Samuel Lin

Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business

“Curious global builder who believes business is a powerful way to bring people together.”

Hometown: San Jose, CA

Fun fact about yourself: I spent 9 months in Taiwan prior to my MBA getting my Chinese to a professional level!

Undergraduate School and Degree: Pomona College, BA Economics

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Store Manager, UNIQLO

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? AlixPartners, New York

Where will you be working after graduation? AlixPartners, Vice President

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

Class of 2006 Scholarship Recipient, Admissions Chair (Graduate Business Association), Executive Vice President (Asian Business Association), Inaugural Zenith Cohort Member, Communication Coach (Accelerate Leadership Center), Teaching Assistant (Management Presentations)

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school?

The achievement I’m most proud of during business school was launching the Tepper School’s inaugural four-country Asia Trek across Taiwan, Thailand, Korea, and Japan.

Before COVID, the Asian Business Association had a tradition of organizing a spring break trip to Japan. When we returned to campus after the pandemic, we had a decision to make: simply bring that trip back or reimagine what it could be. Our team chose the latter.

We wanted to design something that reflected how we personally experienced Asia — not just as a place with incredible culture and history, but as one of the most dynamic economic regions in the world. So we built a new trek spanning

both East and Southeast Asia that would introduce classmates to the companies, entrepreneurs, and communities shaping the region’s (and the world’s) future.

Bringing it to life was far more complex than we initially imagined — we had to coordinate dozens of alumni, companies, and partners across four countries and multiple time zones. Many of those partners had never worked with Tepper before, so a lot of the early work involved building trust and simply convincing people that this idea could actually happen.

What made the experience meaningful was the response. Many students later told us the trek was the most impactful experience of their MBA because it helped them see Asia in a completely different way, and not just through lectures or case studies, but through firsthand conversations with people building and leading businesses there.

Seeing this idea come to life instilled in me the confidence to pursue and lead bold ideas, even when they’re daunting and complex — and that has stayed with me throughout my time at the Tepper School.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career?  The professional achievement I’m most proud of was becoming a Store Manager at UNIQLO at age twenty-two.

I joined the company through its UNIQLO Manager Candidate program, which is an intensive leadership training program designed to prepare future store leaders. The program took place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when retail operations were constantly adapting to new challenges.

At the end of that year, I was promoted to manage the Glendale Galleria store. Overnight, I found myself responsible for a business generating over $10 million in annual revenue and leading a team of more than forty employees.

What I remember most about that experience is how much I struggled in the beginning to build trust. Many members of the team had more experience than I did, and I quickly realized that leadership could not simply come from a title. It had to be earned.

That first year was the most challenging yet rewarding experience of my professional life, and the lessons on how to build trust and lead a team have forever shaped the way I approach leadership.

Why did you choose this business school? I chose the Tepper School because it combines two skillsets that I believe are essential for modern leadership: technical rigor and human understanding.

Many business schools emphasize one or the other, but the Tepper School intentionally develops both. Courses in AI and quantitative decision—making are paired with leadership development coursework and through the Accelerate Leadership Center, which focuses on communication, influence, and interpersonal dynamics.

In my opinion, the special sauce though is in the size of the Tepper School community.

Because the class is relatively small, the Tepper School feels like a blank canvas. If you have an idea that your newfound knowledge will inevitably spark — whether it’s an event, a new initiative, or a program — you can build it. And because the community is small, individual contributions are noticed, and matter.

That environment gave me the confidence to step into leadership roles and build initiatives like the Asia Trek alongside classmates and faculty who were willing to support ambitious ideas.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Professor Rosalind Chow.

Professor Chow teaches topics that many business schools rarely discuss directly: power and influence inside organizations.

Her class challenged many of my assumptions about leadership. We explored different forms of power, including positional power, relational power, and reputational power, and how each affects decision-making within organizations.

One of the key insights from the course was that power itself is not inherently good or bad. It is simply a resource that exists within every organization. The real question is whether leaders understand how it works and whether they choose to use it responsibly.

The course helped me see that great ideas alone rarely drive outcomes. Instead, progress often depends on how well leaders build coalitions, align incentives, and mobilize the right stakeholders.

It fundamentally changed how I think about leadership and organizational dynamics, and how I will approach my career.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? Power & Influence, taught by Professor Rosalind Chow.

