Meet Northwestern Kellogg’s MBA Class Of 2025

P&Q: Sustainability has emerged as a major attraction to prospective MBA students. How does your full-time MBA program integrate sustainability across its curriculum?

Haydon: “Kellogg’s full-time MBA program embraces sustainability across its curriculum through a dedicated Energy and Sustainability pathway. The pathway offers a comprehensive curriculum that addresses the intersection of energy, sustainability, and business, ensuring that students understand the implications of energy on climate change and vice versa. Students can expect to learn from different approaches including conceptual frameworks in academic courses, experiential learning, and interdisciplinary collaboration opportunities.

A few courses within the pathway include:

Managing Sustainability Transformations: New this year and taught by Professor Klaus Weber, it focuses on how companies focused on sustainability can continue to generate economic value in competitive markets.

The Economics of Energy Markets and the Environment: Taught by Professor Meghan Busse, it has nearly tripled in in size since it began just a few years ago. The class focuses on strategy setting and the microeconomic tools of analysis and decision making in energy (and energy-facing) industries.

Additionally, students can elect to take courses from Northwestern’s Institute for Energy and Sustainability (ISEN), which boasts more than 25 courses on the topics of sustainability and energy ranging from physical sciences and engineering to social science, business, communication and law. Outside of the classroom, students have the option to exercise their interest and passion in sustainability through co-curricular activities, such as the following:

* Joining Kellogg’s student-run Energy and Sustainability Club (KESC), which fosters a sense of community among over 450 members, ensuring a robust network and comprehensive support for those passionate about the climate transition.

* Participating in Kellogg’s Climate Conference, held for the first time in 2022, which brings together students, Kellogg alumni and speakers, sponsors and industry participants to discuss pressing policy-aligned strategies and scalable climate solutions.

* Or, joining over 75 teams in the Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge, an event which invites graduate students from around the world to develop and pitch creative financial approaches to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges.”

P&Q: What are some key elements in your teaching of leadership? What types of options does your school offer that deepens student experience with leadership and makes them more competitive in the marketplace?

Haydon: “While the MBA is a tool to help students become more marketable to employers and future-colleagues, Kellogg takes an intentional approach in developing self-awareness, reflection, cultural awareness and accountability first as we prime the next generations of leaders to take on the business world. Kellogg encourages self-reflection first a foremost, through experiences built into aspects of the curriculum, and particularly when students first join our community during their new student orientation, Cultural Immersion in Management. This programming includes:

* Culture Box, an immersive exercise facilitated between intimate groups of Kellogg students, models courageous conversations around the influence cultures and systems in one’s life. Through bold disclosure, students reflect on the value of individual authenticity, perspective taking, and impact of our actions and words on group dynamics. The goal of the culture box is to make those central elements of self-visible to those around us which may otherwise go unknow or discussed. By having these conversations, Kellogg hopes to cultivate a considerate community where students advocate for one another’s well-being and disrupt individual tendencies to seek out only those that are “just like us.”

* Whereas Culture Box is a discussion of broad and persistent influence in one’s life, Crucible Moments is an immersive conversation exercise that challenges students to identify critical junctures in one’s path. Identifying these moments and outcomes of the experiences, for good or worse, force immediate and significant growth of self. Students are challenged to reflect and have vulnerable conversations about their experiences with the goal of promoting vulnerability, increasing self-awareness, and beginning the critical process of reflecting on a future state of self – all vital components of becoming great leaders.

Kellogg leaders who will oversee organizations must also have a thorough command of areas ranging from collaboration and negotiation to finance, strategy and data analytics. We’ve always embodied a broad academic scope that includes general management at the forefront because we believe well-rounded managers make better leaders. When you understand how each part of an organization contributes to the success of the whole, you approach problems differently.

A few courses that we’ve added that are specifically designed to allow students to reflect inwardly as they prepare to become Kellogg leaders, include the following:

An experiential course, Leading with Empathy: Enhancing Your Emotional Intelligence to Lead in Diverse Settings, provides students the opportunity to increase their level of emotional intelligence with an emphasis on empathy, and learning how to apply both to better interact and lead in diverse settings.

