Lykourgos (Luke) Demas

Yale School of Management

“Serial jack-of-all-trades.”

Hometown: Valley Stream, NY

Fun Fact About Yourself: I co-founded a maize farm in Malawi!

Undergraduate School and Major: Harvard University (Class of 2016), Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Senior Associate, Performance Delivery Team, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria

The Yale School of Management is regarded as a purpose-driven program. What is your mission? How will your MBA at Yale SOM help you fulfill that mission?I aspire to bring equity to healthcare delivery in under-resourced settings. During my prior work in the healthcare sector, I witnessed situations where simple, data-backed, sustainable solutions had outsized impacts on health care delivery, and I believe many such opportunities remain. At Yale SOM, I hope to gain the perspective necessary to connect these pieces further, expand my knowledge of other components of the healthcare delivery pipeline (e.g., venture capital funding of innovative new ideas), and learn from my colleagues to better support and catalyze the resourcing, development, and implementation of such ideas.

What word best describes the Yale SOM MBA students and alumni you’ve met so far and why? Real. Of course, Yale SOM students and alumni are smart, accomplished, and driven—these attributes are prerequisites to get into any top business school. What surprised me the most was how authentic everyone has been, how vulnerable people are willing to get, and how passionate my colleagues are about ideas and topics both inside and outside of the typical business sphere.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Yale SOM’s MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? During the application process, I was immediately drawn to Yale SOM’s Global Study requirement. Having lived and worked in three very different countries—the U.S., Switzerland, and Malawi—I have seen first-hand the importance of having a global perspective when it comes to effectively delivering impact across borders and cultures. The explicit emphasis on international experience provided by the Global Study program highlighted Yale SOM’s international focus, which I really appreciated. And of course, I am excited to travel (COVID permitting)!

What course, club, or activity excites you the most at Yale SOM? Voices, a forum that provides students the opportunity to share their personal stories in a safe and welcoming space, encapsulates many of the things I am most excited about at Yale SOM: engaging my classmates on tough and often uncomfortable topics, learning from a diversity of viewpoints, and forming deep life-long friendships.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: I moved to Malawi in January 2020 to work to support the country’s HIV program. As you can imagine, the nature of my work supporting the Ministry of Health changed dramatically as the year progressed, and I was eventually tasked with quantifying the health products needed to prepare the country for COVID-19: PPEs, hygiene products, essential medicines, and clinical devices. Simple, right?

I confronted the harsh realities of advocating for the health and safety of Malawians at a time when rich countries—many of which fund the Malawian health system—were themselves scrambling for products. I had to balance theoretically correct “answers” with realities on the ground. In a country with few trained anesthesiologists, for instance, increasing the number of ICU beds or ventilators was largely infeasible. Despite many frustrating moments (and many hours of multi-time-zone Zoom calls), my ministry colleagues and I articulated the needs of the country and coordinated with aid organization to bring the needed products into Malawi. While there are still many challenges to overcome given the uncertain future of the pandemic, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, I am proud to have supported the country during such an uncertain time.

How did COVID-19 change your perspective on your career and your life in general? COVID-19 has further strengthened my belief in the importance of concerted relationship-building and maintenance. During the pandemic, we were all deprived of the casual subway hellos, the water-cooler gossip, and the passing anecdotes we share with colleagues as we enter the office. Relationships could no longer blossom organically, face-to-face. Rather, real effort was needed to bond with people over video, a task made even more difficult by “Zoom fatigue” and audio lags.  I found myself struggling to think of creative and engaging ways to connect with people virtually, but through that process I came to appreciate the value that clear communication and vulnerability can have in building new connections and strengthening existing bonds. I hope to bring this concerted effort and authenticity to the new bonds I will form at Yale SOM, hopefully fully in-person!

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point and what do you hope to do after graduation? After a several-years exploration into health care delivery—starting at McKinsey supporting Fortune 500 healthcare companies and ending in Malawi supporting the Ministry of Health—I discovered that in many low-resource settings, the challenges confronting good ideas are often associated with lack of capital. At this stage in my career, I am interested in better understanding the financing side of good ideas, and hope to explore opportunities in venture capital and impact investing through my MBA journey at Yale SOM. I am keeping an open-mind about what will come afterwards, but I know it will be exciting—stay tuned!

What other MBA programs did you apply to? Aside from Yale SOM, I applied to HBS, Stanford GSB, and Berkeley Haas.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Yale SOM’s MBA program? From my experience, more than other programs, Yale SOM emphasizes authenticity and a commitment to the “and society” component of its mission. I would urge applicants to think critically about what truly motivates them—not just what they think the school wants to hear—and emphasize how they plan to use the skills they develop at Yale SOM toward the betterment of society at large.