Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management

Nearly 40 million people live in California. Here, you’ll find five business schools among U.S. News’ Top 50 full-time MBA programs. Texas is home to over 30 million people – and six Top 50 programs. Florida? Think 22 million people – and one program (which enrolls maybe 120 full-time MBA students).

Yes, Florida lags behind its peers in the MBA space. Just look at next door Georgia – with half the population – boasting three programs in the Top 30 alone. In business, that gap translates to opportunity – a blue ocean with lots of pent-up demand. All you need is one established brand to colonize it.

Last year, the Owen Graduate School of Management stepped up to do just that.

In April, Owen made a game-changing announcement. The school would be expanding its footprint into Florida. It wouldn’t be just some satellite renting the floor in some corporate park. This would be an actual campus in downtown West Palm Beach with over 1,000 master’s and doctoral candidates taking classes. It would be a long-term investment in the full-time market with deep roots in the community.

How big? In an August interview with P&Q, Owen Dean Thomas Steenburgh projected the price tag to be up to $700 million dollars, with staffing running 80-90 faculty members. Along with a business school, the operation is expected to include a college of computer science and artificial intelligence, with the campus to be built on seven acres of government-owned land.

The Florida expansion is part of a “growth mindset” that Dean Steenburgh has brought to Owen after taking the reins in 2023. After all, the business school houses roughly 600 graduate business students (along with a cohort of undergraduate business minors). However, Steenburgh sees a huge upside in serving the South Florida market.

“There has been a huge flight of capital south over the past 20 years,” he tells P&Q in a 2024 interview. “A campus in Florida would give our school growth consistent with our brand. We are in a city that is on fire economically. This would be a similar situation with huge economic growth. There are consistencies around that growth like real estate. We should have a program in real estate to take advantage of two markets where capital is flowing in recent years.”

At the same time, Owen would be catering to a different market, with the Kellogg School running an Executive MBA program in Coral Gables and Warrington College being a dominant player in the online space. That doesn’t count the synergies that the business program could create with the in-house computer science department in data science, Steenburgh adds. Even more, the area is home to 1,100 Vanderbilt alumni, creating a well-spring of access and goodwill. Best of all, the school already has financial support, with Stephen Ross ponying up $100 million provided Vanderbilt can purchase the land. The latter is one reason why Steenburgh has tempered his enthusiasm with a clear-eyed realism.

“There is a lot that has to happen before this goes forward. We would have to raise a lot of money and there’s reason to believe that can happen down there. Most fundraising campaigns have a quiet period and this is not that. Within 18 months to a year, we will know exactly where we will be. While there is no public number, hundreds of millions of dollars need to be raised. We don’t want to do anything second-rate. Business schools are expensive.”

The Palm Beach facility may be years into the future, but it also represents a deviation from the norm. In a world that increasingly pivoting away from the on-campus, two-year experience, Owen is doubling down on it, expanding its brand into an underserved market along way. In Steenburgh’s words, Owen is “going to take some big swings at things” in the future.”

Why not? The momentum is on the school’s side.

Look no further than the rankings, where Owen climbed from 27th to 20th (U.S. News), 25th to 20th (Bloomberg Businessweek) and 21st to 19th (LinkedIn). In a survey of current students conducted by The Princeton Review last spring, Owen posted the 3rd-highest score for its Faculty and Family Friendliness and the 4th-best score for its Campus Environment. Regarding faculty, Owen boasts an All-Star lineup of distinguished researchers and talented teachers: Tim Vogus, Kelly Goldsmith, and Robert Whaley. Even Richard Florida, a mainstay on the Thinkers50 list, is a visiting professor at Owen this year. Of course, there is always Brian McCann, an Owen alum and expert in strategic management who has been a favorite of many graduates, including ’23 alum Alyssa Patel.

“Each class has been planned with extreme precision,” she tells P&Q. “From simulations to classroom discussions, he has various active learning tools designed to help his students think through strategy frameworks and their applications. Furthermore, his feedback on assignments is incredibly thorough and timely, highlighting his commitment to each student. His expertise, coupled with his sense of humor and dry wit, creates a classroom experience where you are constantly kept on your toes.”

