Scout O’Beirne 

University of California-Berkeley, Haas School of Business

“Passionate dreamer questioning the status quo and building a more just and equitable world for all.”

Hometown: Birmingham, AL

Fun fact about yourself: During my freshman year of college, I performed in a student-written play based on the true story of the chimpanzee Lucy, playing a supporting chimp character who made animal balloons. Our production was selected to perform at the Sheffield International Theater Festival.

Undergraduate School and Degree:  Harvard University, AB in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Talent Equity & Strategy Program Manager Lead (Native+ & People with Disabilities – Americas) at Google

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? Field Orchestration Summer Associate at Ownership Capital Lab

Where will you be working after graduation? I’m not sure yet, but hopefully I can work somewhere aligned with my values.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

• Co-chair, Race and Inclusion Initiative
• President and Co-founder, Beyond Capitalism Club
• VP of Advocacy, Haasabilities
• Member, Student Advisory Board for the Center for Responsible Business
• Academic Cohort Representative
• Consortium Member and Consortium Full Scholarship recipient

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? Formally establishing the Beyond Capitalism Club is the achievement I am most proud of during my time at UC Berkeley Haas. The club had informally existed for years through the efforts of passionate students before me, but formalizing it was a labor of love that my incredible team made worthwhile. Having a recognized club formalized a space for students to build a community around their curiosity or critiques of capitalism, specifically as it relates to climate change and wealth inequality. By exploring alternative, more just economic systems, students can then be inspired to pursue careers that support a more evolved economic future. Building something that will outlast my time at Haas and continue to challenge students to think beyond the status quo has made this work so meaningful.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? The professional achievement I am most proud of is the learning program I designed for recruiters and hiring managers at Google, which explored the history of race and racism in America. I worked with over 100 individuals in my department, including a team of senior leaders. My goal was to equip learners with a deeper understanding of the history of race in the United States and giving context to the realities of racial inequality today. Creating a space for meaningful dialogue and education within a major corporation reinforced my belief in the power of informed, systemic approaches to equity.

Why did you choose this business school? I chose UC Berkeley Haas because I believed they were leading the conversation about climate change and sustainability among elite business schools. Their Defining Leadership Principles (DLP) spoke to me in a way no other school’s ethos did: Question the Status Quo, Students Always, Confidence Without Attitude, and Beyond Yourself. These principles are ones I have lived by for longer than I knew that they also defined Haas, so they resonated with me deeply. When I visited campuses during admitted students’ weekends, I felt the most kinship with students at Haas — many of them were also living out these principles and trying to figure out how to make the world better in their own way. I continue to be inspired by Haas’ commitment to its DLPs, especially as business faces existential challenges from climate change and rising wealth inequality.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Matilde Bombardini has been my favorite MBA professor, as her macroeconomics class was the most inspiring course I took at Haas. Beyond the content itself, Professor Bombardini was energetic, engaging, and deeply dedicated to her students’ learning. For every question she could not immediately answer in class, she dutifully wrote it down in her notebook, and then spent hours on Slack each week finding articles and resources to address each student’s inquiry. Although her subject matter can be challenging, she made it as accessible as possible to the greatest number of students. I am grateful to have been her pupil during my time in the program.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? My favorite course as an MBA has been Climate, Politics, Finance, and Infrastructure, a class that examines the climate crisis from a holistic, systems-change perspective. Taught by Kate Gordon, CEO of California Forward, and Libby Schaaf, the former mayor of Oakland, the course brought in guest speakers from across industries who are tackling climate change — from local government officials to business founders and executives. Learning from people who are approaching the crisis from every critical angle reinforced a systems-thinking perspective that I believe is desperately needed by future business leaders, especially as we graduate into a world being inextricably altered by climate change and growing wealth inequality.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? My favorite events at Haas are those hosted by the Center for Responsible Business. The Center for Responsible Business’ leadership and staff work tirelessly for the students. They are dedicated to cultivating a community of care, learning, and curiosity that has been both a safe haven and a space of exploration for me during my time at Haas. They have featured speakers and topics ranging from the Doughnut Economics Action Lab, which is reimagining how California measures economic health beyond growth-biased GDP, to the Rethinking Corporate Ownership panel, which brought together leading experts working to build companies that better serve people and planet over shareholders. These conversations are invaluable on a business school campus because they open up the aperture of what is possible to explore in this environment. At a time when businesses must seriously consider their role in climate change, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions, the Center for Responsible Business brings in leaders from across the world who are grappling with these questions in their own work. This has been deeply inspiring.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? If I could do one thing differently during the MBA, I would have invested even more time in the relationships that became most important to me. I entered the program with three goals in mind and made decisions about where to devote my time and energy based on whether they served those goals. Each semester, I reflected and reevaluated, ultimately prioritizing depth over breadth in my relationships with classmates, professors, and staff.

