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24 May 2022, 07:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Ricardo Perez-Truglia wants to help MBAs and companies make better decisions |
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First and foremost a behavioral economist, Ricardo Perez-Truglia, PhD, is happiest when the “common sense” concepts he teaches in Microeconomics influence the decisions made by his students in the Evening & Weekend MBA and MBA for Executives programs, whether they are in the office or at the grocery store. Named a Sloan Research Fellow in 2020—an award given by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise—Perez-Truglia focuses his research on the intersection of behavioral economics, political economy, and public economics. Recent publications have explored the effects of salary comparisons and salary transparency, and an unusual approach to studying the gender pay gap. What do you hope students will take away from your core Microeconomics class? My most important goal is that students learn a way of thinking. Microeconomics should not be about memorizing formulas and ‘econo-slang’ terms like opportunity cost or market equilibrium. Of course, we talk about those things, but we do it in the context of using common sense, logic, and data to make decisions. In the end, Micro is about critical thinking. Not long ago, a former student told me that when she was at the supermarket buying groceries, she looked at the prices and products and she couldn’t stop thinking about our classroom discussions. Jokingly, she said, it was like I was inside her head. I love that my class changes the way students look at the world and make decisions. That is exactly what I’m aiming for. What is a favorite classroom exercise or assignment? I try to flip the classroom. Rather than lecturing, I ask students to watch asynchronous videos on various topics and frameworks ahead of class. When we gather in the classroom, we hit the ground running with discussions and group activities. The active learning happens in the classroom, by applying the concepts. What I enjoy most about teaching is when we apply abstract concepts to very practical situations that they may be reading about in the newspapers or encountering on the job or in their daily lives. For example, to teach about market equilibrium, I might ask the simple question “What’s going to happen to the price of bitcoin?” Working in small groups, they apply the market equilibrium model to this question and then share their insights. The groups tend to come up with different answers. That is appropriate, given that the correct answer for almost any microeconomic question is “It depends.” How would you describe Haas MBA students? I am always struck by how much people care about others and how much they care about having rewarding jobs, personally, but also for the larger society. Early in each term, I ask the question: “What makes a firm valuable?” In economics, there is one concrete answer. A firm’s value is based on its ability to make profits now and into the future. Haas students, however, typically offer a myriad of answers. They want to take into account a firm’s contributions to the environment, to the community, to equity. I’m super happy about that. We have meaningful, thoughtful conversations about things you might not expect in a Micro class: the gender pay gap, minimum wage, rent control, antitrust, how market power affects consumers. Haas students are not the cartoon MBAs who only want to make more money. They also want to be good parents, good to others, good voters. I relate to them, and that makes teaching my class all the more rewarding and enjoyable. Your research explores some of those concepts. How do you connect your research to the classroom? One of my research topics is the gender pay gap. In my Micro class, we do an exercise on the topic. The exercise uses data that relates to the students directly: the earnings after graduating from an MBA. The data shows that female MBAs earn almost the same as male MBAs immediately after graduation. When I ask students what they think the pay differential is 15 years later, they typically estimate that female MBAs earn between 10 and 20% less than male MBAs. It actually is closer to 50%. We talk about how societal and workplace norms—women staying home to raise children, male workers socializing with male managers—combine to frustrate the progression of talented female workers. I also study salary transparency. The students relate a lot to this topic, especially when they negotiate their salary or have to decide whether to change jobs. There is a lot we can learn about transparency policies in other countries. For example, Norway has had salary transparency for decades. You could look up anyone’s salary, but you had to go to the tax office and page through big books. Now, however, the internet has made the data so much more accessible. I want to understand the implications of these transparency policies, positive and negative, intended and unintended. We are beginning to understand that transparency is not an off/on switch. You need to think about how much to disclose and how you do it: Aggregated or dis-aggregated? How do you give people the information they need to make decisions, without damaging people’s feelings of self-worth? We need to maximize the benefit and minimize the harm. What new course would you design for the MBA curriculum? It would be cool to teach an elective in behavioral economics. I would introduce the basic principles of behavioral economics, to help students recognize the biases that lead to poor decision-making. It is well-documented that individuals tend to make large, systematic mistakes in making important decisions, like choosing a health care plan or deciding how much to save for retirement. What hasn’t been as well scrutinized is how companies, even big firms, make very, very big mistakes. After all, a firm doesn’t decide; individuals working there decide—humans who are prone to error. And when big companies make mistakes, the consequences ripple out to consumers, employees, and their families. I think that the insights from behavioral economics could help students to avoid those kinds of mistakes. The class also would be a good excuse to teach students more about the scientific method. These days companies are more and more open to running experiments to find out what works and what doesn’t. Learning how to design a good experiment is a skill that can create a lot of value. The expertise and insight your professors bring helps deepen and enhance your MBA journey. By selecting a top school with top-notch professors, you maximize your experience.  Read more from the Take 5 with a professor series:
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21 Jun 2022, 07:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Christine Parlour on the radical importance of Cryptokitties and other fintech developments |
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Before entering academia, Professor Christine Parlour worked in reinsurance and also in securities settlement, two jobs that focus on the mechanics of how things happen. That sparked her interest in the “plumbing” of financial systems. Now, the holder of the Sylvan C. Coleman Chair in Finance and Accounting, she researches and teaches topics related to recent “radical” changes to the traditional finance system, like decentralized finance. How do you approach Fintech in your class on that topic? My role is to provide the background and clear explanations of general systems and principles of fintech. I introduce students to how fintech firms work, which is often quite different from more traditional firms. We discuss concepts like two-sided markets, platforms, and platform competition, and increasingly, cryptocurrencies and blockchain. The goal is for them to translate those concepts into the sector they already know or the sector they want to work in. Teaching [MBAs] is like an exhilarating game of ping-pong." How has the class evolved since you began teaching it? What I teach has shifted radically because the material and industry are moving so quickly. Each time I teach the course, I update it and teach different topics. So even though it goes under the same course title, it is never the same course twice. Five years ago, I focused mostly on two-sided markets and platforms because at that time, fintech was all about payment systems. Now the class and my research are much more focused on cryptocurrency and decentralized finance, or DeFi, because that is where fintech has moved. Stablecoins, which are digital currencies pegged to fiat currencies, are one example. According to a recent JP Morgan report, Tether is now one of the largest purchasers of short-term commercial paper. That is a massive footprint, and it is just one stablecoin. Regulators are taking notice and getting worried because cryptocurrencies are outside regulators’ reach, in essence doing business on a beach in the Caribbean. NFTs (nonfungible tokens) are another development. The very first NFT, created by Dapper Labs, was Cryptokitty. You could—still can—buy and sell kitties and even mate them with other kitties on the blockchain. OpenSea, which enabled auctioning Cryptokitties, became a massive business. What lessons can MBAs take from Cryptokitties and apply in more traditional businesses? While NFTs may sound silly, the fintech concepts behind them have serious implications for businesses. Right now, for most businesses—large and small—fintech has its biggest impact on the backend. It affects the giant machinery of payments, value transfer, and supply chains—all the elements that make an economy work. The Square payment dongle is a good example. That was revolutionary. That technology changed who can take credit cards and what it costs. What are the rewards of teaching MBAs? MBA students have already had a successful career and thrived in a stressful work environment. They have experienced how the economy works and have their own perspectives on what is right and wrong about it. They bring that to the classroom. They take what they are learning, turn it around and upside down to understand how it would have worked in their last job or will work in their new job. Teaching them is like an exhilarating game of ping-pong. Why should MBA students embrace their finance classes? Finance is at the heart of what you want a business to do: transfer and store value. Understanding how that happens is of the first order for any business. It is fundamental. There is a logic about how value moves and is stored. History is littered with bad financial decisions. Sometimes you make the wrong decision. Sometimes you make the right decision, and it still turns out badly. When you understand finance, you are far better prepared to make the best decisions you can at the time with the information you have available. The expertise and insight your professors bring helps deepen and enhance your MBA journey. By selecting a top school with top-notch professors, you maximize your experience. Read more from the Take 5 with a professor series:
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19 Jul 2022, 07:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Kevin Coldiron brings a storied career into the classroom |
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Kevin Coldiron brings his wealth of experience and a treasure trove of stories to the classroom. In the mid-1990s, while at Barclays Global Investors—now part of BlackRock, where he serves on the Investment Review Committee—Kevin was part of the team that popularized factor investing. He then cofounded and managed the Algert Coldiron quantitative equity hedge fund for a decade. Now the owner of Rockridge Capital, LLC, he also writes a regular column for Forbes, exploring topics that range from the wealth tax to teenaged stock speculators. What is your Dynamic Asset Management course about? Asset management has two functions: The first is stewardship, essentially looking after someone’s capital. The second is search, which happens when you have a strategy that you want to follow, and you need to find the best person to execute it. Both are activities that a range of people in an organization—quants and managers—might need to know about. That is why I always have a few MBA students in what is technically an MFE (Masters in Financial Engineering) class. We all learn best from stories, narratives and examples. When I talk about a theory or principle, I link it to a real-world example, a story. This helps students remember. I know this works because grads have emailed me when they use a concept to tell me they remember the story that I used to illustrate it. What is your favorite class assignment or exercise? The entire class builds toward the final assignment, when we look at how the Canadian Pension Fund, one of the most sophisticated and respected investors in the world, applies the ideas we’ve covered. We comb through its annual report and financial statements to understand how the fund executes on what we explored in class. For their last project, teams of students take on a client—a pension fund, for example—and decide how they would manage the client’s money. The deliverable is a strategy document that outlines the problem the client faces, and the team’s strategy designed to help the client fund its liabilities. The assignment makes the students think about how to apply theories and ideas in the real world. Then they present their ideas in a strategy document that the client can understand. It has to be readable, not just pages of charts. It has to tell a story. The plumbing of the financial markets has completely changed." You were a successful hedge fund manager for a long time. Why do you teach now? Teaching forces me to stay current on new research and to translate those new ideas for students. Before I can translate, I have to understand it for myself. I like the intellectual demands of that. It’s also fun to get to know the students. I have ongoing relationships with many of them. A couple helped out on a book I co-authored with Jamie Lee and Tim Lee, The Rise of Carry. One grad did a lot of work on computer programs, while another read it cover to cover and gave feedback. What do you hope students will take away from your class? A set of tools to use when faced with a problem, whether that is creating a strategy or finding someone to execute a strategy. I also hope they will develop the mental habit of challenging basic assumptions. Like the Defining Leadership Principle has it, Challenging the Status Quo. My favorite part of class is the last hour when I go through 10 takeaways from the course. These are references that can serve as a template for a career in finance, distilled from my experience in the market. That is fun and practical. If you could design a new class for the MBA curriculum, what would it be? The plumbing of the financial markets has completely changed in the last 10 to 20 years. Central banks are operating differently. ETFs didn’t exist; now they are a core part of the markets. Things like the GameStop meme may seem frivolous but have real-world implications. Investors and people raising capital need a holistic understanding of how the plumbing works because there is reflexivity from the plumbing of the markets into the real-world economy. To mix a metaphor, the class would take the financial markets’ engine apart, look at all of the pieces, understand how they all work separately and as part of a bigger system, and what happens when you drive it. I would call the course The Modern Financial Ecosystem. The expertise and insight your professors bring helps deepen and enhance your MBA journey. By selecting a top school with top-notch professors, you maximize your experience. Read more from the Take 5 with a professor series:
