Patrick Yeung

MIT, Sloan School of Management

“A diligent, dedicated community builder who splits time between sustainability, personal development, and paying-it-forward.”

Hometown: Cupertino, CA

Fun fact about yourself: I speak some Norwegian!

Undergraduate School and Degree: The University of Chicago, BS in Mathematics, BA in Economics, with a minor in Norwegian studies

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Consultant at Bain & Company in Chicago, IL, USA

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? Interim Chief of Staff at EarthSuds (virtual). EarthSuds is a startup that produces and sells all-natural ingredient shampoo, conditioner, soap and lotion tablets that are convenient for travel and help reduce single use plastic waste. I worked on their latest packaging (designing, sourcing, procuring), on doing customer research primarily with hotels and other B2B customers, and on managing some of the online D2C channels.

Where will you be working after graduation? Consultant at Bain & Company in San Francisco, CA, USA

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

• 2026 ClimateCAP MBA Summit, Chief of Staff (June ’25 – Present)
• MBA Community Building Chairs, Co-president (April ’25 – Present)
• MBA Pre-Orientation Trips, (Pre-F(x)) Co-director (April ’25 – Present)
• MBA Cohort Community Building Chair, Atlantic Cohort (October ’24 – Present)
• MIT Sloan Runners Club (“Sloan and Steady Run Club”) active participant (September ’24 – Present)
• MBA Core Accounting Teaching Assistant, Prof. Joe Weber (Fall semester 2025)
• MBA Study Tour Organizer, Sustainability in Scandinavia (Spring semester 2025)
• MBA Pre-F(x) trip leader, Croatia (one of two leads hosting ~20% of incoming class for a week) (April ’25 – August ’25)
• MIT Sustainability Summit Sponsorship Lead (October ’24 – May ’25)
• MIT Sloan Asian American Alliance, VP of Events (October ’24 – May ’25)
• MIT Sloan Pride, VP of Careers (October ’24 – May ’25)

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I finished my first Ironman 70.3 race (also known as a Half Ironman) while enrolled at MIT Sloan. I didn’t grow up very involved in athletics and only started taking my physical health seriously after graduating from high school. My endurance sport journey started with running 5Ks freshman year of college and graduating to half marathons by sophomore year. Five years later, I pushed my endurance journey further to reach my goal of running a marathon and a 100K ultramarathon, but I started feeling burnt out by only relying on running as my endurance sport. So, I diversified…but the real training had to wait until business school.

By having the flexibility to choose what I worked on and when I worked on it, I was typically able to slot in two workouts a day to build the endurance necessary for the half triathlon distances. And in June at the beginning of the summer in the middle of business school, I crossed the finish line at the Half Ironman Western Massachusetts race, despite never racing on a bike or in the water before. It was an incredible culmination of my first year of business school.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? Early in my career, while working at Bain, I was not on track to be promoted. Everyone takes failure differently. Being told “we think you are behind on performance expectations and only have three months to turn it around or you are going to be let go,” was the first time in my career I felt a sense of disappointment in myself. It struck me pretty hard, but I got back on my feet pretty quickly because I was determined to stay at Bain versus recruiting elsewhere. And I took it one day at a time. With lots of help from the community I had built around me at Bain, I managed to secure the promotion that satisfied the performance improvement plan (PIP). But I didn’t stop there – I kept pushing and ultimately got promoted again six months earlier than the standard track. This episode in my career reinforced my confidence in my skillset, agility, and resilience. For me, this personal growth is an achievement like no other.

Why did you choose this business school? I chose MIT Sloan to engage with a community of builders. I felt it was important to focus on creating a network that was very different from my existing one in the consulting and advisory world. MIT Sloan, with its rich entrepreneurship ecosystem and the talent it attracts, has allowed me to do just that while also exploring a new city, focusing on sustainability work, and testing whether I’d enjoy working as a joiner instead of a founder.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Professor Kerry Siani, whose corporate finance (15.402) class I had the pleasure of taking. She artfully brought the cases we discussed in each class to life while also bringing in her varied personal experience, which made for vibrant in-class discussions. Most of all, she was an excellent teacher in the most literal sense – she was able to break down concepts, correct misunderstandings, and facilitate a collaborative environment, all while being supportive of students as whole humans, not just as students within her class. She’s one of the few professors I’ve ever had who can “be real” without detracting from the content of the class, whether the focus be about career trajectory, managing work-life balance, or finding purpose.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? Management of Services (15.768) taught by Professor of the Practice Zeynep Ton, who wrote the books, The Case for Good Jobs and The Good Jobs Strategy. She helped us understand how and why some of these operational systems seem to work differently than others, challenging a false dichotomy that businesses have to decide between people and profits. We explored how different business choices (e.g., higher pay, higher expectations, more slack in staffing) impact each other, ideally in a reinforcing way that creates a stable system that creates jobs people want while also generating profits that satisfy investors. That is not to say it is easy to do it – in fact most of the class is dedicated to understanding just how hard transformations like these can be. Her class has been the one that has inspired/equipped me most to be a different kind of business leader – one I can be proud of.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? MIT Sloan pre-functions (we refer to them as pre-F(x)s), which are non-academic trips led by second-year students before classes start, were the way I met most of my closest circle of friends. These trips are one of the ways that we truly connect with a diverse group of people within the MBA environment. You are somewhat randomly assigned to a trip, and the vast majority of students take part to meet people they otherwise wouldn’t share classes or extracurricular interests. Pre-F(x) is in line with the other functions we have during the school year, including the Sea-F(x) – the welcome back to school cruise in Boston Harbor – and the C-F(x)s – the culture functions where affinity clubs take turns hosting a party throughout the school year. The F(x) notation is the mathematical way of writing it, which is a nod to MIT’s broader “nerdiness” that I think adds to the experience!

