After a year of delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the summer Olympics are here—and four Haasies are in Tokyo to compete in golf, swimming, and water polo.
The Games of the XXXII Olympiad are scheduled from from July 23 to Aug. 8, 2021. The group of competing Haas athletes includes:
Collin Morikawa
Collin Morikawa, BS 19, joins Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele and Bryson DeChambeau on the men’s U.S. golf team.
Collin Morikawa holds the Wanamaker Trophy after winning the PGA Championship golf tournament at TPC Harding Park in 2020 in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
The U.S. will have have more golfers represented than any other nation during this year’s Games, according to Golf magazine. Pro-golfer Morikawa won the 2020 PGA Championship in his first-ever attempt last year.
When he enrolled at UC Berkeley, Morikawa had a single-minded focus to learn how he could succeed as a professional golfer, treating the endeavor as much as a job as a sport. “If you look at big professional athletes, they’re running their own business, which is their name and their brand,” he told Berkeley Haas Magazine. “I wanted to invest in my future and learn as much as I could so when I turned pro I would be ready for the outside world.”
Ryan Murphy
Ryan Murphy, BS 17, backstroker, is heading to his second Olympic Games.
In 2016, Murphy won gold in both the 200m and 100m backstroke, and swam to victory in the 400m relay medley with Olympic legend Michael Phelps, Cal alum Nathan Adrian, and Cody Miller. “I honestly didn’t think I’d win the 200m backstroke, but that’s the event I really trained for,” he told Berkeley Haas News at the time. “The 100m back comes a little more naturally to me, so the 200 is the one I have to really work for. It’s the one that meant a lot because I know what’s gone on behind that whole race and what I did in coming up with the best strategy to win it.” This year, he’s serving as an Olympic team captain for USA swimming.
Johnny Hooper
Johnny Hooper, BS 19, is Cal’s #2 all-time leading scorer. (Cal Athletics photo)
Johnny Hooper, BS 19, a 6’2″ attacker, qualified for Tokyo as a member of the Men’s Senior National Team, USA Water Polo. Hooper is Cal’s #2 all-time leading scorer with 245 goals, and he helped lead the squad to the 2016 NCAA Championship. The team trained remotely during the pandemic, and Hooper, along with many of his teammates, spent part of the last year playing professionally in Europe.
Alicia Wilson
Alicia Wilson, BS 22, will swim for Great Britain. (Cal Athletics photo)
Alicia Wilson, BS 22, qualified for a spot on Great Britain’s swim team to compete in the 200-meter individual medley, a technically challenging race involving equal parts backstroke, butterfly, breaststroke, and freestyle. Wilson, a rising senior from England, had an incredible 2021 season, capturing the 2021 Pac-12 crown in the 200-yard individual medley.
Wilson said her inspiration started in 2012 when the London Olympic games “were literally on my front doorstep.” Read an interview with Wilson here.
Startup Spotlight profiles startups founded by current Berkeley Haas students or recent alumni.
London Swift, MBA 22, co-founder of startup Et al, a community for women and gender-diverse creative freelancers.
Before London Swift arrived at Haas, she raised $15,000 on Kickstarter to build a test website called Et al., a hub for women and gender-diverse creative freelancers.
Swift hoped the beta site would bring “creatives”—digital designers, podcast creators, photographers, artists, and writers—together to find gigs.
“We got a tremendous response,” said Swift, MBA 22, who is working with her partner and co-founder Sophia Wirth, a digital brand strategy consultant. “We had 100 people reach out but only had room for 25 people on the site.”
At Haas, Swift is building Et al. from a test site into a business—a place for many more freelancers to showcase their portfolios, and network about everything from collaborative opportunities to fair pay rates to administrative challenges. Employers will use the site’s bulletin board to post job jobs and view users’ creative profiles.
“We wanted to build a community where women could better understand the pay issues and work together to close the gender wage gap in the gig economy,” said Swift, a ceramics artist who once considered a career in the arts, but, wary of the low pay, worked as a consultant at Deloitte after her undergraduate program.
“We wanted to build a community where women could better understand the pay issues and work together to close the gender wage gap in the gig economy,” —London Swift, MBA 22.
Part of Et al.’s strategy will be to keep customers’ costs low, by offering flexible monthly user subscriptions. Platform users will be segmented into professional communities, where they will have access to an exclusive Slack workspace.
Swift said she was inspired when one of their first test users, a new freelancer who had never written for a magazine, built her first creative portfolio and landed her first assignment with Elle UK, an article about how 1990s television sitcoms revolutionized Black beauty. “She is now working full-time as a freelance writer and we could not be happier for her,” Swift said.
Help along the way
Many groups have supported Swift’s startup journey since she arrived at Haas.
First, she was accepted into the Berkeley Student Entrepreneurship Program (StEP), a 10-week campus-wide incubator. Then she raised $35,000 last spring to build a new version of Et al.
Et al. co-founders London Swift, MBA 22, (right) and her partner & CEO Sophia Wirth, a digital brand strategy consultant, whom she met during her undergraduate program at American University.
She was also the recent recipient of the Hansoo Lee Fellowship, created to honor the memory of Hansoo Lee, MBA 10, and is among the startup founders joining the Blackstone LaunchPad Techstars summer fellowship program for entrepreneurs. There, she’ll work with a mentor and bounce new ideas off other founders.
Last spring, El al. also participated in the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership’s Investing in Inclusion pitch competition, coming in second. “It’s so unique to have a startup space that’s focused on social impact and profitability,” she said. “It felt really special for us.”
Swift is also working with Berkeley Female Founders and Funders to find a few undergraduates who might be able to work with the team this summer. “We have an incredible network of entrepreneurs here,” she said.
London Swift, co-founder of Et al., considered a career as an artist.
Outside of the startup world at Haas, Swift is a member of the Consortium, an organization that recruits qualified students who can demonstrate a commitment to its mission of enhancing diversity in business education and leadership, and Q@Haas, the LGBTQ+ MBA community at Haas—and the vice president of academic affairs for her MBA class. She said she’s looking forward to returning to campus this fall. “I’m definitely an extrovert and love being with people,” she said.
Meantime, Swift will focus on her company—and a new ceramics wheel she just bought, getting back into pottery and her creative side.
“Having the opportunity to study at Haas, support women in the arts, and address pay inequity is such a privilege and I cannot wait to see what the next few years bring,” she said.
Haas Voices is a first-person series that highlights the lived experiences of members of the Berkeley Haas community
Elle Wisnicki, MBA 22, dreams of opening a wellness retreat center that offers animal-assisted therapy to children and adults—and she’s moving closer toward that goal at Haas. Wisnicki is a 2021 recipient of the John E. Martin Fellowship, (named for the father of Michael Martin, MBA 09) awarded to students who are working to improve mental healthcare quality and access.
Elle Wisnicki, MBA 22, dreams of opening a wellness retreat center that offers animal-assisted therapy.
I’m Black and Jewish and was raised by a single mom. I was an independent kid, always wanting to help others, so when I wasn’t caring for stray animals in the neighborhood, you could find me babysitting.
Growing up in Hollywood, Calif., where wealth exists parallel to a large population experiencing homelessness, I learned about mental health challenges at a young age. My mom and I got to know the stories of our neighbors who were homeless and faced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, depression, and more.
From childhood to high school, my career aspiration was to become an OB/GYN doctor or genetic counselor for families. However, after realizing that a lot of people can’t even get to the doctor for basic care, I shifted my goals away from providing care to helping people access care.
After realizing that a lot of people can’t even get to the doctor for basic care, I shifted my goals away from providing care to helping people access care.
After undergrad at Columbia University, I worked in consulting. At that job, I began connecting the dots among common mental health issues within different groups of people I’d met and worked with for over a decade, including homeless veterans, patients I worked with at Planned Parenthood, students I supported as an RA in my dorm, and even my financially well-off consulting coworkers who were burning out. No matter their walk of life , many shared a common thread: determining how to best address their mental health problems.
When I started putting it all together I began to see how I could thrive in this line of work and I wanted to start focusing on it right away. When I considered leaving consulting, I knew I had to align my career with my values so that my work would reflect my life’s greater purpose. After reaching out to diverse people in my network, I was inspired to become a mental health coach at Sibly, a text-based mental health and wellness app.
This was the first step toward starting my own mental health-related venture. However, I knew that creating a startup without the support of an MBA network would be challenging. So I initially came to Haas to focus on startup solutions for crisis response. What I quickly learned was that the many hours of research, customer discovery calls, and networking on a computer screen, on top of my MBA lectures, was leading to burnout.
In November 2020, I took the month off of my startup to spend some time restoring my own mental health. I volunteered for a ferret rescue and took llamas on walks up north in Yuba City, played with goats and did goat yoga in Half Moon Bay, and worked with kitten rescues. My soul lit up.
My soul lit up. I felt healed when an animal rested in my lap or greeted me.
I felt healed when an animal rested in my lap or greeted me, or when I moved my body around innocent beings, who only wanted to provide affection.
