5 Questions With: Boston Questrom’s Leadership Team

Bonus: 5 Questions with Catherine Fazio, Associate Dean of Residential MBA Programs

Catherine Fazio is a Clinical Assistant Professor and Associate Dean of MBA Programs at Boston University Questrom School of Business. Much of her work is an intersection of law, business strategy, and innovation. Before joining Questrom, she served as Managing Director of the MIT Lab for Innovation Science and Policy. In the past, she’s been a partner at Kirkland & Ellis – advising clients on complex business issues including mergers and acquisitions, antitrust matters, arbitration, and risk management.

Fazio has also served in leadership roles with organizations including the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture and the Atrium School in Watertown, Massachusetts. She holds a J.D. from Stanford University, an MBA from MIT’s Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership, and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

P&Q: What is one thing your school does differently today than three years ago because of shifts in the economy, technology, or other forces?

Fazio: A lot has changed in three years, and at Questrom we are constantly innovating in response. One development that stands out is the launch and rapid growth of the Questrom Consulting Lab. Rather than simply asking students to solve hypothetical business problems, we are increasingly creating opportunities for them to work on consequential problems for real organizations, with real clients, deliverables, and expectations.

The model brings together talented graduate students, experienced faculty advisors, and professional project management. For example, our partnership with SharkNinja created a dedicated AI & Analytics Lab in which students work on AI-driven and data-powered solutions aligned with the company’s strategic priorities. Other teams have developed a private-LLM intelligence engine for Sikich, conducted market analysis for Terumo BCT in Africa, used predictive modeling to improve margins for Movado, and applied digital marketing analytics to help LG improve online conversion.

What excites me most is the combination of student talent and professional accountability. Students are not merely demonstrating what they know; they are learning to manage ambiguity, clients, teams, deadlines, and deliverables.

P&Q: How is AI woven into your curriculum? Please cite specific courses so readers can see how students learn to use the tools and apply best practices.

Fazio: AI is woven into our MBA curriculum at multiple levels. Faculty are integrating generative AI into courses across marketing, analytics, strategy, management, communications, and career development, not simply teaching students how to use a tool, but asking how AI changes the work managers do.

For example, our Management and Organizations core class uses dynamic cases that allow students to engage with evolving managerial situations. In Leadership Communications, students leverage GenAI tools to practice presenting themselves, delivering executive briefings, and responding to questions. We have also launched an MBA faculty collaborative to help faculty push this kind of curricular experimentation further.

At the same time, students can take courses specifically centered on AI. AS one example, Integration of Generative AI in Business Practice examines how organizations identify high-value applications, develop implementation roadmaps, manage AI projects, and navigate legal, intellectual-property, ethical, organizational, and operational challenges. This year we are also introducing two courses that teach students how to build AI agents and leverage agentic AI.

Our goal is to empower students to create value using AI through leveraging their judgment, creativity, context, and leadership.

P&Q: What does your school offer that isn’t available elsewhere on campus or at other schools?

Fazio: One distinctive feature of our MBA is the way we use residency-format courses. Students can take a complete course in an intensive format spanning one or two weekends. But the residency is more than compressed scheduling. We design groups of residency courses around shared themes and intentionally create connections among them.

Students from different classes come together for integrated discussions and panels with alumni, executives, and other experts. We connect residency programming to Questrom’s institutes and centers and, where possible, to industry and academic events taking place around the School. The result is an experience that crosses the boundaries of an individual course: students might explore a problem through the lenses of leadership, negotiation, law, strategy, or technology and then come together to hear how practitioners confront those same tensions in the real world.

The format creates something else that is equally important: concentrated time to build community across our full time and part-time programs. Part time students who are balancing demanding careers with an MBA can immerse themselves for a weekend—not only in a subject, but in the intellectual and professional life of the School. For both full time and part-time students, the format combines academic intensity, interdisciplinary learning, practitioner engagement, and relationship-building in a way we think is particularly powerful.

P&Q: What’s one of the most important things students learn at your school that can’t be found in the curriculum?

Fazio: A strong community is something you build rather than something you simply join.

MBA students arrive focused on their own goals: what they want to learn, where they want their careers to go, and whom they need to meet. We welcome that determination and drive. Over their time here, I think many many discover something even more powerful. Your own opportunities expand when you invest in other people’s success. Celebrate the classmate who lands the job. Make the introduction that helps someone else. Share what you know. Ask for help when you need it, and be generous when someone asks the same of you.

There is another lesson embedded in that: you have to allow yourself to be known. People cannot advocate for you, connect you to opportunities, or recognize where you might contribute if they do not know what excites you, what you are good at, and what you hope to do.

Those lessons do not appear on a syllabus. They emerge through teams, student organizations, conversations with faculty and alumni, and friendships. But they may ultimately be among the most enduring things students take from an MBA.

P&Q: What skill is becoming dramatically more valuable for business students, and what’s becoming less valuable?

Fazio: Constructive critical thinking, and the ability to communicate that thinking, is becoming dramatically more valuable.

Generative AI can quickly produce a summary, analysis, presentation, or recommendation. That means the premium is shifting from simply producing an answer to knowing whether it is the right answer: What assumptions underlie it? What is missing? Which evidence matters? How would someone with a different perspective challenge it? And, most importantly, what should we actually do?

I use the word “constructive” deliberately. Critique alone is not enough. Business leaders have to take imperfect information, competing perspectives, and increasingly AI-generated analysis and move from “here is what is wrong” to “here is what we should do next.” Then they have to communicate that judgment in a way that brings other people along.

What is becoming less valuable, therefore, is the ability to produce a polished first-pass answer as an end in itself. AI has made that easier. The differentiator is increasingly framing the right question, interrogating the output, applying context and judgment, making a decision, and communicating it persuasively.

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