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11 Aug 2022, 06:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Making a measured pivot to venture capital |
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In her second year in the Evening & Weekend MBA program, Atusa Sadeghi, MBA 22, started thinking about leaving a legacy. She did... a seven-figure legacy. No, not a donation, but as co-founder of a venture capital fund that represents “Cal students investing in Cal students.” She and classmates Kevin Chang and Dogakan Toka, both MBA 22, came up with the idea when they realized the high number of unicorns (start-ups valued at more than $1 billion) incubated at UC Berkeley. “We knew so many people who wanted to invest, but students don’t have much disposable income. Only by creating a fund could we have an impact and attract the attention of founders,” she said. Chang and Sadeghi, assisted by Kurt Beyer, who taught their Entrepreneurship class, formed Courtyard Ventures as a limited liability company. Its name honors the spot on campus where countless connections have been made among Haas students. Today, the fund has nearly 200 investors, and Kevin is the managing partner, guiding the work of Haas students who serve as partners and associates. Atusa, who initially trained and worked as a professional mechanical engineer in the mining industry, knew an MBA would eventually be part of her professional journey. “As much as I loved being on the technical design and operations side, I was always fascinated by the details of how a project was sourced, planned, and developed.” Working at the Canadian engineering and construction management firm SNC-Lavalin gave Atusa experience in the complete life cycle of several multi-million-dollar projects, and she met industry leaders who remain her mentors. But, after six years, she knew that “to become a more well-rounded engineer, I needed to work onsite as a permanent field employee. I wanted to work alongside the construction and operation team to learn first-hand what the gaps are in our design, the pain points we engineers, who typically work from the home office, don’t see.” Her next stop was at JDS Energy & Mining, a smaller firm that allowed her to experience the entrepreneurial side of project management and engineering consulting as the engineering manager overseeing the design and commissioning of a gold mine and bauxite mine in Guyana. There, she was part of ”a lean team. We worked long hours in harsh environments, but we enjoyed every minute of it. The company culture promoted innovative thinking and collaboration across disciplines and functions.”  When she applied and was accepted at Berkeley Haas, she also jumped at the opportunity to work at Shell USA. This was not only another step along the path to blending her business acumen and engineering skills, it was a leap toward her goal of becoming an integral contributor in the climate tech space, specifically, mining-related technologies. As a technology director in Shell USA’s Mining and Decarbonization sector, she concentrates on identifying start-ups with innovative technology that can reduce inefficiencies and improve sustainability in mining operations. Still eager to add direct VC investing to her toolbox, Atusa parlayed a 10-week MBA internship at Blue Bear Capital into a relationship that has endured after graduation. Atusa was introduced to the firm, which invests in high-growth technology companies across the energy, infrastructure, and climate industries, at an on-campus event. “I was so impressed with Carolin Funk, a Blue Bear partner. We had so many similarities. She is what I want to be,” Atusa said. During her internship, Atusa created a market map and an investment thesis for companies exploring for base and precious metals, battery minerals, and rare earth elements—one of today’s hottest mining sectors. Now employed part-time as a senior venture associate, she continues to work with the deal team, exploring new opportunities while closely supporting existing portfolio companies. As co-president of the Haas Venture Capital Club in her second year, Atusa further embraced her passion for leaving a legacy. She and her co-president “shook things up” by creating a stronger student VC community, strengthening relationships with Haas alumni, and promoting collaboration with nearby business schools. “The VC world is small. It is based on strong, deep relationships. We are certain to work with each other as well later in our careers. Why not start building those relationships while we’re still students?” she reasoned. Atusa also participated in the Venture Capital Investment Competition where her team represented Berkeley at the global finals. She was recognized with a Cheit Award for outstanding teaching as the graduate student instructor in Kurt Beyer’s Entrepreneurship class. “For a VC, knowing how entrepreneurs think is critical. Kurt had great insights into that mindset as an entrepreneur himself,” Atusa said. She also represented Berkeley as the 2021 recipient of the Financial Woman of San Francisco Scholarship.  Describing herself as a “crazy networker,” Atusa quickly found a community at Berkeley Haas. “Arriving as an international student, I had no connections here, but it was so easy to form strong bonds with my classmates and students in the other MBA programs. I felt welcomed right away. As clichéd as it sounds, I have to say, some of my strongest friendships have formed during my time at Haas.” It was hearing about her classmates’ personal and professional journeys in classes like Leadership Communication that gave Atusa the confidence to tell her own story and take pride in it. She has come a long way from being a young female engineer who was actively discouraged from going to remote mining locations to the tenacious, self-assured, and astute professional intent on building a long-term career in a role where she can “pour all of my passion, experience, and skills into creating a more sustainable future.” Atusa agrees with one of her favorite professors, Lucas Davis, “who taught our Energy Environmental Marketing class, that ‘ strategy setting and decision making rely on having a good understanding of how markets work, including environmental policies and climate change.’ Today we are building novel solutions with a better understanding of our global climate market. This makes my job, as a technical ESG VC enthusiast so much more exciting.” Interested in making your own career pivot? An MBA from a top business school can help you grow your network and leadership skills so you can take the next step toward a fulfilling career. 
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16 Aug 2022, 10:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Building villages to balance family and career |
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Kadidia Konaté, MBA 24, has learned that saying “yes” is essential to success as a parent, an MBA student, and an entrepreneur. “I don’t say no to help. I say yes to anyone who can help me.” That could be a parent willing to take her daughter to a school event or a professor offering advice on her start-up. And she is getting better at asking for help. It is easy to ask her six-year-old twins (a boy and a girl) to play with their two-year-old sister while she studies. “They are very easy-going,” she says. “And I don’t even have to ask my husband to help out. He participates fully in our home life.” Kadidia also answers with a resounding “yes!” when anyone asks her if a parent can succeed in an MBA program. “Yes, you can do it. You will not be the first or the last. You are capable; be confident.” Up to this point, Kadidia’s career has been very technical, grounded in math, engineering, and computer science. As a lead data scientist at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, or NERSC, she collects data on how NERSC’s supercomputers are being used and analyzes it to predict and optimize future usage. She calls it “orchestrating the systems.” Even before enrolling in the Berkeley Haas Evening & Weekend MBA program, Kadidia had taken her first steps toward entrepreneurship, and she knew that the success of her start-ups depended on her ability to understand and leverage the language of business. She was attracted to Berkeley Haas for its networking opportunities and the deep resources available for entrepreneurs, as well as its location. Start-Up Village Kadidia credits Rhonda Shrader, executive director of the Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Program and leader of the two-day HATCHLab Startup Weekend program for “phenomenal support and incentive” in focusing Kadidia’s vision for HairRobotics, her start-up idea. “The last time I had my hair braided, it took nine hours, and that was with two women braiding,” she said. “And the difficulty isn’t just the time or the cost for the customer. The braiders often develop carpal tunnel syndrome and have back pain from standing for long hours. Salon owners can’t raise prices too much, so the profit margin is slim. The traditional service isn’t working for anyone. My solution would leverage technology to enable faster braiding at a lower cost, allowing for increased demand and revenue and protecting the braiders’ health.” At HatchLab Startup Weekend, Kadidia fleshed out her idea and met other student entrepreneurs. She even left the weekend program energized enough to immediately interview 30 customers to validate the problem. She also applied for Berkeley StEP, where she met more professors and budding entrepreneurs. “They all agreed that I had a good idea but needed help organizing myself. I said, 'yes!,' and started working with a Harvard professor, Mike Grandinetti, who is advising me and is using HairRobotics as a class project.” More assistance came her way through the Blackstone LaunchPad, which provided seed funding that allowed Kadidia to begin forming a team of engineers and other experts. She also is using the online community BearX to recruit her HairRobotics team. “I am so excited that my start-up ideas and I are growing at the same time here at Berkeley Haas – HairRobotics and also my nonprofit, nopreeclampsia.org." Nonprofit Village Kadidia founded nopreeclampsia.org to raise awareness of the condition, which she had during her second pregnancy. Preeclampsia is a complication of pregnancy that can cause premature delivery and put the mother’s life at risk. “I was fortunate to receive good care here in the States, but many women in my home country, Mali, are at much greater risk. Initially, I thought the problem was women being unaware of their blood pressure and that I could solve it by giving women blood pressure cuffs so they could visit their doctors when something looked wrong,” Kadidia said. But then, using what she had learned at Haas about the importance of looking at a problem through your customers’ eyes, she started talking with doctors and hospital administrators in Mali, also important customers. They cautioned her that too many women would not know how to read their blood pressure results, and those who did were likely to think that they could manage their own health instead of seeing their doctors—which is really what they need to do. Plus, she learned that in addition to blood pressure cuffs, doctors lack magnesium sulfate—the only medication used to prevent seizures—to give to women with preeclampsia. “Now, thanks to being better prepared as an entrepreneur, I am re-focusing the organization to prioritize the concerns of doctors and hospitals and am educating myself on what it would take to manufacture or import magnesium sulfate in Mali.” Family Village Her most important village will always be her family. “Managing kids means managing yourself,” she said. “Being in school forced me to stop procrastinating and postponing.” An example is her “batch cooking” approach to ensuring her family eats healthy meals. Once a month, Kadidia dedicates a day to cooking the array of sauces that are integral to Malian cuisine. “I deep freeze them, and we eat them with rice or lentils at lunch,” she said. “At dinner, I cook fresh, drawing on dishes from the many places I have lived and traveled: Brazil, India, France, Italy, Spain, or Ivory Coast. My kids are good eaters and enjoy everything that I cook, which makes me very happy.” Another family ritual that has been adapted during Kadidia’s studies is the bedtime story. “Because I am in school two nights a week, the twins complained that I wasn’t there to read them a bedtime story,” she recalled. “So, I started reading them a story after they come home from school and my husband reads to them at night. Now that they are starting to read themselves, we read together!" From adapting family life to finding support and direction for her start-up ideas, Kadidia demonstrates that parents can, in her words, “build your villages for your kids, your career, and your aspirations.” Interested in pursuing your own entrepreneurship ventures? An MBA from a top business school can help you grow your network and leadership skills so you can take the next step toward a fulfilling career. 
