Meet Emory Goizueta’s MBA Class Of 2026

THE ATLANTA ADVANTAGE

No doubt, Goizueta has made ‘small’ the cornerstone of its program – intimate and service-driven with an emphasis on academic excellence and career support. However, it also benefits from the ‘big’ force surrounding it: Atlanta. Picture 16 Fortune 500 concentrated in the metro area (and another 17 firms dotting the Fortune 1000). Think Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Delta Air Lines, UPS, and the Southern Company maintaining their headquarters in the Big Peach. According to Startup Genome, Atlanta’s startup ecosystem generated more than twice the seed funding as the average large metro from 2021-2023. In fact, Atlanta is home is home to over 13,000 tech firms and 40 corporate innovation centers. With 57 higher education institutions enrolling over 250,000 students, Atlanta is the Southeast’s answer to Boston – a place to find young, hungry talent with cutting edge skills. That doesn’t count Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. One of the largest airports in the United States, Hartsfield-Jackson handles over 2,100 arrivals and departures every day, providing access to almost anywhere MBAs want to go to pursue job opportunities.

It’s not just business that makes Atlanta a great place to live and earn an MBA, says Patrycja Kepa. “The cross-section of my passions lies in film and entrepreneurship; therefore, Atlanta is the perfect place with its flourishing film industry presence, as well as a bustling community of startups and well-established Fortune 1000 and Fortune 500 businesses. Another reason why I adore Atlanta is because of its diverse community and it being a hub for arts and culture. From the High Museum to the infamous Slutty Vegan restaurant chain, Atlanta is never boring, and I’m excited to continue my education in this city!”

Among the Class of 2026, Aurora Straus appreciates the greenery – it is nicknamed “the city within a forest” after all – along with scenic walks in Druid Hills. On top of that, downtown is just a 10-minute drive from campus (on good traffic days), she adds. Maheep Gurnani appreciates the “charm” of Atlanta’s distinctive neighborhoods. Among alumni like Cameron Bard, you’ll hear about how Atlanta’s cost of living is much lower than similarly-sized metros.

“Atlanta truly has a little bit of everything,” says Megan Trudo, who graduated alongside Bard in 2024. “Crave that buzzing, big-city energy? Midtown’s your oyster. Feeling outdoorsy? Hike through the lush greenery of Piedmont Park or escape to Stone Mountain. Need your music fix? Dive into the live scene in Little Five Points or East Atlanta Village. And let’s not forget the food coma-inducing culinary adventures, from soul food havens to trendy fusion joints.”

LEGACY OF LEADERSHIP

Aside from Atlanta, leadership is another word that is associated with the Goizueta Business School. Notably, the school offers GALA – the Goizueta Advanced Leadership Academy. A mix of coursework, speakers, and one-on-one coaching, the program concludes with a sailing excursion over the holidays around the Virgin Island. Here, students practicing leadership, communication, and teamwork by spending a week living on a catamaran sailboat and competing against other Goizueta teams. MBAs can also receive more intensive self-development through the Coaching Fellows program or earn an Advanced Certificate in Leadership.

However, there is one leadership activity that every Goizueta MBA completes: the Leader’s Reaction Course (LDR). This legendary event, held at Fort Moore, is geared towards providing students with self-awareness on how they’ll react in stressful situations or how well they take coaching. For alum Sai Konkala, the LDR was “hands-down” the most valuable event he participated in at Goizueta.

“It was here that I first bonded with my core team over wild obstacle courses. Our team was gutsy, diving into challenges and embracing fresh ideas fearlessly. Whether we were climbing a ladder held by the team or crossing over water with only 4x4s, the team threw their hearts into it and overcame our fears. We switched leaders for each obstacle, mixing things up and listening to everyone’s input. With guidance from coaches, we tackled team-based scenarios also faced by U.S. Army officer candidates. After each challenge, we’d chat about what went right, what went wrong, and how we could improve. The experience not only strengthened our team spirit but also taught us vital lessons in leadership and teamwork that I carry with me to this day.”

AN INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN MITCHELL

The Goizueta MBA program is also renowned for its IMPACT projects, where first-year teams partner with firms ranging from Porsche to Coca-Cola to Habitat for Humanity to gain hands-on experience in high-level problem-solving before starting their summer internship. At the same time, the school has gained world-wide recognition for its John Lewis Case Competition focused on social issues. This past year, Goizueta’s Full-Time MBA program also ranked 17th in the world according to Fortune, while finishing 18th in U.S. News American-centric ranking. That’s just the start of this year’s news cycle at Goizueta.

This summer, P&Q reached out to Brian Mitchell, Associate Dean, Full-Time MBA Programs and Goizueta Global Strategy and Initiatives. Here are the latest developments and signature experiences inherent to the Goizueta MBA.

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

Mitchell: “Last year, we launched a faculty-led committee charged with reviewing and reimagining certain elements of our core curriculum, which has been extraordinarily effective over the past several years. Some of the innovations will include an increased emphasis integration across functional areas and emerging technological trends in business. We expect this approach to prepare our students to better understand how senior executives think holistically about their strategies, and how technology will continue to reshape how business is done around the world.”

P&Q: Every January, P&Q publishes a “10 Business Schools to Watch” feature that highlights how schools are raising the bar and enhancing the student experience through innovation or expansion in programming or resources. What is one innovation that sets your school apart from your peer programs and makes you a business school to watch? Why is it so groundbreaking?