Goats are part of Elle Wisnicki’s animal-assisted therapy plan.
I realized others enjoy animals and nature in a healing way as do I and many people are looking for alternative wellness solutions. My potential customers told me they benefited from being closer to nature, but craved structure and couldn’t find affordable group wellness centers near them.
My vision is to offer that structure, by opening a retreat center with half day, full-day, and weekend wellness retreats. I’m also considering animal-assisted individual and group therapy, goat yoga, sustainable farming workshops, garden box subscriptions, children’s birthday parties, summer camps, a petting zoo, products, and transportation to access all of these services through bus rides between San Francisco and Oakland.
When I was applying for the Martin fellowship I connected with a Haas alum who had won a similar fellowship a few years before me. We recognized we both had similar goals. He recently began developing land he and his family own and considering what kind of venture they want to use it for. We’ve started discussions around the types of pilots we will put together to determine what is most appealing to our customers.
In addition to these plans, I continue to work in mental health tech. This semester, through the Lean Launchpad entrepreneurship class, I worked for a wellness startup Shimmer, focused on employer wellness benefits and insurance. My summer internship is focused on health insurance and mental health access for children and youth in foster care.
Throughout this journey, I’ve realized how grateful I am to be living and working at a time where as a society we’re finally prioritizing mental health. There has been tremendous growth in the wellness industry and I am thrilled about increasing access and with the movement toward mental health destigmatization.
Hannah Greenberg and Alex Lopez are “searchers” on the hunt to buy a U.S.-based software company.
Hannah Greenberg and Alex Lopez, both EMBA 20, are best friends who hope to add “chief executive” to their resumes.
The pair are looking to buy a software as a service (SaaS) company in the hospitality or financial services industry through their new search fund Ven Capital Partners. They scour markets for a perfect match, typically a successful 60-something owner who is about to retire. ”A lot of family businesses don’t think about succession and they don’t have a plan of what’s next for them when they retire,” Lopez said. “That’s where we come in.”
Greenberg and Lopez are known as “searchers” in the finance world, joining a growing tribe of MBAs who, lacking a pool of their own capital, use an established investment vehicle called a search fund to acquire a single, privately-held firm.The group includes pioneers like Mahesh Rajasekharan, MBA 09, and Sumit Garg, MBA 08, who co-founded search fund Globe Equity Partners in 2010. Two years later, the pair bought Cleo Communications, where Rajasekharan remains CEO.
More recently, Jeff Oldenburg, MBA 18, co-founder of the Tusker Fund, acquired Echosec, a Canadian cybersecurity company. Lance Barnard, MBA 21, founder of LML Capital, last month acquired and became CEO of Ward Pharmacy in Denver, Co.
“A very young CEO”
The search fund model isn’t new, but it’s growing fast at business schools. More than 400 search funds have been raised since 1984, according to a 2020 Stanford Business School Search Funds study, half of them within the past several years. From 1984 through 2019, investors put $1.4 billion of equity capital into traditional search funds and acquired companies.
Jan Simon teaches the Search Funds course at Haas.
“Search is really taking off,” said Jan Simon, a former Goldman Sachs executive who teaches the popular Search Funds course at Haas and is a managing partner at Vonzeo Capital Partners, typically investing in up to 25 search funds per year. For MBAs who want to partly own a firm and serve as CEO, “it doesn’t get better than the search fund model,” said Simon, who also teaches at Barcelona’s IESE business school. “The average person who does this is 32 years old, a very young CEO,” he said. A typical search fund entrepreneur can land 25% to 35% ownership in a company (30% in the case of a team) over several years.
“Search is really taking off,” said Jan Simon, a former Goldman Sachs executive who teaches the popular Search Funds course at Haas.
Bill Rindfuss, executive director of strategic programs for the Haas Finance Group, pitched Search Funds as a new Berkeley Haas finance course in 2019, inviting Simon to teach it as an extracurricular. “It was well-attended and got great student evaluations, which helped greatly in getting it approved as a new course,” Rindfuss said.
While other courses, including New Venture Finance taught by Maura O’Neill and M&A courses taught by Peter Goodson, help prepare students to launch their own funds, the Search Funds class is the headliner for students focused on search.
The course teaches MBA students with little to no CEO experience how to raise money—usually between $500,000 to $800,000—from a group of a dozen or so individual investors. The class also walks students through the complexities of the search and acquisition process. Searchers typically hold the companies they buy for six to 10 years.
Startup vs search
The model isn’t for everyone, though, as there’s risk. About a third of all searches end without an acquisition. Search also might not be the right fit for students with true startup aspirations. “I ask students, ‘What appeals to you?’” Simon said. “Do you like to go from 0 to 10 in starting a company? A lot of people want to be in the middle—from 100 to 1,000. It’s that type of entrepreneur we’re looking for, someone who is taking an existing business and growing it.”
For Lopez, a former U.S. Marine with an investment banking background, and Greenberg, who has a private equity background, a search fund is the perfect middle ground, as both are entrepreneurial but had no interest in building a startup from scratch. While their total fund amount is undisclosed, their lead investor is Pacific Lake Partners, and they’ve also drawn a few investors in the Haas community.
They’re now looking to buy a company with a minimum of $1.5 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) on revenue up to $50 million, and a clear path of repetitive business from existing customers. “Our job is to find companies that aren’t actively for sale and figure out where they are financially before it gets to the point where they want to be more formal,” Greenberg said.
Lopez, whose family is from Mexico, said he and Hannah add to the diversity of an industry that is lacking Latinx and female representation. Women account for just 7% of searchers, according to the Stanford Business School study. No data in the study tracked ethnicity.
“Women and Latinx entrepreneurs are slowly getting more opportunities in the space, but Hannah and I would love to pave the way for many more,” said Lopez.
A roller coaster at times
Joe Odell, EMBA 20, co-founded search fund Steadfast Horizon.
There are also relatively few MBAs with families in the search fund space, which demands that searchers move to wherever they buy a company. Jess Patterson and Joe Odell, both EMBA 20, are an exception, starting search fund Steadfast Horizon last year.
By March, they’d raised $800,000, on the high end for a search fund, from 24 investors.
They’re unique in search in that they both have families—yet are willing to relocate to where a deal takes them. “Traditional search skews toward a different profile than our own,” Patterson said. “But our families are all in and ready to move.”
Odell said the process has been an emotional roller coaster at times, but fun.
“I didn’t feel like we were going to make it a few times during fundraising,” he said, adding that the “searcher” community has supported them along the way. “Search is incredible opportunity-wise and it’s not cutthroat. Each one of us is trying to build a new future for ourselves and those we love.”
Clockwise from top left: Ross Levine, Panos Patatoukas, Nancy Wallace, Dan Mulhern, Guo Xu, and Jenny Herbert Creek.
Six faculty members and five Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) have been honored at 2021 commencements for excellence in teaching.
Students in each degree program choose faculty each year to receive the Cheit Award, named after Dean Emeritus Earl F. Cheit, who made teaching excellence one of his top priorities.
This year’s winners include:
Evening & Weekend MBA program: Assoc. Prof. Panos Patatoukas (evening cohort), who teaches financial information analysis, and Prof. Ross Levine(weekend cohort), who teaches macroeconomics
Undergraduate program: Dan Mulhern, who teaches leadership in the Management of Operations Group as a continuing lecturer and distinguished teaching fellow
PhD program: Asst. Prof. Guo Xu of the Business & Public Policy group
Master of Financial Engineering (MFE): Prof. Nancy Wallace, chair of the real estate group
Graduate student instructors (GSIs): Atusa Sadeghi (EWMBA); Devan Courtois (FTMBA); and Sooji Kim (undergraduate); and Maxine Sauzet and Nick Sanders (MFE)
Berkeley MBAs are not only making an impact in their careers, they’re also earning the third highest salaries among top business school graduates over a lifetime, according to new research.
P&Q commissioned PayScale to collect this data for the first time since 2014.
The compensation software maker surveyed online data for 2,390 graduates from the top 50 U.S. business schools. They estimated median pay and bonus over both a 20-year and 35-year period, essentially a lifetime of post-MBA earnings.
Harvard Business School MBAs topped the PayScale list with its graduates earning a median lifetime income of $8.5 million, followed by Stanford with $8.3 million, and Berkeley Haas with $8.25 million.
Early-career pay for Berkeley Haas grads was $137,000, with 20-year earnings growing to $3.67 million.
Comparatively, the lifetime median earning of a Top 50 MBA grad is $5.65 million. (Lifetime median pay for all graduates with bachelor’s degrees is $3.32 million.)
“It is clear from this new data that our grads are not only making an impact on the world and building powerful networks through Berkeley Haas, but they are also launching rewarding lifelong careers that carry a clear return on the investment made in their degrees,” said Berkeley Haas Dean Ann Harrison.
The PayScale estimates include base salary, cash bonuses, and profit-sharing in today’s dollars.