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23 Aug 2022, 07:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: How Juliana Schroeder teaches through service |
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Juliana Schroeder is a behavioral scientist whose research exploring how people make social inferences about others both informs—and is informed by—her MBA classes in Negotiations and Conflict Resolution. In addition to her work in the Management of Organizations group at Haas, Juliana is affiliated with the Social Psychology Department, the Cognition Department, and the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley. The recipient of the International Social Cognition Network Early Career Award in 2018, she also has won awards for teaching excellence at Haas, was a Poets & Quants “40 under 40” top business school professor, and is a member of Club 6, an award given to Haas faculty who receive mean teaching evaluations greater than six on a seven-point scale. How would you describe your teaching style? I would call it ‘teaching through service.’ I think it is crucial to put students’ needs first. If anyone has difficulty with the material, the burden is on you as the professor to improve. You have to be willing to admit that you may have made a mistake or did not present a topic clearly enough. We are all here by choice. I’ve chosen to teach and, because my class is an elective, the students have chosen to take it. We all have to respect those choices and make it worth each other’s while. My responsibility is serving the students and providing them with the learning outcomes they desire. The students’ responsibility is to care about the material, to be engaged and excited. As long as one person in a conversation has a goal, that conversation is a negotiation." What might a typical Negotiations class look like? I make the class as interactive as possible. I typically present a mix of theory and research, practice, and tools in each session. The research component provides empirically founded insights that research has shown to be effective. Learning by doing is essential. I can tell you the answer, but it doesn’t sink in until you have done it and practiced and adjusted the model to fit your needs. Finally, students take away a framework for every negotiation they are going to have in their life. I love hearing from students that they are using the techniques and frameworks we explore. Not just in important career situations like salary negotiations, but also in negotiations with their roommates and family members. Negotiation is such a useful topic. In truth, as long as any one of the people in a conversation has a goal, that conversation is a negotiation. And of course, we all negotiate with ourselves! Tell us a bit more about how you integrate practice into your class. The Negotiation class has 10 modules, each presented in a three-hour class. Each class has a case exercise. We start with a simple one-on-one negotiation, for example a buyer and a seller. My colleague Holly Schroth writes most of the cases and she excels in making them Berkeley-centric, like a Berkeley café owner negotiating with a supplier of yerba mate tea. As the course progresses, the cases get more complex. Students encounter what happens when one side gets angry or lies or trust breaks down. The final exercise involves teams of 10 people who negotiate during the week between classes. The teams need to think about coalitions and office politics as they complete a high-stakes internal negotiation. At the end of each exercise, we look at the outcomes in real-time using the iDecisionGames platform. We use the data displays to examine the team and individual outcomes and frame takeaways for the students to use later. What are the rewards of teaching MBA students? I love MBA students. They are giving up a lot to be in the program and are very committed. They are not afraid to engage deeply and thoughtfully. I also love that they bring their own work experiences to the table. Our relationship is reciprocal. I stay in touch with students long after they graduate. We brainstorm on negotiations they encounter on the job or when they change jobs. And through them, I gain insights into how negotiations play out in the real world, which I can then bring back into the classroom. The expertise and insight your professors bring helps deepen and enhance your MBA journey. By selecting a top school with top-notch professors, you maximize your experience.  Read more from the Take 5 with a professor series:
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15 Sep 2022, 10:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: The power of not being content and choosing to lead by example |
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Priya Govindaraj, MBA 24, leads by example in every facet of her life. She was the first female in her large, multi-generational family to go to college, leading the way for her siblings and cousins. She set another example when she chose to keep working after her marriage. And after she became a parent. But when she told her parents that she intended to get an MBA, they were shocked. “That was a real eye-opener for me,” Priya said. “They had supported each of my earlier decisions. But now, they wished that I felt content with my good job and my family. They didn't want me to rock the boat.” But she wasn’t content. She wanted a career that allows her to give back to society and to inspire others to follow their dreams. Now, a year into her Evening & Weekend MBA program at Berkeley Haas, she is thriving at work, in her classwork, and at home. Her husband and “best buddy does more than his share at home,” Priya said. “Nonetheless, he is inspired to get an MBA of his own. It will be his turn next.” (Priya is already talking up the Berkeley MBA for Executives program as “perfect” for him.) And while their six-year-old daughter has had a harder time “sharing mommy,” Priya has set clear boundaries that reassure both mother and daughter. “I do most of my schoolwork in the early morning before she is awake She is a bit young to understand what I am doing, but she is very smart, and she recognizes I am doing something important for me. She also is extremely kind, even to me when I can’t give all my attention to her,” Priya said. “I am in class all day Saturday, but Fridays and Sundays are family time.” When she talks with prospective students about parenting during her MBA studies, Priya emphasizes the need for strong time management skills and acknowledges that there will be trade-offs: “You cannot have it all, all of the time. There will be occasions when you have to let something go.” She also appreciates Berkeley Haas as a “safe space where I am not afraid to be vulnerable, to admit when I need help. People—especially my study team—are always there to lift me up. I love that every member of the team contributes their strengths and welcomes help in overcoming their weaknesses. We teach each other.” She recently took on a leadership role at Haas as an Academic Rep of her cohort. In her role as a corporate application engineer at Yahoo, her conversations with stakeholders once were one-way: The stakeholders telling the engineers what they wanted. Now that Priya understands and speaks the concepts of essential business disciplines like strategy and operations, finance and accounting, she finds herself better prepared to take a more global view. She is more comfortable Questioning the Status Quo on topics outside her immediate sphere. “I am asking more informed and relevant questions about topics that once were foreign languages to me. I am having real, meaningful dialogues with stakeholders that add so much value to what we can do together,” she said. Classes like Leading People have helped Priya look at her team and her organization differently. Now, she said, “I have a better understanding of the influence our leaders have on us as a team and what that means for how we all work together.” She has noticed that her co-workers and managers are taking note of her newfound confidence and knowledge. Priya takes even more satisfaction in her newfound “growth mindset that has broadened my horizons and the way I think about my career.” And her parents’ opposition? Priya said, “It melted away when they saw me grow more confident and assured. Now they are excited for me and for all that I will be able to accomplish. They are spreading the word in the family about how valuable an MBA can be!” Interested in making an impact through your own career? An MBA from a top business school can help you grow your network and leadership skills so you can take the next step toward a fulfilling career. 
