Meet Dartmouth Tuck’s MBA Class Of 2026

A PERSONAL BOARD OF ADVISORS…AND A SCHOOL BAND

Overall, the future of the Tuck MBA appears bright. One of P&Q’s 10 Business Schools To Watch In 2025, Tuck achieved the highest score for Alumni Support when The Financial Times surveyed its students last year. In that same survey, the school posted top 10 scores for both Career Services and Overall Satisfaction. The Class of 2024 also weathered a brutal employment cycle far better than its peer schools, as the school increasingly devoted resources to sustainability. In recent years, the school has also added some game-changing wrinkles to its programming. That includes Tuck Sprints, shorter courses on emerging topics that enable students to absorb best practices in real time. Two years ago, Tuck rolled out Tuck Compass, where MBAs receive a Personal Board of Advisors – a leadership coach, career services adviser, and alumni member – who provide one-on-one coaching to guide students and hold them accountable for achieving their personal goals.

“Alumni advisors and experienced non-Tuckies come together to provide a student with guidance on navigating the MBA experience, along with personal and professional development goals,” explains Jason Gaines. “These engagements are not simply a check-in. It’s a series of meetings with structured goals and the space to challenge the student beyond their comfort zone. The entire purpose is to grow beyond one’s limits by leveraging their PBA’s experience and wisdom. To date, I have nearly a fully constructed board who has begun to help me think differently about experiences to obtain for future biopharmaceutical executive leadership.”

Among the most popular traditions at the school is Tuck Talks, where up to 300 students will gather for 5-10-minute presentations from classmates on their personal lives. Another is the Tuck Band, where two bands are formed to play gigs throughout the year.

“I first encountered the T’22 and T’23 Tuck Bands during Admitted Students Weekend, and I was amazed by their talent,” admits ’24 alum Lauren Baltrus. “I was skeptical that our T’24 band could match their skill, but I was pleasantly surprised by the abundance of talented singers, guitarists, keyboardists, and drummers in our class who came together to form the band they named Supply and Da Band. The band’s performances are not only an extremely fun way to enjoy live music, but also showcase the incredible talent within our class.”

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE SENIOR ASSOCIATE DEAN

The first-year class also cited Tuck’s Global Insight Expeditions (GIX) and co-curricular centers as opportunities they look forward to participating in. In an exclusive interview with P&Q, Joe Hall, senior associate dean for teaching and learning, shares his insights on these areas, along with providing an inside look at the school’s career centers, soft skill development programming, and new courses and faculty.

P&Q: What have been the two most important developments in your MBA program over the past year? What type of impact will they have on current and future MBAs?

Hall: “It was an exciting academic year at Tuck, and we made numerous advancements across the MBA experience. A specific area of focus was generative AI. Recognizing the need for our graduates to have a solid understanding of gen AI—given the impact it will have on their post-graduate careers—we added numerous courses focused on the topic, partnered with OpenAI to give our entire campus access to ChatGPT Edu, and gave our faculty the latitude to incorporate AI into the classroom from a pedagogical standpoint. These additions will help prepare Tuck MBAs to hit the ground running with gen AI when they reenter the workforce.

As Tuck looks ahead to celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2025, we have also given a lot of thought to increasing opportunities for students who would thrive in the Tuck environment, but don’t enroll due to financial burden. We made big strides in that area over the past year thanks to a generous scholarship bequest from Tuck and Dartmouth alumnus Glenn Britt and robust scholarship fundraising led by Tuck Advancement and a team of generous alumni called the Team of 100.

The Team of 100 campaign started as an idea to bring together 100 alumni donors to support endowed scholarship funding and raise $125 million to commemorate 125 years of the Tuck School. To date, the Team of 100 has raised $112 million toward its ultimate goal. The strides in scholarship support will help Tuck attract and enroll exceptionally talented and well-matched students, including those who will take on higher financial burdens.”

