Julian Turner

UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business

“I’m an entrepreneurial thinker at the intersection of LGBTQ+ advocacy and virtual reality.”

Hometown: Paradis, LA

Fun Fact About Yourself: As a kid, I taught myself to do back flips, front flips, and everything in between by watching the cult classic “Bring it On.”

Undergraduate School and Major: University of Southern California: BS, Industrial & Systems Engineering

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Canvas (Virtual Reality Media Startup), Pre-MBA Business Development Intern

Berkeley Haas is founded on four Defining Leadership Principles: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself. Which principle resonates most with you and why?

Students Always. I think it’s important that we never stop learning about not only the world around us but the one inside each of us. As such, I’ve been committed to learning about myself: my motivations, fears, passions, and ticks. Unveiling these things has improved all aspects of my life.

Personally, my spirits have lifted, and I am able to make deeper connections with those around me. Professionally, I’ve been able to address my areas of improvement as a leader and a teammate. As a result, I was able to make immense change during my time at Shopify and DoorDash. I led teams that achieved things, such as increasing year-over-year revenue by 7% for a key product and decreasing driver-prompted order cancellations by 50%.

What excites you about earning your MBA in the Bay Area? I’m a techie at heart. All my roles at Deliverr, Shopify, and DoorDash were heavily reliant on my data analysis and programming skills. So, I’m excited to join the Bay Area’s community of technological innovators. Also—more personally—for years, I’ve been saying I enjoy hiking even though I go on two hikes a year, at most. Being in the Bay Area with all its beautiful scenery will allow me to become the hiker I’ve been claiming to be.

What was the key part of Berkeley Haas’ MBA curriculum or programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? Haas’ affiliation with the Berkeley SkyDeck accelerator and incubator. SkyDeck provides educational resources and funding opportunities to startup teams. Berkeley students are also offered internship opportunities and networking events with SkyDeck companies. As a student, I plan to intern at a SkyDeck startup and build relationships with the advisors. Doing so would enable me to have a strong network in place that I can tap into when I launch my own venture.

What course, club, or activity excites you the most at Berkeley Haas? The annual Haas drag show. I’ve performed both in drag and as a backup dancer for other drag queens in West Hollywood. Not only do I miss the stage, but I miss the camaraderie of bringing a show together. Those hours practicing fostered some of my strongest relationships. I’m excited to share that experience with my future classmates and, admittedly, show off my performance skills a bit!

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: Leading the 2022 Out for Undergrad (O4U) engineering conference team. Out for Undergrad, also known as “O4U”, is an LGBTQ+ organization that hosts annual conferences and year-round programming for LGBTQ+ undergraduate students. I selected and led the 2022 conference team through the yearlong planning process. That process culminated in the largest, most well-reviewed in-person engineering conference O4U has ever had.

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.

At this point, what do you hope to do after graduation? Post-MBA, I want to bridge my professional experience in technology with my passion for queer advocacy. I intend to launch a mixed reality venture that will enable immersive, inclusive experiences for LGBTQ+ people. Growing up in a secluded town, I relied on social media to find places to be my authentic self. I want to use modern technology to provide such spaces for the next generation.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Berkeley Haas’ MBA program? Be proud of who you are: your achievements, your story, and even your flaws. Your application is your opportunity to show Haas what you’d be contributing to your cohort. So, think beyond just professional experiences, and share the other aspects of yourself as well. The Haas community is very close and very welcoming, so feel free to present your full self.

DON’T MISS: MEET THE BERKELEY HAAS MBA CLASS OF 2026