“The estimates show that the MBA degree–despite all the second-guessing over its value–is one of the surest paths to a lucrative career,” Poets & Quants Editor John Byrne wrote.
The PayScale research was also published in Forbes.
When Michelle Lu, BS 21, applied to UC Berkeley four years ago, she planned to study engineering.
But then she checked a box that changed her future.
“There are only a few decisions that really change the course of one’s life,” said Lu, who is among 41 students in the founding Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology (M.E.T.) class that graduated last Saturday. “Applying to and attending M.E.T. was one of those decisions for me.”
“We’re so proud of these students, who are graduating with a unique and valuable set of business skills—from leadership to microeconomics— and specialized engineering talent,” said Erika Walker, assistant dean of undergraduate programs. “We can’t wait to see what this class accomplishes with these two degrees.”
Program founder Michael Grimes, EECS 87, and head of Global Technology Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley, said the the pioneering first M.E.T. graduates are already living up to the expectations set when the program was established.
“With deep technology training and business and management skills already developed, the incredibly successful career launches of the founding class of M.E.T. proved the unlimited demand for these uniquely dual skilled technology leaders,” he said.
Launching a new program
The M.E.T. program is highly competitive, drawing about 2,500 applications for just 40 slots in the inaugural class—an acceptance rate of less than 3%. “It was a leap of faith for students to join this new program when they had really compelling offers from other schools,” said Chris Dito, M.E.T.’s executive director. Dito praised Dawn Kramer, M.E.T.’s associate director, for her work to launch and expand the program and for her deep commitment to the students. “It’s not easy to launch a new program at a public university,” she said. “It’s tricky and she helped pull it off.”
Part of the challenge was admitting the right students, which Kramer believes they did. “The students demonstrated their interests from the start, and we were able to keep opening doors and providing opportunities for them at Berkeley. They took advantage of that,” she said.
The founding M.E.T. class in 2017. Photo: Noah Berger
Akshat Gokhale, BS 21, who earned the undergraduate Department Citation with a 4.0 GPA, praised the intellectual diversity of the M.E.T. students. “Each of us has a different background and story, and each of us is harnessing our dual degree in a distinct way,” said Gokhale, who is heading to McKinsey’s Digital Group as a business analyst. “So, no matter what you’re interested in researching or building, there’s most likely someone in M.E.T. who can help.”
No matter what you’re interested in researching or building, there’s most likely someone in M.E.T. who can help. – Akshat Gokhale, BS 21
Developing their resumes
The job offers M.E.T. students are accepting reflect the program’s intersection of business and tech, and they say their internships played a critical role in developing their resumes.
Lu said M.E.T. provided the kinds of opportunities that “you couldn’t get anywhere else,” including an internship at Zoom, which she landed sophomore year. “I started as a project manager and by the end I was doing everything.” (Grimes helped establish the first M.E.T. internships at Zoom). She’s now heading to a job as a technology investment analyst at Morgan Stanley.
Michael Trehan
Ganeshkumar Ashokavardhanan, BS 21, said the quality of mentorship in the M.E.T. program was “immensely helpful and inspiring—everything from the office hours with M.E.T. board members to the access to tech and business leaders who visited campus to the fellowships and internships the program provided.” As a freshman, Ashokavardhanan was chosen as a Kleiner Perkins Fellow, (along with fellow M.E.T. student Louie McConnell) from thousands of applicants. As a fellow, he interned at one of Kleiner’s portfolio companies.
Ashokavardhanan was also selected for the Accel Scholars mentorship program, where he learned about venture capital, how to fund a company and how to lead product and engineering teams. After interning for two summers at Microsoft on the Azure cloud computing team, he accepted a job with the company.
Michael Trehan, BS 21, said his experiences in the M.E.T. program equipped him to apply for a job that he’d typically need an MBA to get. He interned in software engineering at Intel and on the project management team of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco before taking a summer analyst internship at JP Morgan, where he has accepted a full-time tech analyst job in San Francisco. “I never thought I would be doing this when I came into Berkeley,” Trehan said. “But here I am graduating early and doing investment banking out of the M.E.T. program. I’m super grateful.”
With the first class bidding farewell to M.E.T., a new class of 56 students will arrive on campus this fall.
Saikat Chaudhuri, M.E.T.’s new faculty director, said he has three long-term goals for the program. These include re-imagining the curricular and co-curricular offerings, creating a summer program for high school students, and developing M.E.T. into a lifelong community.
2021 Haas graduates on campus tossing caps. From left to right: Richmond Tang, Michael Pratt, Hannah Miller, Tamarik Rabb, and Matt Portnov, all BS 21. (All students are roommates, except for Richmond Tang, who is vaccinated.) Photo: Matt Portnov.
On top of persevering through the rigorous curriculum, the Berkeley Haas undergraduate class of 2021 faced rolling blackouts, wildfires, and the global pandemic. It may not have been the experience they expected, but it will shape them for life, said commencement student speaker Phoebe Yin, BS 21.
“Today we celebrate something that’s unique to our generation: It’s a soft strength to stay malleable when the world is hard on us,” Yin said during virtual commencement last Saturday. “Our story is just beginning…we have nothing to stop us because we are ready for anything. To think only about the things we have lost would be to ignore the compassion, creativity, and unparalleled resilience we have gained.”
“Our story is just beginning.” – Phoebe Yin, BS 21.
The graduating class of 380 students included the first 41 graduates of the Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology (M.E.T.) program and three students graduating early from the Global Management Program (GMP).
The M.E.T. program, a collaboration between the Haas School of Business and the UC Berkeley College of Engineering, grants students two degrees in business and engineering in four years. GMP students enter Haas as freshmen and earn an undergraduate business degree with a concentration in global management.
“Your class has by far had the most impact on me during my time teaching here at Haas,” commencement speaker Diane Dwyer, BS 87.
Dwyer, a former broadcast journalist who is on the professional faculty at Haas, acknowledged that students are living in a time of widening income inequality—including within their own class. She noted that one of her students couldn’t afford to buy a working laptop, while another logged into class from a traveling adventure.
“…Stay humble…even in the midst of great accomplishments like the one you’re obtaining today. Stay resilient. The last 18 months have surely taught us that. And stay appreciative, even despite the unfairness and the obstacles that your class has faced,” she told the graduates.
Dean Ann Harrison, who wore full regalia for the sendoff commencement video, also congratulated the class for its many achievements.
“Your world was upended in the middle of your junior year at Haas due to a global pandemic, yet you showed true grit, mastering a rigorous academic curriculum during one of the most turbulent years any of us has experienced,” Harrison said.
Speakers praised the grads for all of their work outside of class during their years at Haas, including calling attention to racial injustice, winning case competitions, creating startups, and providing face masks to essential workers.
“You met the challenge with grace, compassion, creativity, reflection, and in many cases, a redefined sense of purpose,” – Erika Walker
“You have endured over a year of college life that was unlike anything you could have ever imagined four years ago. Yet you met the challenge with grace, compassion, creativity, reflection, and in many cases, a redefined sense of purpose,” said Erika Walker, assistant dean of the Berkeley Haas undergraduate program.
Haas alumni, who ranged from more recent grads to veteran business leaders, also sent their well wishes and encouraged graduates to live by the Haas Defining Leadership Principles every day.
Among those alumni were Shantanu Narayen, MBA 93, chairman, president, and CEO of Adobe; Kenneth Chen, BS 03, vice president and chief audit executive at Spotify; Scott Galloway, MBA 92, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business; and TubeMogul founder Brett Wilson, MBA 07; Austin Drake, BS 18, who works in global operations at Facebook; Double Bear Lucky Sandhu, BS 96, MBA 15, president of Reliance Financial; and Jordyn Elliot, BS 20, a marketing associate at Ingenio.
Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) Award winner: Sooji Kim
Dan Mulhern, who teaches leadership in the Management of Operations Group as a member of the Haas professional faculty, won the Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching. Students in each degree program choose faculty each year to receive the award, the top teaching honor at Berkeley Haas.
As commencement approaches, we’re interviewing grads from different Berkeley Haas programs about their experiences and future plans.
Today we feature Kyle Cook, EWMBA 21, a data analyst at Vanguard who served as Berkeley Haas Evening & Weekend MBA academic cohort representative, VP of social impact for his class, executive VP of the EWMBA Association, and a Berkeley Haas admissions ambassador. Cook lives in Phoenix, Ariz., with his wife, Jayanthi, and two rescue dogs Limerick and Chewbacca Pickles. To hear more from Cook, listen to his 2020 Haas Podcast interview.
Kyle Cook
You’ve been at Vanguard almost 11 years, a long time considering how often people job hop these days. What’s kept you there—even as you’ve completed your MBA?
What appeals to me about Vanguard is its mission: To take a stand for all investors, to treat them fairly, and to give them the best chance for investment success. We’re not putting retired peoples’ money into really risky things, and we want to be as low-cost as possible and return those savings to the consumer.
