There’s a reason MBA students are jumping for joy at Stanford Graduate School of Business these days: the prestige Silicon Valley school now has new world-class facilities–a nine building modern campus for B-school students.
The Most Successful Stanford B-School Graduates Of All Time
You’ve probably heard all the stereotypes about Stanford. They’re laid back and California cool; they’re not like those Ivys who supposedly foam at the mouth as they step over their classmates. Stanford students are do-gooder free spirits, an eclectic bunch who bend the world to what they believe it should be. In other words, they are the James Dean of business schools, misunderstood iconoclasts with warm hearts and mad Excel skills.
And maybe there’s some truth there. But there’s no denying one fact: Stanford grads have made more than the proverbial dent in the business universe. They’ve drilled a hole right through it!
Not surprisingly, Stanford is consistently ranked among the top schools for entrepreneurship, with alumni (and dropouts) founding and co-founding game-changers like Google, Nike, Cisco, Netflix. Yahoo, and Linkedin. So who are the top graduates of Stanford Business School?
This week, Business Insider compiled its list, featuring alumni from both the MBA program. Wondering which big names passed through Palo Alto on their ways to wealth and renown? Check out this list:
Joe Coulombe (’54): Founder of Trader Joe’s Grocery Store
Charles Schwab (’61): Chairman and CEO of Charles Schwab Corporate
Phil Knight (’62): Founder of Nike
Nolan Bushnell (’70): Founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese
John Browne (’72): Former CEO of British Petroleum
Jeffrey Bewkes (’77): President and COO of Time Warner
Kendall Powell (’79): CEO of General Mills
Vinod Khosla (’80): CEO of Sun Microsystems
Miles D. White (’80): CEO of Abbott Laboratories
Richard Fairbank (’81): Chairman and CEO of Capital One
Seth Godin (’84): Best-selling author
Steven Luczo (’84): CEO of Seagate Technology
Penny Pritzker (’84): U.S. Secretary of Commerce
John Donahoe (’86): CEO of eBay
Carlos Brito (’89): CEO of Anheuser Busch InBev
Mary Barra (’90): CEO of General Motors
Jacqueline Novogratz (’91): Founder of Acumen Fund
Kevin Tsujihara (’92): CEO off Warner Brothers
David Sze (’93): Managing Partner at Greylock Partners
Victor Koo (’94): Co-Founder of Youku
Jeffrey Skoll (’95): First President (and employee) of eBay
Mariam Naficy (’98): Founder of Minted and Eve.com
Sam Yagan (’05): CEO of Match.com
Pete Flint (’05) and Sam Inkinen (’05): Co-founders of Trulia
That’s quite a list! And you can bet everyone is looking to buddy up to Brito and Sze at reunions. And wouldn’t you love to have been in those class discussions from the class of ’84! And get this, here are some of the Stanford GSB grads who were left off Business Insider’s list:
Robert Fisher: Chairman of Gap, Inc. (Graduation date unavailable)
Richard Kovacevich (’43): Former Chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo
Tom Peters (’72): Best-selling business author
Micheline Chau (’76): Former President and COO of Lucas Film
Jim Collins (’83): Best-selling business author
Yair Landu (’89): Former President of Sony Pictures
Greg Waldorf (’94): Founding investor and former CEO of eHarmony
Ali Rowghani (’02): Former COO of Twitter
One more point: This list only includes graduates. Stanford GSB dropouts have included John F. Kennedy, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, and Reliance Industry’s Mukesh Ambani.
Source: Business Insider
DON’T MISS: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A STANFORD FIRST YEAR
