Michael Henry

Yale School of Management

“I spent seven years working in Africa and Asia, and came home to scale my impact.”

Hometown: Needham, MA

Fun Fact About Yourself: I won the US College Boxing National Championship in 2016 for my weight class. I’m now long retired from boxing!

Undergraduate School and Major: University of Michigan: Economics and Environmental Studies

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Director of Research & Innovation at Shamiri Institute

Shamiri Institute is a nonprofit that delivers mental health programming in Kenya.

The Yale School of Management is regarded as a purpose-driven program. What is your mission? How will your MBA at Yale SOM help you fulfill that mission? I aim to help organizations deploy resources more effectively to solve real problems and improve outcomes for people and societies.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Yale SOM’s MBA curriculum or programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? Yale SOM’s unparalleled connections with Yale’s other graduate programs, such as the world-class law, policy, and environment schools. This is a unique top business program that also facilitates learning and network-building outside in other disciplines that interact with business.

What course, club, or activity excites you the most at Yale SOM? I’m excited about the Meng Impact Investment Fund at Yale SOM, because it allows students to jump into real impact venture capital (VC) with no experience. The Meng Fund stands out by its inclusion of other grad students from around Yale. For instance, an MBA student who is interested in healthcare VC would likely end up on a team with MD students and build a different and valuable perspective through that collaboration.

What is your unique quality that will enable you to make a big contribution to the Class of 2027? I bring unique experience of working directly with socioeconomically disadvantaged communities in the Global South, using data-driven professional methods. I hope to contribute this perspective on how data can be used in novel ways to solve seemingly intractable problems and improve lives – no matter the industry.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: Through Director positions as two locally-led nonprofits in Kenya, I helped these organizations scale their social impacts by collecting better data and using it creatively to make programming decisions. For instance, a program supporting gender-based violence survivors was able to switch from paper records to a digital system and saw trends that allowed them to deploy their team more effectively geographically, and therefore support more survivors. Accomplishing this required a little work with tech, and a lot of work with people and workflows!

What do you hope to do after graduation? I hope to join a company that makes or influences strategy and resource decisions to drive social value at scale, such as a consulting public sector team or an impact investment firm.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Yale SOM’s MBA program? In your essays, video, and interview, go beyond expressing interest in Yale’s distinctive “Business & Society” mission. Communicate authentically how you have demonstrated a commitment to achieving positive impact in your work, community, and world.

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