I’ve had multiple opportunities for advancement there, rotating to four or five positions, taking on new and challenging opportunities. In my current role, I’m responsible for sourcing, storing, validating, and distributing investment data. At Haas I’ve been able to update my job skills, including learning Python (the programming language) in my marketing and people analytics class.
What do you think helped bring your class together during the pandemic?
We’ve done a lot of different things to keep the unity of the EWMBA program. I will say it was definitely very challenging. The students really valued informal networking and that isn’t as easy to replicate on Zoom.
Cook’s dogs: Limerick (left) and Chewbacca Pickles.
Despite the challenges, one really cool thing that came out of the pandemic was Haas Hearts, a consulting and project implementation initiative driven by MBA students to address challenges nonprofits faced due to COVID. I worked with the program office and Jamie Breen, assistant dean of MBA Programs for Working Professionals, to set up the program. Students stepped up and gave up their free time and we opened the program to incoming MBA students who delivered valuable services at a time when all businesses were suffering. Every team had a faculty advisor and the teams reached out to nonprofits, offering help with everything from volunteer planning to fundraising to strategy implementation to scaling and digitization.
Did you have a favorite course or professor at Haas?
Peter Goodson
I took two classes with Peter Goodson: Turnarounds and Private Equity. Turnarounds is a really unique course. We had to finish 16 cases before class even started. We got barraged with questions from 9 to 5 and worked on our slides until 10 pm each night. Goodson has the energy of a 20-year-old, and people like that he’s extremely candid with his feedback. If you give an answer that’s not good, he lets you know. You get muted if you go off topic and he has his GSI mute him if he goes off topic too. At one of our finals, we were asked to present to a board of directors.
Goodson took previous feedback he’d gathered that Haas students weren’t good on their feet or strong with presentations and he made us focus on those two things. In one role-playing assignment in class he’d say, “This is the role I want you to play,” and he’d tell you what the expectations were and when you were up, everyone had to present. I had a classmate who didn’t contribute much in core courses, but because he was forced to participate in Goodson’s class he opened up a lot more. He had so many insights that he wasn’t sharing before that enriched the class’s learning.
You’ve been involved with the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program in Phoenix to help the underserved with their taxes. What inspired you?
Vanguard partnered with the City of Phoenix to run a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) site at the nearby community college. I started volunteering as a tax preparer in 2013 after some of my friends who were doing it suggested that I do it as well. It was a learning opportunity for me. During the program, you meet with clients and often their families. Their income was between $12,000 to $20,000, so getting every penny back for them was a critical thing. The year before I got into Haas I signed up to be the site lead. We took time to get everything right and we generated $1 million in returns from a total of 120 returns for people. Our work was so important and it helped generate a lot of empathy.
What did you take away from doing the MBA program during a pandemic and what’s next for you?
I think that you learn more when times are more challenging. A lot of successful companies were founded post-Great Depression, after wars. There are a ton of startups launching this year. People are innovating and finding new ways for the world to work. It wasn’t ideal but this is preparing people for the new economy, which will be remote-friendly.
Kyle Cook, EWMBA 21, and his wife, Jayanthi, at an Indian wedding.
Next up, I’m hoping to become a product manager. The longer term goal would be to eventually launch a social impact incubator at Berkeley and recruit business students to give more back to society.
I want to thank my wife a lot for her support. Before the pandemic lockdown, she would drop me at the airport and make me something to eat for my trip. I was a commuter from Phoenix so I would leave at 4 a.m. and get back the next day or night. She took care of our dogs and supported me through the devastation of a bad test. I couldn’t have done the program without her and I am excited to have more time to spend with her now.
Dean Ann Harrison (top, left) congratulated the PhD grads as Haas faculty, family, and friends joined commencement online.
Ten newly-minted Berkeley Haas PhDs were praised for their resilience during the 2021 commencement ceremony last Saturday, with Dean Ann Harrison noting “the incredible years of hard work” they’ve put into earning the advanced degree.
In full regalia, Finance Prof. Ulrike Malmendier, faculty head of the doctoral program, introduced Harrison, who virtually welcomed the students and their families and friends.
While the PhD is the smallest Haas program, it’s the program “that’s nearest and dearest to the hearts of our faculty, all of whom are PhDs and deeply committed to training the researchers and professors of the future,” said Harrison, who earned a PhD in economics from Princeton University.
Melissa Hacker, executive director of the PhD program, introduced each of the 2021 PhD graduates, who include Stephen Walker, Andres Gonzalez Lira, Thiago Scot, Mohammad Abbas Rezaei, Nika Qiao, Muhammad Yasir Khan, Byung Hyun Ahn, Vincent Skiera, “Harry” Zihao Zhou, and Gauri Subramani.
“Never, ever give up.”
Asst. Prof. Abhishek Nagaraj discusses Gauri Subramani’s disseration at commencement.
Harrison praised the students for their years of hard work. “In the midst of the most horrifying pandemic in 100 years you persisted in the program and in finding jobs,” she said. “We are so proud of you.”
She also offered three pieces of advice: stay in touch with your fellow graduates and faculty advisors; never be afraid of submitting your work or sharing it with others; and finally, never, ever, give up. “How well you do will depend entirely on your resilience and determination,” she said.
During the ceremony, faculty advisors, including Assoc. Prof. Panos Patatoukas, Prof. Steve Tadelis, Prof. Ernesto Dal Bó, Prof. Gustavo Manso, Assoc. Prof. Dmitry Livdan, Asst. Prof. Abhishek Nagaraj, and Prof. Miguel Villas-Boas were called on to explain each student’s accomplishments.
Cheit Award winner Guo Xu.
The students’ dissertation titles ranged from “Machine Learning and Corporate Fraud Detection” to “The Impact of R&D Classification Shifting in High-Technology Industries” to “Essays on Quantitative Marketing Theory.”
Five of the students have accepted faculty jobs, while three will take industry positions. Two have not yet finalized their plans.
Asst. Prof. Guo Xu of the Business & Public Policy group was selected to receive the Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching. Students in each degree program choose faculty each year to receive the award, the top teaching honor at Berkeley Haas.
A sustainable, space-saving vertical strawberry farm that produces ultra-sweet berries without pesticides and an online bank for “free thinkers, rebels, and entrepreneurs” were among the new companies that propelled Berkeley Haas to No. 4 for fundraising on the Poets & Quants Top 100 MBA startups list this year.
Annually, Poets & Quants ranks b-school startups with at least $5.5 million or more in funding. To be considered, founders must have launched their startups within the five prior years (2015-2020) and have at least one founder enrolled in an MBA program within that time frame.
Hiroki Koga, MBA 17, developed his idea for more sustainable farming with Oishii at Haas.
This year, five Haas companies founded in that period raised a record total of $125 million. Two Haas startups made it into the Top 20, including Oishii, founded by Hiroki Koga, MBA 17, ($50 million) and Oxygen, founded by Hussein Ahmed, EMBA 18, ($33 million).
Also on the list were Kyte, a car-sharing startup co-founded by Ludwig Schoenack, MBA 19, ($18 million); Time by Ping, a timekeeping automation company co-founded by Kourosh Zamanizadeh, EWMBA 18, ($17.3 million); and healthcare startup Twentyeight Health, cofounded by Amy Fan, MBA/MPH 19, ($6.08 million). Twentyeight Health also made Poets & Quants’ 2020 “Most Disruptive Startups” list.
Amy Fan, MBA/MPH 19, co-founder of Twentyeight Health
Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia Business School had seven startups on the 2021 list, while Haas, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and France’s INSEAD all had five.
“We’re so proud of what these startup founders have accomplished,” said Rhonda Shrader, executive director of the Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Program, noting that founders from four MBA degree programs–full-time MBA, evening & weekend MBA, MBA/MPH, and executive MBA—are represented on the P&Q list. “Their ongoing success is proof of the depth and breadth of our entrepreneurship programs across campus, and a testament to the drive that so many of our students have to build world-changing startups.”
More proof of that drive came this week as Ryan McQuaid, MBA 08, announced that he’d sold his startup, virtual primary care platform Plushcare, to Accolade for $450 million. McQuaid, who started Plushcare at Haas, made previous Poets & Quants Top MBA startup lists.
Entrepreneurship is one of Dean Ann Harrison’s top three priorities for the school, and Haas continues to invest in new resources, recently announcing three new professors in its Entrepreneurship & Innovation group and a plan to build a new entrepreneurship hub on campus. “It’s gratifying to see so many Haas founders on this list who are solving important problems that impact everything from the environment to healthcare,” Harrison said.
Validating the business model
Oishii’s sustainable strawberries have two to three times the sweetness of a conventional strawberry. Photo: Oishii
Jersey City-based Oishii, ranked No. 14 on the list, runs a vertical farming operation, raising top-quality strawberries that are tested to ensure two to three times the sweetness of conventional berries.