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? I took all my classes at MIT Sloan. If I did it over, I would have prioritized cross-listing classes from across MIT and Harvard. I think the diversity of a business school classroom is rich, but fundamentally everyone in attendance is involved in the business world. Though I did sit in on a few classes across MIT’s campus and at Harvard, I ultimately never committed to one, and it feels like a missed experience that, in a world with do-overs, I would’ve spent more time digging into classes I would have liked to take.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? We did a case in 15.915 Business Strategies for a Sustainable Future on the construction of the business school building E62, which was built in the early 2000s when a green building was still on the bleeding edge. In particular, the focus was on building a sustainability business case to find win-win scenarios, but it was often more a battle to win over the hearts and minds versus the numbers. It ultimately took personal political capital to get some things done, and the numbers ended up working out because a new power generation to support the building’s needs wasn’t essential because the building is very energy efficient. Matt McCarthy, former CEO of Ben and Jerry’s, who spoke at MIT Sloan, said something that has stuck with me as I reflect on the E62 case: “Beware false dichotomies – who controls the frame controls the game.” I know that as I aim to align my career with a double/triple bottom line that I’ll be faced with those dichotomies, but the combination of Matt’s advice with the tangible example of the very building I go to every day was the most impactful case study I had in business school.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? Cambridge / Boston has the Charles River Promenade, which is a paved trail that goes for several miles in each direction from MIT Sloan. Going for a run has been a source of therapeutic reflection time. Having a place where I can do that without worrying about (too many) traffic lights brings me great joy.

What business leader do you admire most? Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia founder, is a business leader I admire for his approach to ethical capitalism, prioritizing people and the planet even when it wasn’t popular. I think it’s important for leaders to walk the walk, and he built the company with his values in mind (e.g., creating an environment where employees did not need to choose between work and wellbeing such as providing onsite childcare).

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? Many of my friends and I took classes in line with the analytics certificate, which includes a class led by Professor of the Practice Rama Ramakrishnan. Called Hands On Deep Learning (HODL), we learned the technical underpinnings of transformer architecture and ultimately built our own large language models and (basic) agents by the end of the half-semester long class, all the while learning where there are pitfalls in the application of AI/ML/DL. In using AI in that class to do the code building, I could, in a very hands-on way, I got to practice orchestrating AI versus being the executor.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? When I came into Sloan, I thought the folks I would most admire would be the ‘builders’ – the people that could take an idea and turn it into something tangible: for example, a company or a product. And that is a quality I still admire in people here. But I have been blown away by someone who is a different kind of builder: Matthew Toy.

Among all his other incredible qualities – caring, conscientious, curious, driven, fun, high achieving, humble, inclusive, intentional, self-aware, thoughtful—Matthew is deeply invested in personal growth, both for himself and for others. As a serial communications TA, it’s part of Matthew’s work within Sloan. However, it has also bled into his academic work as he has investigated what enables high performers to sustain high performance as an independent study. But more importantly, it’s in how he carries himself every day, in even the tiniest of day-to-day interactions. It is not easy to put that feeling into words, but it is easy to feel it when you meet him. He is a builder of character.

Approaching himself, his growth, and others’ growth with patience and grace requires a whole suite of soft skills that he possesses and continues to exercise. When you meet him, you quickly realize he is not someone chasing clout or prestige. He is chasing excellence. Matt Toy inspires me not just by what he can do. He inspires me by who he is, who he strives to become, and how he builds up those around him.

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

1) Work in Norway! I studied both the language and culture in college and have receive the opportunity to travel to Norway several times in business school, but it would be awesome to live and work there for a while.

2) Join a climate tech scale-up to help professionalize the business (e.g., in a chief of staff or head of strategy and operations type of role). That kind of experience will give me the opportunity to get my hands dirty and build while knowing the work I’m doing has an impact I can stand behind.

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

“Patrick Yeung is an MBA who approaches challenges with passion and is unafraid to embrace change. Patrick shared that he chose MIT Sloan to be a part of a community of students building the future. He has made a meaningful impact within the Sloan community in diverse areas including his role as Chief of Staff at this year’s ClimateCAP MBA Summit, serving as an MBA core accounting teaching assistant, organizing a study tour in the Nordic region, and leading several MBA-focused student groups. In these roles, Patrick has demonstrated strong leadership, reliability, and a collaborative approach that has fostered lasting partnerships with peers and administration alike. Patrick is also an avid athlete competing in Half Ironman competitions. He understands that businesses don’t need to choose between people and profits, and plans to put this belief in action after graduation. Patrick has been a true asset within the MIT Sloan community.”

Dawn Roberts
Senior Associate Director, Student Experience & Operations
MIT Sloan School of Management

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