Fortune 100 CEOs: When They Were MBA Students

 Indra K. Nooyi

When PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi was an MBA student at Yale’s School of Management she was “totally and completely broke.”

To several of these corporate chieftains, the MBA clearly opened doors that might have been shut if not for the degree. For Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, his 1974 MBA degree from Berkeley’s Haas School was critical. “I graduated in a recession and my MBA was my initial foot in the door,” he said in an interview with Berkeley’s alumni magazine. “You learn a very thorough, analytical methodology at Haas. We did not have many cases in those days. Instead, we relied heavily on a highly quantitative, data-driven approach to problem solving. That has worked extremely well for me in the high-tech industry.”

Or consider Target Corp. Chief Executive Greg Steinhafel, who graduated with a Kellogg MBA in 1979. “Kellogg was a life-shaping experience for me,” he told the school’s alumni magazine a few years ago. “The school was way out in front as an innovator in the team concept. The importance Kellogg placed on working collaboratively has been extremely valuable to me as a leader.”

Even when some classroom learning seemed theoretical at the time, the CEOs say it eventually paid off. John Watson, who has spent his career at Chevron and was named to lead the Fortune 3 company in January 2010, said the fundamental economic principles he learned as an MBA student at the University of Chicago continue to guide the way he analyzes problems, approaches issues, and leads his business. “I recall wondering just how much of what is taught here would have any relevance to the business world. And I’ve come back with the answer: a great deal.”

For some, going to business school was a major sacrifice. PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, who graduated from Yale’s School of Management in 1980, recalls seeing a magazine advertisement for the school while still living in India. She liked the fact that the school’s dean was not an academic but had an industry background. She applied, was accepted with financial aid, but was surprised that her parents agreed to allow her to go. “It was unheard of for a good, conservative, south Indian Brahmin girl to do this,” she once told the Financial Times. “It would make her an absolutely unmarriageable commodity after that.”

It was a difficult experience. In an interview last year at Yale with dean Sharon Oster, Nooyi recalled how she was virtually broke in her first year as an MBA student. “Those were very tough times.,” she said.  “At the end of the month, if I saved $5. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I was totally and complete broke. I had no money to buy clothes. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I worked the front desk of Hadley Hall from midnight to 5 a.m. at $3.35 an hour, the minimum wage. That money was the grocery money for the week.”

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