Founder Koga arrived at Haas in 2015 after working as a consultant in the vertical farm industry in Japan. Realizing that agriculture was no longer sustainable, he decided to tackle the problem by growing crops indoors, which allowed him to use 90% less land and water, eliminate the use of pesticides, and cut down on food transportation distances.
The MBA program provided two years to assess his hypothesis and validate the business model in the U.S., something he said he could never have done from Japan. During Koga’s second year, he entered the LAUNCH accelerator program—and won the competition, “which gave us more credibility and recognition as we were raising our seed round.”
Oishii’s strawberries, coveted by chefs, sold out pre-pandemic, Koga said. But as more people started cooking at home over the past year, they became increasingly aware of what they were eating and more willing to pay for higher-quality produce. As a result, many vertical farm companies have grown quickly and experienced a significant increase in revenue and funding, Koga said.
Filling in missing pieces
Startup Oxygen, No. 19 on the P&Q list, offers banking to freelancers, consumers, and small businesses, with no monthly fees, marketing itself as a new kind of bank account for “free thinkers, rebels, and entrepreneurs.”
Hussein Ahmed, EMBA 18, founded Oxygen to help people who don’t fit the “typical mold” for banking.
Ahmed said he founded Oxygen out of personal experiences with banks. “Living for a big part of my life as a “solopreneur,” consultant, and business owner, it was always a struggle to work with banks and financial institutions because I didn’t fit the typical molds they have—either a 9-to-5 full-time employee or a corporation—nothing in between,” he said.
The pandemic, while horrible, was “a blessing in disguise” for Oxygen, he said. With stay-at-home orders, digital banking suddenly became the only way to bank “without having to drive down to a branch and wait in line masked up,” he said. There was also a massive boom in new business formations in the U.S., which significantly accelerated Oxygen’s small-business banking growth.
Ahmed, who has an engineering background and started companies before he arrived at Haas, said the MBA program helped fill in missing pieces.
“With an engineering background and product focus, along with scars and wins and street smarts, I was still missing the academics and business tactics from economics, finance, and accounting,” he said. “Having those subjects, great professors, and class discussions gives a lot of perspective on how to think about all those different angles and perspectives—while being at the helm dealing with everything on a day-to-day basis.”
As commencement approaches, we’re interviewing grads-to-be from different Haas programs about their experiences at Haas and future plans. We kick off our “five questions” feature with Gauri Subramani, PhD 21, one of 11 Berkeley Haas PhD students participating in virtual commencement May 1.
Gauri Subramani
Gauri Subramani studies the intersection between innovation and representation, specifically with respect to gender. She’s studied patents as a way to measure innovation in her research, examining the reasons for the underrepresentation of women in patents in the U.S.
This fall, Subramani will join the faculty at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. The first course she’ll teach to undergraduates is Leadership in Organizations. (Watch a video about her research here)
Here’s our interview:
You majored in economics and English as an undergrad at Wellesley College and ended up working in the Office of Economic Policy in Obama’s Treasury Department after graduating.
Did the English major help?
Gauri Subramani with her parents at her undergrad commencement.
Economics got me in the door, but English helped me to write and to be a good communicator. I really benefited from doing both. This was my second job out of college, which I held for two years, and they were excited that I had a background in English. A lot of work goes into writing clearly about economic insights and the role of the Economic Policy team at the Treasury Department is to translate policy on behalf of the Treasury Secretary, President, and others in the administration. If you can’t communicate with others, you are working in a void.
You must have brought those same skills to your PhD research?
Yes, definitely. I feel that being able to write in an accessible way is really important, particularly as an academic. I’ve also learned from the work of researchers whom I respect a great deal. For example, (Harvard professor) Raj Chetty is an amazing economist and has written very readable papers exploring the drivers of inequality. Partly because of its accessibility, his work also gets a lot of attention in the policy world and in popular press. My favorite paper that he’s written is about who becomes an inventor in America (which explores the roles of family background and exposure to innovation by examining data available in tax records). It inspired the work that I’ve done.
You’ve researched how women and men differ when it comes to applying for patents. Why are so many more men granted patents over time?
To begin, women are less likely than men to apply for patents; roughly 86% of applications come from men or all-male teams. But even conditional on applying for a patent, women are less likely to end up receiving one than men. My coauthors and I studied this gap and found that female patent applicants are less likely to continue in the patent process after receiving a rejection, which is a fairly common event, and inventors can respond to these rejections and their application will continue to be evaluated.
To begin, women are less likely than men to apply for patents; roughly 86% of applications come from men or all-male teams. But even conditional on applying for a patent, women are less likely to end up receiving one than men.
We did find evidence that the gender gap is reduced for applications when an attorney is used or the patent applicant is affiliated with a firm. There are so many environmental factors that can contribute to gender disparities, including the type of support women get at firms, and how organizations invest in a male versus a female inventor. Our findings suggest that access to resources and information can help decrease the gender gap in patenting.
How did you decide to study patents? Was that your idea when you started the program?
I am broadly interested in understanding representation in innovation, and a project I spent some time on was exploring the underrepresentation of women in clinical trials and the impact that has on health outcomes. This project didn’t get off the ground because it was only semi-recently that companies were required to report data by gender and it’s hard to get data on the performance of a drug by gender. But that got me thinking about other areas in which to study the effects of inclusion on innovative outcomes. A popular and common way to measure innovation is to look at patents because the data is easily available, quite fine-grained, and updated regularly.
Asst. Prof. Abhishek Nagaraj of the Management of Organizations group helped Subramani “ask better questions and do better research.”
Which faculty have you worked with closely in your program?
I’ve worked most closely with Asst. Prof. Abhishek Nagaraj. I’ve learned a lot from him about how to ask better questions and how to do better research.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to go into academia initially because I thought that “measurable impact” meant working in policy.
But then I saw how some faculty here bridge the gap, by helping to inform policy conversations and by talking to people in industry. I was a GSI for Abhishek in Entrepreneurial Strategy, a class he developed as an elective to bring research to practice. In the class, the students learn research-based frameworks that inform how one should develop an entrepreneurial strategy. Abhishek brought speakers into the class and made an effort to make the course’s takeaways tangible to students, and to keep two feet in the real world.
As CEO of Poshmark, Manish Chandra, EWMBA 95, constantly questions how and why people shop, and the journey clothing takes from the supply chain to closets to resale.
Manish Chandra, EWMBA 95
A decade after he graduated from the evening & weekend MBA program, he started the pioneering social shopping platform Kaboodle, which he sold to Hearst two years later in 2007. Poshmark, a social marketplace for new and used clothing and accessories that he founded in 2011, focuses largely on extending the life cycle of clothing.
In a Dean’s Speaker Series event on April 9, MBA students and Robert Strand, executive director of the Center for Responsible Business at Haas, interviewed Chandra about how he embeds sustainability into the core of his business, his journey as a leader, and his vision for the future of capitalism.
Here are a few highlights from the interview.
On the meaning of clothing: “Clothing really binds people together. It brings a sense of community, it empowers people, it makes people feel good, proud. It can uplift people.”
On Poshmark’s rise in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic: “Covid 19 was a seismic shock and a very sad shock for all of us. We’re still reeling from it. We’re isolated and we’re not physically connected. The circular economy and the resale really was in many ways a connector. When you bought and sold things from each other it connected you to another human being. It gave you something that was very powerful, that took energy to do. We saw the rise of second hand.”
On capitalism in the post-pandemic world: “We’re at a very powerful moment in our history…As we come out of hiding places and the world reintegrates over the next few months, I feel like everyone is looking at their life and looking at their values in a very different way. And as we go out and truly experience both the wonder of human connection and the misery that people have had, it’s a really important time to transform how we feel about consumption, how we feel about capitalism, and how we feel about sustainability. I think all three things can exist in a meaningful way.”
On getting an MBA: “Haas is, for me, one of the most transformational experiences, particularly because it happened after I’d worked for a few years and I was looking at finding that next level of growth for me.”
Startup Spotlight profiles startups founded by current Berkeley Haas students or recent alumni.
Lastbit Co-founders: Bernardo Magnani, MBA 20, and Prashanth Balasubramanian
Economist and former McKinsey consultant Bernardo Magnani, MBA 20, spends a lot of time thinking about the meaning of money and how it regulates societies and human behavior. That fascination—and a drive to shake up the international payment industry— led him to early bitcoin user Prashanth Balasubramanian, and fintech startup Lastbit. In this interview, he discusses how he fell into entrepreneurship at Haas and wound up making it into the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator.
What does your startup do (in about 20 words)?
Lastbit is building a payment platform to enable cheap and instant cross-border settlements leveraging the Bitcoin Lightning Network
How did you get started in entrepreneurship at Haas?
Lastbit co-founder Bernardo Magnani, MBA 20, is on a mission to offer cheaper and faster cross-border payments.
When I came to Haas, I didn’t really know I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I didn’t even take a single entrepreneurship-related course during my MBA program. Nevertheless, I was very clear about the fact that I wanted to work close to financial institutions and payments.