If I had to do it again, I would lean even further into that instinct — nurturing the connections that made me feel whole and human over the million other things constantly vying for attention. The MBA can be an overwhelming experience with an infinite number of classes, events, and people to focus on, but the real magic happens when you have clarity on what matters most and follow your instincts about what feels right. At the end of the day, we are human beings in this program, and I wish I had honored that truth even more fully with my friends and colleagues.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? The most impactful case study is the one I am actively working on. The study tells the story of how a mid-sized CPG company asked the question: How can we retain commitment to our values and purpose after our owner leaves? The case details the myriad of corporate governance structures the company explored — including an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) and nonprofit ownership of company shares — in pursuit of embedding its founding purpose and values into the corporate governance structure itself. The company identified the Perpetual Purpose Trust as its most powerful structure: a legal mechanism where a trust – rather than individuals or shareholders – permanently owns the company to uphold its mission. This ensures the business can never be sold or its profits extracted for personal gain. The biggest lesson I took away is that corporate legal structures in the United States do not make it easy for companies to elevate purpose and social good to the same level as shareholder primacy, even when a business was started with social purpose at its core. The case is slated to be published in partnership with the Center for Responsible Business in fall 2026.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? I live in Oakland, the city right next to Berkeley, and I love the rich diversity of events and people I get to experience between both cities. In particular, on the border of both cities is Local Economy – a community organization that serves as a resilience hub offering programming and workshops open to all. The organization describes itself as an “antidote to chaos and isolation.” I love the artistic and people-focused spirit of living in these cities, where residents are passionate about making their neighborhoods and the world a better place. This essence can easily be experienced in multiple places, but one of my favorites is Albany Bulb, a former construction debris landfill that has been transformed into a community park. Here, residents have constructed beautiful and provoking art from the remnants of trash.

What business leader do you admire most? I most admire Taj James, co-founder of Full Spectrum Capital and, in his own words, “a father, poet, strategist, ecosystem designer, investor, and capital advisor.” Taj co-founded Full Spectrum Capital to answer the questions: “How can we build the relationships and express the love needed to transform our world? How do we support leaders and communities to unlock potential and possibility, see the ecosystem and the whole, and design and act in ways that bend the long arc of history toward balance and harmony?”

I admire Taj because he is real — he acknowledges the truth of the system we exist in and is building an alternative that works to put power and wealth back into the hands of local communities and leaders. Taj is dreaming of a way to mobilize capital so that it serves people and ecosystems, not just those already at the top. Not only is he dreaming, he’s bringing people together to actually build this hopeful future.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? I am currently in a product management class where the professor completely overhauled his syllabus from one year to the next to fully incorporate AI capabilities, even building his own AI learning model that takes the “flipped classroom” to a whole new level. The biggest insight I have gained from using AI is an understanding that a profound shift is happening in our society, and most immediately in the knowledge-worker sector. While it remains unclear how AI will impact how we work, I sincerely hope the optimists are right: that it simplifies our tasks and frees up time for friends, families, and life beyond the office. My fear, however, is that AI will instead trigger the Jevons Paradox — where because productivity can be achieved so much faster, workers are simply expected to produce more in the name of increased productivity and share price.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Margo Wilwerding is truly, fully, and authentically herself. She is strident and committed to her values and lives her life according to them without apology. In a society that often signals we are only worth what we can produce, Margo rails against this minimization of humanity by showing up as her full self. She also works harder than anyone I know and is deeply committed to leaving Haas a better place than she found it. But what I admire most is that she profoundly understands she is worth so much more than the product of her labor and lives this truth in different ways — through her commitment to her friends, her hobbies, and the things that bring her joy.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list?

1) Work at or help build a steward-owned company — one structured so that purpose is permanently embedded in its governance and not dependent on the goodwill of any single owner or shareholder. My time studying alternative ownership models, including the Perpetual Purpose Trust, has convinced me that the ownership structure of a company shapes everything about how it operates. I want to be part of proving that businesses can thrive while being accountable to their mission, their workers, and their communities, not just their investors.

2) Found a community tea shop with my dear friend, serving traditional Chinese medicine tonics (which her dad makes!). We envision it as a place for nourishment, energetic alignment, and gathering with people who believe a better world is not only possible but worth building together. I envision a space where the simple act of sharing a cup of tea opens the door to deeper connections across differences, and where those connections become the foundation for local action. The best movements have always started in rooms where people felt cared for first.

What made Scout such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?

“It is my pleasure to recommend Scout O’Beirne for the 2026 Poets & Quants Best and Brightest MBA feature. As the Associate Director at the Center for Responsible Business (CRB) at UC Berkeley Haas, I have the honor of working with Scout on a number of high-impact and meaningful projects. While Scout’s work ethic and dedication are demonstrated through her performance as a student, what stands out to me most is her unwavering commitment to building communities of care. Scout was personally chosen by our executive director to join the CRB’s Student Advisory Board after student members independently recommended her for membership. This campaign, while unconventional, confirmed what was already evident: Scout earns the deep respect of her peers not by seeking recognition but by consistently showing up for her community.

Scout’s deep curiosity and commitment to leaving spaces better than she found them moved her to create the Reimagining Ownership in Business course, where she developed an inspired syllabus and sourced passionate guest speakers, including community trailblazers rethinking how business ownership can advance economic democracy. The course was born from Scout’s belief that business education should do more than prepare students to succeed within existing economic structures; it should empower them to question them. For Scout, the most urgent business question of our era is not how to win within the current system, but how to build ownership models that hold business itself to a higher standard of accountability to people and planet. In developing this course, Scout revealed not only her conviction that business can be a genuine force for good, but her deep commitment to bringing her fellow students along on that journey, growing and learning together rather than alone. Scout’s willingness to question the status quo comes not from cynicism but from a genuine ethic of care and a conviction that we can and must build something better, together. She is exactly the kind of leader our world needs.

Persis Sberlo
Associate Director
Center for Responsible Business
Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

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