Phrare Bhudharhita Teinwan

Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business

“I enjoy challenging myself while uplifting my community around me to create a positive impact.”

Hometown: Bangkok, Thailand

Fun fact about yourself:mI love gelato and ice cream so much that I learned how to make it from scratch.

Undergraduate School and Degree: Chulalongkorn University, B. Eng. Aerospace Engineering

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Airports of Thailand, Senior Product Manager, CEO Office

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Southeast Asia (Bangkok)

Where will you be working after graduation? Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Consultant

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

• Tepper MBA Scholarship
• Forté Fellow
• President of Asian Business Association
• Inaugural Golub Capital Board Fellow, partnering with the local Boys and Girls Club of Western PA
• Communications Coach

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? Hosting and leading the Tepper School’s first-ever Asia Week is my proudest achievement. It was one of the most active weeks at Tepper, with a full string of events centered around Asian culture, community, and food – and most importantly, it was super fun. What made it even more meaningful was seeing how much it brought people together – students, faculty, and staff – not just during the week itself, but afterward too. We hosted interactive, cultural events like matcha-making and kimchi-making to immerse people in Asian culture, along with personal, impactful events like a my15 event where Asian students shared what their identities meant to them. Some people told me they started making matcha at home after the matcha making event because they had a kit sitting around but had never actually used it. For others, it was their first time trying things like kimchi or matcha, and they truly loved it.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? The professional achievement I’m most proud of was leading a team of engineers as a Product Manager to launch a new digital credit card product from 0 to 1 in Indonesia. It was a frontier market, so I had to work through every stage of the process. This included conducting customer interviews and adjusting the product based on user insights to getting regulatory approval, which was honestly a very stressful stage because everything had to be perfect. The moment I remember most clearly was launch day, when we turned on app availability in the Google Play Store and watched registrations grow from 0 to over 100,000 users in a one-month timeframe. Seeing something we built from scratch reach people so quickly was incredibly memorable and meaningful to me.

Why did you choose this business school? I chose the Tepper School because it combines three things I cared about: strong quantitative rigor, a tight-knit community, and a connection to the broader CMU ecosystem. Coming from an engineering background, I wanted an MBA that would further strengthen my analytical and quantitative skills, and the Tepper School offered the kind of rigorous curriculum that helps sharpen those capabilities.

Moreover, as this is my first time studying abroad, having a strong sense of belonging was very important to me. I wanted to be part of a community where I could genuinely get to know my classmates, and the Tepper School’s smaller class size creates exactly that kind of environment. Last, being at CMU, a global leader in AI and technology, means we are constantly talking and thinking about how business and technology intersect. This is the area that I’ve always been excited about, and I believe will continue to shape the future.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? Acting for Business was my most favorite class from MBA. I always love to talk about this class with my family and friends because it was such a unique experience. What I loved most is that it focused on soft skills, self-awareness, and really understanding both myself and my audience. It taught me that communication is more than just speaking, it is also about actively listening, observing, and responding to others in a very intentional way. The class reminded me that soft skills can make a huge difference in professional life. Having a professor from CMU’s School of Drama brought a very different and valuable perspective. At a more quant-heavy school like the Tepper School, that more human-centered approach felt like the right balance. It helped me think more deeply about how I connect with people, and the way I see the world has been more delicate, which I truly appreciate.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? The Tepper School has a tradition that each affinity club will host their own flagship events throughout the year, and I absolutely loved all of them. Each club organizes an event that shares its rich culture with the broader Tepper School and CMU community, like the Latin American Business Club’s Noche Latina, South Asian Business Association’s Diwali festival, Veterans Club’s Military Ball, Asian Business Association’s Lunar New Year Gala, and Black Business Association’s Sneaker Ball. What I love about these events is that they bring people together in a very authentic way to experience and learn about different cultures. These events go beyond celebration, they reflect the Tepper School’s value to diversity and inclusion, but more importantly, they help people build deeper understanding and connections across cultures that would be very helpful in our professional life as we will grow in the international network.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why?
If I could do one thing differently, I would have explored the broader CMU ecosystem earlier. One of the unique advantages of the Tepper School is being part of CMU, which is so strong not just in business, but also in engineering, arts, public policy, and much more. There are so many opportunities to collaborate across schools, and I wish I had leaned into that sooner. I eventually got involved in experiences like a collaboration with the School of Drama later in my first year, where we had a workshop session with a VP from Disney to talk about the importance of ethics in Disney operations. It was incredibly insightful and I wish I had attended these cross-school events earlier. That experience reminded me how valuable it is to be proactive and intentional about seeking opportunities beyond the classroom.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it?
One of the most impactful case studies I had was in my Behavioral Economics class, which drew heavily on ideas from Thinking, Fast and Slow, and how people make decisions. We explored how people often rely on intuitive, fast thinking when making decisions. One concept that really stuck with me was how choice architecture influences behavior. In one class exercise, we were asked to design a menu for a local coffee roaster. It was very interesting to see how small details, such as the order of items, how options were framed, or introducing a premium item, could influence what customers were more likely to choose. The biggest lesson I took away was that decisions are rarely purely rational. The way choices are presented can significantly shape behavior. That insight changed how I think about product design, pricing, business strategy, and even how businesses communicate value to customers.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? 
Pittsburgh made my first experience in the United States feel like home. Before coming to the Tepper School, I did not know what it would feel like to live so far away in a completely new country, but Pittsburgh has such a warm and homey character. People are very nice in general, and I always have nice small talk even with someone who I first met, which is very new to me as it was less common growing up. Casual gatherings became a big part of my experience and made the community feel very real. I also loved that I could build connections beyond campus through my work with the Boys & Girls Club and collaborations with local high schools through different activities. I felt like I could build meaningful relationships and create impact locally. Even small things about the city made daily life enjoyable. For instance, the new airport is incredibly beautiful and efficient, which I really appreciate when traveling. Altogether, Pittsburgh was not just where I studied, but where I truly found the sense of belonging.

