. Valero Energy
UCLA (Anderson)	R. David Yost, 1970	27. AmerisourceBergen
SMU (Cox)	Edward B. Rust, 1975	37. State Farm Ins.
Yale School of Management	Indra Nooyi, 1980	43. PepsiCo
Berkeley (Haas)	Paul S. Otellini, 1974	56. Intel
University of Windsor	Sergio Marchionne, 1985	59. Chrysler
Wisconsin	Steven A. Burd*	60. Safeway
Northern Illinois University	Craig R. Herkert	61. Supervalu
Indiana (Kelley)	John T. Chambers, 1975	62. Cisco Systems
Virginia (Darden)	John R. Strangfeld, 1977	64. Prudential Financial
Pennsylvania (Wharton)	William J. DeLaney III, 1982	67. Sysco
Georgetown (McDonough)	Gregory M.E. Spierkel	75. Ingram Micro
Pepperdine (Graziadio)	Michael B. McCallister, 1983	79. Humana

* Indicates a master’s degree in economics or finance. Listed in order of the schools with the most MBA alumni among the Fortune 100, or when there is only one alum from a school, by the rank of the CEO’s company on the Fortune 100 list.

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