I came to business school sponsored by McKinsey, and despite the fact that my experience with the consulting firm was very positive, I was having doubts about whether it was the right platform for me to drive change.
During my summer internship, I worked for one of the biggest financial institutions in South America, looking for an alternative path. I had a beautiful experience, leading three teams and nine people in digital transformation initiatives. But again, I didn’t feel that was my path. I wanted to do more things, faster.
Following my intuition, I came back to Haas determined to explore entrepreneurship. I reached out to Santiago Pezzoni, Santiago Freyria, and Francesco Dipierro, co-founders of StEP, who are now dear friends. I had heard amazing things about the program and felt that joining a rising project at the heart of the business school was the best way to learn. Eventually, I became part of StEP’s leadership team and fell in love with entrepreneurship.
Where did you meet your co-founder Prashanth Balasubramanian?
Lastbit founder Prashanth Balasubramanian faced challenges moving money from India to pay his tuition in Switzerland.
After joining StEP, I knew I wanted to find an opportunity with a fintech startup. I first heard about Lastbit and Prashanth through SkyDeck. I read everything I could find online about Prashanth and his project. I immediately felt connected to his story, values, mission, and even his love for heavy metal music. I had to meet him.
Intending to meet him, I went to my first and last networking event of my MBA. He was not there. I was bummed. Eventually, I found him and we started working together almost immediately. I never looked back after that.
Today, I’m very proud of our partnership and feel that we complement each other perfectly. On paper, we have pretty much no overlap and very different backgrounds, but our drive, vision, and values are pretty much the same.
Where did the idea for Lastbit come from?
Prashanth decided to start Lastbit when he was studying for his Master’s in Computer Science at ETH Zurich. While in Switzerland, he faced a lot of challenges moving money from India to pay his tuition and eventually decided to use Bitcoin.
Despite its potential, Prashanth realized that Bitcoin was still very far from delivering on its promise of being a new viable monetary system. Transactions were too slow and expensive, and using Bitcoin for real-world transactions was close to impossible. He decided to leave his Master’s program to start Lastbit with the mission to take Bitcoin mainstream, leveraging the Lightning Network, a technology that makes sending as little as a dollar instantly across the globe economically viable.
Why did the idea appeal to you personally?
Growing up in Mexico I saw how broken financial services are and I’ve been trying to find a way to solve this. When I met Prashanth, I immediately understood what cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin could mean for financial services. I’ve worked close to banks for around seven years and had never seen something nearly as exciting. I believe cryptocurrencies are the only credible promise to drive a paradigm shift in financial services.
What’s the Lightning Network and why is it so important?
The Lightning Network is a communication protocol built on top of Bitcoin that allows money to be sent between two parties instantly for very low fees without requiring a middleman to settle the transaction. The Lightning Network as a technology is meaningful for financial services because it’s arguably the fastest and most cost-effective way to settle transactions in the history of digital payments.
The Lightning Network as a technology is meaningful for financial services because it’s arguably the fastest and most cost-effective way to settle transactions in the history of digital payments.
Disrupting cross-border payment settlements with the Lightning Network could mean that sending and receiving money across the globe to anyone, anywhere, could be as simple and fast as paying your friends for lunch using Venmo or CashApp.
International payment settlements have seen no meaningful disruption in almost 50 years. Today, most global payments are still settled using the guidelines set by SWIFT, a protocol developed in the 1970s that isn’t up to par with the requirements of an economy that’s become more digital and global. SWIFT transactions can take five days or more and can cost $50 or more to settle, whereas Lightning transactions are instant and cost less than a penny each.
Getting into Y Combinator is exciting for any startup. What was the virtual experience like?
Quite frankly, one of the best experiences of my life. Honestly, I was a little skeptical about this batch being remote and I questioned how much value it would have for us. But for me, as a first-time founder, it was very transformative. It provided both unparalleled knowledge and access to one of the deepest networks in Silicon Valley.
Y Combinator marked a before and after for us. We just had our demo day (an event held twice a year when startups present to investors) and it’s been crazy. The interest we got is overwhelming. It feels like a dream come true.
What’s been the biggest challenge for Lastbit so far?
The biggest challenge has to be regulation. Cryptocurrencies have operated outside of the scope of traditional financial regulation for most of their history. Nevertheless, regulation has started to emerge globally.
We take regulation very seriously and are always looking to be one step ahead of what’s strictly required from us. Nevertheless, there is no real guarantee that regulation in the future will be favorable for businesses like ours. For example, some countries, including India, are attempting to ban cryptocurrencies.
All taken into consideration, I believe that regulation is a good thing and for us and being proactive about it can be a competitive advantage as it was for Coinbase.
What are your goals for the next six months?
Right now we are super focused on Europe, working on enabling cheaper and faster euro-to-euro merchant payments and remittances between Europe and Africa. Our goal for the next 12 to 18 months is to grow the business enough to raise a Series A round, which may require expanding our focus to other geographies, such as the USA.
The long term vision is to build a platform that connects all the major international payment corridors so that businesses across the globe can build payment solutions using our infrastructure. Think about Stripe, but for cross-border payments.
When MBA student Sandeep Shah met Cal wide receiver Monroe Young, they talked about football first, one of Shah’s passions, and then moved on to Young’s future career plans.
Wide receiver Monroe Young works with mentor Sandeep Shah, MBA 22. Photo: Al Sermeno, KLC fotos
“He’s exploring the idea of turning professional,” said Shah, MBA 22, who earned a bachelor’s degree in sports management at the University of Texas at Austin, and worked with the football team there.
Whether or not Young makes it to the NFL, Shah is helping him map out everything from resume drafting to professional network building through a new mentoring program that matches MBA and law students with 20 Cal football players, one Cal women’s rower, and one Cal baseball player.
The program launched this month, a joint effort between the Haas Sports Business Club and the Cameron Institute, which serves as the Cal Athletics department for student-athlete development.
“An opportunity to create more interest”
Ben Adler, JD/MBA 21, who initiated the mentoring program as vice president of marketing for the Haas Sports Business Club, said his interest in mentoring athletes grew after he worked with Gabby Costamagna, BA 21, a member of the Cal women’s rowing team who was considering going to law school.
Ben Adler, MBA/JD 21, initiated the mentoring program as vice president of marketing for the Haas Sports Business Club.
He also teamed with the Cal Athletics Department on a consulting project, part of which centered on the lack of graduate student engagement with Cal Athletics.
“Berkeley has thousands of graduate students who have allegiances to their undergraduate teams,” said Adler, who is partial to his own alma mater, University of Michigan. “We’re not as identified with Cal, so there was an opportunity to create more interest among grad students.”
One way of doing that, he thought, was connecting grad students directly to the athletes through a mentoring program. So through the Sports Business Club, Adler reached out to the Cameron Institute.
Bineti Vitta, the Cameron Institute’s director of career development, said they were immediately interested because mentoring aligns with the Institute’s career development pillar.
Piloting the program with student-athletes made sense, she added, as a common mindset among high-profile teams is centered around going pro. Yet in 2020, only 1.6% of NCAA football players were drafted to go professional. If players don’t go pro, they are often challenged with finding an identity outside of sports. “They love their sport and can’t even imagine there’s something that they could love equally,” Vitta said.
They love their sport and can’t even imagine there’s something that they could love equally, – the Cameron Institute’s Bineti Vitta.
Exploring and refining a career path
Kendall Stuscavage, MBA/MPH 22, a Cal undergraduate cross-country runner, mentors Josh Drayden.
During five hour-long sessions with mentors, athletes explore various career paths based on their interests, begin to build resumes, and discuss ways to frame their experiences as leaders.
Kendall Stuscavage, MBA/MPH 22, who ran Division 1 cross-country for Cal as an undergraduate, is mentoring Cal cornerback Josh Drayden. Drayden’s top choice is the NFL, but the two have discussed alternate plans—including work in sports management or coaching, or maybe entrepreneurship. “I am helping him to explore and refine that path,” she said.
Cornerback Josh Drayden called the mentoring program “a great tool for student athletes.” Photo: Al Sermeno, KLC fotos
Drayden called the mentoring program “a great tool for the student athletes here.” “I look forward to working with Kendall more,” he said.
Stuscavage said that the mentoring program is rewarding personally, and also provided an opportunity for her to stay involved with the Cal sports community. “I grew up in the Bay Area and was a Cal Bears fan since I could say the words, “Go Bears,” she said. “As a lifelong athlete, sports are my passion.”
When Adler graduates this spring, he’ll hand off the mentoring program to Stuscavage and Shah. He said he hopes they will expand the pilot to other Cal sports programs, and recruit graduate students from beyond the business and law schools as mentors to expand the career scope of mentorship.
“We would love to expand the mentorship program and the relationship between Haas and other professional schools on campus,” Shah said. “We have high hopes beyond this to create something that is sustainable.”
Big Give, the annual 24-hour campus-wide online fundraising blitz, brought in nearly $5 million in donations to Berkeley Haas this year.