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22 Sep 2022, 07:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: A "non-traditional" MBA student tells her story |
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Guadalupe D. Manriquez, MBA 21, describes herself as a “non-traditional” MBA student—female, a member of an underrepresented community, and a professional in the public sector—yet she embodies the very traditions captured in the Haas Defining Leadership Principles. “It was the Haas emphasis on Questioning the Status Quo and going Beyond Yourself that made me think I could study here without compromising my goals. My desire to have a social impact with my career would not make me an outlier at Haas,” she said. Lupe’s grandfather was a bracero who left Mexico for California in the mid-1970s and she is the proud daughter of farmworkers in California’s Central Valley. She grew up in a small agricultural community in Fresno County since the age of 5 when her and her family immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico. Despite not finishing grade school themselves, her parents value education deeply. “My sister Pilar, brother Juan Baltazar, and I all graduated from Cal, so our parents have now earned four degrees from UC Berkeley. We hope that our youngest brother, Ricardo, will make it five.” Lupe’s upbringing fuels her passion to positively impact disadvantaged communities through her work. When she enrolled in the Berkeley Haas Full-Time MBA program, Lupe returned to the Bay Area from Sacramento, where she had worked first for the California State Senate and then the Department of Finance, California’s budget office. There, her work focused on health care policy analysis and budget development for California’s public health care departments. As the oldest in her family and a first-generation student, graduate school was always a goal. When she started thinking about where and what to study, Lupe researched the backgrounds of state leaders she respected and wanted to emulate. An MBA, she concluded, would give her business tools and perspective, strengthen her leadership skills, and provide the versatility to pivot to the private sector. Lupe explored the consulting sector in her internship with Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, where she worked on projects that included analyzing COVID responses for a client in Los Angeles. Lupe gained a mentor, bonded with the two other Haasies on her team, and dove deeply into improving her PowerPoint and presentation skills, while learning about other states’ Medicaid programs. She gained more private sector experience consulting with WelbeHealth for her Equity Fluent Leadership class. Her team researched and crafted recommendations for the health-care start-up to improve its recruitment of under-represented minorities. Lupe enjoyed her private sector experiences, but an unexpected call from her former boss at the Department of Finance brought her back to the public sector with an opportunity that merges her passion for social impact and her Haas-enhanced skills. She is now an assistant program budget manager overseeing a team that provides fiscal policy advice to the Governor’s Office on issues related to Medi-Cal, the nation’s largest Medicaid program with a $138 billion budget that covers more than one-third of California’s low-income population. “This job is what my MBA studies prepared me to do. It affirms my skills and my leadership ability,” she said. “I have a higher profile and am in a position to have a much greater impact.” Lupe also had an impact at Haas, where she served as finance vice president of the Latinx Business Club and was active in the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership (EGAL), and both the Gender Equity and Race Inclusion Initiatives. She and Paula Fernandez-Baca, MBA 21, teamed up to survey alumni and current students about their experience with the interview component of the Haas admissions process. “I really feel it is my responsibility to make sure spaces are inclusive and supportive of a multitude of identities,” Lupe said. “In this instance, the Admissions Office engaged with Paula and me, listened to our recommendations, and implemented several of them. Changing this one process isn’t the complete answer, but Haas has shown its willingness to make sure everyone feels welcome here.” Lupe found a community going through the core curriculum with the Blue cohort and through her experiences with her Consortium Family. “Whether it was preparing for a Finance exam, going to a Bad Bunny concert, or organizing to support and create inclusive spaces for each other – the Haas community showed up for each other and to celebrate each other,” she adds. “I can truly say my classmates have demonstrated that they will go beyond themselves for other Haasies for a lifetime.” A classmate once described Lupe as a “quiet leader,” a quality that she embraces. She doesn’t need or want to be in the spotlight. She does want to get the job done, get her points across, and stand her ground when it matters. Lupe credits the many soft-skill electives she took at Haas with strengthening her leadership style: In Interpersonal Skills & Embodied Leadership she learned strategies to lead with confidence and calmness. Power & Politics helped her understand where her influence is in each situation and how to use it effectively and strategically. Negotiations was “super-helpful. Now, when I am negotiating with the California Legislature, I know to look at the big picture, not just my small frame.” But it was Storytelling for Leadership that made the biggest difference for Lupe. “As powerful as it was for me to tell my own story, it was just as valuable to hear my classmates’ stories. Their honesty helped all of us tear down barriers and build stronger connections with each other. It encouraged me to sign up for an EGAL Story Salon just before graduation. I am uneasy about talking about myself, particularly in a public forum, but I came to Haas to stretch myself, and this allowed me to share my story openly and push myself outside of my comfort zone. In my gold hoops and Selena T-shirt, I felt powerful, accepted, and celebrated, by the Haas community. It turned out to be the cherry on top of my time at Haas because it reinforced my belief that everyone can live part of their story here at Haas.” Interested in making an impact through your own career? An MBA from a top business school can help you grow your network and leadership skills so you can take the next step toward a fulfilling career. 
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27 Oct 2022, 07:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Powering up her career and empowering other women in finance careers |
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Coming to Berkeley Haas, Aditi Narware, MFE 23, knew she wanted her experience to be more than learning in the classroom. “Of course, I appreciate everything we learn in the classroom—from math and coding to machine learning and data science—but what I really value is that everything is closely related to the real worlds of finance or technology. For me, it makes a real difference that the Berkeley Haas Master in Financial Engineering program is in a business school, not an engineering school,” she said. “Even more, I appreciate the all-around approach that Berkeley Haas takes. The professors and the MFE office staff really care about us as individuals. They listen to us and support us in ways I didn’t even know I needed.” Aditi’s interest in mathematics might have been inevitable. “My mother was a math teacher who, when I was a child, tutored me in advanced concepts one or two levels above the other students in my class.” But it was an early internship with a financial consulting firm that introduced Aditi to the intersection of math and finance. “I like knowing that there are all of these abstract concepts in the background that you can use to accomplish real, tangible results with practical implications,” she said. “And financial markets are so dynamic. Regulations change, economies shift; you have to constantly tweak your models to make them more robust. That is exciting.” I wanted my MFE experience to benefit not only myself and my career, but other women." She is equally excited that the MFE class of 2023 is a record-breaking 31% female. Yet, Aditi noted that “the financial industry remains dominated by men in leadership and managerial positions, so there is work to be done. I am committed to empowering women to reach their full potential in the industry. I wanted my MFE experience to benefit not only myself and my career, but other women.” To that end, she ran for the Women’s Chair position in the Financial Engineering Student Association. In that role, Aditi oversaw a promising partnership with Financial Women of San Francisco, that encompassed joint meetings and networking events. And thanks to the MFE Alumni Mentorship program, Aditi connected with a mentor with whom she could discuss anything from what she does on the job to the challenges of the MFE program. Pursuing her MFE in a business school environment, Aditi said, “teaches superior technical skills as well as the softer skills to advance in our careers, when we start to lead teams and work with clients,” she added. The Berkeley Haas MFE curriculum includes Positioning Yourself for Opportunities in the Financial World, a class that addresses communication and networking skills, as well as the Financial Institutions Speaker Series, which brings experts into the classroom for in-depth discussion of the “skills needed to contribute to a firm’s mission.” Aditi applauds the array of MBA club activities where MFE students are welcome. “Here, you get to listen to how people in business talk and think. You learn the vocabulary and gain insights into their thinking. Since we will be working alongside people with MBAs, it makes sense to meet them and get to know their priorities,” she said. “And these are good networking opportunities, as well.” Aditi’s next out-of-the-classroom learning experience is her three-month internship in the Fixed Income/Securitized Products Group at Morgan Stanley in New York. She has never worked on fixed income before, nor lived in New York City, but she “came to Haas to explore. I am still in the early stages of my career and am eager to apply my skills and find out which arena is best for me.” And perhaps Aditi’s most unexpected learning experience happened on the waters of the San Francisco Bay. “I love sitting on the waterfront in San Francisco’s Marina district. Even though I am not at all familiar with watersports, I decided to try kayaking,” she said. “It was so much fun! I went one step further and tried windsurfing. I actually windsurfed! Never would I have done this anywhere else.“ Whether on the bay, as an advocate for women, or on the job, Aditi is confident she will emerge from her MFE studies “more mature and confident in myself. I know that I can push my limits and succeed.” Interested in making an impact through your own career? An MBA from a top business school can help you grow your network and leadership skills so you can take the next step toward a fulfilling career. 
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03 Nov 2022, 06:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Sowing seeds for Berkeley start-ups |
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Has the venture capital world been “overlooking the entrepreneurial energy and achievement” at UC Berkeley? Kevin Chang, MBA 22, several of his classmates, and founders across campus think so. “Despite being located right here, great startups at Cal often go unseen by Silicon Valley venture capital. The ecosystem and resources here at Berkeley are fragmented, which adds to the limited visibility,” Kevin said. Together with fellow Haas students Dogakan Toka, MBA 22, Wei Zhu, MBA 22, Ryan Kimura, MBA 22, and Atusa Sadeghi, MBA 22, he set out to help solve the problem. Their solution was to form Courtyard Ventures, a venture fund backed by students and alumni investing in Cal start-ups. Venture capital had not been on the road map for Kevin when he enrolled in the Evening & Weekend MBA program. “After five years in investment banking, I wanted to get into entrepreneurship, to create something,” he said. Upon starting the program, he immediately started to experiment in the start-up arena, unfortunately with little success. But those “great learning experiences” introduced Kevin to the entrepreneurship resources, strong founder community, and startup ideas across UC Berkeley. Kevin honed his skills in classes like New Venture Finance, Entrepreneurship, and Haas Impact Fund before starting an independent study with Ryan under Kurt Beyer with the objective of researching and analyzing various ways to structure a venture fund. Those experiences, he said, “not only gave me insights into the industry, but they also introduced me to people who are passionate and driven to have an impact on the problems they were working to solve. They helped me understand the mindset of a founder.” Courtyard Ventures—named after the place on the Haas campus where so many of the founders’ and other conversations took place—formed in 2021. In its first seven months, it raised nearly $2 million from 150 investors, all Cal students and alumni. Some of the investors also work with the fund to help source, evaluate, and support startups as well. Courtyard began deploying its capital in January 2022, and has since made 13 investments, with another 10 to 15 planned in the near future. It’s a testament to how many startups are being founded on campus; the fund has looked at more than 400 so far. Courtyard Ventures typically writes checks in the $50,000 to $100,000 range, and invests in early-stage companies. Of the investments made to date, valuations of three companies have already stepped up. To find start-up candidates and help build the ecosystem, Courtyard Ventures leverages its relationships with groups at Cal like Berkeley Entrepreneurs Association, Haas Venture Capital Club, and Berkeley Venture Capital. The fund is also helping build bridges across disciplines like engineering and chemistry, working with groups such as the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub and the Life Sciences Entrepreneurship Center. Courtyard investments emphasize the fund’s industry-agnostic approach:
Interested in making an impact through your own career? An MBA from a top business school can help you grow your network and leadership skills so you can take the next step toward a fulfilling career. 
