Stanford’s International MBAs Of 2021: Where Their Paths Will Lead

BRIDGING THE GAP WITH AN INTERNATIONAL, MULTICULTURAL BACKGROUND

Yuko Ono joined the prestigious Stanford MBA program as a professional who has already made a big impact, having lived on almost all of the continents. Now she wants to use her MBA to reinvent accessibility to education in Asian countries.

Born in the UK, Ono moved to Tokyo as a child. Growing up, she also spent three years in Los Angeles and some time in Kenya before returning to Tokyo at 14. It was Kenya that perhaps made the greatest impact on her as a young person; the country’s socioeconomic reality contributed to her decision to major in international business and politics in college. Afterward, she joined Mitsubishi overseeing the international development side of the company.

“The Japanese government would fund projects in developing economies, and then some private companies would undertake the project,” Ono explains. “So what I was doing specifically was building hospitals in Myanmar and West Africa.”

MORE THAN A SOFT SKILLS CLINIC

After six years leading major infrastructure projects in Africa, Ono became intrigued by the potential impacts of innovation and entrepreneurship. And there are few better places to go than Stanford if those are your interests.

“I specifically wanted to come to Stanford because it’s in Silicon Valley, and that’s where a lot of startups start,” she says. “I wanted to regain my international side and go to my dream grad school in the U.S.”

Ono argues that Stanford in particular and business schools generally are ideal places for networking. But she also gained hard skills in her two years at GSB.

“You also learn like basic like coding and statistics, so they make you do Python,” she says. “It’s one of the fundamental IT skills that all business people should have. It’s another language, a communication tool.”

SERVING AS A TRANSLATOR AT THE OLYMPICS

Those sets of skills helped Ono gain the knowledge she needed to land at Udemy, an e-learning company that, yes, teaches courses in Python. She is currently the company’s business marketing manager, primarily overseeing partnerships with the Asian market.

As time progresses, however, she expects to expand to the African continent and provide educational solutions to countries there.

“Right now, I want to experience this expansion into the Japanese market and the Korean market and eventually leverage that experience to deliver our contents to Africa,” she says. “That’s where there’s a lot of demand.”

Ono has been in Japan helping out with Olympic and Paralympic tennis tournaments, serving as a translator since the young professional speaks four languages.

“I’m only temporarily in Japan because I have been part of Japan Tennis Association for the past ten years, where I played tennis in varsity tennis,” she says. Once the Paralympics wrap up, she will make her way back to the Bay Area.