Morgan Yucel

Yale School of Management

“I’m a potent combination of Boston brash, SoCal whimsy, and Vermont socialism.”

Hometown: Boston, MA

Fun Fact About Yourself: I once punched a kangaroo—but it was in self-defense!

Undergraduate School and Major: Pomona College with a major in Public Policy and Economics

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: ideas42, Senior Associate

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? My mission is basically antithetical to the mission of Jeff Bezos’s private rocket trip out of our atmosphere—I want to take the immense financial resources that exist in our capitalist economy and harness them toward creating inclusive opportunities for all of society. From investing in clean air for those of us left on earth to breathe, to designing products that democratize access to education, I see my mission as employing our financial structures to generate social good. I couldn’t imagine a better school than Yale SOM—with its dual focus on “business and society”—to help me hone my financial skills, while not losing focus on my commitment to social impact.

What word best describes the Yale SOM MBA students and alumni you’ve met so far and why? I would say that virtually all community members that I’ve met at Yale are “dedicated.” In fact, the application question for SOM asks each applicant to define our greatest commitment, and the self-reflection this entails is evident in the resulting cohort. Each person that I have met is deeply dedicated to pursuing a goal—from building solar fields in low-income communities to starting their own cannabis chain in high-end markets. It is inspiring and humbling to be in the midst of so many people who are driving with clear eyes and full hearts toward remarkable destinations.

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? After spending my early career committed to generating social impact, I worried that I would lose touch with this commitment when entering the capitalist and competitive mindset of business school. Yale stood out to me in the search due to its core value of harnessing business to serve society. Over and over again during recruiting events for Yale, I saw how my prospective classmates and potential professors brought this value to life, by focusing not just on the financial ramifications of a decision, but also on the consequences for the environment and economic inclusivity. Our mutual commitment to generating social gains, as well as financial ones, is part of what ultimately drew me to Yale over other programs.

What course, club, or activity excites you the most at Yale SOM? Putting aside my acute curiosity about trying out for the polo team (because when else in my life would I ever play polo?!), I am most excited about the Global Social Entrepreneurship class at SOM. My pulse quickens whenever there is an applied opportunity for learning, and this class offers the chance to learn from and collaborate with startups operating in another country. The global spirit of SOM is definitely something that I appreciate about the school—SOM even has a “Global Studies” requirement for graduating—as this global mindset introduces us to other marketplaces we could navigate, new needs we could meet, and different processes we could adopt.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: Perhaps my greatest accomplishment has also been my most exhausting one. Over the course of my first five months at a new job, I worked with a cross-cultural team in the United States and Côte d’Ivoire to research, design, and user-test a prototype for prompting pregnant women to complete a full course of malaria treatment.

To accomplish this, I coordinated with team members across languages, time zones, and industry functions, all while learning my company’s methodology as I applied it! Ultimately, we developed an innovative “prenatal passport” that essentially functioned as a scavenger hunt, complete with signatures and certificates, that encourages midwives and pregnant women to work together to ensure that each prenatal client received regular malaria medication during their pregnancy. The government is actively scaling this up across eight health centers in Abidjan now, where it will reach 10,000 women by the end of the year. It made me so happy to know that at least one product I designed is being actively implemented.

How did COVID-19 change your perspective on your career and your life in general? COVID has carved away so many layers of our dynamic social lives, and in this newly Spartan world, forced me to actively set limits on how much space I would devote to work. I encountered something close to burnout after six months of nonstop computer scrolling, and it helped me recognize that I needed to be as active about scheduling opportunities for life to occur, as I had been about scheduling meetings at work. Now I know that I need to consecrate certain parts of each day to focus on my personal pursuits, from trying to amass the largest collection of Ravensburger jigsaw puzzles outside of Germany to catching up on crime podcasts as I walk around the block.

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point and what do you hope to do after graduation? After five years of working at nonprofits, I realized that no matter how hard my teams and I worked, the products and programs we created were not profitable, but reliant on donor funding—and thus had an uncertain pathway to scale. This meant that when the grant ended, so too did the outcomes we worked hard to foster, from town halls in the Congo to family planning programs in Senegal. I believe that an MBA will allow me to better serve these communities by giving me the opportunity to gain the financial management skills that I need to develop products that can become profitable and self-sustain their own social impact. After graduation, I hope to work in either impact investing or social enterprise incubation to develop profitable products that can reach scale.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? Harvard, MIT, Yale, Tuck, and Berkeley—I wanted to stay on the East Coast, but with one memorable exception. To be honest, though, my heart was set on Yale from the outset, due to its focus on social impact.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Yale SOM’s MBA program? My fellow classmates come from an incredible wealth of different backgrounds—from more countries, industries, or marketplaces than I could count on ten hands (if I were lucky enough to have ten hands). Yale is welcoming to all. If you can picture yourself here, then there is a space in the frame for you. We need what you have to offer. The application process can feel grueling, and I certainly went through various crises of confidence while applying, but now that I’m here, I’ve realized that the whole point of this experience is to be authentic to yourself, while also actively developing new skills. In short: don’t overly doubt yourself during the application process, since you are here to learn and grow!