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10 Nov 2022, 08:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Born a Billionaire: Reimagining Wealth in the Pursuit of Happiness |
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Kenny Vaughn, MBA 16, danced on stage at the2022 DEI Symposium to the beat of his classmate Ace Patterson’s (also known as Call Me Ace) song, “No Assistance,” prompting applause, laughter, and a few hoots of recognition. He wondered out loud what you had to do to get invited back to Berkeley Haas as a speaker. One answer, he mused, was “You got to be rich. Not just rich, you got to be wealthy. But that’s OK because, I am, actually, a billionaire.” In traditional MBA fashion, Kenny followed up by talking numbers, starting with a number that every human has in common: heartbeats. At an average resting heart rate of 75 beats per minute, he calculated, our hearts beat 40 million times in a year. “Suddenly, at age 30, I realized that I was a billionaire. In fact, I had been a billionaire for five years! Almost everyone in this room is a billionaire! And if you’re not 25 yet, hang on, you’ll get there.” If heartbeats seem like an unusual way to measure wealth, Kenny reminded the audience of a fundamental definition every MBA learns in Intro to Finance: Currency is a store of value and a method of exchange. For Kenny, heartbeats are the currency we should value most. Instead of merely spending time—and heartbeats—people are better off spending time plus attention, which equals intention, according to Kenny. Intention delivers a better return on your investment for you and the people around you. How does Kenny invest those heartbeats? His biggest holdings are in joy, gratitude, and love. He invests them following nine “principles of the heart” which he outlined by taking the audience through his life journey, including his “transformational” time at Berkeley Haas. Joy He related his first principle, “manifest the remarkable uniqueness of you,” to his childhood. “I was an Army brat. Because we moved around a lot, I was always the new kid. I had the choice to be friendly or to be lonely. Being friendly is a lot more fun and productive.” He used his own military career—a West Point graduate, he served several years in Korea, rising to the role of company commander—to his second principle: Reframe happiness as a verb. “My wife served in Korea at the same time as me, but in typical fashion, she was stationed three hours away. Happy became traveling to see her. Happy became making a meal for our son.” Kenny continues finding happiness in his career. After completing thefull-time MBA program at Berkeley Haas, he served as director of Diversity Admissions & Outreach at West Point. There, he happily led the effort to matriculate three of the four most diverse classes in the Academy’s history. Gratitude Gratitude plays a huge role in Kenny’s life and his investment theory. “Thank you are the two most important words I know. They are saying ‘I see you. I appreciate you. I acknowledge you.’ We all need to plant seeds of gratitude, graciously, in our lives,” Kenny said. As photos of his Haas classmates and study group, of the Consortium Fellows, of former Dean Rich Lyons and Marco Lindsey, associate director, DEI, flashed on the screen, Kenny spoke about the importance of “being present in gratitude.” And as he changed from button-down and suit jacket to T-shirt and leather jacket, replacing his dress shoes with red Ferrari Pumas, Kenny recalled the ”profound, beautiful and painful conversations” shared at the Brothers Luncheons, initiated by Lindsey. His wardrobe transformation complete, deliberately lying face-down on the floor, his arms behind his back, Kenny spoke George Floyd’s last words: “I can’t breathe.” “Oppression,” Kenny declared, “reveals our common humanity. We all have heartbeats. We all need to leave behind the shackles of racism, classism, materialism, and other isms. We need to go beyond the pain. We need to leverage our emotions and galvanize ourselves and others.” Life isn’t happening to you, it is happening through you. The joy and the trauma in my life make me what I am. And that reverberates down through the generations.” Love From there, Kenny segued into his belief that “life isn’t happening to you, it is happening through you. The joy and the trauma in my life make me what I am. And that reverberates down through the generations. Four generations of my family have served in the U.S. military; I carry that history with me.” Leaving the military gave Kenny insights into another investment principle: Fall in love with the journey, not the destination. When he left the U. S. Army in 2021, Kenny, like all service veterans, found himself suddenly in control of his next move. “When you’re in the Army, you are given your next assignment. Now, no one was telling me what to do,” he recalled. “When you’re not always chasing or anticipating the next thing, you get to slow down. You get to look around and go toward the people and places that bring you joy.” For now, that is Louisville, Kentucky, close to family, where he works as a senior manager, Transformation & Operations with Indeed. Citing the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Kenny talked about “the drum major instinct that makes us want to be out front working for hope, for equality, and for excellence. And that is important work. But the greatest change each of us can make comes from within. It comes from spending our heartbeats wisely, with intention.” Watch Kenny Vaughn’s complete presentation,Born a Billionaire: Reimagining Wealth in the Pursuit of Happiness. Interested in the Haas Student Experience? An MBA from a top business school can help you grow your network and leadership skills so you can take the next step toward a fulfilling life and career.  
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11 Dec 2022, 00:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Use your inner strengths and community to tame impostor syndrome |
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“It can be uncomfortable when you are the first, or one of only a few people, to take your place in a space not built for you, or worse, in a space designed to keep you out.” Speaking at the2022 Berkeley Haas DEI Symposium,Élida Bautista, PhD, Berkeley Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, explored that discomfort from the perspective of her own career. “I entered Claremont McKenna College as an undergraduate not long after the college had started to admit women, and there were even fewer Latinx students. Plus, everyone had taken AP classes in high school; my high school didn’t even offer them. In the summer, I worked at McDonald’s while my classmates were able to pursue internships.” Élida went on to earn her doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Michigan and held a post-doc fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Department of Chicano Studies. She admitted, however, feeling compelled “to keep my doctoral research files for years just in case someone decided I was given my degree by mistake.” Before joining Berkeley Haas five years ago, Élida spent 14 years at the University of California, San Francisco filling various roles in the Department of Psychiatry, including clinical professor and director of the Multicultural Clinical Training Program. Addressing Impostor Syndrome During Élida’s talk at the 2022 Berkeley Haas Diversity Symposium, several audience members shared their own misgivings and self-doubts. One spoke about “having to be perfect. Always.” Another found the need “to constantly advocate for myself exhausting.” Those comments track with the definition of “impostor syndrome,” a name coined byValerie Young, EdD, as “a pattern of behavior where people doubt their accomplishments and have a persistent, often internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.” She suggested ways to address impostor syndrome and to normalize one’s response to being an outsider. For example, she emphasized that “beginnings always mean change. Everyone feels off-base at the start.” That is true whether you are just beginning the MBA application process or walking into the first day of class. I am in this space because my voice matters." It is important, she continued, to remind yourself that “you can change the script. I’m dating myself here, but I imagine a cassette tape playing negative messages on a continuous loop. You need to change the script to something like, ‘I am in this space because my voice matters. I am here to contribute novel ideas, to speak to what others cannot because they don’t have my experience.’” Defusing Stereotype Threat Impostor syndrome gets even more complicated when it is entwined with “stereotype threat.” This idea, popularized by Claude Steele in his book,Whistling Vivaldi, addresses group identity and the ways in which stereotypes can undermine the performance of the people they target. Stereotype threat can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. “If women, for example, are perceived as no good at math, they sense they will be judged in terms of that negative stereotype. This creates stress and their performance can suffer. This doesn’t validate the stereotype, but it can perpetuate it,” Élida said. “Of course,” she continued, “a little stress can be motivating. I logged in 15 minutes early for this Zoom presentation because I worried that something would go wrong. Everything was fine and I used that time to ground myself by turning off my screen and taking several deep breaths.” Other recommended calming techniques include guided meditation and music. She also encouraged the use of visualization to counteract stereotype threat. “If you can see it, you can be it,” she said. “Do a Google search for the kind of role model you need: teachers as leaders, women in STEM, parents as students, leaders with disabilities. Use the images you find to inspire and remind you of your potential.” Berkeley Haas offers plenty of role model candidates: members and supporters of ouraffinity groups, events like the annualDiversity Symposium, guestspeaker series, andpodcasts among them. Affirming Yourself Élida closed her presentation with reassurance that was also a call to action: You rock! Affirm yourself! “Highlight your self-worth by looking at your entire self and the things that make you unique: the causes you support, where you volunteer, the awards or promotions you have received. Emphasize the positive things that set you apart,” she said. “Those are the reasons you are needed, even in the places where you feel uncomfortable. No one else can contribute in exactly the same way that you can.” Watch Élida’s full presentation:Invoking Your Inner Strengths & Community: Tools to Address Impostor Syndrome Interested in learning more about the Diversity Symposium? The Diversity Symposium highlights role model candidates, members, and supporters to inspire you. 