In the same Princeton Review survey, current students also ranked Owen’s Human Resources and Operations programming as the 3rd- and 4th-best in the world (with Management and Consulting finishing 7th and 9th). Along with the high satisfaction rates in these areas, Owen excels in another area: Healthcare – a highly lucrative, recession-proof specialization. That’s hardly surprising considering the Nashville area is home to over 900 healthcare firms, including giants like HCA Healthcare (a $65 billion dollar company)y. According to the Nashville Chamber, healthcare employs 330,000 people ad produces $68 billion dollars for Middle Tennessee, with one-of-every-two private hospital beds managed out of the region.

To capitalize on this advantage, Owen has developed a robust Healthcare concentration, with industry courses covering areas ranging from analytics and finance to marketing and economics. At the same time, Owen MBAs benefit from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, one of the world’s top teaching hospitals, being less than a half mile down the road. That makes for opportunities for MBAs pursuing healthcare concentrations to find experience and mentors.

“I chose to come study healthcare at Owen because Nashville is the mecca of healthcare,” writes Avani Gangavelli, a 2024 grad. “The education and networking I am involved in at Owen has proven that this was the right place for me to get my MBA. I’m learning about current problems in healthcare in real time, due to our incredible professors, and brainstorming what we can do as future leaders to improve the patient experience.”

Healthcare isn’t the only increasingly critical area where the Owen MBA excels. Owen also differentiates itself through its two-year Leadership Development Program (LDP), which it operates in partnership with Korn-Ferry and Hogan Associates. LDP is grounded in leadership research and delivered through personalized executive coaching, hands-on group activities, and individual reading and reflection. As a whole, it iis designed to help students gain self-awareness, sharpen their communication skills, and match an executive presence with a team-oriented mindset. Even more, the LDP program is considered so valuable that 90% of Owen graduates complete it.

“Through the Leadership Development Program, students have access to executive-level quality resources, with individual tailoring and a flexible design,” explains Bailey McChesney, Owen’s director of MBA admissions, in a 2024 interview with P&Q. “Our program incorporates resources like the Hogan Assessment, a top leadership development organization used by Fortune 500 companies, into an individualized design that meets students where they are. We are also intentional about providing students with the tools and skills they need to leverage the leadership skills they develop within the program for career-long application, making them more competitive in the marketplace.”

Structurally, the MBA program also applies a wide breadth approach using Mods. Basically, students complete courses in quarters instead of semesters so they can touch more topics over their two years at Owen. That penchant for breadth is carried over to Owen’s new signature event: Convoy Conference. Billed as “SXSW meets Davos but with a healthy dose of Anchor Down,” the three-day event will bring over 100 alumni speakers to campus, along with industry leaders, to address entrepreneurship, venture capital and private equity. It would be hard to top this ambitious effort in terms of expertise and networking.

“The conference offers two tracks with a dedicated track just to healthcare startups because of Nashville and Vanderbilt’s prominence in the field,” explains Bailey in a 2025 interview with P&Q. “Main session tracks blend keynotes (Mark Cuban, Jeff Rothschild) with main stage panels (The Unicorn Lessons, Accelerating Growth, Developing Talent, and Legends & Parables) with industry (AI, Deeptech, Crypto, Fintech, RealTech, Cybersecurity, CleanTech, Food/AgTech, Consumer Tech, Supply Chain Tech, Creative Economy, Aerospace) and topic breakouts. The event is groundbreaking in its multi-day format, breadth of topics covered, opportunities to advance the university startup ecosystem, awards ceremony and concert, and alumni engagement.”

Now, Owen is fresh off the $55 million renovation of its Management, which expanded its space by 50%. Sure enough, the program is turning to bigger plans like its West Palm Beach campus. With an institution like Vanderbilt University – nicknamed the “Harvard of the South” – behind it, Owen is poised to make a big move. To do that, Owen knows it must never take its eye off the fundamentals that brought them to this point: a mix of individual attention and rigorous demands that fuel transformative growth.

“Having every resource for success is crucial – world-class faculty and dynamic classrooms, life-changing career opportunities, immersive experiences and surroundings, and faculty, staff and peers that care about your success,” adds Bailey in a 2024 interview with P&Q.  “The Vanderbilt MBA program has all of those things, but what differentiates us is that our small size, extremely close-knit community and incredible setting in Nashville, Tennessee mean that all of those resources are readily accessible and the people behind them all know your name. Within a one-minute walk in our building, a student can see their Leadership Coach, Career Coach, Academic Advisor and professors, and will walk by dozens of their classmates gathering together. Our community cares deeply about not only the outcomes students achieve, but their experience and growth in the program, and success well beyond business school.”

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