Holly Cramer

University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business

“A curious and enthusiastic explorer, pursuing a world with dignity at its core.”

Hometown: San Diego, CA

Fun Fact About Yourself: I made a short film that was admitted to the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Undergraduate School and Major: UC Berkeley, History 

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: International Catholic Migration Commission, Humanitarian Assistance Program Manager

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: I managed a program that delivered over one million food parcels to displaced people in Southern Syria during active conflict.

What quality best describes the MBA classmates you’ve met so far and why? Character! It has only been a few weeks together and I’m so impressed by the genuine depth of character in everyone I’ve met.

Berkeley Haas is founded on four Defining Leadership Principles: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself. Which pillar resonates most with you and why? I truly admire all four principles, and I think they’re optimized when they all work together. If I had to choose one, I’ve been very motivated by “Question the Status Quo.” My most influential experiences have all come after asking, “Why not?” or “Are you sure?” to those who tell me how the world works. For example, after high school, I worked in different countries abroad while I considered whether higher education was the right choice for me. And like most of my peers growing up after 9/11 in America, I was taught that the Middle East was dangerous—so I lived there for four years. If society upholds certainties that “this path is good” or “this path is bad,” I usually can’t help but question it.

I’ve already met so many peers at Haas who share this type of curiosity. In the communications class at orientation, the professor read us a quote by James Baldwin that says, “You have to go the way your blood beats.” My classmates and I aren’t afraid to have our blood beat in a new direction.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key factor that led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA and why was it so important to you? Culture. Berkeley Haas operates on specific values and principles that shape what leadership should look like, and that vision really aligns with my ideals. When applying, I could feel this culture in the students, the programming, and the defining principles. If you’re applying, examine the priorities of the school. Ask yourself what kind of leaders and people graduate from the school.

What club or activity are you looking most forward to in business school? So many things! Socially, I’m so excited to get to know this community of classmates and professors in a thoughtful way through activities like deep-dive dinners. Academically, I’m really looking forward to being back in the classroom and learning completely new things. I’ve always thought math wasn’t my strongest ability, but I want to plunge into my quant courses and work hard to feel fluent in the end. I’m also hoping to bring what I’ve learned about working in under-resourced and high-conflict areas to ground some of the MBA curricula into relevant tools for service provision in environments such as refugee camps, migrant host communities, and border crossings.

What was the most challenging question you were asked during the admissions process? Putting self-examination into words is always challenging, especially when it will be evaluated. It can feel like a great personal risk to put yourself out there. It was helpful to remember that the admissions people aren’t trying to trick or judge you, just learn about you.

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point in your career? There are many opportunities in the field of humanitarian assistance to leverage the MBA skill set to improve service delivery and ultimately help displaced people to live with greater dignity. Areas such as compliance, supply chain management, and design thinking all exist in the humanitarian field but have a great potential to be elevated to some of the standards we see in the private sector. I’m also pursuing a Master’s in Public Health at Haas (MBA/MPH), hoping to focus on epidemiology and global public health. I want to directly apply the MBA toolkit to these problems and to contextualize MBA thinking for under-resourced and high conflict areas.

What other MBA programs did you apply to?  NYU, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Yale

How did you determine your fit at various schools? Aside from chatting with current and past students, I felt that a school’s application process also gave me an understanding of how good our match would be. I was so challenged and excited about Haas’s six-word question essay that I actually enjoyed writing it. I figure a school that has this type of homework is a place that I’m drawn to already. Remember that it’s a mutual process: you want to find the school that fits you, not fit yourself to the school.

What was your defining moment and how did it shape who you are? My defining moment was in my late teenage years, when I took some time off after high school to understand what I wanted to do next. During that time, I put myself into new environments completely outside my comfort zone. I worked in rural Mexico at a women’s substance rehabilitation center in a cleaner and childcare role. I also worked in Peru and Cambodia as an English teacher after receiving my Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate. These places taught me about the universality of human experiences, the importance of preserving individual dignity, and the paths of individual and societal healing after trauma. It also confronted my own privilege and limitations. I was uncomfortable a lot of the time—tired and homesick and just generally clueless—but that’s also when my best learning happened.

Where do you see yourself in ten years? Solving problems big and small, being as creative as I can be, and living fiercely.