Meet The Berkeley Haas MBA Class Of 2026

Beatniks and activists. Ideologues and idealists. Hippies and do-gooders. The fringe. The freaks.  The free spirits. That’s how much of the world picture Berkeley. Opting out and drifting along, La Vie Bohème style. Wagging their fingers and bellowing on bullhorns – doomed stands against falling skies and widening gaps.

Reality is, Berkeley isn’t “Berserkely” as outsiders frame it. It is more a state of mind – always questioning and driven to disrupt old orders, deeply principled and profoundly committed to the greater good. That extends to California’s flagship university. At the University of California at Berkeley, alumni and faculty have collected 61 Nobel Prizes – including nine in the past four years alone. From flu vaccines to CPU design, the university has been on the leading edge of innovation. When you visit the Haas School of Business, you won’t be mobbed by Birkenstock-wearing, Trotsky-quoting radicals. Instead, you’ll find entrepreneurs, inventors, financiers, and public servants – innovators, champions, leaders, and change agents focused on their missions.

TAKING THE BERKELEY ETHOS…TO WEST POINT

Haas itself boasts 44,000 alumni, with graduates found in over 80 countries and 20,000 companies and institutions. That includes the U.S. Army. On the surface, Berkeley seemed to be as far from West Point as you could get for Christian Letsinger. A member of the U.S. Army Cyber Protection Brigade, where he served as Chief Data Officer, Letsinger has experience quite a transition after joining the MBA Class of 2026 at Haas. In the military, he points out, there is always a “right and wrong way” for almost everything. As an MBA student – and later in his career – Letsinger hopes to contribute to an environment where questions are welcome and the “fear of the unknown” is embraced.

“I noticed the most successful organizations, small or large, were led by people who encouraged innovation and initiative, while allowing themselves to be relatively risk tolerant,” he writes. “This created environments where people felt safe to experiment—safe to make mistakes but also to learn and grow. As a result, the organization was allowed to push boundaries and consistently get results…I appreciate environments built on trust that embrace diversity of thought and understand that innovation is often the cornerstone of progress.”

After graduation, Letsinger plans to take this mentality back to West Point, where he has been charged with bringing data analytics into the cadet curriculum to sharpen their decision-making. Afterward, he plans to bring this prowess into U.S. Army cyber planning, strategy, and operations. In these areas. Letsinger has literally written the book for the U.S. Army’s Cyber Mission Force during the Solar Winds Compromise, which he describes as “the largest cyber intrusion in the Department of Defense history.”

“During the incident response, the organization leaned on my subject matter expertise on the structure and data flows across the DoD enterprise network. I was able to help directly lead the response, resulting in the successful remediation of all affected Army assets across the globe and the development of the active hunt concept. This concept is a proactive methodology that uses data science and analytic development to pursue advanced threats and enable decision making in multi domain operations. This concept was so well accepted that it found its way into codified doctrine, becoming the standard for how we conduct Defensive Cyber Operations today.”

FOLLOWING “GOOD DUDESMANSHIP”

Letsinger isn’t the only distinguished veteran in the Class of 2026. Vicky Fam, a Cornell grad, served in the U.S. Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer – despite a “propensity for motion sickness.” Her biggest moment, she says, involved a high wind storm, which prevented over 100 crew members from going home due to their inability to use cranes to move power cables that weighed hundreds of pounds. In response, Fam posed the “crazy idea” to move the cables without a crane to her supervisor.

“Three hundred sailors came together as one, proving to me the importance of teamwork. This spirit of camaraderie not only allowed the sailors to return to their families, but also highlighted the strength of collective effort and reinforced the value of unity and “good dudesmanship” in overcoming even the toughest challenges.”

Before Haas, Volodymyr Silchenko suffered through war in the Ukraine. A restauranteur, he turned his establishment into a place for his community to gather during blackouts for hot meals and even rare internet access when all else failed.

“An 11-year-old once relied on our power supply to charge his inhaler,” Silchenko tells P&Q. “At my venue, stand-up comedians offered humorous refuge, and soldiers performed “I Will Survive.” Receiving the “Unbreakability Point” honor and a certificate of appreciation from the 43rd Artillery Brigade, which played a pivotal role in defending Kyiv during the full-scale invasion in February 2022, stands as my proudest accomplishment. These honors symbolize the resilience, solidarity, and unwavering spirit we fostered in the face of adversity in the darkest times.”

Not surprisingly, Silchenko is looking forward to Food@Haas, a club designed for foodies who want to share their love of culinary delights with classmates. “Sharing food with friends and loved ones has always been an act of care and love. Being displaced from my home in Crimea taught me the importance of a safe place, which led me to the hospitality industry. Keeping my restaurant open every day during the war was about creating a second home for my guests and team, a place of comfort and stability. Food@Haas’ focus on community and inclusivity aligns perfectly with my values.”

