Some of the 100 exceptional MBAs this year who made Poets&Quants’ list of the Best & Brightest MBAs … [+]
Collage courtesy of Poets&Quants
At the McDonough School, everyone knows Leena Jube. In the hallways, she’ll belt out her rallying cry: “You say Hoya, I say Saxa! Hoya! Saxa! Hoya! Saxa!” For Georgetown MBAs, the ‘Hoya Yell’ is a question as much as a statement. It is a reminder to reflect on how well they’re living in the moment and bringing out the best in others. More than that, it is a call for community – and a call for action. That’s exactly where Jube thrives.
“From the first day I met Leena, she distinguished herself as a force. It is almost impossible not to be pulled into her orbit and influenced by her positive energy,” says Kerry J. Pace, associate dean of MBA Programs. “But her real impact is not just her energy and enthusiasm, it is in her actions; Leena leads by example.”
In student government, Jube focused on diversity and inclusion, hosting panels and guiding conversation to educate and connect her classmates. She served as a teaching assistant for three classes – and even co-developed a course, Innovation Through Inclusion, with a professor. Now ticketed for Deloitte, Jube had previously helped Dove Body Wash produce double digit growth as a brand manager. That doesn’t even count her starring role in a Ben & Jerry’s commercial!
Leena Jube is one of the Class of 2021’s Best & Brightest: engaged, forward thinking, and results-driven – a person, in the words of classmate Juanita Pardo Varela, who “brings love and joy to the community.” For seven years, Poets&Quants has been honoring MBAs like Jube.
This year’s Best & Brightest list includes 100 MBA graduates from 63 programs worldwide, including Stanford, Wharton, INSEAD, MIT, Northwestern, and Columbia. Business schools were encouraged to select candidates based on “academic prowess, extracurricular achievements, innate intangibles and potential, or unusual personal stories.” Overall, women outnumber men by a 60-to-40 margin on this year’s list. Deloitte and McKinsey ranked as the top acquirers of Best & Brightest talent, hiring seven and six graduates, respectively.
Stefy Smith is joining Apple after earning her MBA from Cornell University. Before business school, she co-founded a waste management company in central Senegal. Her community was riddled with illegal waste dumps that risked public health – not to mention a 40% unemployment rate. Her venture tackled both issues simultaneously and now employs over 250 people.
“We’re slowly improving the economic health of the town,” she writes. What I am most pleased with is that we revealed to the community that sustainability and profitability aren’t mutually exclusive.”
Indeed, you’ll find the Best & Brightest operating at the highest levels of business and government. Take U.C. Berkeley’s David Bolívar. As an investment banker, his team partnered with Peru’s Ministry of Finance to issue the country’s largest international bond. Before NYU Stern, Krithik Tirupapuliyur’s insights on data collection and analysis resulted in the overhaul of Merck’s manufacturing operations. At the same time, Xiangshi Guan developed an integrated risk management platform at Citigroup. It was a project, he says, that saved the trading business from being closed by regulators.
“We not only launched the platform in six months and saved the company’s core business, but also improved efficiency by saving 4,000 working hours per year,” explains the University of Chicago grad. “This experience also opened the door for me to the technology world and inspired me to pursue a career in product management.”
The Class of 2021 was also defined by service. HEC Paris’ Emric Navarre rose to being an executive officer in the U.S. Air Force before moving into the U.S. Space program. His proudest career moment, he says, came when he was organizing humanitarian airdrops to refugees surrounded by ISIL forces in Iraq. In the U.S. Army, Kevin Bubolz held the distinction of being the only Chinook Flight School manager. To train the next generation of aviators, this University of Minnesota MBA revamped the program’s curriculum, an initiative that he says saved $10 million dollars annually and cut training time by 11%. For Rice University’s Casey Sherrod, her big moment came in February, when she learned that she was being promoted to Major in the U.S. Army.
“When I first commissioned almost 10 years ago, I never thought I would make it this far,” Sherrod admits. “My grandfather was enlisted in the Army for over 20 years, and served in both WWII and the Korean War. I am so proud to follow in his footsteps and continue our family’s legacy of service to country.”
The Best & Brightest weren’t just serving the greater good in the armed forces. At Stanford, Joshua Young Yang has been tackling early detection of kidney disease through entrepreneurship. His startup venture has already generated $5 million dollars in funding. UCLA’s Shoshana Seidenfeld raised $650 million dollars for President Obama’s Partnership for Refugees initiative as part of a four member team at Accenture. Josh Nathan also targeted his efforts to the populations who needed it the most.
“Before coming to business school, I launched a controversial and transformational charter school network in Liberia, West Africa,” writes the Northwestern MBA. “[I was] working alongside Liberia’s visionary president and minister of education to improve education quality. In our first year of operations, a randomized controlled trial showed that students in our schools had achieved two years of learning in one year of time. That school network continues to this day, serving 68 schools and 25,000 students across Liberia daily.”
This spirit of service continued into business school. To help his classmates prepare for consulting interviews and careers, Andrew Marshall developed the school’s first case book, replete with 200 slides covering industry overviews and frameworks and 20 practice cases. On top of that, he started a mentoring program, distinguished alumni series, and even a case competition. In contrast, MIT’s Riana Shah and Olga Timirgalieva launched a First-Generation, Low-Income (FLI) Club to address an often “taboo” topic among business students.
“Starting this club has allowed us to be more inclusive and intersectional from a socio-economic perspective,” Shah explains. “It has also allowed us to bring together a community of peers who want to connect around challenges that are unique to FLI students face such as helping plan for and funding our parents’ retirement, balancing familial needs and business school finances, etc.”
Looking for a Best & Brightest who went above-and-beyond? Let’s introduce Tess Belton. This past year, this University of Chicago MBA held over 100 one-on-one resume reviews. Believe or not, Belton asserts, she got just as much out of the sessions as the first-year students. “I’ve enjoyed learning how to read others’ personalities and anticipate what they need from me, whether it’s a confidence boost, tough love, or just a listener. I leave almost every meeting feeling more energized than when it started, which has confirmed my passion for mentoring others.”
Alas, the past year didn’t turn out as expected for the Class of 2021. COVID wreaked havoc on everyone’s plans. Treks, events, and even internships were cancelled as the world moved online. The future became shrouded in uncertainty as MBAs wondered when the world would return to normal. In this void, the Best & Brightest stepped up. They explored possibilities, marshalled resources, galvanized classmates, and stepped out of the easy and comfortable. They embraced new ideas and platforms, never giving into doubt or accepting average. They may not have enjoyed a traditional experience, but the tumult instilled something far more valuable in the Best & Brightest: the faith to imagine, the courage to act, the stomach to persevere, and the confidence in knowing they could achieve anything…together.
“To say that my MBA experience was elevated because of my colleagues would be a gross understatement,” adds the University of Pittsburgh’s Bianca Joi Payton. “They have made these two years the greatest of my life. The fact is, I came into this program with 66 strangers but will be leaving with 66 family members.”
Who are this year’s Best & Brightest MBAs? Click on the link below to access 100 in-depth profiles on these game-changing students.