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11 Dec 2022, 01:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Berkeley Haas students answer the question: why get an MBA? |
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Joselyn Baety, MBA 24, spent years considering an MBA program, determining what her return on investment would be. Cost was a big factor, but not in the way you might expect. “I was already making really good money. I had a career that I could see going forward without an MBA,” she said. “I just needed to understand where an MBA would actually take me more than what I'm already currently doing.” Her investment has already paid off. After 10 years in the oil-and-gas industry as a refinery planner and economist, she is now one year into a new role as an advisory manager at Deloitte. Putting the question in another way,Alex Holden, MBA 23 asked himself, “What's the value of an MBA? It sounds kind of expensive. How is that actually helpful? It's important to look at it as really an investment in yourself. For me, it's kind of about taking a leap.” Alex’s leap has taken him from a six-year career in sales with the San Francisco Giants baseball organization to a position with IVSA as manager, US Co-Branded Business Development & Partnerships. “You can't calculate how much money you're going to make in the next five years and do the net present value of that to see if it makes up for the MBA tuition, because there's so much intangible stuff that you get in an MBA program that is just invaluable,” saysFarzad Yousefi, MBA 23. “I decided to pursue my MBA because honestly, at the time I felt a little stuck. I felt like my career was not progressing as fast or as rapidly as I wanted. And I thought an MBA would push me forward and propel me to where I want to be.” Skills – Tangible and Intangible For many Berkeley Haas students, those “intangibles” fall into a category where the school excels: leadership. Nana Lei, MBA 22, who holds a master’s degree in international affairs from the University of California, San Diego’s School of Global Policy & Strategy, was a senior analyst working on data analytics at Oracle. She “wanted to learn how to be a leader. So, you know, set vision for a team, define strategies for my own team rather than just tackling challenges as they come up.” Today, Nana is a senior consultant at Deloitte. I've also learned a lot about myself and the person I want to become and continue growing into.” An MBA, saysGhita Soulimani, MBA 23, “is not just about the finance class or the accounting or the strategy class. It's also about knowing what type of leader you want to be, what kind of person you want to be, and projecting that. I've learned a lot in terms of what will benefit me professionally, but I've also learned a lot about myself and the person I want to become and continue growing into.” A senior manager of clinical partnerships with health care start-up Color, Ghita “wanted an MBA because of the versatility of the skill set that it would allow me, the network that I would build, and to push myself outside of my comfort zone.” The Berkeley Haas core curriculum and electives take some students out of their comfort zone—a challenge that is their answer to “Why an MBA?”Marissa Maliwanag, MBA 24, a senior manager in Global Logistics & Provisioning at Fuze, had studied biology and chemistry in college. “I never took any econ courses. I had never seen accounting books or anything like that, so I figured an MBA would help round out my foundational skills.” Entrepreneurship had long interestedChris Dekmezian, MBA 24, and he figured an MBA would help him figure out how to get there. When he applied for theevening & weekend MBA program,Jarret Wright, MBA 22, was running a marketing company. Already the founder of several start-ups, he knew things were missing in his skill set. “I wasn't 100% sure exactly what they were. It just kind of felt something was missing. I needed to be in a place where it was safe to be able to explore.” Your Decision to Make No matter your reason for getting an MBA, the decision is yours to make. As Farzad says, “There are people who are going to tell you that you should definitely get an MBA because it helps them, or it helps other people they know. There are others who are going to tell you don't need it because they've seen people who went up without it or were fine without it. And to be honest, both of those groups are probably right because, given their situation, an MBA was or wasn't right for them. So, it's important to talk to different people and take their input. “But this is not a decision to let other people make for you.” Watch more Berkeley Haas students answer the question: “Why an MBA?”  
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20 Dec 2022, 12:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Acts of resistance and advocacy |
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Alyssa Kewenvoyouma, MBA/JD 22, has a strong sense of identity, an identity with many facets. She is Indigenous (Navajo and Hopi) and of Mexican descent. The list continues: older sister, daughter, queer, community member, cousin, friend. She is an advocate for all of her communities. During her time at UC Berkeley, she also has been a committed member of both the Law School and Berkeley Haas student communities. Alyssa started at the Law School and applied fora full-time MBA when she realized that thedual-degree program would give her complementary skill sets she could leverage to deliver more value to her clients. “Being in a dual degree program means switching your mind set. Classes in Constitutional Law and Statistics require different approaches,” she said. “Law school is about independent study, while business school relies a lot on group project work.” Two of her favorite MBA classes deepened her story-telling and communication skills; skills that Alyssa considers essential. Power & Politics, taught byBrandi Pearce, PhD, gave Alyssa insights into creating alliances and to becoming a more influential and effective leader. “In a field as hierarchical as law, that will be useful,” she said. The other, Designing Financial Models That Work, taught byJenny Herbert Creek, MBA 10, spoke to Alyssa’s prior experience as a financial analyst, but more importantly, showed her “how to use data to tell a story, to articulate my points simply and powerfully, especially for people who don’t have a finance background. Plus, I loved the design aspects.” Both programs proved “transformative.” Simply being at UC Berkeley for Alyssa, “is an act of resistance. Places like this were built to exclude people like me. I hope my presence here, and the work we are doing to expand the admission of Native Americans and other URMs (under-represented minorities), will grow our community here and in the larger worlds of business and law.” But beyond being on campus, Alyssa engaged in advocacy and affinity groups at both the Law School, where she co-chaired the Berkeley chapter of the Native American Law Students Association, and at Haas. There, she led a team working on theRace Inclusion Initiative (RII). She and her team members, Ahni Mack, MBA 23, Hilary Going, MBA 23, and Erick Brock, MBA 23, filled a gap by founding the first Native American and Indigenous Business Club.  Pictured: Native American Law Students Association at Berkeley Law. Alyssa is second from left. “This is a group that I would have loved to be able to join when I applied to Haas,” she said. “Now, prospective students will be able to see themselves reflected in an affinity group, to know that there are people on campus willing to go to bat for you, to welcome you on a cultural level.” In her dual roles as an RII team leader and representative of an affinity group, Alyssa also has a seat on theDiversity Admissions Council. That group collaborates with members of the Admissions Office on strategies to increase representation of various underrepresented groups. “While there have been Native American students at Haas in the past, I am the only one in my class, and one of the few to really advocate for creating an Indigenous community here,” she said. “I have seen a desire on the Diversity Admissions Council to do more outreach to Native students and to support them when they are here, including the potential for financial support.” I found the people here to be strategic, driven individuals who are wildly caring and compassionate." Alyssa credits theDefining Leadership Principles, in particular, Beyond Yourself, for making the Berkeley Haas culture real among her classmates and professors. “I found the people here to be strategic, driven individuals who are wildly caring and compassionate. They want to make the world a better place and are willing to go beyond themselves to do that. It really represents what I want to do with my career.” Her career will start in the Los Angeles office of law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP, where Alyssa interned each summer as a student. Her internships gave her opportunities to work on both corporate matters in the firm’s offices, and onsite with tribal clients. “Akin saw the value of me adding an MBA to my credentials. I look forward to using all of my skills and passion on a mix of corporate and tribal work, hopefully in the economic development arena. I deeply appreciate the opportunity to work with a firm that has such a profound American Indian law and policy group. It is a place where I can be happy going to work every day.” Ready to go Beyond Yourself? Explore how the Defining Leadership Principles at Berkeley Haas are exemplified in our students, faculty, and community and learn how MBA programs at Haas produce leaders who embody these values.  
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22 Dec 2022, 08:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Three ways to measure the immediate ROI of an MBA |
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Sometimes you have to wait a long time to see the results of an effort: The people involved with NASA’s Project Apollo worked for eight years to send astronauts to the Moon. Sometimes the results arrive more quickly: The astronauts on Apollo 11 reached the Moon in just four days of flight. The return-on-investment (ROI) horizon for an MBA can also be long-term and immediate; sometimes at the same time. Not long ago, a group ofBerkeley Haas Evening & Weekend MBA students and graduates talked about the immediate ROI of their studies. The Financial ROI Salary is one of the most concrete ways to measure ROI. The manager who hired me specifically told me it was because of the Berkeley name and the MBA.” Joselyn Baety, MBA 24, had a 10-year career in the oil-and-gas industry when she started classes. Within her first semester, she switched gears and landed a job at Deloitte as an advisory manager. Starting as an advisory manager, she noted, “is a pretty big deal and I also got an increase of 30% to 40% on my pay. The manager who hired me specifically told me it was because of the Berkeley name and the MBA.” When Joselyn thinks about the investment she made in herself and her MBA studies, she calculates between 15 to 18%. Plus, she is in talks with her new employer about paying some of her tuition, “so that return on investment will also go up.” With a background in the U.S. Army and the aerospace industry,Alan Duong, MBA 22, said that the moment he got into Berkeley Haas, “a manager from LinkedIn who just graduated from Haas reached out to me on LinkedIn and asked me to join her team almost immediately.” He started as a senior FP&A analyst, and within two years, was promoted to manager while he was in the program. Today, he is a consultant at EY-Parthenon. Alan applied a lot of what he learned at Berkeley Haas in negotiating his promotion and raise. “I could do things in a manner such that I presented a complete package. It wasn't ad hoc or haphazard.” What he learned in class benefited his career directly. The Responsibility ROI Identifying and qualifying for new roles is another source of immediate ROI. “Since I started the program I’m in about my third role. Now that might be perceived as not desirable, but it's because of growth in areas that have opened up new doors for me and to have more impact with my skillset,” saidChloe Kaufman, MBA 23, product manager at Cisco. “What I've been able to do with the learning and experience in the classroom is really identify the gap areas that I could go after.” Chris Dekmezian, MBA 24, tells a similar story. He started his studies in a technical staff position at QuantumScape. “After just a half-semester worth of classes from my MBA and I could transition into product management at the same company,” he said. “Being able to leverage the classwork and the coursework immediately in my job was incredible.” And these are just a few examples. As Joselyn said, “The classmates that I'm working with, I see them also getting promoted. I'm seeing a lot of people using this MBA as leverage to say, ‘I deserve more money’ or ‘I deserve a better title.’ They're setting their eyes at a similar, if not higher, goal than mine.” All That Plus The Intangible ROI “The immediate ROI I've seen doing my MBA has really been the broad access to a differentiated set of people,” saidKyle McKenzie, MBA 23, VP and senior regional director, Private Equity, Voya. “I started out in one role in a company and now have drastically changed to another role. That's primarily because I've learned so much and created different passions at UC Berkeley that I found a new route at work into my life. “I think my friends and family have really noticed my work ethic go up quite a lot because I'm actually passionate about something,” he continued. “That's helping me really find a path in life and understand where I want to go. It's been very beneficial for me, and I think made my family proud. I'm the first person to go to college, let alone get a master's. They see how much work I'm putting into it, and that really allows me to feel a lot of pride.” Interested in making an impact through your career? An MBA from a top business school can help you grow your network and leadership skills so you can take the next step toward a fulfilling career. How will you measure the ROI of your MBA?  
