As Pandemic Rages, MBAs Battle The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce

Thomas Donohue, CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. U.S. Chamber photo

‘THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS LIKELY TO BE OVERWHELMED’

Najib Jai lives at the intersection of business and health — an interesting place to be as a pandemic wreaks havoc on the world economy. A 2021 MD/MBA candidate at the Pritzker School of Medicine and Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, Jai has has wrapped up most of his medical school training and is at the tail end of the first year of the B-school portion of his dual degree. Jai is “horrified,” says his classmate Richard Day, “at the idea that one half of his future career is getting submarined by the other.”

Najib Jai. LinkedIn

Jai tells P&Q that the shortages of PPE, or personal protective equipment like facemasks, that invocation of the Defense Production Act would address are impending in some places and already apparent in others. The time to act, he says, is yesterday.

“I don’t think that there’s much debate,” Jai says. “Even someone like myself, who’s not necessarily in the hospital, I can tell you that my school and classmates are doing a really good job on the medical side to actually create masks and other sort of protective equipment for the folks in the hospital.”

Unlike in New York City, the hardest-hit metropolitan area in the U.S., medical students like himself have not yet been asked to help in the hospitals of Chicago. He won’t be surprised to see that change, however.

“With the expected shortages, not just in terms of PPE but also in terms of faculty and staff members, the medical students at this point haven’t really been tapped into actually going back into the hospital,” Jai says. “They’re effectively being protected from that. That being said, there are certain trends that are slowly taking place in areas like New York, where they’re just being hit so hard, and the traditional format for that really is that they’re graduating off fourth-year students early in hopes of getting them fully licensed and prepared to actually go to the hospital. That hasn’t quite happened yet here at Chicago, or at least not at the University of Chicago, but I think it’s fair to say that that is a possibility for sure.”

Before that point — before things get really desperate — invocation of the DPA is a necessity, Jai says. Already stories are being told of medical professionals reusing masks. “The reuse of a mask,” he says, “when I was rotating throughout all the different areas of medicine, was probably the worst thing you could ever do.

“When you really break it down, in the grand scheme, the healthcare system is likely to be overwhelmed. I can tell you: Seeing both ends of the spectrum here, or rather both worlds, the medical side certainly is getting hit pretty rough. So when you look at the unique position that MBAs have in terms of impacting a powerful lobbying entity like the Chamber of Commerce to enact something like the Defense Production Act, it’s incredible. MBAs have the ability to leverage their perspective and opinion, and they have unmatched capacity to execute, to get things done.”

WANTED: A STRONG FEDERAL RESPONSE

Jeremy Wano. LinkedIn

Jeremy Wano, a veteran of the Navy and a dentist in the Naval Reserves, is in the first year of a dual-degree program at Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business and Harvard Kennedy School of Government. A colleague of Richard Day’s who interned with him last summer, Wano has spearheaded outreach to get MBAs at Dartmouth on board with the letter-writing campaign to the Chamber.

“I stay pretty up-to-date on current events,” Wano tells P&Q. “I’m pretty politically active outside of school as well. And so when Richard thought of this idea, he thought of me and reached out to me. I thought it was a fantastic idea, especially for someone like myself who’s confined and wants to do stuff and is used to organizing people. It’s hard to do that right now. And he thought of this idea and it’s something that we could all do while we’re at home, and I decided to jump in.”

Besides the petition, the MBAs have been drafting and sending hundreds of emails and recruiting support at other business schools, spreading the word at Harvard, Yale School of Management, the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, and elsewhere. They utilized their already huge network of contacts not only at B-schools but other schools within universities as well, primarily through dual-degree programs.

“Right now we’re trying to reach that critical-mass level where we get enough people getting the word out there that we’re doing something like this, and then starting to contact the Chamber of Commerce,” Wano says. “We’re currently trying to work on them with some type of other social media strategy so it’s not just coming from individual students, that this presence is going to start being out there, more publicly seen. This is going to be seen more from the outside and not just the students internally. So we’re trying to develop some type of strategy here, where we can get this out more publicly and more broadly.”

A strong federal response is vital, Wano says, pointing out that as a healthcare worker, the outcry from healthcare workers on the front lines of the crisis resonates with him.

“We would really like to see the administration use the full force of the DPA, and streamlining the efficient distribution of the critical supplies that are needed out there with the ventilators and masks, the PPE, and things like that,” he says. “And just act quicker. Because time is running out and we’re really concerned about what will happen if the states are left to fend for themselves, like what is going on now.

“If you are an MBA student, please get involved. Please send an email out to the Chamber of Commerce. We’ve even drafted it for you so it can be pretty straightforward, but try to personalize it as much as you can, and add as many personal details in there as possible. The business sector is something the administration seems to be listening more widely to than some of the other public sector officials. We can get our voices out there as future leaders in the business world, saying, ‘This is something that we care about and this is something that we want to see.'”

“IN A MONTH IT’LL BE TOO LATE’

The effort by MBAs to pressure the Chamber is only a few days only and “not super sophisticated,” Richard Day says. They are using a form email “that people consent to signing, which basically says, ‘I’m an MBA at a top level. I’ve been following what’s going on. I can’t believe that you’re lobbying against this when the American Hospital Association has asked for it, the American Medical Association has asked for it, and the nurses have asked for it.’ A hundred-and-ten-plus national security experts, including a former secretary of defense, have all signed an open letter saying, ‘For the love of God, why haven’t you done this yet?’ And we are saying the same.”

The next step? The MBAs have started organizing teams at a number of schools, Day says, with the idea to really ramp up the volume of email outreach to the Chamber in coming days. “I would like to go up into the hundreds and drag the numbers way up,” he says.

“Obviously we’re eager to move as quickly as we can on this just because, one, obviously these sorts of campaigns need to go fast, but the other is: We can’t afford to wait a moment. In a month it’ll be too late.”

Are you an MBA who wants to join the effort to persuade the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to support the invocation of the Defense Production Act? Send them a message here.

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