Sahana Adeline K

IE Business School

“Chartered Accountant turned sustainability MBA bringing empathy, energy and a little likeable chaos everywhere.”

Hometown: Chennai, India

Fun fact about yourself: I host game nights with the energy of a military drill sergeant. Grown adults, some a decade older than me, have admitted they are a little scared of me when I bring out the rulebook.

I judge a place by its food more than its tourist attractions. I collect friends and food memories.

My friend group looks like a UN summit, every continent, every background, every story you can imagine.

Undergraduate School and Degree:

Stella Maris College, Chennai, India – Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting and Finance)

Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, New Delhi – Chartered Accountancy

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? My last full-time role was at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as an Articled Audit Assistant. Alongside which, I also ran a part-time self-employed tax consultancy.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? I worked as an independent tax consultant, filed tax returns and advised individual clients on tax planning.

Where will you be working after graduation? My goal is to join a Big 4 firm as an ESG Auditor, or to step into a Sustainability Consultant or Compliance Officer role at a multinational company. Either path puts me exactly where I want to be, at the intersection of financial rigour and sustainability impact.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: Was awarded the

High-Achieving Women in Finance Scholarship, and am actively involved in the

Sustainability Club and Net Impact Club, engaging with topics at the intersection of business and impact. I am also a member of the India Club and Culinary Club, building a cross-cultural community and contributing to a more inclusive student experience.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? Being the youngest in my class came with a quiet kind of pressure. Many of my classmates brought years sometimes decades of professional experience into every classroom discussion, and I was conscious of that gap from day one. What I am most proud of is not only completing Term 1 with an honours grade, but also earning a meaningful place in those conversations.

More than the grade, what has stayed with me is the feedback from my peers. More than once, they have said they value my perspective during discussions. In fact, a running joke in class is that no one can quite believe they are debating with someone born in the 2000s. Apparently, I think, speak, and argue like I belong to an entirely different generation. I have been told I sound ‘way older’ more times than I can count and I have chosen to take that as a compliment.

Being the only person in the room whose birth year starts with a 20 and not a 19, still being respected and taken seriously academically and intellectually is the achievement I am most proud of so far in business school.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? In my second year at PwC, I was entrusted with leading the revenue audit for a high-priority client during a period of significant team turnover, including changes in the engagement partner and lead managers. Instead of waiting for direction, I took initiative by revamping outdated testing procedures and co- leading the final presentation to the PwC US team. The engagement was completed with high-quality deliverables three weeks ahead of schedule.

For this, I received an “Above and Beyond” award. What made the experience especially meaningful was not only the recognition, but the fact that I was the youngest person on the team to have been trusted with such a high level of responsibility. Successfully delivering under pressure and receiving appreciation from the new engagement partner, the US team, and my manager remains my proudest professional accomplishment to date.

Why did you choose this business school? I entered the program with a clear goal:

transitioning from core audit into ESG auditing. With a strong foundation in finance and audit already in place, what I needed was the sustainability expertise to build on top of it. IE’s strong reputation and top ranking in sustainability-focused business education made it the natural choice.

And honestly, the prospect of spending a year living in Madrid did not hurt either.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Professor Luis Diestre, who taught Strategy in Term 1, stood out for the way he facilitated case discussions. I would arrive in class having read the case and feeling well-prepared, only for him to steer the conversation into perspectives I hadn’t even considered. It kept me on my toes every single session.

More importantly, he had a way of weaving the numbers into the qualitative reasoning, constantly reinforcing that every strategic insight has to be grounded in data. That approach resonated directly to my background as a Chartered Accountant, and it has genuinely reshaped the way I approach problem-solving.

What was your favourite course as an MBA? It is ESG Performance Reporting course within my concentration right now. I entered IE with a clear career goal, but also with some nerves about whether the course content would truly match the expectations I had built around it. It not only met those expectations, it exceeded them.

Mr. Silviu’s approach was practical from the very first session. He taught the subject by starting with the end goal: where we want to be in our careers and then working backwards to the skills, frameworks, and competencies needed to get there. He also ensured that we explored reporting standards relevant to the countries we come from and intend to work in, making the learning feel real and applicable rather than purely theoretical.

Within the first few sessions of the course, I am not just engaged, I am genuinely excited about building a career in this field. It confirmed everything I had hoped for, and that level of clarity is hard to put a price on.

What was your favourite MBA event or tradition at your business school? Music Fridays with the IE band. Every Friday after classes, the band would play, beers would be handed out, and everyone would just gather and wind down together. After a week of lectures, assignments, and pressure, it was exactly the kind of pause you needed.

What I loved most about it was the mix of people it brought together. You would meet people you never crossed paths with during the week, people outside your cohort and classes, and somehow, with music playing, genuine conversations would naturally unfold. The playlist was always international, with something for everyone to relate to, which felt perfectly reflective of IE’s diverse student community. Those Fridays were a reminder that IE does not just speak about building community, it creates the conditions for it to happen.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? I would have started having one-on-one coffee conversations much earlier. In Term 1, socialising mostly happened in big group settings: parties, events and gatherings. Even though they were fun, it rarely felt like I had genuinely connected with anyone.

