Serena Agrawal

UCLA, Anderson School of Management

“Fun-loving, innovation-focused healthcare nerd with a passion for the outdoors.”

Hometown: San Antonio, TX

Fun fact about yourself: I have 24 patents!

Undergraduate School and Degree: Rice University, BS Mechanical Engineering

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Senior R&D Engineer, Becton Dickinson

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? BCG, Denver

Where will you be working after graduation? BCG, Denver

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: Outdoor Adventure Club (President), Healthcare Business Association (Executive Vice President), Anderson Career Team Coach – Healthcare, Price Center for Entrepreneurship (Venture Fellow), Women’s Business Connection (Member), Entrepreneur Association (Member), UCLA Technology Development Group (Innovation Fellow), and MedTech Innovator (Fellow)

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I was on the organizing team for the Healthcare Business Association VITALS conference, an annual student-run healthcare conference that brings together students, clinicians, innovators, industry professionals, and others for a day of dialogue surrounding the healthcare industry’s most pressing challenges. This year, we grew conference attendance by 60% and succeeded in bringing the southern California healthcare ecosystem together. The organizing team was fantastic, and leading alongside them was one of my MBA highlights.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? I helped to design a medical device that is able to draw blood from an IV catheter, eliminating the need for an extra needle prick for blood draws. It was rewarding to work on a difficult technical challenge and design a solution that positively impacts the lives of thousands. I worked with a team of smart and driven individuals who were all united by a passion for improving the patient experience.

Why did you choose this business school? I realized that if I wanted to help bring meaningful healthcare innovations to market, engineering expertise alone wasn’t enough. I needed to understand unmet clinical needs, evaluate the business opportunity, and develop strategies to scale impactful solutions. Business school offered the opportunity to build those skills while exploring different career paths within healthcare innovation. Anderson’s strong healthcare ecosystem and culture of collaboration made it the ideal place to do that.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? My favorite professor was Mathias Kahl, who taught my Venture Capital & Private Equity course. Coming into business school without a formal finance background, I appreciated how he made investing and financial concepts both approachable and genuinely interesting. He has a great ability to break down complex ideas while keeping the class engaged. At the same time, he often took time to learn about our individual interests, which made the class feel very personal. One of his favorite phrases when walking through a formula or financial concept was, “Isn’t that just beautiful?” – I still quote him to this day!

What was your favorite course as an MBA? Negotiation Behavior. Each class includes a live negotiation with classmates followed by a group debrief. It’s fun stepping into different roles – from a soccer player’s agent to a sneaker buyer – while testing negotiation strategies in real time. The class also made me realize how competitive I can be. I’ve already started applying some of the lessons in real life (like negotiating wedding vendor contracts!).

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? Every year, the Outdoor Adventure Club hosts a camping trip in Yosemite National Park. Even as an avid camper, organizing and attending a trip with more than 40 MBA students was new territory for me. We spent the weekend hiking, swimming, cooking massive camp meals, and sharing stories around the fire. One of my favorite parts was seeing classmates try camping for the first time and discovering that they loved it!

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? If I could do my MBA again, I would pursue cross-campus collaboration earlier. UCLA has incredible resources across engineering, law, and medicine, and I wish I had engaged those communities sooner. As a second year, I joined a cross-campus innovation challenge and worked with engineering, medical, and law students to build a venture around a medical technology. It reminded me how powerful interdisciplinary collaboration can be and how unique UCLA’s ecosystem is.

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 cases that stuck with me most was analyzing Patagonia’s corporate strategy. The company built its strategy around protecting natural environments, not just generating profit, and this resonated with its customers. What stood out to me was how a clear mission can actually strengthen a company’s competitive advantage rather than limit it. As someone who spends a lot of time outdoors (and wears a lot of Patagonia clothing), I appreciated seeing how Patagonia marries its mission and business decisions.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? Los Angeles is in such an ideal location – I live 10 minutes from the beach, 30 minutes from amazing hiking, and a few hours from great skiing. The diversity of cultures and food has been a highlight for me, as well.

What business leader do you admire most? I admire Robert Langer, an engineer/researcher turned businessman whose work has helped lead to dozens of biotechnology companies and lifesaving therapies. I admire his ability to translate scientific discovery into real-world impact, and I appreciate how he has built an ecosystem that connects academia, entrepreneurship, and industry to drive outcomes.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? Anderson offers an AI Agents for Managers course – this was a fantastic introduction to the capabilities and functionality behind AI agents. For the final project, we each created an AI agent-driven workflow to solve a real-world problem. It was fun seeing what everyone came up with, and I have a much better sense of how I’d like to use AI as a tool, not just a buzzword, in my career.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Marisa Eng is the founder of Matcha Dachi, a company that aims to make authentic Japanese matcha accessible, portable, and meaningful. I have had the privilege of watching Marisa grow her business from a passion and idea to a full-fledged business, attracting hundreds of customers at pop-up events and with a full online presence. She has unwavering work ethic, stays true to her values and culture, and somehow still makes time to see her friends!

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

• Help launch a healthcare startup from idea to its first patient treated.
• Become a part-time adjunct professor.
• Bonus: Open a brewery!

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

“I met Serena early during her first year and was immediately impressed by her poise, self-assuredness, and her passion for healthcare innovation. She clearly articulated her vision to leverage her engineering background in medical devices to make an impact as a future business leader in healthcare and began to thoughtfully build out her plan of how she would accomplish those goals at UCLA Anderson.

What makes Serena a perfect fit at UCLA Anderson was how she combined her personal career goals with a strong commitment to Anderson’s “Share Success” mantra of collaboration and service. On campus, she channeled her passion for healthcare innovation into leadership roles across the Healthcare Business Association (HBA), the Price Center for Entrepreneurship, and UCLA’s Technology Development Group and MedTech Innovator, and she was able to land multiple summer internships offers in healthcare, ultimately landing at Boston Consulting Group in their healthcare practice.

During her second year, as an Anderson Career Team (ACT) Coach, Serena mentored a group of first year students pursuing healthcare careers. I saw firsthand how she and her co-leader calmly and firmly supported the often-nervous first years by providing both organized and structured guidance and positive encouragement. Also, as Executive VP of HBA, she continued her contributions to Anderson’s healthcare community through various initiatives, including the annual VITALS Conference, one of the more successful student-run conferences on campus with participants from across UCLA and Southern California’s healthcare ecosystem. In addition to her more professional endeavors, as president of Outdoor Adventure Club, she helped spread her love for the outdoors through leading both small and large-scale trips to destinations across California. Whether designing life-improving medical technologies, mentoring classmates navigating healthcare careers, or bringing the community together through conferences or outdoor activities, Serena, with her calm, professional demeanor and leadership style, elevated those around her as an invaluable member of the Anderson Class of 2026.”

Phil Han
Assistant Dean of Parker Career Management Center

 

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