Author: Haas News

Startup Rumi gives students, profs an ethical way to use AI

|By Gary Thill
a woman wearing a name badge talking to another woman at an event at Haas
Ghazaleh Sadooghi, EWMBA 25, wanted to use AI for her classwork after ChatGPT was released but feared being labeled a cheater. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small

When OpenAI released ChatGPT, Ghazaleh Sadooghi, EWMBA 25, wanted to use it but feared being labeled a cheater. 

A senior software engineer at LinkedIn, she knew there had to be a better way to incorporate AI ethically into academia. So she and her husband, Mo Zadeh, MIMS 16 (information systems), began developing the startup Rumi Technologies, aiming to empower students to use AI responsibly within guidelines set by their instructors.

In this interview, Sadooghi explains how Rumi enables responsible AI use and discusses how Rumi is already being used by Haas students.

Tell us a bit more about what Rumi does.

Rumi functions like the suggested changes feature in Google Docs. We included a time slider that reveals every edit and AI prompt used during the writing process. This is all seamlessly integrated into Canvas, a new interface for working with ChatGPT on writing and coding projects. So professors can use Rumi to customize the AI prompts and functionalities for their assignments. Students who write their papers within the Rumi platform can show how they used tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, in their research. Instead of relying on flawed AI detectors or taking a hands-off approach to AI, professors get insights into students’ writing and thinking processes, rather than just evaluating final submissions.

 Which Berkeley Haas programs are trialing Rumi? 

Berkeley Haas is using Rumi in undergraduate and MBA classes. The feedback we’ve received from students and faculty has been very helpful in guiding our product development. We have the support from the Haas Digital team, particularly Tom Tripp, executive director of Haas Digital, and learning support consultant Hamza Taha. In addition to Haas, we’ve also signed 10 contracts with leading educational institutions in the United States, including Tufts University, Foothill College (which Niche ranked the No. 1 community college in California), and The Baldwin School (the No. 2 private high school in Pennsylvania).

man and a woman at UC LAUNCH talking to other students
Mo Zadeh, MS 16 (information systems), and Ghazaleh Sadooghi, EWMBA 25, co-founded Rumi and are working with Haas students, who are using the platform. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small

What are some key challenges schools face when incorporating AI?

We’ve engaged with over 1,000 educators and instructional designers across the United States and internationally. In most schools, we work with their AI steering committees that have formed to gather faculty feedback and propose solutions on how to deal with AI. Within each committee, there is often a divide: Some members advocate for banning AI to uphold academic integrity, while others support allowing AI to promote AI literacy.

Should AI policies be set by institutions?

We believe AI policy shouldn’t be set at the institutional level. It should be determined at the assignment level at the discretion of individual instructors. Schools should provide broad guidelines on AI policy and offer tools to implement these policies for any assignment. Rumi supports a range of AI policies, from no AI usage to partial AI integration to full AI integration.

How did your time at Berkeley Haas help you launch your startup?

When we had the initial idea for Rumi and a rough prototype, I shared it with one of my favorite professors, Maximilian Auffhammer. He was excited about our vision and provided valuable feedback, becoming a source of motivation for our team. Later, when we faced challenges in defining our pricing strategy, I turned to professional faculty member Bill Pearce, who guided us to think beyond simply making the product cheaper to appeal to customers. 

startup team holding a large winning check at a competition at Haas
The Rumi team nabbed first place at the 2023 UC LAUNCH competition. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small

The Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Program (BHEP) and the UC LAUNCH accelerator program were crucial to our startup’s progress. They connected us with top mentors, provided valuable exposure, helped us secure grants and small angel investments, and introduced us to our very first outside investors, Underdog Labs, who are very supportive. The team at LAUNCH, especially BHEP executive director Rhonda Shrader, our mentor, Jed Katz, MBA 96, and Mohammad Naqvi, MBA 24, were incredibly helpful and supportive. To date, we’ve raised $450,000 finished first in UC Launch’s 2023 startup cohort, and have been featured in Forbes.