P&Q: Every January, P&Q publishes a “10 Business Schools to Watch” feature that highlights how schools are raising the bar and enhancing the student experience through innovation or expansion in programming or resources. What is one innovation that sets your school apart from your peer programs and makes you a business school to watch? Why is it so groundbreaking?

Hall: “Last academic year, we introduced Tuck Compass—a holistic system that gives students the ability to identify their personal goals and chart their own path during their MBA journey. An integral part of Tuck Compass is the Personal Board of Advisors program, and it’s been terrific to see students take to it and leverage the program to get the most out of their time at Tuck.

The PBA program matches MBA students with advisers—consisting of Tuck alumni, career services advisers, leadership coaches, and more. Students then meet with their board regularly throughout the academic year to receive advice, expertise, and assistance in support of their individual goals and to help bring clarity to their decision-making. In many ways, the PBA is a perfect encapsulation of the personal, connected, and transformative experience that is unique to Tuck. We’re really excited to see the PBA program, and all of Tuck Compass, grow after a successful first year with the classes of 2024 and 2025.”

P&Q: What types of programs do you offer to sharpen your students’ soft skills? What areas do you emphasize and how do you instill these skills in your students?

Hall: “Tuck’s intimate scale and trust-based learning environment is the perfect setting for MBA candidates to develop their soft skills. This is done in numerous ways, starting with the curriculum. In both core and elective courses, from Managing People to Communicating with Presence, Tuck students are consistently developing soft skills alongside hard skills in the classroom. The very nature of the Tuck environment, which puts an emphasis on team-based learning, asks that students develop their soft skills so that they can work effectively within a group.

Beyond the classroom, there are numerous co-curricular opportunities students can partake in to build their skills. This includes leadership training, Tuck traditions like Small Group Dinners that bring together students for conversation and connection, and new initiatives like Tuck Dialogues. Introduced last academic year, Tuck Dialogues was built off of our ground rules for navigating difficult conversations and offers programming designed to help community members improve their ability to navigate and lead such discussions. The series offers numerous touchpoints—including a speaker series, skill-building workshops, and more—all with the goal of having students, staff, and faculty to engage with each other about hard issues that generate honest, often strenuous disagreement. Altogether, students have ample chances during their time at Tuck to develop the specialized skills and the emotional intelligence necessary to achieve meaningful growth.”

P&Q: What types of programming – through classroom instruction, extracurriculars, and treks – does your school offer to expose students to country-specific and global business practices? What have students told you were the most educational and fun aspects of these activities?

Hall: “We recognize that successful business leaders today must be able to navigate different cultures, economies, and industries. For that reason, all Tuck students must fulfill a global requirement and take a course in a country that is new to them. There are several ways for students to satisfy the requirement, including but not limited to term exchanges with partner institutions, global independent studies, and the popular Global Insight Expedition (GIX) course. GIXs bring together students and faculty in a global setting—one that is often familiar for the faculty member but purposefully new for the students—where they engage with corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, community leaders, government officials, and local people from different walks of life. Each GIX has a unique focus that can range from examining entrepreneurship in Australia, to exploring new product innovations in food and agriculture in Chile, and much more.

Co-curricular opportunities also provide students the chance to expand their global perspectives, particularly through Tuck’s six Centers that provide pathways of learning and application in specific industries. For instance, each year Tuck’s Center for Business, Government & Society and Revers Center for Energy, Sustainability, and Innovation sponsor a delegation of students to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as COP. Not only do students in the delegation have the chance to travel globally, but they are given credentialed observer status at the conference which affords them access to innovative ideas, formal presentations, and high-stakes negotiations focused on combating the growing impact of climate change around the world.”

P&Q: What are the most exciting new courses that your school is offering to MBAs this school year? What makes them so unique and valuable?

Hall: “Tuck has added a number of interesting new courses to its curriculum and, as I mentioned above, there has been a specific focus on examining and exploring generative AI. What’s really great about how we have approached adding gen AI courses is that we’ve done it with a holistic perspective.