With a total of 830 gifts from donors to the school, Haas broke the previous record of 806 gifts in 2019, raising $4,971,688. The event kicked off virtually on March 10 at 9pm and ran until 9pm on March 11.
In addition to being No. 1 on the leaderboard, again, for the most money raised by a department, school, or college, Haas also claimed prizes for:
The top two funds with the most unique international donors
The top three funds with the most unique donors all night
The top three funds with most unique donors all day
Other successes include claiming a total of $171,250 in challenge matches donated by Scott Galloway, MBA 92, Marty McMahon, MBA 01, Keith and Wendy (Bleiweiss) Lohkamp, both MBA 96, Douglas Herst, BS 65, and Carolen Herst, BA 64, and Haas Dean Ann Harrison.
“The past year has been challenging in so many ways, but Big Give and the generosity of our community is truly a bright light,” said Tracy Mills, executive director of Berkeley Haas Development and Alumni Relations.”We’re so grateful to everyone who came together and gave back to Haas this year in a show of collective strength and “beyond yourself” spirit that makes us proud.”
Throughout the day, Haas featured special alumni videos on social media of people who “light the way” for others.
Big Give launched in 2014 to give the entire Berkeley community—alumni, parents, students, faculty, staff, and friends—the chance to come together to support favorite schools and programs, and to help those schools and programs win prize money.
Haas Voices is a new first-person series that highlights the lived experiences of members of the Berkeley Haas community.
L-R, clockwise: Erinn Wong, BS 21, Mia Character, BS 20, and Vivian Feng, BS 24.
The myth of the “model minority” stereotypes Asian Americans as a polite, law-abiding, hard-working group that’s overcome discrimination to achieve educational and career success through drive and innate talent—typically in math and science.
The myth defies the fact that the Asian American community is diverse socioeconomically and culturally. The perception of the Asian community as a monolith is also the reason why people remain mystified by anti-Asian racism, says UC Berkeley alumna Hua Hsu, who wrote in the New Yorker recently that the “needs and disadvantages of refugee communities and poor Asian Americans have been obscured.”
Recently, several high-profile incidents of violence against Asians have shone a spotlight on long-simmering anti-Asian racism, and also highlighted the way the “model minority” myth has been used as a wedge between Black and Asian communities. We talked to two undergraduate students who are Chinese American, along with a recent undergraduate alumna who is Black, about what the myth means to them and how it impacts their lives.
Erinn Wong, BS 21, who grew up in Sacramento. Wong is a queer Chinese American; her parents are from Hong Kong.
Vivian Feng, BS 24, a freshman in the Berkeley Haas Undergraduate Global Management Program who grew up in Oakland. Feng is Chinese American and a graduate of Oakland High School.
Mia Character, BS 20, a native of Gretna, Louisiana, grew up in Redlands, Calif. She is now a recruiting coordinator at Robinhood via contract with AppleOne.
When did you first hear the term “model minority?”
Erinn Wong
Erinn Wong: I first heard the term back in high school. I thought it meant to stereotype Asians as hardworking, good at math and education—that somehow we work hard and we succeed and it was very much aligned with the meritocracy myth. I really bought into that and internalized it growing up, believing that if you work hard, you’ll be successful. It wasn’t until college that I was able to put two and two together and recognize that these stereotypes are rooted in anti-Blackness and white supremacy to show that Asian Americans are the “model minority” and to situate Black Americans as the “problem minority.”
Mia Character: It was probably when I first moved to California from the South that I was first introduced to Asian people and to the stereotypes. I don’t think anyone within my inner circle or family perpetuated these stereotypes, but I did hear them in the media or at school with jokes the kids at school would tell. From early on, I always thought of Asian American students not as competition, but as the ones to emulate because they were really good in their classes and played all these instruments and seem to have it all together. It wasn’t until I got to Cal that I really started paying attention to and listening to other Asian American folks that I learned how dangerous the model minority myth is.
It wasn’t until college that I was able to put two and two together and recognize that these stereotypes are rooted in anti-Blackness and white supremacy to show that Asian Americans are the “model minority” and to situate Black Americans as the “problem minority.” — Erinn Wong, BS 21
Vivian Feng: I’ve been aware of it for so long, but I didn’t really put a name to it. When I first heard it, I just thought of the stereotypical views of how Asians are better at math and internalized the belief that if I worked hard enough, I would be able to achieve success. But I never really talked about it until high school, when I fully embraced my identity.
How did your thoughts about the model minority change once you got to Berkeley?
Mia: I think it wasn’t until I got to Cal that I realized that the model minority myth impacts the Asian-American communities a lot more than just a simple “Oh, you’re good at math.” It’s a socioeconomic issue and it’s very systemic. At Cal, I started listening and paying attention and I was able to learn and grow in my understanding. There are groups within the Asian-American community that are disproportionately impacted by things like colorism that I didn’t know about in high school. Everybody has a different experience in America and all minorities face different stereotypes. I think my time at Cal has made me a lot more comfortable having conversations with my Asian friends and asking how they’re doing and how they have been impacted by racism and the systems of oppression that America is built on.
Vivian Feng
Vivian: It affected me mentally before even going into Berkeley because I felt like I had to go to Cal to meet expectations. In the end I chose Berkeley because it was the only college that I applied to with a major that lined up with my interests of international development, cross-cultural experiences, and traveling. When I got my acceptance letter, I had some doubts, but I ultimately felt this need to pursue my passion. Being at Haas as a freshman is even more drastically different because most people typically get in their junior year. You have this imposter syndrome. People internalize the model minority myth and say, “You got in, you’re smart. You can get through it, you’ll pass your classes.” But in reality, I don’t feel like that because I am a first-generation college student who went to an under-resourced high school. I do not feel prepared, and I’m literally in a system that wasn’t necessarily designed for me to succeed.
People internalize the model minority myth and say, “You got in, you’re smart. You can get through it, you’ll pass your classes.” But in reality, I don’t feel like that because I am a first-generation college student who went to an under-resourced high school.— Vivian Feng, BS 24
Erinn: Coming to Cal was my first time experiencing being with a larger East Asian population in school. I feel like people lump all Asian Americans together. I went to high school with, and was classmates with, many Hmong students, who are severely underrepresented in higher education and other areas, not to mention Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians. The model minority myth is really destructive. My classmates who were Hmong would either go to community college or work to support their families or go into the military and a few would go to a state college.
I also learned here at Berkeley that the identity and label “Asian American” had radical roots. It was coined by graduate students Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee, who formed the Asian American Political Alliance in 1968 at UC Berkeley to bring together Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese students to stand in solidarity. They fought for the self determination and collective liberation of Asian Americans and Third World Peoples, and in the Third World Liberation Front strikes, which led to establishing Ethnic Studies majors at colleges across the U.S. Asian American was a radical label then because it brought together a multi-ethnic, multi-class, and multi-generational coalition of Asians and shifted away from the “Oriental” label. To call yourself an Asian American at the time was a political statement. It’s wild now that Asian American has lost its radical, political roots because of the way it has been wielded by the white mainstream and model minority myth, and then internalized by all of us, to homogenize, invalidate, and erase our struggles and solidarity with each other and other communities of color.
How does the model minority myth hurt you personally?
Vivian: I’m told I’m too aggressive, but I don’t like being quiet when I feel the urge to speak up. I wasn’t engaged politically when I was younger because I had this perception that politics was only for white people. It was just ingrained into my life. Growing up, whenever I brought up politics with my mom, my thoughts were dismissed. It felt like I was talking to a wall. Eventually, I realized that my mom’s lack of political engagement is because of her lack of education while being in survival mode. Many East and Southeast Asians in my community have to worry about their basic necessities before even thinking about studying. As I became more knowledgeable about the model minority myth, I was always told that I was “too political” among my peers.
However, this fueled my desire to stop being a bystander and conforming to societal standards. Our reality is that the model minority myth hurts everyone as it perpetuates white supremacy.
Erinn: I got feedback at two tech corporate internships that I needed to be more confident, even though I thought the way I presented myself was fine, despite struggling with imposter syndrome and confidence at times. At the same time, in other spaces I’d get feedback that I was too strong and too aggressive, something East Asian women face. You’re expected to be submissive, not speak up, and just do what you’re expected to do. And when you do speak up and contribute, you’re seen as too strong, aggressive, bossy, a bitch. It’s the long-standing East Asian stereotypes of East Asian women being docile and exotic, while also being the dragon lady or tiger mom. The term also impacts how much space I take up, because as an East Asian woman, I’m expected to not take up space. The model minority myth compounds that by making me think, “Oh, maybe my struggles are not as marginalized as another person of color and I cannot take up as much space.”
