McGowan Fellows Program Celebrates Historic Milestone

The McGowan Fellows Program is a highly selective scholarship that offers full-year of paid tuition and extensive leadership training, coaching, and networking opportunities to 10 students from 10 top-tier MBA programs.

Celebrating its second decade of operation, the McGowan Fellows Program introduced its 11th class of grant recipients this year, who will begin their program in August.

Michael T. Nietzel, of Forbes, recently sat down with Diana Spencer, Executive Director for the McGowan Fund, and discussed the program’s accomplishments and its impact on MBA education.

EXTENSIVE LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

One of the aspects that makes the McGowan Fellows Program unique is the leadership training that it provides to recipients.

Fellows take part in a social impact project, where they focus on a complex societal issue and collaborate with organizations in building impactful solutions. Past projects have included building an ethics curriculum by Aurora University and a collaboration with the American Heart Association aimed at increasing participation for the Get With The Guidelines program.

The structure of the program focuses heavily on the social impact project with other supporting aspects such as coaching and formal coursework.

“About 70% of it is experiential through the social impact projects, 20% is coaching by Fellows alumni toward McGowan principles; and only 10% is formal coursework,” Spencer, the executive director of the program, tells Forbes.

FOCUS ON IMPACT

The McGowan Fellows Program places a strong emphasis on values-based leadership. The underlying concepts of the program are that good leadership has the power to transform individuals, teams, organizations, and society; leadership can be taught; and good leadership is greatly needed as our nation faces increasingly complex challenges.

“Our vision is that every MBA program should be developing principled, values-based leadership in their students,” Spencer tells Forbes. “Business leaders should not be thinking only of value in terms of shareholders or direct customers. They need to consider the impact their work has on the widest possible range of stakeholders in society.”

As such, the program is looking into developing consultancy relationships with B-schools in the idea of “conscious capitalism.”

“That’s the idea that when capitalism is practiced ethically and consciously, it should do more than make profits, it should elevate humanity by aiming at higher purposes, taking into account the broader needs of society, and building a culture of trust and accountability for all those it serves,” Spencer tells Forbes. “Our Principled Leadership Program serves as a strong foundation for such a change.”

Here is the list of this year’s McGowan Fellows:

Pooja Aysola, MIT Sloan School of Business

Mehal Choudhary, Columbia University Graduate School of Business

Brittney Cummins, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business.

Sanat Daga, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management

Adam Davis, Georgetown University McDonough School of Business

Jane Fisher, Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business

Alexander Goot, University of Virginia Darden School of Business

Matthew Griffin, Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business

Karthik Hakkuvan, Duke University Fuqua School of Business

Alex Lowry, University of Michigan Ross School of Management

Read the full interview at Forbes.

For bios of the 10 McGowan Fellows, Click Here.

Sources: Forbes, William G. McGowan Charitable Fund