The 100 Best & Brightest MBAs: Class Of 2025

By any measure, Simi Shah is a success story. A Harvard undergrad and Wharton MBA, Shah boasts a resume that would land at the top of any company’s stack. Before business school, she served as the chief of staff to Indra Nooyi, former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. At Wharton, she was tapped to mentor undergraduates by Adam Grant, best-selling author and organizational psychologist. Shah was named a Forbes “30 Under 30” in media this year. Before that, she rang the New York Stock Exchange opening bell. And she has even been invited to the White House – twice.

Still, Shah didn’t take her success for granted. She has found common cause with people looking to get their lives back on track. That’s why she taught a weekly negotiations course at a Pennsylvania prison to over a dozen men. Leading a pilot program, Shah imparted the same principles that she’d learned as a first-year MBA student. All the while, Shah bonded with her students over TV shows like Shark Tank or their dreams after serving time.

“Walking into the prison every week – no phones, no professors, no paper, or pencils – I was completely outside my comfort zone,” Shah tells P&Q. “But we created a special experience together. I found these men, their enthusiasm, and their desire to learn energizing. It reminded me of the power of paying my knowledge and opportunities forward. We changed lives in a tangible way.”

NON-AMERICAN STUDENTS MAKE UP THE MAJORITY

Shah is one of the 100 full-time graduates honored in Poets&Quants’ Best & Brightest MBAs from the Class of 2025. Now in its 11th year, the Best & Brightest honors the top full-time MBA graduates at elite business schools across the globe. The story is designed to expose readers to the top student leaders. In the process, they can see where the Best & Brightest devoted their time and energy – and how they elevated their classmates and contributed to an unforgettable and transformative educational experience. At a time of great uncertainty, this group represents a vanguard of hope for the future.

To compile the Best & Brightest list, P&Q invited 82 of the world’s best business programs to participate. Like previous years, P&Q encouraged schools to nominate students for their “academic prowess, extracurricular achievements, innate intangibles and potential, or unusual personal stories.” Overall, P&Q received 220 nominations from 78 business schools, with candidates judged on their extracurricular leadership, personal excellence, and the insightfulness of their responses and recommendations. As a whole, the Best & Brightest MBAs list profiles students from 61 business schools (with access to in-depth student profiles found on pages 3-4). These schools range from Alliance Manchester to the Yale School of Management and include 16 non-American programs. Like previous years, due to the top-to-bottom quality of the nominations, P&Q will run a separate “MBAs To Watch” story over the summer to honor the remaining 120 nominees.

Last year, the Best & Brightest MBAs deviated from precedent, as men outnumbered women by a 55-to-45 margin. The 2025 list, however, represents a return to the norm, as the ratio flipped to 60-to-40 in favor of women. Still, this year’s class is far more global than past lists, as 54 members originally hailed from outside the United States. That’s way up from the 41 non-American students who dotted the 2024 Best & Brightest list. In total, 79 members attended American business schools. At the same time, 29 hold graduate degrees beyond an MBA. Another eight graduates completed military service.

Along with a greater presence of non-American students, this year’s list also features a clear winner among employers. Eight Best & Brightest MBA students – so far – have accepted offers from the Boston Consulting Group. That’s up from last year’s total of three. In 2024, Deloitte tied for the lead with five hires. This year, it recruited six members. In contrast, McKinsey fell from five to two recruits over the past year. Bain and Amazon each landed five members from the ranks of the Best & Brightest, while Nike and Kearney each snagged two graduates. In addition, a quarter of the class was still undecided or mulling over offers.

COVERING A HISTORIC ELECTION

Before starting business school, the Best & Brightest were already comfortable in big roles. As an architect, ESSEC Business School’s Valentina Flora Angelucci has worked on high-profile projects like designing a branch of the Brooklyn Pubic Library and a whiskey distillery for DIAGEO. At Meta, Will Tan, a 2025 graduate of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School, ran a Facebook fundraiser that generated $2.4 million in support of 90,000 families during COVID-19. Nico Pedreira, the student government president at the Yale School of Management, came to campus with plenty of political experience. He served as a deputy political director for Gavin Newsom for Governor and Kamala Harris for the People. Pedreira’s classmate, Ioana Solomon, made assistant VP at Morgan Stanley, where she built a team that conducted due diligence across 16 workstreams and closed two deals that netted $130 billion in assets under advisement.

At the same time, Amanda Golden leveraged her time in business school to transition from a Google communications manager to a venture capitalist. She points to covering the 2020 presidential campaign for NBC News as the highlight of her career (so far). “Living out of a suitcase for two years, I reported across all of NBC News and MSNBC’s platforms, covering every candidate who ran for president, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and racial and social justice movements. The experience pushed me to adapt quickly, navigate complex stories, and maintain journalistic integrity under immense pressure.”

Some class members build their reputations in the public sector. Before enrolling at the Wharton School, Aarati Cohly served as chief of staff in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Engagement, which helped to fuel the highest voter turnout in 30 years during the 2021 mayoral election. Alliance Manchester’s Raymond Xiang Zheng started MBA classes after working as a senior trade and investment officer for the British Embassy in Beijing, where he was involved in raising capital. In China, Miya Huimin Ding, a snowboarding enthusiast, joined the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2022 Winter Olympics. As part of her work, she helped to introduce Bing Dwen Dwen, the Olympic mascot, to the world.