What business leader do you admire most? Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, has always been someone who I look up to and admire. What I admire about her is how she combines deep technical credibility with her amazing leadership. As someone who has worked at the intersection of business and technology, I really respect leaders who can understand both the technical side and the strategic side of the business to make impactful transformation. The way she has led AMD through such a strong turnaround in high-performance computing and AI, while staying focused on long-term execution and growth, is very inspiring. I also deeply appreciate what her leadership represents as an Asian woman leading one of the most important technology companies in the world. Her ability to balance long-term vision with strong execution strongly resonates with me, and it is something I aspire to in my own career.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? One thing I really appreciate about the Tepper School is how AI is integrated into learning in a very practical way. A lot of our classes encourage us to use AI to work faster, explore more ideas, and prototype more efficiently, but we still have to be the ones applying judgment and deciding what actually matters for the business. For example, in Design Thinking with AI, AI helps us brainstorm, but we have to shortlist and refine the ideas ourselves. In another project, we used AI to generate video prototypes more quickly, but we still had to create the storyline and think carefully about the prompts. What I took away from that is that AI should be used to accelerate the process and used as a tool, not to replace human judgement.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? I admire a lot of my classmates, but if I’d have to choose one it’d be Divyesha Malhotra. She is the President of Tepper’s Business & Technology Club, President of the Brewmeister’s Club, and a board member of Tepper Women in Business. I really admire her contributions to the Tepper School community, especially in creating professional opportunities and supporting women’s empowerment. I have worked with her in several classes, and I am always impressed by how organized, thoughtful, and structured she is in the way she approaches work and communication. As someone who also comes from an engineering background, I particularly appreciate that quality. On a personal note, she also taught me how to dance for Diwali, and this year was my first time performing. That experience showed me that she is not only an impressive leader, but also someone who brings others into the community with warmth and encouragement.

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

1. Creating impact beyond my region: Lead cross-regional work that helps organizations navigate growth and transformation. At the same time, I would bring together insights from different markets by leveraging my global experience and strong adaptability across cultures to solve problems that are larger than any one geography and create meaningful impact at scale.

2. Becoming a core member of global professional network within a specific practice/industry: Build deep expertise in a practice area that I am interested in while using my cross-cultural experience to collaborate effectively across geographies, connect with different types of people, share knowledge, and drive collaboration and impact in different markets at an international scale.

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

“I had the opportunity to teach Phrare in Acting for Business at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, where she earned one of the highest grades in the course.

Acting for Business is an experiential course that draws on foundational acting techniques to help MBA students develop presence, persuasive communication, and the ability to influence others through clear intention and responsive listening. Students are asked to take risks in front of their peers while experimenting with voice, physicality, and interpersonal action. Phrare distinguished herself through both her preparation and her willingness to engage fully in the work.

In performance exercises and scene work, she consistently demonstrated attentiveness to her scene partner and an ability to shape interactions with clarity and intention. One of the central principles we emphasize in the course is playing a specific action on another person in order to achieve a goal. Phrare showed strong instincts in this area. She was particularly effective at maintaining focus on her partner, sustaining pressure in the moment, and adapting her choices in response to what was happening in the scene. Her work often carried a sense of playfulness and precision that helped the interaction feel dynamic and authentic.

Beyond individual performances, Phrare contributed positively to the collaborative atmosphere of the class. The course depends on students supporting one another through feedback, observation, and shared experimentation. She approached this process with curiosity and generosity, helping to create an environment where her peers could take risks and continue improving.

Based on my experience working with her, I see Phrare as someone who combines intellectual rigor with interpersonal awareness. Those qualities are reflected not only in her academic work but also in the leadership and community initiatives she has undertaken during her time at Tepper.

For example, she helped lead Tepper’s first Asia Trek, coordinating travel, company visits, alumni meetings, and cultural programming across four countries for both full time and part time MBA students. She has also played a meaningful role in expanding cultural programming within the school by helping introduce Tepper’s first Asia Week, which included a series of events celebrating Asian culture and culminated in a Lunar New Year Gala attended by more than 300 members of the Tepper and broader CMU community.

In addition, through the Golub Capital Board Fellows program, Phrare has worked directly with the Boys and Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania, contributing to the development of a performance dashboard to help the organization better understand and improve its impact. She also initiated a program called Pitch A Teen, a reverse Shark Tank style event that allows young participants to evaluate entrepreneurial ideas while learning about business and innovation. Initiatives like this reflect her willingness to extend her efforts beyond the classroom and apply her skills in ways that benefit the broader community.

I believe she brings both discipline and creativity to the environments she enters, and I am confident she will continue to contribute meaningfully in the next stages of her professional career.”

David Charles Goyette
Associate Teaching Professor of Acting and Business Communication

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