What’s the long-term vision for Rumi? 

Our goal is to build the world’s leading academic integrity and artificial intelligence (AIAI) platform for educational institutions. We already have interest from schools in the Philippines, Thailand, and Australia. Beyond EdTech, we see significant opportunities in other industries, such as workforce development and legal tech.

Professor Jennifer Chatman named interim dean of Berkeley Haas 

| by Haas News
photo of a woman standing in front of Chou Hall on Haas campus
Professor Jennifer Chatman has been appointed interim dean of Berkeley Haas, effective August 1. Photo: Jim Block

Professor Jennifer Chatman, who is known for pioneering research in organizational culture, has been appointed interim dean of Berkeley Haas.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Ben Hermalin announced the news today.

Chatman’s appointment, effective August 1, 2024, follows Dean Ann Harrison’s announcement that she will step down at the end of July after a successful five-year term, including being named Dean of the Year by Poets and Quants in 2023. Harrison will continue her teaching and research as a half-time Haas faculty member. 

Harrison was enthusiastic in her endorsement of Chatman, noting her profound impact as an academic expert and effective leader. “Jenny has been an inspiration to many at Haas, including myself. Her appointment as interim dean ensures that Haas is in capable and visionary hands,” she said. 

Chatman said, “It will be my honor to serve the school and campus, and I look forward to hearing your ideas and concerns so that we can accomplish great things together in the year ahead. Let’s continue to let our Defining Leadership Principles inspire the best in us.”

The search for a permanent Berkeley Haas dean will begin in early fall. 

Commitment to Berkeley

Chatman, the Paul J. Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management, joined the Haas faculty in 1993. She has served on numerous school and campus committees and was associate dean of academic affairs from 2022 to 2024. Chatman was instrumental in helping Haas significantly increase the size and diversity of its faculty. From October to December 2023, she led the school as acting dean during Dean Harrison’s sabbatical. 

Chatman has a strong connection and commitment to Berkeley. A double Bear, she earned her BA in psychology and her PhD in business administration from Berkeley. Her connection to academia has deep roots as well. She followed in the footsteps of her late father, Seymour Chatman, a first-generation college student and former faculty member at Berkeley, who was influential in the fields of film, literature, and rhetoric.

Award-winning research

Chatman’s research has garnered numerous accolades, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Management. Her work has shown, for example, how emphasizing innovation within a strong organizational culture can increase a firm’s financial success and how narcissistic leaders create organizational cultures with less collaboration and integrity.

During her tenure at Haas, Chatman has consistently received high praise for her teaching, reflected in her membership in the “Club 6” for high teaching evaluations. She also won the Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching and was named among the “World’s Best B-School Professors” by Poets & Quants. She has led numerous programs as part of Berkeley Executive Education, including the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Program and Leading Strategy Execution Through Culture Program, shaping future leaders by translating her research insights into practical knowledge.

Chatman’s influence extends into the corporate world where she advises top companies across various industries on real-world cultural challenges. She is widely recognized for her expertise in fostering effective organizational cultures and its impact on the success of the organization, co-creating one of the most widely used tools to assess organizational culture.

She co-founded and co-directs the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation with Haas Professor Sameer Srivastava. In March 2024, they launched a podcast, The Culture Kit with Jenny and Sameer, in which they apply insights from current research to help solve listeners’ workplace culture problems.

Read more:

Berkeley Haas dean to step down, remain on faculty 

| by Haas News

Ann Harrison will step down as the dean of the Haas School of Business on July 31, 2024, remaining a half-time faculty member. The decision will allow her to spend more time with her New York-based family and focus on her research, she said. 

“It has been an incredible honor and joy for me to serve as dean of Haas,” Harrison said in a note to the Haas community sent this morning. “I am proud of what we have accomplished together.”

Harrison has served as dean of Berkeley Haas since January 2019, the second woman to lead the school. Her deep ties to UC Berkeley—where she earned her bachelor’s in economics and history and served as a professor in the College of Agricultural and Resource Economics for 10 years—have allowed her to make far-reaching changes in a short time, said Ben Hermalin, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost for UC Berkeley, who announced the news today.