“By integrating social media marketing strategies, we built widespread consumer impact,” explains the CEIBS MBA. “The Weibo hashtag related to Bing Dwen Dwen garnered over 60 billion views. We also enhanced product production and distribution across various channels, resulting in a 650% YOY increase in licensed revenue. Through Bing Dwen Dwen, we were able to share the rich tapestry of Chinese culture with the world.”  

HELPING THE NEEDY FIND FINANCING, INSURANCE, AND JOBS

Looking for scale? Cambridge Judge Business School’s Seki Guan headed up the development of the KIMI APP, which she describes as “an AI personal assistant with over 60 million monthly active users.” A decade ago, Vinicius Santos Avelar, an engineer by training, led the emergency water supply response during Brazil’s Rio Doce mining disaster, where a dam failure unleashed millions of tons of toxins into the waters and farmland supporting over 100,000 people.

“Faced with an unprecedented crisis, I worked alongside a multidisciplinary team to develop a rapid response strategy—coordinating logistics, optimizing distribution routes, and ensuring that 2 million liters of potable water reached affected populations daily,” explains Santos Avelar, a 2025 grad of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School. “Navigating such a high-stakes crisis tested every aspect of leadership—from managing resources under pressure to making critical decisions with incomplete information.”

Like Santos Avelar, the Class of 2025 often looked to serve the greater good. Working at Capital One, Tanner Morgan, a Duke Fuqua grad, developed a solution geared to help populations like students and immigrants prove credit worthiness. The Wharton School’s Mallika Patkar shepherded a similar solution in the insurance industry for small farmers and independent laborers. Before becoming a ‘Boothie’ at the University of Chicago, Ilana Habib created an AI-run chatbot, Oli, that provided upbeat messages to over two-million college students. By the same token, Douglas Scandrett supported Ukrainian refugees in his native Canada by launching a nonprofit to help them better compete for jobs.

“I led the development of our résumé writing and editing program, recruiting over 60 volunteers and creating Ukrainian-language resources to help job seekers craft résumés that would get noticed,” explains Scandrett, a graduate of Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School. “The goal wasn’t just formatting—it was about restoring confidence and giving people a real shot at employment in their new home. Though I had to step back when I started business school, I’m incredibly proud that 4Ukraine.ca continues to thrive. To date, the services and tools I have built have helped over 60,000 people take a critical step toward rebuilding their futures.”

EMBRACING THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

Scandrett is among the many entrepreneurs on this year’s Best & Brightest list. At MIT’s Sloan School, Blake Blaze, a veteran of the U.S. National Security Agency, launched Front Row Fantasy, which operates like fantasy football…only with “up-and-coming musicians.” His classmate, Toritse David Maroh, once started a venture capital syndicate to support 44 African entrepreneurs. Not only did the University of Oxford’s Surayyah Ahmad help launch a fund to support underserved markets in Central and West Africa, but she also co-founded an accelerator to nurture startups in northern Nigeria. In India, Vivek Yadav entered the ground floor of a blockchain venture that eventually became a unicorn!

You’ll find Best & Brightest entrepreneurs hailing from all walks of life. Look no further than Min Kyung Lee, a graduate of the National University of Singapore. A graduate of Cornell University and Columbia Law, Kyung Lee worked as a legal counsel for GlaxoSmithKline Korea. As an MBA student – and despite being a mother to a newborn – she co-founded BillDetail, a legal-tech solution, and Kinder, a platform that connects expats with local families. After graduation, Kyung Lee will remain in the startup space, heading up Korean business development for a different legal-tech startup.

“The achievement I am most proud of in my professional career is successfully pivoting from a traditional legal career to entrepreneurship and a business role. Rather than following the conventional path for lawyers, I sought out new challenges, immersing myself in the world of legal tech—an industry where I could bridge my legal expertise with my business school experience. Through my startup, BillDetail, and my new role at BoostDraft, I have been able to drive innovation in an industry that has been slow to adopt change.”

MEDICAL MARVELS

The Best & Brightest MBAs have been particularly active in medical startups. Exhibit A: Elham Jamshidi from the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Here, she has been involved in accelerators ranging from Techstar to SPARK. In her native Iran, she opened up Riske Man, the nation’s first approved digital health company.

“As a woman CEO in a male-dominated country, I worked tirelessly for a year to collect patient data to develop the app,” she writes. “Our mobile application helped people check their COVID risk based on their health history. We grew to over one million users in just three months, and the project won the Most Innovative Product at the World Hospital Congress, which is an International Hospital Federation Award.”

Another face of entrepreneurship would be Sanchaita Kohli, a graduate of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School. In India, she opened a surgical practice, Face Surgery Delhi, that she was able to build into a global operation. IESE Business School also features an accomplished entrepreneur: Lili Chen. A decade ago, she co-founded Lifetech, which marketed solutions that enabled cardiologists to determine when patients needed a stent – and where. Eventually, Chen’s startup employed 500 people and hit the market as an IPO. In the case of Deanna Portero, she spent her time at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School helping to build the Orphan Therapeutics Accelerator. At its core, the accelerator fills a gap by supporting clinical development of therapies for rare diseases that rarely attract substantive investment. After earning her MBA, Portero will be leading partnerships and innovation at the accelerator. And her efforts have earned her the respect of classmate and fellow entrepreneur Elham Jamshidi.

“She’s raising three kids while pursuing both her MBA and MPH degrees. That alone is incredible. But what really inspires me is how she’s using her expertise in rare diseases to help patients who are often forgotten by the big pharma. She’s not just a mom, just a student, or just a health care leader: she is excelling at all three.”

See pages 3-4 for 100 in-depth profiles of this year’s Best & Brightest MBAs.