Henry Ritter

Yale School of Management and Yale School of Environment (MEM)

“Big mountain boy with loving friends who appreciates French and/or queer cinema.”

Hometown: Cambridge, MA

Fun Fact About Yourself: I walked across Rhode Island and it was probably one of the best days of my life. Don’t sleep on the Ocean State.

Undergraduate School and Major: Brown University – Economics

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Hut Croo for the Appalachian Mountain Club. Basically, I lived and worked on top of a mountain in New Hampshire helping run an off-grid overnight hiker refuge. It was an incredible, exhausting time and I made lifelong friends with some very special humans.

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 to join a community of people building towards a world that is more sustainable, just, and kind. I view an MBA as a broad degree — one that can be used to better run organizations of any kind (for profit or otherwise) moving in this direction.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Yale SOM’s MBA curriculum or programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? Yale was a natural place to pursue the intersection of business and environment; few schools can offer a joint degree program that blends the two domains so intentionally. Beyond that, I was quite drawn to the academic openness of Yale’s graduate education; while at SOM, I can easily take courses across Yale which allows me to do things like take an Intro Psych class with a bunch of excessively nervous 18-year-olds.

What course, club, or activity excites you the most at Yale SOM? I’m excited to explore the entrepreneurship curriculum at SOM broadly — particularly in practicum settings where I can learn hands-on from peers. Outside of SOM proper, I’m excited to write for Rumpus, which is one of Yale’s satirical publications.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: I am most proud of the moments when I’ve walked away from opportunities that didn’t feel aligned with my value set — and towards those that do. Early in my career, I declined a return offer to McKinsey following an internship which left me questioning the path (despite having sunk many, many hours casing!). More recently, I spent considerable effort shifting towards a more mission-based role within Alphabet, moving from Ads at Google to climate work at X.

What do you hope to do after graduation? We shall see! I’m not holding myself to any one outcome quite yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be something more entrepreneurial in nature.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? None! I actually was deciding between Yale’s joint degree program and a PhD at HBS (also with a climate focus). Evidently two very different paths.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Yale SOM’s MBA program? All I can suggest is not to follow my lead and decide to apply with 24 hours left before the round 3 deadline…

DON’T MISS: MEET YALE SOM’S MBA CLASS OF 2025