What made this course so impactful was that it examined the dynamics that actually determine whether ideas succeed or fail inside organizations.

Many business classes focus on strategy frameworks or financial models. While useful, this course focused instead on the human side of organizations: how influence works, how coalitions form, and how leaders navigate complex stakeholder environments.

Through coaching and case discussions, I began to understand that many decisions in organizations are shaped not just by logic, but by relationships, incentives, and credibility — and by extension, power and influence.

It was one of the few courses that genuinely changed the way I think about business itself.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? My favorite MBA tradition at the Tepper School is the annual Tepper Women in Business Leadership Conference.

One of the things I love most about the Tepper School is the “blank canvas”, where students have a real opportunity to shape the kinds of experiences and traditions that define the school. The TWIB Leadership Conference is one of the best examples of that.

During my first year, I attended the conference as a participant and was struck by how powerful it was. The event brought together industry practitioners, alumni, students, and allies to talk about how we can continue advancing women in business. What stood out to me most was that it wasn’t framed as a space only for women; rather, it was a space for the entire community to engage in the conversation.

That inclusivity is very meaningful to me. Real progress happens when everyone feels ownership over the outcome. The conference created an environment where people could come together, learn from one another, and think collectively about how to build more equitable and supportive workplaces.

Even though I wasn’t directly involved in organizing the conference, I loved experiencing it as a member of the community — supporting my classmates and showing up as an ally. This year was especially meaningful because one of my closest friends in the program, Amber Lo, served as president of TWIB and led the conference herself. Watching her bring her own vision and personality to the event was incredibly inspiring.

She introduced new speakers and ideas, including Aisha Bowe — a former NASA rocket scientist turned entrepreneur — and partnered with Pittsburgh’s Magee-Womens Research Institute to highlight the intersection of science, health, and business. Seeing the conference evolve each year reflects something special about our school: a community that empowers students to lead, supports one another’s ambitions, and creates spaces where everyone can grow together.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? Focus.

During my MBA, I was excited by so many different opportunities that I tried to do a little bit of everything. Over time, I realized that I underestimated how long it takes to make a truly meaningful impact and overestimated how much time and energy I had.

If I could go back, I would choose one or two initiatives, dream bigger within those areas, and invest even more deeply in them.

That said, the process of discovering that lesson was an important part of the MBA journey itself.

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 cases I experienced during business school was the Grand Strand negotiation in my Negotiations course, which taught me the importance of empathy and care in creating business value.

What made the exercise powerful for me was how it reframed the way I think about negotiations. Before business school, I often thought negotiations were cold, hard discussions simply about what each side wanted and each side trying to get as much as possible.

The Grand Strand case forced us to think much more deeply about how value is actually created in a negotiation. Each party had different priorities and constraints that were not immediately visible on the surface. The real opportunity came from understanding those underlying decision criteria: what the other side truly cared about and why.

That experience helped me realize that the most effective negotiators practice something that looks a lot like empathy in a business context. Instead of focusing only on your own outcome, you try to understand how the other side defines success.

Once you understand that, you can often structure agreements that create more value for both sides than either initially expected. It was a simple idea, but an incredibly powerful one, and it is a lesson I expect to carry with me throughout my career.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? One way the Tepper School has integrated AI into the curriculum is by teaching not just the technology itself, but how it actually gets used inside organizations.

In a course called AI Methods for Social and Visual Analysis, we focused on something that often gets overlooked in business analytics: most company data isn’t neatly structured in databases. In fact, roughly 80% of corporate data lives in unstructured formats like PowerPoint decks, documents, images, and social media posts. The course explored how AI tools can unlock insights from this type of information.

For our final project, my team built a tool using generative AI to scrape social media posts and perform sentiment analysis on them, ultimately connecting that sentiment to company profitability. What I found exciting about the project was how tangible it felt. Rather than talking abstractly about AI, we were building something that could realistically help companies understand how public perception influences business performance.

Another course that shaped my thinking was Fundamentals of Operationalizing AI, which I took at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College. The professor — a former PwC partner with both an MBA and a PhD in artificial intelligence — walked us through the entire lifecycle of deploying AI within an organization, from identifying the right use cases to managing data pipelines, governance, and long-term model maintenance.