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18 Jan 2023, 04:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Seeking an MBA to change the future of health care |
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For Richard Golfin, III, JD, EMBA 24, health care is not just a business. It is a “fascinating area of life. After all, most of us start and end our lives in a health-care facility. But it is a complex business and one of the most regulated in the U.S. economy.” Richard knows about regulation. He is the chief compliance & privacy officer, and head of legal at theAlameda Alliance for Health, a public not-for-profit managed care health plan, created by and for Alameda County residents. The organization has more than 400 employees, works with 10,000 physicians, and has 320 members, most of them low- or no-income. “We see all of the social disparities across races, genders, and ethnicities and not just in health care, but in housing access, food insecurity, and personal safety,” he said. Bringing Fresh DNA to Health Care There has been some adjustment to being back in an academic setting, “What the heck is Slack?” he asked with a grin. “I have more emails and more inboxes than I could imagine. Being in classes with tech folks and consultants, who are up to date, I had to learn the vernacular.” He is eager to use his learning to find new ways to benefit his older, more repetitive industry. Likening health care delivery to a “dinosaur,” he is excited to be in the classroom with people who can help him fill in the gaps in health care. His MBA studies, he said, give him the opportunity to “do some paleo-engineering, to add fresh DNA to an industry I care so much about. I will have the platform to take that leap, and I’m confident others will take the leap with me.” One of those gaps is the lack of products for the LGBTQ+ community. “We have health-care plans built around care coordination services tailored for the chronically ill, for folks who are institutionalized. People in the LBGTQ+ community have their own physical and behavioral health needs that are particular to them. Why do we not provide equitable plans for persons in the LGBTQ+ community? This is where we need to go as an industry, community, and country,” Richard said. He also wants to be part of the change needed to solve ongoing, deep-seated equity issues in health care delivery. In the U.S., as socio-economic status and household income decline, so does access to health care: people have fewer providers, have more trouble getting appointments, and have to travel farther to reach those providers. “When the fence preventing you from getting care is a certain height, we need to make sure that everyone has a ladder that will help them get over the fence,” he said, “and you certainly don’t want a system that raises the fence for everyone while shortening the ladder for some people. That is what we have now. There are opportunities to develop delivery models that bring everyone up to the same level, we just need to widen our focus, to imagine something different.“ Where else could I find such diversity of experience? That is where being surrounded by so many classmates from different backgrounds broadens and adds to the impact of Richard’s MBA experience. “I’m surrounded by 73 individuals with unique backgrounds, all contributing to my personal and professional development. Where else could I find such diversity of experience?” Studying more than math and economics His decision to pursue an MBA grew out of his growing sense of complacency. “I found myself with nothing to do after work. That took me back to a lesson I learned as a kid growing up in South LA: stay busy and you stay out of trouble,” he said. “My MBA is a way to build out my tool shed. I am learning how to run an entire organization, not just the compliance part of it. I’m preparing myself, not just to advise on operations and finances, but to execute in those areas.” Richard applied to Berkeley Haas knowing that he wanted a big school environment and a school with a top-tier reputation. TheBerkeley MBA for Executives program met both those criteria. He is equally gratified to be in a school that shares his beliefs and values. “There is a real commitment to education, to craft, and to the importance of relationships here.” He is beyond happy that his classes are not just teaching him “a bunch of math”—although he admits to using the knowledge gained in his Finance class to scrutinize his homeowner association’s budget. “In my job, I do not do math, nor economics. It is classes like Trust-Based Relationships and Leadership Communications that really apply to my work. And they have been worth it already.” They also are preparing him to take on a role he believes is intrinsic to leadership: helping the people around him, especially young talent, grow and learn. “I love the idea of being able to curate young talent. I have been fortunate to apply the learning and engagement opportunities discussed in these courses with myself and my teams. We've tried some of the exercises, relied on the material, and I have presented the techniques I was able to obtain in my leadership meetings. That is a remarkable return I did not expect at the onset of the program.” Interested in having an impact through your own career? An MBA from a top business school can help you grow your network and leadership skills so you can take the next step towards a fulfilling career.  
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24 Jan 2023, 15:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Doctoral student relishes research and teaching |
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Analexis Glaude knew early on that she wanted to be a professor and a role model for others and knew she would have to find the right area of interest. She studied psychology as an undergrad at Cal-Poly Pomona, with an emphasis on industrial-organizational psychology. Then, an internship revealed how closely her interests aligned with business. In 2022, she started her first year of study for a doctorate inManagement of Organizations (Micro), one ofeight PhD specializations offered at Berkeley Haas. “Having grown up in the Sacramento area, Berkeley was familiar. Now, it feels like home,” she said. “I love the vibe here.” While Analexis expects her student days at Berkeley Haas to last five years—two years of intense coursework, followed by a period researching, writing, and defending her dissertation—she is excited about a couple of the interim milestones. She should receive her Master’s degree in 2024, after two years of immersing herself in statistics, reading the literature, and working on projects. “That will feel like a real accomplishment in itself,” she said. Even more, she eagerly anticipates starting her teaching career as a TA or GSI at Haas. “I have had so many outstanding teachers and mentors. I can’t wait to give back the support and inspiration I have received,” she said. I am excited at the idea of teaching and learning simultaneously. For Analexis, both the teaching and the researching aspects of her planned career resonate with the Student Alwaysdefining leadership principle at Haas. “It’s a cycle to me: teaching others, but also being willing to continue to learn. As a doctoral student, I am excited at the idea of teaching and learning simultaneously,” she said. “Even experts continue to learn new things in their fields through research and experience. It’s important to realize that the field of academia is always changing. New findings and perspectives can lead to breakthroughs.” So far, Analexis’ biggest challenge has been conquering “R,” an open-source programming language broadly used in statistics, data analysis, and machine learning. Having arrived at Berkeley Haas with little to no background in coding or programming, the learning curve has been steep and the results gratifying. She credits the workshops at the D-Lab and assistance fromAssistant Professor Sa-Kiera Tiarra Jolynn Hudson for helping her make the initial leap into R and is learning by doing. But she cautioned, “my best advice to prospective PhD students is to sharpen your coding skills and data analysis proficiency as soon as you know you will be entering the program.” She is honing those new-found data analysis skills on her independent study project under the supervision of Sa-Kiera, who teaches Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging in thefull-time MBA program. Funded with a research grant from the Center for Equity, Gender and Leadership (EGAL), Sa-Kiera and Analexis are examining how different domains—life and physical sciences and tech, for example—are perceived in terms of how creative and innovative people need to be in order to succeed. “Although people tend to use the two terms interchangeably, creativity and innovation are different things,” she said. “We hope to run additional studies to apply this to hiring, firing, and promotion in the workplace and look at how race and gender may play a part in this.” “As a first-year PhD student, I am very grateful that EGAL provided me with the opportunity to begin my first research project,” she said. In addition to funding, EGAL is a community of its own. Its Research Gatherings bring together faculty and students to present their research. Analexis called it “amazing to have a resource like EGAL available. They provide opportunities for research on very important topics to be shared and conducted. That’s really valuable.” And while she is building her networks at Berkeley Haas, Analexis is studying friendship formation. She is part of a team evaluating different friendship types: work-only friends, personal friends, and crossover friends (who are both work and personal friends). Another topic at the intersection of psychology and business. After encountering no teachers of color in her middle and high school years, Analexis values the greater diversity and solidarity at Berkeley Haas. The diversity extends to the other two members of her Management of Organizations (Micro) cohort who bring their own backgrounds to Berkeley Haas: one is from Singapore; the other is a parent. “We all reached Berkeley Haas by different paths and bring our own perspectives to our work,” Analexis noted. “From my professors and cohort to the people at EGAL, there is real solidarity here. We get along well and share a common sense of wanting—and putting the work in to achieve—equity.” Interested in making an impact through your leadership? EGAL educates future leaders on how to intentionally use their power to drive positive change and build an inclusive and equitable world.  
