Whitner Chase

University of California-Berkeley, Haas School of Business

“Driven by a sense of justice and a passion for nature.”

Hometown: Windermere, FL

Fun fact about yourself: I play the harmonica!

Undergraduate School and Degree: Davidson College: BS, Biology and Environmental Studies.

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Program Director for the Montana Conservation Voters in Helena, MT.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2023? Seneca Environmental (a tribally owned renewable energy company, remote from Berkeley).

Where will you be working after graduation? Undecided.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

• President, Native American & Indigenous Business Association
• Impact CFO Fellow (Member of the inaugural cohort)
• VP, Haasemite for Redwoods@Haas (Haas’ outdoors club)
• VP DEI, Berkeley Real Estate Club
• VP, Haas Christian Fellowship
• Class Superlative: “Most Likely to Leave Corporate America and Become a Zookeeper”

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? There are many things I’m proud to have done as the president of Haas’ Native American & Indigenous Business Association. For example, the representation of Indigenous perspectives is much more common on campus with the club now in its second year. Over the last six months, other student groups have been reaching out to me for advice on how to incorporate indigenous viewpoints into their events and projects, a nice change from last year when I would typically initiate these conversations. Additionally, we found in admissions data that Native applicants are the most underrepresented in the suite of minority groups tracked by Haas’ full-time MBA program and that most Native applicants are denied after the interview stage. So, I worked with admissions to build infrastructure where we can better support Native American and Indigenous applicants with interview prep. As of this writing, every applicant we’ve worked with since implementing this system has been admitted to the program.

To my knowledge, we’re still the only Indigenous student affinity group at a top-ranked MBA program, which is hard to believe given the incredible value of people who can bring this lens to an MBA community. When our founder, Alyssa Kewenvoyouma, graduated, people asked me if the club should still exist given that there were no longer any members of the affinity group in the student body. This is, in fact, the very problem that needs to be solved, and the burden of it should not be placed upon the shoulders of the next Indigenous student to arrive. If you identify as Native or Indigenous and hope to earn an MBA, or are an ally interested in supporting the representation of Indigenous perspectives and students at an MBA program, please let us know how we can support you in these goals.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? I spent five years at the Wyss Foundation, a family foundation dedicated to saving the world’s last wild places through the establishment of protected areas such as national parks. In 2019, I was tasked with building a portfolio of grants in Australia, and I found a skilled South Australian conservation advocate at The Wilderness Society of South Australia who had previously worked with a community in the northern part of the state to protect the beautiful and biodiverse Munga-Thirri–Simpson Desert region. After working for some time with this champion, I designed a grant that became the sole source of funding to revitalize and execute this park protection campaign, which, in 2021, became the largest national park on the Australian continent at 8.9 million acres and the largest protected area ever created with the support of Wyss philanthropy.

When I was 9 years old, I began my conservation career by (unsuccessfully) picketing the development of a quarter-acre woodlot next door to a buddy’s house. To have been a part of an effort 15 years later that successfully protected a landscape of such size and importance for countless people, plants, and animals was incredibly fulfilling and truly beyond my wildest childhood dreams.

Why did you choose this business school? As an environmental nonprofit professional, I was discouraged when I learned that my alumni interviewer worked for a major bank in São Paulo—I figured I’d have a better chance of admission if my interviewer’s life experience aligned more with my own. As it turns out, he was so inspired by his coursework toward sustainability, that he became a vegan (very difficult to keep up in Brazil) and now volunteers in a DEI capacity at his company. We shared so many values that I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence—this school would be a perfect fit for someone like me. It’s really true: Haas does attract those who prioritize doing good for others, no matter their background or interests.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Satish Ananthaswamy manages the fixed income portfolio for the University of California Investments office and was my professor for the Fixed Income elective course. He designed a rigorous and challenging syllabus for us, and as our reward for keeping up with it, he’d deliver a clear, emphatic style of pedagogy with boundless energy every Thursday evening. Guest speakers included Rick Rieder, CIO of BlackRock, and Jon Gray, president and COO of Blackstone, but Satish’s own investment stories provided the most insightful investing and portfolio management lessons. Due to his day job at the university, Satish isn’t paid for this work, yet he makes a point to go above-and-beyond, getting to know each of his students on a personal level and even helping some of us prepare for investing-focused job interviews. I would highly recommend that every Haas student try to find a spot in Satish’s course.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? International Business Development is a course in which you and three classmates serve as a team of consultants for a client based outside of the United States. Our client was a well-established Swiss company looking to enter the U.S. market for water conservation products—a good fit for a sustainability-minded person like myself. Not only was our client fun, invested in our project, and easy to work with, but I was blessed with a wonderful team who became close personal friends over the project’s term. The two weeks we spent on-site in Luzern was my first trip to Europe! We still keep in touch with our client, and they’re executing our proposal in the way that we recommended, which has been a nice surprise and a demonstration of our value. Fingers are staying crossed for their success.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? For the last two years, I’ve organized our class camping trip to Yosemite National Park (called “Haasemite”). Five hundred students typically attend, many of whom have never gone camping before. It’s incredibly fulfilling to see these classmates brave the elements and ultimately thrive outside of their comfort zone. On our second night last year, I managed to fit 141 hot, extra-large pizzas into my truck for delivery to the campground—a personal record I will probably never break.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? The Haas VC and impact investing curriculum is incredibly strong. I wish that I’d taken better advantage of it in my first year.