In a world where “AI” is often used as a buzzword, that course helped demystify the technology. It taught me that the real challenge is rarely building a model — it’s

knowing when AI is actually the right solution and how to integrate it into real business processes.

The biggest insight I gained from these experiences is that AI doesn’t replace human judgment; it amplifies it. The leaders who will benefit most from AI will be those who understand both the technology and the business context in which it operates.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? I most admire my classmate, Teyonna Jarman. In business school, we are surrounded by ambitious, accomplished, and incredibly smart people. What sets Teyonna apart to me is something deeper: her passion for living, her empathy, and her artistry.

She moves through the world with a sense of self that is incredibly rare. It is immediately clear to anyone who meets her that she is building a life and career all her own — not one driven by prestige or external validation, but one grounded in purpose, creativity, and being who she genuinely wants to become. Whether through her work in entertainment, her leadership at the Tepper School, or the way she shows up for others, she brings both heart and conviction.

I admire that deeply. Teyonna reminds me that success does not have to come at the expense of authenticity. She is the kind of person who seems to be living in a way that her five-year-old self would be proud of, and that’s the energy I want to live with too.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? One item on my professional bucket list is to build my own retail brand.

I’ve always viewed business as a form of expression: a way to bring ideas, aesthetics, and values into the world in a tangible way. By building a company, I hope to create products and experiences that make people’s everyday lives a little better while bringing together the global perspectives that have shaped my own life.

The second item is to help someone else start their own business.

Mentorship has played a huge role in my journey, from managers who trusted me early in my career to professors and classmates who pushed my thinking during business school. Because of that, I increasingly see success not just in terms of what I build myself, but in whether I can help others build something meaningful too.

If I’m able to help another founder take the leap and create something of their own, I would consider that one of the most meaningful markers of success in my career.

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

“I could not be more delighted to shine a light on how Sam Lin’s contributions to the Tepper School of Business make him a standout not only in his class, but – I would venture – also among all of the newly minted MBAs of this year. He is distinguished by his academic prowess, his pedigree of top positions within the Tepper MBA class of 2026, and most of all  by how he interrogates the process and then elevates the outcome of everything in which he participates.

Sam’s deep sense of curiosity, coupled with his gift for actively listening, was clear from the first time I spoke with him as he began his time at Tepper. And he has since proved to be one of the most empathetic and thoughtful students I’ve encountered in all of my years here. He is inquisitive about other people and their experiences, and seems to have a natural inclination for building trust, no matter who he is speaking with. I’ve witnessed him help a fellow student feel at ease in a difficult moment; seen him wow a high-profile alumnus with his great questions; and I, myself, have counted on him as a thought partner and collaborator. In all instances, Sam not only seems to understand the lay of the land and the stakes involved, but he also finds a way to help others find their footing. It is this generosity of time and spirit which Sam exemplifies that make him a leader within the school.

Beyond how he shows up with others, his systemic contributions to the Tepper School are also evidence of Sam’s leadership spirit. Some of his most notable accomplishments grew out of his role as EVP of Tepper’s Asian Business Association. One such achievement was spearheading the Tepper School’s inaugural 4-country Asia Trek, an initiative that engaged over 250 participants and senior leaders at major global corporations. Prior to this trek, Sam created innovative presentations and panel discussions to prepare students for how to fully engage in the travel experience. Among the preparatory content he presented was not only tips and tricks for Asia, but also a keen focus – drawing from content he learned in the Tepper School’s Accelerate Leadership Center – on how to interact in an emotionally intelligent and culturally humble way. The way that Sam took it upon himself to synthesize aspects of what he was learning in his MBA into a cogent playbook for one of the students’ hallmark experiences is just one example of what makes him one of the best and brightest.

As someone who has worked alongside Sam on student-led projects, who was thrilled when the selection committee chose him as one of only twenty students to join the elite leadership development program I lead at the Tepper School called Zenith (and who has watched him take risks and reflect thoughtfully throughout it), and who currently supervises him in his role as a Communication Coach (a position through Tepper’s Accelerate Leadership Center, which offers peer-to-peer coaching), I have consistently seen Sam brings his best to everything he does. And he makes others better in the process, too, me included.”

Michelle Stoner
Senior Academic Program Manager
Accelerate Leadership Center

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