Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

Death and taxes.

They’re the only certainties in life. While MBAs have flocked to finance for generations, there is one business school that has gone all in on “the business of health”: Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.

Why not? After all, Johns Hopkins is “synonymous with health” says Dean Alexander Triantis. Home to 29 Nobel Prize winners, Johns Hopkins ranks as the United States’ top school for Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health according to U.S. News & World Report. The school is equally formidable in Engineering, Hard Sciences, Education, and Global Policy. This proximity enables MBAs to tap into leading experts to develop programs and commercialize ideas. With healthcare accounting for 20% of American GDP, that makes for huge opportunities to build a healthcare career with access and impact. At the same time, healthcare expertise is equally coveted in the larger marketplace.

“That other 80% has woken up to the opportunities”, says Dean Triantis in a 2023 interview with P&Q, “whether it is the tech sector that sees great application opportunities or whether it is any industry thinking about the well-being or healthcare of their employees and thinking about the impact of services and products on the health and well-being of their customers. As terrible as COVID was, it has awoken interest in this field and many of the companies that are not in the 20% of the economy now have chief medical officers focused on that whole ecosystem. Everyone is focused on the cost, the quality and the accessibility of healthcare.”

Carey MBAs have certainly noticed the difference. Vanessa Battista, a pediatric nurse who earned a dual MBA-Doctor in Nursing Practice, quickly experienced how relevant the programming was to her work. The program’s focus on outcomes, she says, was invaluable in tasks like drafting memos and organizing events.

“We did that all the time, learning practical skills that just helped you do your work even better,” Battista told P&Q in a 2023 interview. “This may sound a little bit hokey but not a day goes by that I don’t use the skills I learned in the program. When you are in leadership, you are always thinking about what you say and how you say it and how the message is received. Those are all skills I learned in the MBA program.”

More than communicating, Battista adds, the Carey MBA taught her how to think beyond her functional confines that had been ingrained from years in her profession. “There were certainly many working in the health care space but also there were business people, engineers, lawyers, and teachers. It was so refreshing to think about problems from different perspectives. That was really enriching.”

Shrey Kapoor, a 2023 MBA graduate who’ll earn his MD this spring, came to Carey as an entrepreneur who founded MetSetGo, am AI-driven telemedicine platform. The curriculum, Kapoor says, trained him on the key nuances of developing a pitch deck – lessons that helped him land a $250K investment. More than that, the team-driven Carey model sharpened his soft skills – the ones he’ll need to manage his 15-member team. Kapoor’s classmate, Mehaque Kohli, lauded the program’s experiential learning opportunities, highlighting the Innovation Field Project where her team worked with executives and clients for a Nashville telehealth firm looking to broaden its services. Another grad, Jon Ilani, loved how he was taught by researchers and practitioners deeply versed in the distinctive rules governing healthcare finance and marketing. Even more, he appreciated how the MBA program went above-and-beyond to help him advance his career while being an applicant and student.

“While every school talked about their potential to help me, Carey Business School went the extra mile to make it happen. They arranged an interview for me with a Carey alumnus for an internship at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, setting me up with a pre-MBA internship and leveraging their strong alumni network. This experience provided me with valuable real-world experience, which was immensely helpful when I applied for internships for the following summer.”

Carey’s experiential and multidisciplinary nature is one advantage it enjoys. However, a real differentiator is flexibility. Dean Triantis notes that the two-year, full-time MBA program now includes a Health, Technology, and Innovation track – not to mention a 12-week paid internship. The Flex MBA can be completed online or include a mix of on-campus residencies and weekend courses. At the same time, Carey maintains an impressive portfolio of programs and certificates.

“In our Flexible MBA, we have a variety of specializations but one of them is in healthcare management, innovation and technology, Dean Triantis tells P&Q. “You can see a theme in not only focusing on health care but on the role that innovation and technology have in disrupting the healthcare system. If you are interested in pharma, medical devices, learning about all the types of insurance structures and the economics of healthcare, we have something for you.  We have a specialized master’s of science program in healthcare management, both full- and part-time. We have executive education with academies and courses. And then the dual degrees with the schools of medicine, nursing, public health and biotechnology. We cover the gamut if you are looking to go deeper as well as having the breadth of the MBA.”

Another advantage that Carey enjoys? The school is relatively young. That translates to an openness that is undermined by silos or entrenched practices. “As schools grow, they tended in the past to develop departments of finance and accounting and so on,” Dean Triantis admits. “We really promote and create inter-disciplinary research. The modern business school is focused on addressing really complex problems that require you to integrate functional areas. Our faculty do that and our students learn that this is the way they are going to address problems.”

Of course, there is the vaunted Johns Hopkins ecosystem. How does it stand up? Shrey Kapoor frames it this way: “As one professor told me, ‘We don’t read books. We write them.’ There are resources here that are not available anywhere else in the world.”