What is the biggest myth about your school? Prior to arriving on campus, I knew Berkeley as a hotbed for social movements and protests in the 1960s and ’70s: That this reputation was earned for only that era turned out to be the biggest myth I told myself. In fact, there was a protest and riot only two days after I moved here, opposing the development of a park owned by the school into high-rise student housing. The Free Speech Movement is alive and well in Berkeley!

What did you love most about your business school’s town? The views! Watching the sun set behind the Golden Gate Bridge will never get old.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? I want to avoid the impossible task of picking only one of the many classmates I admire in the full-time program. That said, Thomas Schwei, who will graduate this year from Haas’ Evening & Weekend MBA Program and also my roommate, rises to the top of my list. Thomas is incredibly fun, joyful, and caring for the amount of time he spends working as a Senior Director of Engineering at Santa Cruz Nutritionals (overseeing 60 FTEs at their vitamin gummy manufacturing plant), completing coursework, dealing expertly with failing parental health and personal misfortune of which only a roommate can understand the full extent (For example, he slipped and broke his knee on the dance floor at the 2022 EWMBA Holiday Party but still somehow made it back inside our apartment without waking me up). I truly don’t know how he does it all so well. I want to be Thomas when I grow up.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list?

1. Save an endangered species
2. Preserve land for conservation purposes in my home state of Florida

What made Whitner such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2024?

“During my time at Haas, Whitner has been the only ally to serve as a president of an affinity club. As a white student leading the Native American & Indigenous Business Association, he faced a unique and nuanced challenge: Given his non-Native identity, how could he best serve the mission of increasing indigenous representation and perspectives on campus? This year, I believe that Whitner was behind every Haas event that included or highlighted Indigenous perspectives, which frankly would not have happened without his perseverance, commitment, and follow through. Without him, there would have been no centrally located poster board display for Indigenous History Month, no movie screenings highlighting Indigenous stories, no themed comedy night out, and no FTMBA participation during the sunrise Indigenous ceremony at Alcatraz Island on Indigenous Peoples’ Day. At Haas, putting on a single event can be an enormous headache. Whitner’s ability to partner with student leaders and staff, relentlessly and politely navigating an infuriating bureaucracy to get to ‘yes’ has made him perhaps the most effective ally I’ve seen at Haas.

When students organizing a conference asked Whitner to invite a Native person in his network to speak at their conference, Whitner said ‘no.’ While perhaps an unlikely response from a person whose mission is to increase Native perspectives, Whitner instead coached these organizers on why asking Native speakers to share an ‘Indigenous perspective’ is asking them to represent a multitude of people when they can only share their personal experience. Rather than agreeing to their request, he helped them consider inviting experts who are Indigenous to speak across fields and topics rather than solely from the ‘Indigenous rights’ angle. He supported them to explore ways to pay Native speakers for their labor and expertise and connect with folks who are actively doing educational and advocacy work. Whitner’s ability to convey the urgent and achievable vision of a more inclusive Haas, effectively build partnerships across the institution, and take concrete steps toward achieving that vision has transformed Haas for the better.”

Sarah Dobson
Associate Director of Student Life and Leadership Development
Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

DON’T MISS: MBAS TO WATCH: CLASS OF 2024