Luna (Yanzhe) Xiao

Yale School of Management

“Passionate Yale MBA student with a focus on climate finance, eager to drive impactful change globally.”

Hometown: Qingdao, China

Fun Fact About Yourself: I have a cat that understands 2 languages.

Undergraduate School and Major:

Undergraduate School: East China University of Science and Technology, major in Labor and Social Security

Graduate School: University of Maryland, College Park, major in Quantitative Finance

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: International Monetary Fund / Research Analyst/ Climate Finance Division

The Yale School of Management is regarded as a purpose-driven program. What is your mission? How will your MBA at Yale SOM help you fulfill that mission? Imagine, implement, and invest.

These are the three steps I envisioned would be needed to tackle the challenges facing the global economy during the green transition, and they fit my future career aspirations perfectly. My mission in the next three-to-five years is to help companies in a variety of industries, from retail to manufacturing, to implement their climate-related pledges efficiently and profitably as a sustainability consultant. In the longer-term, I would like to work at an impact investment fund to identify, invest, and support companies that can create shareholder value in a highly sustainable way that benefits the global environment.

Yale SOM has the resources to help me develop a better-rounded business sense through courses in operations, leadership, and strategy while teaching me the best-practice process improvement options to efficiently integrate those climate transition actions into firm’s operations.  Yale, as the epicenter of impact investing, will help me to accumulate investment-related skills and experience in the Impact Investing Club.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Yale SOM’s MBA curriculum or programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? I’m deeply attracted to Yale’s commitment to social impact and its emphasis on community contribution. My experience at Yale’s admission events reinforced this admiration; I was particularly struck by how students consistently highlighted Yale’s culture and its influence on their choices, surpassing other programs. An example was shared by a Yale alumni member, who spoke about the intrinsic value of social impact at Yale, an ethos that resonates strongly with me. Coming from a rural county, I’ve seen firsthand how underrepresented groups can be marginalized in economic development. Joining a community like Yale, which prioritizes societal contributions, aligns perfectly with my background and aspirations.

What course, club, or activity excites you the most at Yale SOM? Yale MBA Sustainability Focus.

Yale has very attractive resources about sustainability. As I want to become a sustainability consultant after graduating from MBA program, I am very attracted to the yale MBA program’s focus on climate and sustainability. For example, courses like Financing Green Technologies and Energy System Analysis would help me generate a better understanding of the current green market.  In addition, the integration with other schools within the broader Yale umbrella also attracts me a lot because being a successful consultant requires much more than the education in finance and technical skills in evaluating the event at issue.  A deep understanding in different areas such as history, geopolitics, psychology is also critically important, given the market fluctuations are driven by all these factors.

What is your unique quality that will enable you to make a big contribution to the Class of 2026? Diverse Background.

I have been fortunate to have a diverse personal background: I came from China, attended the graduate program in the US, and have been working at International Monetary Fund with colleagues from all around the globe. So I have taken every opportunity to advocate for all voices to be heard in various professional and personal settings.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: My biggest professional achievement was coauthoring a working paper named 800,000 years of climate risk, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This accomplishment was unique not only because of my pivotal role in bridging the highly technical modeling exercises across disciplines, but also because our paper provided innovative insights on understanding the historical patterns of temperature anomalies.

To my delight, our analytical work helped identify critical patterns in the historical data so our team could successfully uncover crucial insights about temperature anomalies that no prior research could do.

What do you hope to do after graduation? My immediate career goal is to become a sustainability consultant at firms such as Boston Consulting Group to help companies implement their climate-related pledges efficiently and profitably. In the longer-term, I would like to take a step further to work in an impact investing fund to identify, invest, and support companies that not only can create shareholder value but also can benefit the global environment.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Yale SOM’s MBA program? Yale SOM MBA aims to “develop the skills and vision needed to contribute to both the bottom line and the big picture in various leadership roles.” Therefore, emphasizing mission alignment to demonstrate how your values and career goals align with Yale SOM mission of “educating leaders for business and society.” Highlight your commitment to making a positive impact through leadership.

DON’T MISS: MEET YALE SOM’S MBA CLASS OF 2026