Berkeley MBA Blog
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At Haas, we live our distinctive culture out loud by embracing our four Defining Leadership Principles: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself. Our mission is to help extraordinary people achieve great things. Our Berkeley MBA blog offers prospective students information on our Berkeley MBA programs, student experience, and admissions process.
Berkeley MBA Blog
5d ago
“There seem to be fewer incentives for women to pursue careers in quantitative finance. Perhaps that is why women have not made very uniform advances in the industry,” Juliette Mayada Ould-Aklouche, MFE 24, observed.
The statistics bear her out: Women and men are almost equally represented in entry-level and mid-career positions in the finance sector, but men earn more and are promoted faster. As you look up the leadership ladder, women nearly disappear. Only one of the 50 largest U.S. banks is helmed by a woman and women hold less than 10% of senior positions in private equity and venture cap ..read more
Berkeley MBA Blog
2M ago
When she heard Dean Ann Harrison speak at an event in Chicago in 2019, Adilene Dominguez, MBA 24, was just starting to research MBA programs. Instead of talking about the average salaries earned by graduates, Dean Harrison invited anyone in the audience “who wants to change peoples’ lives” to come talk with her.
Adilene was the first person in line. “No matter what I do, taking space and making space for others in my community will always be primary in my life. I don’t need an MBA to increase my earning power. I want an MBA to prepare myself to pursue social justice,” she said.
From her childh ..read more
Berkeley MBA Blog
3M ago
When she enrolled in the full-time MBA program at Berkeley Haas, Chifum Ann Ukadike, MBA 25, navigated several transitions: She moved to a new country. She returned to the classroom—in a different academic system—after many years in the workforce. She encountered a new culture and social environment. How did she handle all of that change?
“For me, it has always been important to have a plan. But, just as important, you have to be flexible in executing your plan,” Ann said.
An MBA "the right way"
Ann’s journey to Berkeley Haas bears out the truth in both of those statements. She had barely fini ..read more
Berkeley MBA Blog
4M ago
“I’m always asking, ‘what’s the plan?’ So, I needed a specific reason before applying to grad school,” said Diarra White, MBA 24. “When I was at BlackRock, I had the opportunity to be the bridge between the design team and the relationship managers on a tech project. It was my first real experience of design thinking. It brings together two of my passions, the research methodologies that I love from my sociology studies, and relationship building with clients. My reaction was, ‘Design thinking, where have you been all my life!?’ I knew I had my plan and my reason for grad school.”
Leaving the ..read more
Berkeley MBA Blog
4M ago
Kelsie Smithson, MBA 24, intentionally chose an MBA program far from her beloved hometown of Louisville, Kentucky because she wanted to get out of her comfort zone and learn how other places work. “It was important for me to spend time developing my career away from Louisville, where the inevitable first question when you meet someone for the first time is, ‘Where did you go to high school?’ Here in Berkeley, that question and the answer carry less weight. We’re all here to think about redefining our futures and supporting each other along the way,” she said.
Telling family and friends that sh ..read more
Berkeley MBA Blog
5M ago
If you want to teach yourself about investing in publicly traded companies, reading Berkshire Hathaway’s annual reports to learn from Warren Buffett is a great place to start. Xavier Jefferson, MBA 24, did that during his first job at LifeBridge Financial Group in Houston, Texas, where he helped high-net-worth clients build their wealth, diversify their portfolios, and manage their money-related emotions. “That is where I discovered the world of stocks and started to imagine myself as an investor. But self-study can only take you so far,” Xavier acknowledged.
Xavier enrolled in the Berkeley Ha ..read more
Berkeley MBA Blog
5M ago
Ten years into his career Luis Toro, MFE 14, still relies on lessons learned in his Berkeley Haas Master in Financial Engineering studies, and he retains close ties to the program as a career coach.
Luis traces his interest in financial engineering back to his first job with the banking regulator in his native Peru. “That job was about pricing illiquid bonds using mathematical models. In some ways, I was already doing financial engineering without realizing. And I was reading papers written by Mark Rubinstein, a pioneer in the field and at the time, a Berkeley Haas professor. Financial enginee ..read more
Berkeley MBA Blog
6M ago
During the four years that Katherine Zepeda Arreola, MBA 24, pondered whether to get a graduate degree—and what kind—she remembers a mentor telling her, “Be afraid. Do it anyway.”
“That is the best advice I’ve ever gotten,” she says now. “Without it, I’d still be trying to decide. Instead, here I am just a few months away from getting an MBA, which was the perfect choice for me. It’s a degree that offers a core set of skills—finance, operations, innovation, and leadership—that will serve me well.”
Katherine’s fear had many sources: fear of not doing well, of not fitting in. It turned out, Kath ..read more
Berkeley MBA Blog
7M ago
When Jeric Huang, MBA 25, was considering an MBA program, even his most valued mentors told him he didn’t need to do that. They assured him that, over the course of a 15-year career in consulting at Deloitte, he had gained the skills, the network, and the business acumen to achieve his goals without another academic credential. Yet, as Jeric reflected on his core values and the impact he wants to have in his career, he respectfully disagreed.
“I’ve always wanted my career to connect the dots between public policies and actions in ways that improve the lives of people on the margin, like low-in ..read more
Berkeley MBA Blog
8M ago
Ten years ago, Leo (Wang) Yao, MBA 22, and his wife, Tingting Wu, took a hike while visiting Alaska. As the trail grew tougher and the switchbacks steeper, they held to their commitment to complete the nearly three-mile Mt. Healy trail in Denali National Park.
Leo though of that climb many times during his Evening & Weekend MBA studies especially as he launched his own enterprise. “Entrepreneurship is a lot like that trail,” Leo said. “Sometimes, the path disappears, and you stumble. You have to work hard, and you need a good support network. To remind myself that I can reach my goals, I n ..read more