We have courses that specifically equip students with hands-on practical application of the technology, including AI and Consultative Decision-Making which serves as a laboratory for students to experiment with AI tools and how they can be useful in making decisions. On a broader level, any course at Tuck can incorporate AI depending on the professor’s goals, and we have specific courses that take a more expansive look at AI and examine its role in business and society. AI-Driven Analytics and Society taught by James Siderius is a great example. The course surveys key challenges emerging in the context of the societal impact of data-driven decision making and gives students a forum where they can discuss potential approaches to addressing these challenges.”

P&Q: Who are two new professors who’ve joined your faculty in the past year? What do they teach and how will they be difference-makers in your MBA program?

Hall: “Tuck has been fortunate to add a number of great new faculty members in recent years, including Mark DesJardine, who epitomizes the idea of a “scholar-educator” that we talk about a lot at Tuck. A talented researcher, Mark’s expertise lies in the areas of shareholder activism and corporate governance, and he has published extensively on the subjects and been recognized by numerous top academic publications. Mark’s skillset and interests are wide-ranging and at Tuck he has been teaching our Social Entrepreneurship course, which offers a hands-on experience in which students identify an opportunity and develop a plan for a new venture that can generate positive financial and social returns. Both with his research and in the classroom, Mark’s passion and care are evident and we’re glad to have him as a member of our community.

Another great recent faculty add is Sonya Mishra. An expert in gender inequality, power and status hierarchies, and more, Sonya’s fascinating research investigates how diversity operates within various forms of hierarchy to shape social perceptions and, ultimately, the workplace outcomes of underrepresented individuals. At Tuck, Sonya designed and teaches the very well-received Leading Diverse Organizations elective, which tackles the issue of diversity within organizations from a quantitative perspective. The course uses cutting-edge research to help students recognize how biases—like gender bias and racial bias—seep into the workplace and then gives them tools to combat those preconceptions so that they can effectively increase diversity and inclusion at their workplaces.”

P&Q: What types of support does your career center and alumni provide to MBA students? How have these services and relationship made your graduates more competitive in the marketplace?

Hall: “Tuck has the most well-resourced career services team, and the highest ratio of career advisers to MBA students, among top MBA programs. Our career advisers regularly meet with students one-on-one and get to know them on a personal level. This means that our career services team knows where an individual student is coming from, where they are trying to go, and can offer honest feedback when working with students to figure out how Tuck can best help them reach their goals.

On the alumni side, Tuck is notorious for having the most loyal and responsive alumni network in the world. We hear it from students every year—if they reach out to a Tuck alumni, the response they receive is open, warm, and inviting. Alumni are eager to share their expertise and advice, to ensure that the next generation of Tuck students has just as transformative an experience as they did. The power of the Tuck alumni network has proven especially crucial in times of economic volatility. At every turn, Tuck alumni step up and offer whatever support they can, and that support can directly help students secure internships and full-time positions.”

Click on the links below to access 12 in-deph MBA student profiles.

MBA Student	Hometown	Undergraduate Alma Mater	Last Employer
Madelyn Flores	San Antonio, TX	University of Texas at Austin	Lean In
Jason Gaines	Cheverly, MD	Morehouse College	Eli Lilly and Company
Kayla Hergott Heiny	Augusta, GA	Florida Institute of Technology	NuVasive
Salman Kazrooni	Manama, Bahrain	Concordia University	Awad Capital Limited
James Lewis	Westport, CT	Yale College	Renew Democracy Initiative
Ryan Montgomery	Seattle, WA	Brigham Young University	Workstream
Nicholas Mut-Tracy	New York City, NY	Emory University	National Nuclear Security Administration and the Office of the Secretary of Defense
Alexa Stewart	Staten Island, NY	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute	Northrop Grumman
Nelo Thembeka Mnguni	Nongoma, Zululand, South Africa	University of Johannesburg	Nedbank Limited
Ricardo Torres-Garzon	Miami, FL	Williams College	Williams College Endowment
Ignacia Ulloa Peters	Santiago, Chile	University of Notre Dame	The Atlantic Council
Brooke VanRosendael	Portland, ME	Suffolk University	PwC

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