Another experiential course, Leader as Coach, provides tools for understanding others’ perspectives and needs. Students learn to engage in “coaching” conversations with others, which sets a foundation for empathizing and developing trusting relationships with key stakeholders (e.g., team members, bosses, clients, colleagues, board members, etc.).

Throughout the remainder of their Kellogg journey, they are then better equipped to work collaboratively in teams, consult clients and actively work on strengthening their leadership skills along the way.

For example, and often in their second year at Kellogg, many students participate in Global Immersion in Management (GIM), classes that deep dive into sectors and regions of the world culminating in an immersive trip to the location of study. Students practice leadership by seeking consulting opportunities with local organizations, and working collaboratively with project groups to deliver high-quality solutions and services.”

P&Q: Two years ago, P&Q asked you to share how you’ve integrated AI, STEM, analytics, and digital disruption into your programming. Since then, what types of enhancements have you made in these areas?

Haydon: “Kellogg has continued to demonstrate its commitment in these areas, particularly through the expansion of our MBAi program and expanding our curricular offerings.

The MBAi degree, in partnership with the McCormick School of Engineering, has solidified itself as a unique and transformative initiative here at Kellogg. Through courses tailor-made for the program, the MBAi equips students with expertise at the intersection of business and technology and addressing the need to fill the talent gap in the rapidly growing fields of AI and Machine Learning at large.

And our curriculum remains dynamic, adapting to industry demands, and emphasizing ethics, innovation, and interdisciplinary thinking within the areas of technology and AI/ML. We continue to use AI not only as a teaching tool but also as a way for our students to understand its capabilities while emphasizing ethical and strategic usage.

For example, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work, which focuses on the organizational and managerial implications of AI and how it can be applied at the workplace, rather than in technical dimensions.  Similar in nature is a class taught by Professor Adam Waytz, called Leading AI: Organizations, Ethics and Society, which prepares future leaders to think about the societal, ethical and organizational implications of A.I., and how to anticipate problems that might arise through the increasing reliance on the technology, and how to address them.

Additions like these, and also adapting our more traditional courses to reflect shifts in industries driven by emerging technologies, underscores Kellogg’s position as a leader in leveraging and teaching emerging technologies, preparing our students to bridge the gap between business and science and supporting the ever-evolving needs of the business world.”

P&Q: How many courses outside the business school can MBAs take during your program? To what extent has your business school embraced coursework from other schools and departments at your university? Are students from other schools and departments at the university allowed to take MBA electives?

Haydon: “Students in Kellogg’s full-time MBA program may enroll in up to one credit per quarter of non-Kellogg, Northwestern classes. For example, and as mentioned above, an increasing number of Kellogg students choose to take advantage of Northwestern’s Institute of Sustainability and Energy, which has developed a series of graduate courses on the topics of sustainability and energy, with an expected audience spanning the entire university, from physical sciences and engineering to social science, business, communication, and law.

Our cross-university curricular partnerships offer opportunities such as NUvention, an experiential opportunity that exposes students to the entire innovation and entrepreneurial life cycle of products in various industries such as energy, transportation and the arts. The NUvention Medical program in particular, walks students through a number of product, intellectual property, regulatory, and business development steps as an entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial team.

Our dual-degree programs allow our MBA students to learn from top faculty across varying subject areas at the McCormick School of Engineering (MMM and MBAi), Pritzker School of Law (JD-MBA) and Feinberg School of Medicine (MD-MBA).”

P&Q: What is your biggest student-run event of the year and what does it reflect about your school?

Haydon: “The biggest student-run event at Kellogg is the Charity Auction Ball (CAB), which brings together the entire Kellogg community, including students, faculty, alumni and local businesses to support Chicagoland nonprofits through a lively fundraising effort.

With over $100,000 raised annually, it has a direct and meaningful effect on the valuable work of the nonprofit partners in our community. By organizing and participating in this event, our students demonstrate their commitment to creating a lasting impact on the communities we are part of. Overall, CAB exemplifies the spirit of philanthropy, social impact and tradition that are at the heart of Kellogg.

Another significant student-run event each year is the Business of Healthcare Conference. This conference serves as a premier platform for industry professionals, alumni and students to engage in meaningful conversations on the most critical healthcare industry issues. Organized entirely by a dedicated team of Kellogg students who are passionate about healthcare, the event showcases our commitment to excellence and leadership in this rapidly changing field.”