Laila Jalilian

Duke University, Fuqua School of Business

“Social impact-led, community-fed, first-gen Iranian Guatemalan changemaker focused on making businesses agents for good.”

Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

Fun Fact About Yourself: While working in Guatemala, I learned Maya-Mam, one of the oldest indigenous languages still spoken today. I became the first American to earn an L3 Certification in Mam from the Academy of Mayan Languages of Guatemala.

Undergraduate School and Major: University of California, Berkeley – B.A in Public Health

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Boston Private Industry Council – Employer Engagement Manager, Healthcare
The MBA program is renowned for its “Team Fuqua” culture, which is predicated on six paired principles: Authentic Engagement, Supportive Ambition, Collective Diversity, Impactful Stewardship, Loyal Community, and Uncompromising Integrity. Which of these resonates most with you – and what does that principle demand of you as a Fuqua MBA? Supportive Ambition resonates most with me because it captures the idea that success is not individual. It is collective. As a first-generation college student and child of immigrants, I know that every step forward is made possible by the people who show up for you along the way. Community has always been my safety net and my fuel.

At Fuqua, that principle demands that I keep showing up not just for myself, but for my peers too, celebrating their wins, sharing what I know, and helping each other stay grounded in our purpose.

Aside from your classmates and school culture, what was the key part of Duke Fuqua’s MBA curriculum programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? Coming to Fuqua with an eight-year career in the nonprofit/NGO space and looking to transition into corporate social responsibility post-MBA, I knew I wanted a program that treated social impact as a serious area of business, not a side note. Fuqua stood out as a true leader in this way. The long-standing Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE), the Social Entrepreneurship concentration, and initiatives like Fuqua on Board show that Fuqua doesn’t just talk about impact, it invests in it.

When I spoke with current students and alumni, I kept hearing the same thing: there are more social impact resources here than they could even take advantage of. That was exactly the kind of problem I wanted to have. Fuqua on Board especially stood out to me as a way to stay connected to the nonprofit world during business school. I’ve spent my career working with organizations that directly serve communities, and my long-term goal is to sit on a nonprofit board. Being able to engage with one during my MBA is both personally meaningful and professionally aligned for me.
What course, club or activity excites you the most at Duke Fuqua?

I’m excited to be part of the community laying the foundation for Fuqua’s Consortium Fellows. This is Fuqua’s first year as a member of The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, a national network that promotes diversity and inclusion in business education and leadership. Even as a new member, Fuqua showed up strong. We had one of the largest student groups at this summer’s Consortium OP Conference! I’m looking forward to co-creating what the Consortium experience looks like at Fuqua and working to build a community that uplifts, connects, and champions one another.

What do you like most about North Carolina so far? Southern hospitality is real! Everyone is so kind. From the moment I arrived, people have gone out of their way to say hello, offer help, or just strike up a friendly conversation. There’s a genuine warmth that makes it easy to feel at home here.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career? At the Boston Private Industry Council, I oversaw healthcare corporate partnerships for the City of Boston’s flagship Youth Summer Jobs Program. This initiative places over 2,000 public high school students, primarily from underserved communities, into paid summer internships. I noticed that interns in healthcare, the majority of whom were Black and Latinx young women, were earning ~$3 less per hour than their peers in other industries.

Since wages are set and paid by employer partners and annual budgets had already been finalized, we knew we needed a creative solution. By reallocating unspent grant funds, our team secured $500 completion bonuses for over 1,000 students. Across two summers, this put more than half a million dollars directly back into the hands of Boston youth and their families, closing the wage gap in the short term. But what I’m most proud of is what happened next: By 2024, our healthcare partners followed suit and raised their wages to align with other sectors, eliminating the need for bonuses and setting a new standard for equity. It was a powerful example of how small interventions can spark lasting, systemic change.

Looking ahead two years, what would make your MBA experience successful? Looking ahead two years, success means graduating with a strong community of purpose-driven peers, the confidence to speak the language of business, and the tools to embed social impact into any strategy. I came to business school to make sure underserved communities aren’t an afterthought, but a business priority and I want to leave knowing exactly how to do that

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