Timothy Hoffmann

IESE Business School

“Actor, filmmaker and healthcare consultant turned MBA – using creativity to build community and better businesses.”

Hometown: Luzern, Switzerland

Fun fact about yourself: I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and grew up across five countries before coming full circle and returning in 2024 to volunteer at a wildlife reserve in the Eastern Cape. The most unforgettable moment: helping turn over a sedated white rhino during emergency field surgery, holding its neck for twenty minutes and listening to its heavy breathing as vets stitched up its wounds. Watching a critically endangered animal stand back up and walk away healthy is something I’ll remember forever.

Undergraduate School and Degree: University of California, Los Angeles Theater Major, Global Studies Minor.

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Strategic consultant, NavBio AG Actor, and actor / filmmaker.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? I worked as a Corporate Strategy Intern at ON in Zurich, Switzerland, a dream job where I got to combine my passions for sustainability, creativity and running. I split my time between corporate M&A and Sustainability, with the highlight being Cyclon, ON’s circularity program, which launched publicly in April. I helped build the execution infrastructure across 10+ departments for a program that now allows any ON product to be returned for resale, donation or recycling – the company’s commitment to taking responsibility for everything it sells. My particular focus was the circular donation strategy, co-developing the processes with leadership and partner organizations so that products not fit for resale still find a second life instead of a landfill.

Where will you be working after graduation? I am currently in conversations with leading companies across two industries I care deeply about: outdoor sports, where I want to continue working on sustainability and circularity strategy, and healthcare, where I want to help bridge the gap between cutting-edge innovation and the people who need it most.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

Co-president of the Performing Arts Club: I organized student-led performances at cultural events throughout the year, including the “IESE Open Mic” series held at the world-famous Razzmatazz venue in Barcelona. Our flagship event sold 600 tickets, with more than two-thirds of the school in attendance. I also founded and lead MECE (Musically Exclusive, Collectively Exhausted), the school’s official rock band – a rotating group of 9 musicians from around the world. As arranger, keys player and singer, I organize rehearsals and perform at major school events including IESE’s “Multi-Culti” (1,000+ attendees) and Open Mic.

VP of Learning, Responsible Business Club: I established the club’s learning function from scratch, designing and running on-campus events (lectures, masterclasses, and informal networking sessions) focused on teaching students how sustainability applies across different industries.

VP of Internal Partnerships, Sports Media & Entertainment Club: I led on-campus programming, most notably a session and panel for first-year students on best practices for securing unstructured internships at sports companies.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? Two achievements stand out, and they share the same lesson.

The first is our EXSIM thesis simulation, where MBA teams run a company for a week in competition against their classmates. I served as Chief Sustainability Officer and Chief People Officer on a team that was as kind and easy to work with as they were brilliant. Halfway through, a small input error between rounds nearly crashed our company – we went from a substantial lead to almost going out of business. We realized the only way through was to work together on every single decision. So, we sat around one big conference table for the rest of the week. Marketing broke down pathways back to profitability with the CEO; sustainability analyzed opportunity costs with the CFO to reduce emissions efficiently; and operations building expansion plans based on the real limitations of logistics and labor. Through tireless teamwork, we came back from behind and tied for first place.

The second is finishing the Barcelona Marathon in under four hours, a goal of mine ever since I started running. I trained for months, but when the last stretch of the race broke me and I completely gave up on myself and my dream time, it was my classmates that carried me through. My best friend ran alongside me and refused to let me quit, while friends cheered all along the final stretch to the Arc de Triomf. I welled up when I crossed the finish line and saw my time – 3:59:11.

Both taught me the same thing: the best accomplishments are the ones you share.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? As part of my time in healthcare consulting, I spent nearly two years advising a private equity firm on the U.S. launch of a dermatology drug for LEO Pharma, a mid-sized European company best known for traditional topical treatments. The ambition was big: break into the U.S. market and compete in the atopic dermatitis space against Sanofi, Eli Lilly, Pfizer and other heavyweights.