Mitchell: “Today’s business school students have a strong connection with society as a whole, and an equally strong interest in addressing the significant global challenges that we all share. Goizueta has long been a leader in researching and teaching at the intersection of business and society, and we continue innovating to set ourselves further apart from other schools. An academic research center within Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, the Business & Society Institute, addresses complex challenges confronting people, the planet, and the business community through academic discovery and purposeful action. The Institute generates research insights that it employs in its teaching and programmatic work on the critical challenges that businesses and their stakeholders must address together.”

P&Q: What types of programs do you offer to sharpen your students’ soft skills? What areas do you emphasize and how do you instill these skills in your students?

Mitchell: “For students interested in deeply exploring their leadership potential, Goizueta offers a unique Certificate of Advanced Leadership through our amazing faculty and network executive coaches, as a way to combine our academic leadership offerings and co-curricular leadership experiences. In addition to completing the required academic courses and experiential activities, students take a capstone course in the spring semester of their final year. We have a special emphasis on five elements of the Goizueta leadership model, which include working across boundaries, acting with integrity, creating vision, taking action, and demonstrating resilience.”

P&Q: What types of programming – through classroom instruction, extracurriculars, and treks – does your school offer to expose students to country-specific and global business practices? What have students told you were the most educational and fun aspects of these activities?

Mitchell: “This is another area of considerable strength for Goizueta because of our strong and intentional connections with our home university, Emory. Before our MBA students travel on our Global Experiential Modules (GEMs), they participate in “Seminars for Global Citizenship”, which are typically led by faculty members from outside the business school who have deep expertise in the histories and cultures of various regions of the world. It is an amazing example of interdisciplinary cooperation among faculty, and benefits the students greatly by instilling a level of cultural competency that enriches their global perspectives as they participate in these immersive experiences. Students often remark on the importance of gaining historical context, and the increased empathy that comes with it, as part of their GEM experience.”

P&Q: What are the most exciting new courses that your school is offering to MBAs this school year? What makes them so unique and valuable?

Mitchell: “In a US presidential election year, many students are very excited to explore the course, Corporate Political Strategy. In this class, students learn how businesses leverage information dynamics to manage the risks and opportunities presented by political systems. Students examine government regulation of industry, activist and public interest groups, the role of lobbying and campaign contributions in the policymaking process, ethical frameworks for corporate political strategy, and other related topics.

Monetizing Innovations: The course provides a comprehensive framework and understanding for creating a monetization and marketing strategy for innovations. This course is valuable because students learn marketing strategies to commercialize an innovation that can drive growth, profitability, and/or societal welfare. As an experiential element within this course, students develop monetization models with multiple revenue streams to sustain and grow an innovation in two and three-sided marketplaces.”

P&Q: Who are two new professors who’ve joined your faculty in the past year? What do they teach and how will they be difference-makers in your MBA program?

Mitchell: “Dr. Brian Jonghwan Lee is an incoming Assistant Professor of Finance at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. He completed his PhD in Finance at Columbia Business School in 2024, and his research areas include household finance and corporate finance. Prior to his PhD, he received his undergraduate degree in Economics and Statistics from Carnegie Mellon University and subsequently held research positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Dr. Dionne Nickerson is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Her research focuses on the impact of sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) on marketing strategy. Her work has been published in Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Marketing Channels. In 2024, Dr. Nickerson was a finalist for the AMA Foundation Robert Lusch Early Career Research Award. Her 2022 Journal of Marketing publication was selected as a finalist for the 2022 AMA/Marketing Science Institute/H. Paul Root Award and 2022 Shelby D. Hunt/Harold H. Maynard Award for its contributions to marketing theory and practice. She earned her Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She also holds an A.B. in engineering (Brown University) and an MBA (Providence College).”

P&Q: What types of support does your career center and alumni provide to MBA students? How have these services and relationship made your graduates more competitive in the marketplace?

Mitchell: “Goizueta’s Graduate Career Management Center operates with the same high-touch approach to student engagement as our Program Office. MBA students take a Professional Development course that is built into the core curriculum, which demonstrates the priority with which we treat career development. Each student is assigned to a career coach who is aligned with their functional interest. We have additional coaching and developmental opportunities for students entering the consulting and finance fields which has contributed to our sustained success as a top MBA program for these career paths.”

 

MBA Student	Hometown	Undergraduate Alma Mater	Last Employer
Shalom Alugwe	Lagos, Nigeria	University of Lagos	GAIA AFRICA
Andrew Going	Peachtree City, GA	Georgia Institute of Technology	Savannah River Nuclear Solutions
Maheep Gurnani	Belize City, Belize	University of Toronto	Maheep’s Imports
Taliah Harris	Atlanta, GA	Georgia State University	Atlanta Public Schools
Justin Helm	Houston, TX	Texas A&M University	Opportune LLP
Malcolm Jermaine Henry	Sacramento, CA	Howard University	Goldman Sachs
Mackenzie Heriford	Rock Island, IL	University of Illinois	Teach for America
Patrycja Kepa	Chicago, IL	Emory University	Anchored Lens Productions, LLC
Lillian Liu	Beijing, China	Emory University	Chewy, Inc.
Zion Richardson	Chicago, IL	University of Wisconsin	Accenture
Andres Ruiz Bruzual	Caracas, Venezuela	Universidad Metropolitana de Caracas (UNIMET)	Miura Capital Group
Ben Snyder	Powell, OH	The Citadel Military College of South Carolina	U.S. Army
Aurora Straus	Cold Spring, NY	Harvard University	Bain & Company / Professional Race Car Driver

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