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21 Feb 2023, 15:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: The immediate impact of an MBA boils down to expertise |
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One of the advantages of being in a part-time MBA program is the opportunity to learn from the expertise of your classmates. If you flip that on its head, it is just as important to consider what your classmates can learn from your expertise. SomethingJarrett Wright, MBA 22, wasn't expecting was “… personally being called on as an expert and comfortably stepping into that power.” A serial entrepreneur in the finance and real estate spheres, Jarrett’s classmates know they can rely on him for straight talk about the rewards and challenges of start-ups. His latest enterprise is Higher Rewards, a financial institution that enables community-facing organizations to offer their members a self-branded credit card that supports the organization each time the card is used. Expertise like that, and in disciplines like operations, finance, and leadership, abounds in Haas classrooms, study groups, and co-curricular clubs. “You get a lot of people that are very passionate about the work that they currently do and will continue to do,” saidChris Dekmezian, MBA 24, a product manager at QuantumScape. “Interacting with them has allowed me to learn from their deep expertise in their respective fields.” There's a real work-in-it-together culture" Some of that expertise is reflected in the work seniority of the typicalevening & weekend MBA student: eight years, compared to three or four forfull-time MBA students. “Class discussions are lively,” saidAlex Holden, MBA 23. “The professor teaches the academic solution, and a classmate raises their hand and how they experienced this in their career. Then another classmate raises their hand and gives a different opinion about how to solve it. There's a real work-in-it-together culture.” Alex is a manager, US Co-Brand Business Development & Partnerships at Visa. “There have been so many cases where we are talking about a scenario or a company in class, and someone in the class has or does work there. They can bring live, real-time examples of how that case turned out or how it's impacting the company,” saidFarzad Yousefi, MBA 23, a field applications engineer at Intel. “That just enriches the experience so much.” Ghita Soulimani, MBA 23, a senior manager of clinical partnerships at Color Health, agrees. When it comes to the frameworks professors discuss, she said, ”In one room you have all these companies in one location, and you learn how those frameworks apply to these companies in a different setting or in a different function.” Another advantage is the ability to apply immediately what you learn from your classmates and professors back on the job. AsAlan Duong, MBA 22, a consultant at EY-Parthenon in San Francisco said, “we lean on each other to ask, ‘Hey, I tried this. It didn’t work, How did you do it?’ Then, at your own company, we have that opportunity to blend classroom teachings into the real world and constantly get this reinforcement feedback, over and over again.” “It's been just tremendous being able to use what I'm learning in the classroom, especially the soft skills… negotiations to navigating power and influence within the organization and being able to use that on a day-to-day basis, right away,” saidNana Lei, MBA 22, a senior consultant at Deloitte. ForMarissa Maliwanag, MBA 24, senior manager, Global Logistics & Provisioning at Fuze, “It feels like immersive language learning, where you're really learning all these things in the classroom and then you're getting to apply them directly in your professional career.” What do you have to learn in an MBA program? What do you have to teach others? Think about it as you think about an MBA. Listen to more discussion of the Immediate Impact of a part-time MBA. Interested in making an impact through your career? An MBA from a top business school can help you grow your network and leadership skills so you can take the next steps toward a fulfilling career.  
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23 Feb 2023, 14:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Insights into why Haas might be the business school for you |
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There are just shy of 500 accredited business schools in the U.S. But there is only one Berkeley Haas School of Business. As entrepreneurJarett Wright, MBA 22, described it, his choice was “between Berkeley and… Honestly, it was just Berkeley. That's the only school I applied to.” This post digs into what sets the Berkeley Haas MBA programs apart, told from the perspective of severalevening & weekend MBA students and graduates. Leadership and Inspiration This program is for people who are inspired and want to be around more inspiring people..." “This program is for people who are inspired and want to be around more inspiring people and give back to this environment,” saidChloe Kaufman, MBA 23, a product manager with Cisco. “Ultimately, we all want to impact and change the world.” The ability of Haas students to change the world also attractedKyle McKenzie, MBA 23, overlaid with a couple of the school’sDefining Leadership Principles: Confidence Without Attitude and Question the Status Quo. “Haas leaders look like everyone out there. They're your coworker, they're your family member. They're your manager. But they are really attacking the world's problems and trying to make the world a better place,” said Kyle, vice president, senior regional director, Private Equity, Voya Investment Management/Pomona Capital. And as much as he knows he could calculate the financial ROI of his MBA,Alan Duong, MBA 22, a consultant with EY-Parthenon, he would really like to find a way to value “the impact on people's lives. That's something that I can't put numbers to, and I think that's what matters.” Aspiration and Hard Work On a less global, more personal level,Marissa Maliwanag, MBA 23, chose Berkeley Haas because “it felt like the students here would make me a better version of myself. Bringing your whole identity into how you approach business problems and how you think about business is really unique at Haas.” Marissa is a senior manager, Global Logistics & Provisioning at Fuze. Once he arrived on campus,Farzad Yousefi, MBA 23, soon recognized that “There's just the smell of, you know, aspiration and hard work… I feel like a different person. Energized, ready to go out there and get something done.” ForShilpa Worlikar, MBA 21, an engineering product manager at Cisco, “The most important value from a Haas MBA is that you are confident that no matter what the challenge is, even if the challenge is not from your exact field, you have the capability to solve it.” And when you can’t solve a challenge, Alan added that “Haas really cares about not just being successful in every single thing, but how do you learn from your failures? That's why I really do love this program. It doesn't just celebrate the great milestones, but we also celebrate when you have failures as well. And we ask how we as a community can come together and help you learn from those mistakes?” Curiosity and Intelligence Sometimes it is not what you know, but who. You will meet, debate, and form friendships with an astonishing array of people at Berkeley Haas. “You're interfacing with students or professionals from a wide range of industries,” saidChris Dekmezian, MBA 24, a product manager at QuantumScape. “I never thought I would have exposure to so many people with so much deep expertise in so many different domains.” Charanya Venkataramani, MBA 21 moved from Yahoo to being a principal product manager at Amazon after graduation. As a student, she encountered plenty of engineers, but also lots of people outside of tech, including an author, investment bankers, and other product managers. But what struck her were their commonalities, including curiosity and intelligence. “I don't know how the Admissions team does it, but they seem to have mastered the secret sauce of bringing in people who really reflect the Berkeley principles,” she said. Jarrett summed it up: “This is a loving community. You will learn how to execute. You will learn how to move to the next level, but hopefully not at the cost of everyone else around you.” That is “just Berkeley.” To hear more about what draws students to Berkeley Haas, watch this video. Interested in making an impact through your career? An MBA from a top business school can help you grow your network and leadership skills so you can take the next steps toward a fulfilling career.  
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10 Mar 2023, 05:00
| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: How the Berkeley Haas leadership principles define the MBA experience |
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You don’t have to talk long with a Berkeley Haas MBA student to realize what they discovered—sometimes to their surprise: The fourDefining Leadership Principles are not window-dressing. They are threaded throughout their experiences and their outcomes. “The whole ecosystem has people pretty much embodying all the principles. For example, I think I'm a Student Always, but I wasn't very confident. I saw other folks who emulated Confidence Without Attitude. Question the Status Quo has never been me, but I saw them and I'm like, yeah, maybe I should do more of that,” saidCharanya Venkatatamani, MBA 21, principal product manager at Amazon. “Everybody is learning from each other, or everybody is aspiring to cultivate the part of themselves that they see in others … We are constantly growing.” Question the Status Quo ForKatherine Zepeda, MBA 24, the Defining Leadership Principles “gave us the common language to consider how we approach the world.” She singled out Question the Status Quo for its importance to her in her job as chief of staff to the CEO and a senior director at the digital coaching program, Beyond 12, and in her involvement with campus organizations. Those include being VP of DEI, Belonging & Justice in theEvening & Weekend MBA Association and a member of the Student Advisory Board of theCenter for Equity, Gender, and Leadership. It is essential, she said, “to think about why things are done in a certain way and to invite other perspectives.” Her classmateMarissa Maliwanag, MBA 24, senior manager, Global Logistics & Provisioning at Fuze, puts her own spin on that principle. “You also have to be willing to question how your mind works, and how you think. You have to be open to new ideas, new perspectives, and new ways of tackling problems,” she said. We need to challenge ourselves and in doing so we make amazing things happen." Chris Dekmezian, MBA 24, a product manager at QuantumScape, appreciates that, in the classroom, Questioning the Status Quo leads to “differing opinions and lively debate, but that's all accepted within the community.”Alan Duong, MBA 22, a consultant at EY-Parthenon, builds on that idea. He said, “if we surround ourselves with yes-men, we're never actually going to advance anywhere in life. We need to play devil's advocate. We need to challenge ourselves and in doing so we make amazing things happen.” Confidence Without Attitude Chloe Kauffman, MBA 23, a product manager with Cisco, points out how the Defining Leadership Principles relate to each other. “To actually be a change maker involves Questioning the Status Quo,” she said, “but having that Confidence Without Attitude is really key.” Her colleague at Cisco, Engineering Product ManagerShilpa Worlikar, MBA 21, said her Berkeley Haas studies “definitely made me more confident in taking whatever challenges that may come in my professional or personal life. And this all comes with humility.” Putting her own spin on the topic,Kristine Kushner, MBA 23, said with a smile, that “Confidence is great, and being able to execute without attitude is key to my wanting to be around these folks all the time.” Kristine moved into a strategy and corporate venture role at VMware in her first year in theEvening & Weekend MBA program. Beyond Yourself Alex Holden, MBA 23, manager of US Co-Brand Business Development & Partnerships at Visa, opens the lens up to consider the culture at Berkeley Haas. “The culture here is about support. It's about growing together as a community. It's not about pumping your chest and saying how great I am that I'm at Haas,” he said. “It's about using what we do here as a tool for our own careers, as well as bettering the community, which really leads to Beyond Yourself.” Nana Lei, MBA 22, a senior consultant with Deloitte, knows she is not alone in thinking beyond her own career. “A lot of my classmates are thinking about how their work aligns with their own values and how we're impacting our societies,” she said. “Haas having defined Beyond Yourself as a principle aligns with my personal values. It demonstrates that it is the right path forward for leaders to think about the impact we're having on the communities that we touch.” Student Always ForJarrett Wright, MBA 22, a serial entrepreneur and most recently founder of Higher Rewards, “Truly listening is a courageous act. It's a humble act. It embodies the sense of Student Always.” Ghita Soulimani, MBA 23, senior manager, Clinical Partnerships at health care startup Color, loves “having that light-bulb moment when a classmate or professor is sharing their knowledge or when you're hearing their experience and how what we're learning in class applies to their day to day.” Being a Student Always comes naturally toKyle McKenzie, MBA 23, vice president and senior regional director, Private Equity at Voya Investment Management. “I enjoy looking at not just what I'm working on but exploring different passions.” What he gained at Berkeley Haas was “a structure to think about things … that has been very beneficial.” When the Defining Leadership Principles are woven together he concluded, “they help you become a better person, a better coworker, and really make you into the leader that you're going to come out of Haas being.” Hear other student views on theDefining Leadership Principles in this video.  
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