The initial plan was to go head-to-head with the market leaders for the same patients. But while conducting research for the team, two findings stuck out to me. First, I saw how much the competitors were planning to spend on Super Bowl ads alone – there was simply no way to match that kind of financial firepower and brand reach. Second, our perceptual mapping revealed that LEO’s drug had been resonating with a more niche patient profile that the bigger players weren’t satisfying. Based on these findings, our team decided to stop trying to fight on their playing field and instead create our own. We adjusted the target patient profile and market share ambitions to focus where we had a real advantage.

The strategy worked. The drug achieved 8% market share and broke $300 million in sales, turning LEO Pharma’s U.S. affiliate from an unprofitable division into the company’s most profitable worldwide. The PE firm I worked with even ended up writing my letter of recommendation for business school – and to celebrate the results, I later sent them a pair of ON running shoes from my internship. The experience taught me that the smartest strategy isn’t always the biggest or most obvious; it’s often the one that plays to your real strengths.

Why did you choose this business school? The people. I remember being nervous when visiting business schools because of my unconventional background – some schools made me feel like just another face in the crowd, while others made me feel like I’d never fit in. Then I visited IESE and ended up in a long conversation with the head of admissions, Paula Amorim. When I told her what I did, she just said, “That is SO cool!” Paula and her team truly believe that diverse backgrounds make classrooms and communities better. She explained to me that they build cohorts around how people carry themselves and treat others, not just what’s on their resume. While we were talking, the lunch hour started and the cafeteria filled up with students from everywhere. I heard at least five languages at once and saw long tables of people laughing and clearly enjoying each other’s company. I remember walking to the bus in the sunshine afterwards and thinking, “This is where I want to be.”

Two years later, IESE turned out to be everything I hoped for and more: the academics are serious and the network is strong. However, what makes IESE special is a community of people from completely different worlds who genuinely like each other and want to see each other succeed.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Professor David Teeters, our Corporate Finance professor. Coming from a background with limited formal financial training, his teaching style was fast-paced, intense, and exactly what I needed. Teeters is incredibly tough, engaging and funny all at once. On the very first day, he cold-called me with a question I genuinely didn’t know how to answer. I braced for the worst, but he just gave a sly smile and told me to review some more and give it a go next time. That small moment gave me the confidence to go back, study the technical notes, and really commit to the cases. When he called on me the next class, I was ready, and by the end of the term I was actively participating rather than waiting to be called on. When he later learned about my background in film and acting, he was excited and encouraging, saying that business needs more people with unconventional paths. That confidence carried directly into my M&A work at ON over the summer.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? Applied International Economics with Professor Pedro Videla. The class was intensely quantitative, and Pedro’s approach is to throw you into the deep end and trust you’ll figure it out. Once it clicks, a whole new world opens up: you can start to explain why countries and companies behave the way they do, and back up your convictions with real evidence. The course culminated in a series of debates where each student embodied an economist. I chose Joseph Stiglitz (a fun chance to put my theater degree to good use) and argued that though free trade can create wealth and development, it can also lock developing countries into low labor standards while enabling overproduction with enormous environmental consequences – drawing on my circularity work at ON. Pedro loves nothing more than a good debate and challenged us every step of the way, which is what makes his classes such a rewarding experience.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? The IESE Open Mic. The tagline we gave it was, “We Are More Than Our Work,” and that’s exactly what it reflects about our school and community.

As co-president of the Performing Arts Club, I organize the event from start-to-finish with my classmate and bandmate Rafa Weber. This included coordinating a dozen-plus acts, rehearsing with our 9-piece school band, managing sound checks, stage lighting, crowd logistics, and staying on schedule with the venue. We hold the event at Razzmatazz, one of Barcelona’s most famous music venues, with professional sound and stage production. More than two-thirds of the school shows up.

The logistics are stressful, but what makes it all worth it is watching the people you study cases and build Excel models with step onto a professional stage and reveal a completely different side of themselves. Students sing, dance, perform comedy, play instruments, surprising you with talents you never knew they had. By the end of the show, the whole room is singing the same words together, hugging and some of them crying! It gives everyone the chance to process the bittersweet emotions of finishing this journey and celebrate everything we’ve been through together.