In Term 2, I made a deliberate change. I started meeting individuals for coffee, just the two of us, and those conversations were a completely different experience. We spoke about our backgrounds, our ambitions, what we hoped to achieve after the MBA. That is where the real connections started to take shape. I wish I had started in Term 1, but I am glad I course-corrected when I did.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? The Pepsi case in my Business Governance and Sustainability course in Term 2. We examined the gap between the world’s actual calorie needs and the sheer volume of calories Pepsi was producing: a gap that could only be bridged through aggressive marketing. That led to a challenging conversation about whether the responsibility lies with the company, the government, or the consumer making the final choice.

The case offered no clear-cut answer, and I believe that was intentional. Instead, it pushed us to reflect on the kind of business professionals we want to become. I believe profit is a legitimate and necessary objective, but not at an unlimited ethical cost. The question of where the line is and who gets to draw it is something I now carry into every conversation about the work I want to do and the kind of company I hope to be part of.

What business leader do you admire most? Ratan Tata. What I admire most is not just the scale of what he built, but the way he chose to build it. He led one of India’s largest business groups while staying anchored in integrity, long-term vision, and a genuine commitment to giving back…without ever making it feel like performative corporate PR

Two things stand out to me in particular. First, it was his openness to learning. By working closely with a young millennial assistant, it showed he genuinely valued that perspective and reflects the kind of leader he was. Second, it was his humility. For someone who had every reason to be otherwise, he remained remarkable grounded throughout his life. That blend of ambition, empathy, and humility is the kind of leader I aspire to be.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? IE has integrated AI across its curriculum, which reflects the direction the professional world is moving in. Most of our professors created custom chats that helped us get a deeper understanding of topics that could not fully be discussed in class due to time constraints. This helped us master the topics we were interested in. In Term 1, we even had a dedicated course on using AI for productivity, and the core message was clear and practical: AI isn’t here to replace you, it’s here to help you perform better…if you know how to use it effectively.

That perspective fundamentally changed the way I approach AI tools. Instead of viewing them as shortcuts, I now use them to think faster, research more deeply, and communicate ideas more clearly. The goal is to become the kind of professional who knows how to work alongside AI not the one who gets left behind by it.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Iryna Kotovych. She is someone I genuinely look up to, and I do not say that lightly.

From day one, she challenged professors. It was not to be confrontational, but because she had strong convictions and was not afraid to voice them – respectfully and with substance. That kind of confidence in a room full of experienced professionals is rare, and it took me a while to stop feeling a little intimidated by it.

What surprised me most, though, was how warm she is outside the classroom. She’s the kind of person who would pause whatever she’s doing just to sit with me for lunch, simply because she knew I didn’t like eating alone. That contrast: being an absolute force in academic and professional settings while also being genuinely kind and generous in personal moments is something I deeply admire. She has influenced how I think about my career and the kind of person I want to be, and I hope to carry some of her strength with me long after the MBA ends.

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

1. Become a go-to ESG Compliance specialist.

As sustainability regulation tightens globally, my goal is to become the kind of expert that organisations turn to when they need someone who understands both the financial rigour and the sustainability substance behind compliance. I want to contribute meaningfully to ESG conversations at an international level and be genuinely valuable in helping businesses navigate this space.

2. Earn a place on a “30 Under 30” or “35 Under 35” list that recognises leaders making a real impact in sustainability or finance.

Not for the recognition itself, but because it would signal that my work is visible and visibility creates influence. Being recognised would mean that my work is shaping conversations and encouraging others in sustainability or finance to think and act differently. That level of impact is what I’m working towards.

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

“I taught Sahana Adeline K in my Strategy course during Term 1 of the IE MBA program, and she is exactly the kind of student this recognition was designed for.

What I remember most about Sahana is not her grade — though she finished in the top 20% of a highly competitive cohort — but the way she showed up every single day. Her section was, to put it charitably, one of the most vocal I have taught in recent years: a group that rarely needed encouragement to speak and occasionally needed encouragement to stop. In that environment, what set Sahana apart was not volume but quality, and not just quality but joy. She participated with a kind of genuine enthusiasm that is surprisingly rare — the sort that signals a student is actually thinking, not simply performing. She engaged with ideas as if they mattered to her personally, built on her peers’ contributions with generosity, and brought a warmth to the room that made others more willing to take intellectual risks.

That disposition, I would argue, is the thread that runs through everything Sahana has done. Her background — Chartered Accountant, three years leading cross-functional audit teams at PwC, over a decade of volunteer work in mental health and community relief — is impressive on paper. But what makes it meaningful is the consistency of character it reflects: someone who takes her responsibilities seriously, invests in the people around her, and approaches new environments with curiosity rather than caution. That is precisely what the IE MBA demands, and precisely what Sahana delivers.”

Luis Diestre
Full Professor in Strategy
IE Business School, Madrid, Spain

DON’T MISS: MBAS TO WATCH: CLASS OF 2026

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