You’re expected to be submissive, not speak up, and just do what you’re expected to do. And when you do speak up and contribute, you’re seen as too strong, aggressive, bossy, a bitch. — Erinn Wong
I’ve heard both East and South Asians say ‘we’re not really people of color,’ which is not true. I think it’s the model minority myth that creates this feeling that we’re not “POC enough.” But something that helped was what Haas alumna Michelle Kim said to me: that we need to think of ourselves as co-strugglers with Black people and other people of color, not as perpetual allies because that’s a white model of allyship. And when I really sat with that and made the connections to how the model minority myth makes me feel shame and guilt for “taking up space,” I saw how it’s white supremacy that makes me feel like I can’t take up space alongside other people of color because white supremacy creates and thrives from scarcity, that there is only enough space for one marginalized group to share their struggles and to thrive.
Mia Character
Mia: As a Black person growing up in a state with a fairly large Asian American population, the model minority myth had an adverse impact on me. It was created to pit Asian American and Black people against one another by saying, “if Asian people can thrive in America and be exceptional and thrive in their roles in our capitalistic society, then Black people should have been able to do it, too.” But if you take a step back and look at the different histories, they aren’t comparable. They don’t need to be compared and contrasted because we faced different kinds of oppression that all stem from white supremacy. Growing up and not understanding this, it was easy to feel like you have to be just as “perfect” to be worthy of respect—that you have to get the best grades, be a part of multiple clubs, and go to the best universities to prove that as a Black person you are worthy.
Growing up and not understanding this, it was easy to feel like you have to be just as “perfect” to be worthy of respect—that you have to get the best grades, be a part of multiple clubs, and go to the best universities to prove that as a Black person you are worthy.—Mia Character, BS 20
How do you think that the model minority myth hurts your community?
Erinn: The model minority myth has real impacts on the Asian community. For example, in tech, East and South Asians are overrepresented in certain departments. But as a whole, we don’t hold a lot of power, which is another reminder that under/overrepresentation is different from marginalization. We are least likely to be promoted to management, and there’s still a “bamboo ceiling.” This can be attributed to people internalizing the model minority and stereotypes of how we’re supposed to just shut up and work hard, or that somehow we don’t have “leadership potential and qualities,” communication skills, or “executive presence.” Southeast Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders are severely underrepresented in tech, and data on Asians is rarely disaggregated.
Beyond tech, Southeast Asians are systemically impacted by deportation, ICE raids, and poverty, Chinatown neighborhoods and Asian-owned businesses have been struggling in this pandemic, and Filipino nurses, Pacific-Islanders, and Native Hawaiians have had some of the highest COVID-19 mortality rates. The model minority myth ignores our struggles and our communities lack sufficient resources and attention. And I learned last year that less than 1% of philanthropic funding goes to Asian American Pacific Islander causes, which proves the model minority myth is at work again.
What are your thoughts about how the myth is connected to the recent anti-Asian violence?
Mia: This was happening long before Trump, but violence against Asians is never talked about. In some ways I think that’s also part of the model minority myth. We’re taught that because Asian Americans are the “model minority,” they can’t face racism and the violence that comes with it.
Vivian: It’s nothing new. Historically, many fail to recognize xenophobic practices, such as The Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment camps, as well as the murder of Vincent Chin. Asians are never really talked about in our history classes, and if it is, it’s always about East Asians from a divisive Eurocentric perspective. Now, the main difference is that anti-Asian violence is captured on camera and that more people are open to talking about it in the younger generation. Social media has changed everything in the way we approach politics. The elderly, especially Asians, are either scared or there’s a language barrier and they won’t report the incidents. And at least in Oakland, the violence has happened for as long as I can remember. I know so many people who have been affected by the violence before the pandemic and it’s a shame that it wasn’t recognized until now.
An Asian American resource guide compiled by undergraduate students Erinn Wong and Vivian Feng includes campus groups, Asian American history, and information about the recent violence against the Asian American community.
5% Full time graduates employed 3 months after graduation
2.5% Total number of distinct courses available
2.5% Total research expenditures
Separately, the MFE program ranked #5 again in both the 2021 Quantnetranking that was published last November and the recent Risk.net ranking.
According to Risk.net, the MFE program had an outstanding employment year in 2020 with just over 99% of the class placed and, at $115,132, earning the second-highest average starting salary of the programs being ranked, in spite enrolling the largest class of 96 students. With only 17% of the application pool accepted, Haas also ranked 4th in terms of the number of accepted students who enrolled.
Finding love in ordinary times is hard enough. In honor of Valentine’s Day, we talked to two Berkeley Haas couples—Jerry Qinghui Yu and Camilla Guo, both MFE 21, and Gary Yin and Aileen Lu, both MBA 22—who found love during a pandemic. Here are their stories.
Jerry Yu and Camilla Guo, MFE 21, exploring wine country in Napa.
When Jerry Qinghui Yu and Camilla Guo, MFE 21, found love in their class of 96 Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) students, it wasn’t a secret for long.
“The program is small, so news travels fast,” said Jerry, who met Camilla at the start of the year-long MFE course.
They shared a sense of humor and similar childhood experiences in China. They both love a good pun, too, particularly if it’s cross-cultural. And Camilla is passing on her passion for cooking to Jerry, who texts photos when he masters one of her complicated recipes.
Ask the pair who is smarter, he’ll swear that she is. Linda Kreitzman, executive director of the MFE program, agreed, but added that “they’re both brilliant and they’re fun together.”
“Jerry is very serious and Camilla really draws out that fun side of him,” she said. “He’s been funnier since he’s been with her.”
Jerry is very serious and Camilla really draws out that fun side of him. — MFE Executive Director Linda Kreitzman
The couple, who became avid local hikers since arriving in Berkeley, plans a road trip for Valentine’s Day, to California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park or maybe Yosemite. “We bought hiking shoes for the hills,” Camilla said. “We love to hike when we’re not busy.”
Next up, Jerry, who earned an undergraduate degree in financial economics, computer science, and mathematics from the University of Toronto before coming to Haas, will head to Boston where he’s landed a job at an asset management company.
Camilla, who holds an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering from Tsinghua University and has worked in derivatives and cross-asset structuring, plans to join him there after graduation in March.
During such a rigorous academic program, only complicated by the stress of the pandemic, it’s nice to have each other, Guo said.
“Since we are in the MFE he understands what I’m learning and we have more to share,” she said. “I don’t have to explain a lot. With friends, I sometimes have to share the background of things. With Jerry I can tell him how I feel right away.”
Gary Yin flew to to London to meet MBA classmate Aileen Lu, who was waiting for a visa to come to Berkeley. They visited Windsor Castle during their trip.
For Gary Yin, MBA 22, finding love during a pandemic was about taking a leap of faith—and getting on a plane.
Gary met Aileen Lu, MBA 22, in September 2020, when both volunteered as moderators during the virtual Berkeley China Summit. Gary was in Berkeley at the time, and Aileen was 16 hours ahead in Shanghai, waiting for a visa to fly to the U.S. and join her classmates.
The pair got to know each other during a conference on entrepreneurship, a shared passion. Both had started education-related companies before enrolling at Haas and had plans to continue working in the startup world.
Gary, who was born in China and grew up outside of Chicago, got to know Aileen in their shared cohort, chatting constantly on Slack and Zoom. But they both thought there might be more to their relationship.
“I found Gary to be a pretty genuine person and when we talked it was natural to open up and share personal stories,” Aileen said.
“The best part of my day was Slacking with her,” Gary said.
Gary Yin and Aileen Lu cooking in London.
As the weeks passed, Aileen, who earned an undergraduate economics degree at Berkeley in 2015, was still unable to get a visa. Frustrated by the closing of the U.S. Embassy in China, she decided to fly to London to try to get a visa there. Surprisingly, Gary offered to meet up with her, and he boarded a plane out of San Francisco with just five other international travelers.
“I thought ‘If Aileen doesn’t get the visa, this might be my one chance to see her during the pandemic,’” Gary said.
“We both took a leap of faith after knowing each other for two months,” Aileen said.
Over three weeks during the holiday break, they met up with friends and explored London. Since Britain’s coronavirus rules weren’t strict at the time, the couple were able to explore places like Windsor Castle and enjoy the holiday lights throughout the city.
When Aileen’s visa finally came through, the couple flew back to California together. They’ve been together since, living a few blocks apart in downtown Berkeley.
Starting out in two countries
Both are deeply involved in entrepreneurship at Haas. Aileen co-chairs the Berkeley LAUNCH accelerator and is working with Berkeley Female Founders, a campus group that brings founders and funders together. Gary is a Pear VC fellow and co-runs the Haas Startup Squad, a group that helps match Haas students to startups at Skydeck, UC Berkeley’s incubator program. He also organizes Startup Marketplace, a program that connects UC Berkeley grad students with top faculty and researchers for National I-Corps projects.
In their free time, the couple enjoys walking the campus, Aileen pointing out the buildings that have changed since she was an undergraduate. “All of our friends have found it pretty amazing that we’re together,” Gary said. “Things have worked out even though we started in two different countries and met in a third. We’re really grateful for that.”
When MBA student Sandeep Shah met Cal wide receiver Monroe Young, they talked about football first, one of Shah’s passions, and then moved on to Young’s future career plans.
