Meet Yale SOM’s MBA Class Of 2021

Yale SOM Interior. Photo Credit: Tony Rinaldo

GO ANYWHERE AT YALE FOR ELECTIVES

For the Class of 2021, Yale SOM’s most distinctive feature is its interdisciplinary character. According to Bruce DelMonico, the school is deeply connected to the larger university. In fact, MBAs can choose to take all of their electives outside the School of Management – a wrinkle unique to business schools in general. In other words, the program personalizes its programming to more closely align with its individual students’ missions. At the same time, business-related courses are highly popular with students from other graduate programs at Yale University. This approach made all the difference for Neil Noronha when he decided on an MBA program.

“Any business school can teach me economics, accounting, finance, and the expertise-related knowledge to be successful,” he concedes. “However, the Yale School of Management seeks to create interdisciplinary leaders who care first about management and the social interactions that govern our systems and society. These leaders approach challenges not just from a purely financial or economics angle, but also from a scientific, environmental, legal, cultural, political, and social one.”

Jasmine Oko, a 2019 P&Q MBA To Watch, took full advantage of this flexible approach, broadening her perspective by taking several classes outside the SOM. “Some of my favorite non-MBA classes I’ve taken include a Yale College education journalism class, where I got my writing ripped apart (constructively!) by a former editor at The New York Times, and the popular Life Worth Living course at the Yale Divinity School, which broadly explores the question of what constitutes a meaningful life through the lens of different religions and traditions. These classes stretched my thinking and learning in entirely new ways from my more practical MBA classes.”

Team meeting. Photo Credit: Tony Rinaldo

INTERCONNECTEDNESS DEFINES THE PROGRAM

The Class of 2021 also praised the MBA program’s global nature. For Lee Young, the program “empowers students to think outside of the traditional confines of business and across functions, industries, and regions.” That’s particularly true with the Global Network for Advanced Management. Founded in 2012 by Yale SOM, the consortium features 30 business schools on 6 continents, with members stretching from the UK’s University of Oxford to Africa’s Strathmore Business School to China’s Fudan University. These one-on-one partnerships are more than a glorified exchange program. The Global Network also boasts Global Virtual Team projects and SNOCs (Small Network Online Classes). Through this network, students can also earn a Master’s of Advanced Management, which attracted 70 students from 23 network schools last year.

Overall, nearly 7,500 students have traveled overseas to complete week-long network courses in March, including over 700 in 2019. Such partnerships only boost the networking opportunities for SOM MBAs, says Giancarlo Solorzano Picasso, who earned his mechanical engineering degree from Notre Dame.

“Yale has explicitly made it clear in its mission that it seeks to be the most “distinctively global” school in the US. This commitment is evident with the sheer amount of international students who make part of each class. Building a network that can connect you with the resources of hundreds of different countries enables you to take the best that each country has to offer, culturally or otherwise.”

A walk inside the SOM. Photo Credit: Tony Rinaldo

The sense of interconnectedness, both with the larger society and various fields of study, is the key feature of Yale SOM’s vaunted integrated core curriculum. Forget “functional silos,” where each discipline is taught independently. Instead, says Bruce DelMonico, courses revolve around business stakeholders like investors and employees. That way, students can take an in-depth look at broader organizational or marketplace perspectives.

“We look not at marketing as a class or function, but we look at the customer as a stakeholder and what parts of an organization relate to the customer or affect the customer experience. So it can include marketing, but also operations, technology, and accounting.”

NOT A NON-PROFIT SCHOOL

This direction hit home for Abhishek Agarwal. “While working as a product development manager and engaging with different stakeholders, I realized it was important to understand all the stakeholders involved and their varied points of view. The integrated core curriculum will help develop leadership skills as they relate to various organizational roles rather than to discrete disciplinary topics. It will prepare me to look across functions within a particular organization as well as across organizations, industries, and sectors when making strategic decisions.”

More than that, the integrated core – particularly raw cases – reflect the often ambiguous and conflicting nature of business decision-making. “I tend to adhere to the school of thought that the best way to learn something is through experience,” adds Kiara Feliz. “Yale’s innovative curriculum takes this to heart by providing various stakeholder perspectives and raw data that may or may not be relevant to solving the issue at hand. This forces students to discern what to prioritize and thereby simulating the next best thing to a real, on-the-job experience.”

Of course, being different often means being misunderstood. In Yale SOM’s case, that translates to being narrowed to a “non-profit school.” The program fed 35% of its grads to consulting in 2018, along with 23% to finance and 15% to tech. In sum, just 1.2% of the class landed jobs with non-profits. Reality is, students come to New Haven to learn how to make an impact and a difference so they can fulfill a larger mission. For the Class of 2021 – or any past or future class – the real value of a Yale SOM MBA is the ability to absorb an array of perspectives and apply them wherever they land for the greater good.

“They might be going into investment banking but thinking about it in a different way because of the things they learned, the values that they acquired or were able to accentuate at Yale,” adds DelMonico.

What led these professionals to enter business schools? Which programs did they also consider? What strategies did they use to choose their MBA program? What was the major event that defined them? Find the answers to these questions and many more in the in-depth profiles of these incoming MBA candidates.

MBA Student Hometown Alma Mater Employer
Abhishek K Agarwal Panjipara, India Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Unilever
Taylor Barnard Stansbury Park, UT Tufts University Deloitte Consulting
Kiara Feliz Manchester, NH University of Pennsylvania FHI 360
Michelle Gilroy West Chester, PA Clemson University American Airlines
Swapna Kumar Rochester, NY University of Rochester Boston Children’s Hospital
Eva Leung Hong Kong London School of Economics Standard Chartered Bank
Nomawethu Moyo Bulawayo, Zimbabwe Colby College Industrial Economics, Inc.
Pemika Nakata Bangkok, Thailand University of Southern California Bualuang Ventures
Ezra Nelson Indianapolis, IN Brown University Boston Collegiate Charter School
Neil Noronha Bowie, MD Georgetown University Office of Senator Tammy Duckworth
Diego Ordoñez Monterrey, Mexico Tecnologico de Monterrey Capitel Desarrollos
Giancarlo Solorzano Picasso Managua, Nicaragua University of Notre Dame SER San Antonio
Anna Troein Windsor, United Kingdom Tufts University Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Lee Young Evansville, IN Morehouse College Delta Air Lines
Allen Xu Overland Park, KS Stanford University HarrisX

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