TURNING A CAREER KILLER INTO A CAREER ACCELERATOR

Before business school, Jorge G. Rodriguez, who restores a ’65 Mustang in his spare time, worked in the City and County of San Francisco Office of Cannabis. As a McKinsey Engagement Manager, Effie Angus earned the firm’s Inspirational Leadership Award, which is given to the person “who most inspires others with their unwavering values and supportive actions and who is integral to creating an inclusive office community.” By the same token, Tianie Scott was awarded a Joint Service Commendation Medal by the U.S. Army for her work in leading her 14-member military intelligence team. At KKBOX, described as “Asia’s equivalent [to] Spotify, Chen-Hsin Lee was assigned the ultimate task as a first-year product manager. Her superiors tapped her to re-design a popular, decade-old app. It was a project, she says, that was unpopular among several department, one even viewed as a career-killer by some.

“Ultimately, we successfully launched the new app homepage, significantly enhancing user experience and driving substantial growth,” Lee explains. “This accomplishment not only shaped my career as a product manager, but also had a profound impact on our company culturally and technically. Revamping the app’s architecture laid a solid foundation for future innovations, and tackling this large-scale project fostered a culture of boldness within our teams, empowering us to embrace change confidently.”

Through this work in music service, Lee adds, she discovered a new career mission. “I witnessed the power of the human voice and the richness that comes from diverse perspectives. However, with only about 10% of content being regularly listened to, independent artists continue to struggle due to mainstream label dominance. After graduation, I plan to continue to drive innovation in tech startups or companies, using what I’ve learned as a business consultant and product manager, while at the same time refining my skills in areas crucial for entrepreneurial success. Down the road, I see myself starting a business to help the world discover the 90%, giving these artists a chance to shine and succeed in the long run.”

Michael Kidd-Phillips – “KP” for short – joined the Class of 2026 from the Walt Disney Company. Here, he pored over revenue streams for the Disneyland Resort so they could produce strategic growth planning. As a side project, KP began conducting research on the connection between Disneyland revenue and the state of the U.S. economic trends. Through this project, which included running data from the Consumer Sentiment Index to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data, KP discovered some valuable trends.

“Ultimately, the insights resulted in an annual revenue increase of $1 million in 2024.”

CURBING GENDER VIOLENCE FOR THE UN

After interning at Goldman Sachs, Julian Turner’s resume incudes strategy and analysis roles at Accenture, Deliverr, Shopify, and DoorDash – including one stop where he cut driver-prompted order cancellations in half. However, Turner lists the 2022 Out for Undergrad (O4U) engineering conference team as his biggest moment.

“In addition to my duties as conference lead, I developed a new sponsorship tier that brought in an additional $75,000 in sponsorship. This brought us over our sponsorship goal, making mine the first engineering conference in the organization to be profitable. More importantly, it enabled us to ensure that none of our students had to pay anything out of pocket to attend.”

Before entering the venture capital space, Imaobong Essien enjoyed a stint with the United Nations Development Programme in South Africa. Here, she developed a program to reduce gender-based violence.

“Our approach was rooted in the understanding that women’s health and economic empowerment are intrinsically linked. We forged a powerful alliance across private, public, and civil society sectors to deliver both immediate safety measures and long-term economic security for survivors and their children… initiative empowered survivors to escape violence, achieve financial independence, and rebuild their lives on their own terms. Moreover, it unveiled a sustainable blueprint for strategic investments in women, demonstrating the potential to drive societal transformation through collaborative and targeted action.”

FUTURE PLANS

After earning her MBA at Haas, Essien plans to become an investment officer, focusing on women’s global health, particularly the healthcare gap. “My vision centers on empowering historically marginalized populations, particularly in the Global South, to address shared development challenges and chart their own paths through increased solidarity, cooperation, and innovative financing. I plan to develop blended finance models that minimize dependency on conditional Western aid, mobilize diverse sources of capital. Eventually, I hope to launch a fund or accelerator focused on commercializing sustainable technologies and creating redistributive mechanisms to support self-determination, innovation, and the scaling of South-South tech transfers.”

Long-term, Julian Turner hopes to develop a “mixed reality venture” that connects the LGBTQ+ community. At the same time, Jorge G. Rodriguez envisions working in impact investing, supporting low-income communities in areas ranging from housing to small business lending. For Jenny Linger, the future is sustainable farming.

“My vision is simple—I want to bring more land workers to the board room and board members to farms. By integrating farmers, farmworkers, and productive Indigenous and rural communities into business decision-making and modeling, there is vast potential to generate greater land, community, and labor ethics, innovation, efficiency, climate synchronicity, and value potential through unrealized logistical and market opportunities for our world’s most significant economic drivers.”

Next Page: Class Profile and Interview with Wendy Guild, Assistant Dean of MBA Programs

Page 3: Profiles of 12 Members of the Class of 2026