“There’s no better place to do health care than Hopkins,” adds Mehaque Kohli. “The entire ecosystem, from the alumni network to the cases discussed in class and even extra-curriculars, you are immersed in health care.”

Last year, the Carey School reached a milestone: It became one of ten American business schools to achieve a STEM designation. The upshot: Carey graduates are eligible to extend their stay in the United States to 36 months. What else makes Carey a business school to watch in 2024? This month, P&Q reached out to Dean Triantis. Here are some additional thoughts on what to expect from the Carey Business School.

P&Q: What have been the most important new developments in your MBA program over the past year? What type of impact will it have on current and future MBAs?

Triantis: “Offering the distinction of Hopkins online, Carey expanded its part-time Flexible MBA to allow students more opportunities to personalize and customize their program to fit their goals and needs. Students can choose from eight in-demand specializations, including business analytics; health care management, innovation, and technology; and public and private sector leadership. The part-time Flexible MBA is Carey’s largest academic program, drawing students from across the U.S. and around the world with a mix of online courses and unique in-person experiences.

As a growing and agile b-school, Carey plans to add more specialization opportunities including areas such as artificial intelligence, and even more experiential learning opportunities for online-learning students.

Of course, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School also offers a full-time MBA and eleven carefully designed dual-degree MBA programs that give students more opportunities to specialize.”

P&Q: Give us your 30-second pitch for your full-time MBA. What makes you unique?

Triantis: “Johns Hopkins Carey Business School is part of America’s first research university, world-renowned in health, engineering, and other fields. With this pedigree, Carey Business School is leading the business of health through unparalleled interdisciplinary collaboration with the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Whiting School of Engineering. Even outside the business of health, Carey provides a highly personalized student experience that intentionally integrates more than a dozen experiential learning opportunities and puts students’ program needs above departmental regimen without sacrificing rigor. It champions a focus on faculty, drawing prestigious experts like economist Michael Keane, management scientist and digital health expert Ritu Agarwal, and Poets & Quants 40 Under 40 Professors Tinglong Dai and Christopher Myers. Plus, Carey’s total student population and its full-time MBA cohort are more than 50 percent women, a distinction few b-schools can claim, but that Carey has had for four years in a row.”

P&Q: What is the most underrated aspect of your MBA program? How does it set you apart from other programs and enrich your MBA students’ experience?

Triantis: “With students from 64 countries, Carey Business School is culturally, ethnically, and religiously diverse. Plus, it is one of only a handful of business schools to achieve gender parity in its MBA programs; Carey’s full-time MBA cohorts have been at least 51 percent women for four years in a row. In fact, Carey has gender parity across the entire student body.

Carey is a place for entrepreneurs interested in impacting the future of business and society through innovation and experience. Its MBA program provides more than a dozen experiential learning opportunities, from impact sprints to immersive international excursions. Carey’s approach to experiential learning is so impressive that, in 2021, the MBA Roundtable recognized it with an Innovator Award for General Excellence. The previous year, Carey integrated AI into its MBA program. In 2022, Carey launched the new Center for Digital Heath and Artificial Intelligence; In 2023, Johns Hopkins University formed its multi-disciplinary Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Institute, which will accelerate and deepen Carey students’ exposure to and understanding of AI.”

P&Q: Give us two examples of how your MBA program leverages the Johns Hopkins health care ecosystem or the larger health care industry as a whole.

Triantis: “The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School is leading the business of health. Fully 25 percent of its faculty are engaged in business-of-health-related research, and Carey offers eight academic degrees with a focus in the field. Through dual-degree MBAs with the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine and Nursing, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Whiting School of Engineering, students capitalize on the interdisciplinary collaboration and expertise of the world’s most respected and trusted experts in health-related fields. Plus, Carey students can transform ideas into action with access to the Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures and Hexcite, the university’s AACSB Innovations that Inspire Award-winning medical software start-up generator. Both programs focus on moving scientific discoveries into commercialized products and services. For example, Carey MBA graduate Christoph Lengauer helped raise funding for a cancer-detection blood test developed by Johns Hopkins researchers. The company was acquired for $2.1 billion in 2020.

P&Q: What does success look like in your MBA and graduate business school programs (i.e. what are you ultimately working towards)?

Triantis: “Johns Hopkins Carey Business School expands Johns Hopkins University’s pursuit of research, discovery, and education through dynamic learning opportunities, innovative faculty, and interdisciplinary collaborations to help shape leaders who seize opportunities to create lasting commercial and societal value. Because solutions to the world’s most complex challenges require more than one area of expertise, Carey uses a de-siloed approach that focuses on areas of academic interest instead of disciplinary departments. Carey’s faculty and academic directors continually reassess the best interests of students and society through business, adapting curricula, experiential learning opportunities, and external partnerships to meet those needs.”

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