It sums up what I love most about IESE: brilliant, driven people from all over the world who work incredibly hard, but who also know how to show up for and celebrate each other, while remembering there’s so much more to our community than just the work we do together.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? In our first-year Marketing course, we did a case on IDEO and the redesign of Cineplanet (Peru’s largest cinema chain). What struck me was how IDEO puts people at the center of their process, spending weeks immersing themselves in Peruvian culture and observing real consumer behavior before generating a single idea. From there, the process was deeply iterative: brainstorm, prototype, test, break down what worked, and build again.

Sitting in class, I realized that this was strikingly similar to the creative process of making art. You start with an idea that moves you, you make the thing, you break down what worked (and what didn’t), and you carry those lessons forward. The biggest lesson: the skills I assumed were least relevant to business (creative instinct, comfort with ambiguity, iterative thinking) turned out to be some of the most transferable.

What business leader do you admire most? Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. His book Let My People Go Surfing is what got me interested in business school. It proved to me that you can build a great business and a better world at the same time. He really is a maverick – Patagonia breaks every conventional rule and thrives anyway. Consumers “don’t care” about sustainability? Make it your number one priority, market causes instead of products, and watch the brand carry you past $1 billion in sales. Can’t survive without rewarding shareholders? Spend on films, activism and supply chain transparency, while remaining profitable for decades. Can’t grow without going public? Give yourself one shareholder – the Earth – and answer to no one else. Enjoy the spoils of your fortune? Give it all away to show the world there’s a better way.

But at the end of the day, I think what inspires me most is that he built a community around shared values, where customers, employees and the brand all believe in the same mission. That conviction is what brought me to business school and what I want to carry into my career.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? IESE ran an intensive data boot camp where we used AI to build complex analytical and predictive models on massive datasets. I came in with almost no data experience and walked out able to build models all on my own, while classmates who were experienced coders were equally impressed by the quality and speed of AI’s output. Critically, IESE didn’t just show us the upside: our professors also walked us through what AI is not good at, and our Strategy and Sustainability course examined the environmental costs of these tools. It gave us a complete picture: AI is game-changing, but it comes with implications we need to pay attention to and take seriously.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? My classmate Ahmed Tuma, who is as kind as he is brilliant. His parents were forced to leave Iraq in 1980, and the family finally returned in 2005 after the war. Ahmed grew up navigating cultural identity challenges, political instability, and economic standstill, earning a master’s in engineering. He then pivoted to consulting when the economy stalled, and eventually earning a scholarship to IESE as the school’s first ever Iraqi MBA student. Hearing his story, you can’t help but admire his resilience and adaptability.

Furthermore, Ahmed is one of the most generous people I know. He is a truly gifted learner who picks up quantitative and qualitative concepts remarkably fast, and he uses that ability to give back. He organized study sessions to help classmates prepare for finals that became so popular the student council presidents asked him to open them to the entire class. During first year, we would arrive early and read cases together. He helped me work through concepts I was completely new to like accounting and decision analysis. He was never just giving me the answer, but asking questions: “What do you think? Why might this be the case?” Watching Ahmed use his strengths to lift others up taught me to do the same, to use my own skills, whether in film, music or anything else, as a way to give back to the people around me.

He is also an incredible father to his tuxedo cat Sylvester, a stray he adopted off the street. As kind as he is brilliant.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? One is working on one of the central tensions in the sportswear industry: we produce too many goods and it’s unsustainable, yet people need quality gear to move their bodies. And I believe keeping people active is one of the most important investments a society can make. You can thrift a lot of things, but you can’t always thrift running shoes. My internship at ON gave me a front-row seat to this problem through circularity, and I want to keep working on it at scale.

Another comes from my roots in healthcare: I want to help bridge the gap between cutting-edge innovation and the people who need it most. My time at NavBio showed me how much life-changing technology exists that remains inaccessible or unaffordable. Closing that gap is something I want to be part of.

And finally, as someone who lived through COVID and the actors’ and writers’ strikes as a working artist, I would love to one day return to the entertainment industry and help build a better business model where the people who make the art share more equitably in its success.

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

“I remember when I first met Tim. I was head of admissions at IESE and made myself available to talk to candidates who were visiting our campus before applying to the MBA. Nine years in Admissions, and talking to candidates was never boring — especially when meeting people like Tim. It’s one of the most fascinating aspects of working in business schools: meeting people you would never meet otherwise. Like a Hollywood actor and producer with business experience wanting to do an MBA.

But Tim’s interestingness went beyond just the Hollywood actor title. He seemed caring, deep and had a genuine willingness to grow while helping others. “I’d love to have him in class,” I thought after an enthusiastic coffee chat at the cafeteria. I started secretly hoping he did a good job during the application process so I could have the pleasure of admitting him.

Tim didn’t disappoint. In the Assessment Day – the part of the application process when candidates are put into groups to work on an assignment – he proved to be exactly what I expected: eloquent, thoughtful and with a unique perspective different from anyone else’s.

Fast forward to his time on campus and Tim kept delivering. He contributed to the community through his outgoing personality and great communication skills, organizing open mics, performing in the school’s rock band and leading the Performing Arts Club. His generous, social nature helps students connect beyond the classroom, strengthening bonds and making relationships deeper and more meaningful, which is what the MBA is truly about.

Tim is living proof of the power of diversity in an MBA setting and how unconventional backgrounds can add a special flavor to the class. I’m excited to see everything Tim will accomplish while carrying the IESE name to the great heights he’ll reach.”

Paula Amorim
Career Development Center Director
IESE Business School

“Tim was in my International Economics course, a class built around student debates on the main global economic and social issues. In class, Tim stood out for his strong critical thinking and his willingness to engage actively with arguments, including mine. This fit perfectly with the aim of the course: to understand that in many issues there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

What I found most valuable was how he dealt with ideas that did not fit his priors—the views he brought into the class. Many students, in that situation, disengage or dismiss the argument. Tim did the opposite. He listened, asked questions, challenged others’ views, and stayed engaged. He understood the nature of the discussion and moved from defending his initial views to questioning them. That is not common and shows real intellectual maturity.

He also combined confidence with humility. He was willing to explain and defend his point of view, but also willing to admit when he did not understand something. I recall a moment in a technical discussion on monetary policy when I used complex terms, including one in Latin. He was the only one who stopped me and asked for clarification. That showed he cared more about understanding than about appearances.

From a teaching perspective, Tim was the type of student you want in class. He raised the level of the discussion, and he did it with a sense of humor and with respect for other people’s views, which made the class more engaging and intellectually valuable.”

Pedro Videla
Head of the Economics Department
IESE Business School

“What made Timothy such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026 was his rare combination of creative originality, intellectual rigor, and a deeply generative approach to leadership. Coming from an unconventional background spanning filmmaking, acting and music, Timothy consistently brought perspectives into the classroom that challenged assumptions and expanded the way his peers thought about leadership, storytelling and influence. At the same time, he demonstrated a remarkable ability to connect this creative lens with structured, strategic thinking, which was also evident in his professional work across strategy, sustainability and investment contexts. He left a mark on his classmates.

This combination came to life most clearly during the final team film project in my Leadership course. Rather than positioning himself at the center, Timothy chose to lead by enabling others. He generously shared his expertise, coached his teammates through unfamiliar territory, and created an environment in which the entire team could perform at an exceptional level. His leadership was not about visibility, but about impact—raising the standard of the group.

What distinguishes Timothy is not only his talent, but his intent. He consistently uses his capabilities – whether creative, analytical, or interpersonal – to challenge and amplify others and to build something greater than himself. This, combined with his global outlook and commitment to meaningful impact, makes him a truly outstanding representative of the IESE MBA experience.”

Alejandro Moreno-Salamanca
Professor of the Practice of Management
IESE Business School

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