“We thank Dean Harrison for her incredible leadership and numerous accomplishments during her term as the dean,” Hermalin said. “For anyone who has had the pleasure of working with her, Ann is wonderful to partner with. She is full of innovative ideas that go beyond Haas; hence, not only has she made Haas better, but she’s also made the campus better. Her leadership will be sorely missed.”

A sustainability mindset

Harrison said becoming a half-time ladder faculty member will allow her to spend meaningful time with her husband and two daughters, who live in New York, while staying connected to Haas and continuing her research. 

“I will be able to remain at the school I have been truly passionate about since I first set foot here as a freshman at Berkeley in 1977,” said Harrison, a renowned economist who is one of the most highly cited scholars on foreign investment and multinational firms. “I am especially excited to have more time to focus on my research into the gender pay gap and what makes industrial policy work.”

Harrison’s top priority at Haas was to embed a sustainability mindset in all of the school’s programs and operations. This resulted in the creation of a sustainability certificate and a dual master’s degree program in business and climate solutions with the Rausser College of Natural Resources, as well as a summer minor in sustainable business and policy. 

Courtney Chandler, Senior Vice Dean of Haas, said Harrison’s accomplishments have had school-wide impact—from growing the faculty, to fundraising, to growing degree programs, to infusing innovation, sustainability, and inclusion into business education. 

“She believes in Haas’ potential and strives to further strengthen the school’s reputation by setting an ambitious vision for Berkeley Haas,” Chandler said.

During her tenure, Harrison appointed the school’s first-ever chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer and the first chief sustainability officer. She orchestrated a major diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging (DEIJB) effort that broadened the profile of the school’s faculty, board, and student body, and created learning opportunities and anti-bias training for the entire Haas community. 

“Grateful for her leadership”

Professor Jennifer Chatman, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, said Harrison’s leadership over the past five years created cultural changes at Haas that have made the school “more diverse, more harmonious, and more collaborative than ever.” “Dean Harrison’s leadership style has set us up for an immensely bright future, and I am deeply grateful for her leadership,” she said.

people standing in the courtyard during the 125th event
(L-R) Ben Hermalin, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost for UC Berkeley; UC Berkeley Chancellor-Elect Rich Lyons; Prof. Jennifer Chatman,  Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Dean Ann Harrison; Prof. Don Moore and Erika Walker, Senior Assistant Dean for Instruction, attending the Berkeley Haas 125h Anniversary Celebration in the Haas courtyard. Photo: Jim Block

Harrison’s focus on innovation and entrepreneurship resulted in a new faculty group and an entrepreneurship hub—slated to open this fall.  Harrison envisions the hub as a central clearing house for students who wish to learn about all entrepreneurship activities across the Berkeley campus. The hub now has a faculty director, as well as an executive director.

In addition, Harrison expanded the school’s degree offerings with the Flex hybrid MBA cohort and worked closely with the Berkeley School of Public Health, the School of Engineering, Biological Sciences, and the School of Law to bolster their joint programs. 

Harrison, a chaired professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School before joining Haas, hired 40 new tenure-track faculty during her five-year tenure, 19 of whom are women. She also nearly doubled the number of faculty positions that are funded by Haas or by philanthropic funds. 

Stepped up fundraising

Under Harrison’s leadership, Haas has also significantly stepped up fundraising and raised $236 million since 2019. This includes the largest single gift in the school’s history—$30 million from alumnus Ned Spieker, BS 66, and his wife, Carol, BS 66 to turn the upper-division undergraduate business program into a four-year program.

When naming her “Dean of the Year” in 2023, the publication Poets & Quants called Harrison’s tenure an “unimaginable and nearly breathtaking record of achievement.”

Harrison said she looks forward to the opportunity to teach in the new four-year Spieker Undergraduate Program. 

“What really motivates me both as a leader and soon-to-be faculty member are the transformational opportunities we provide for our students, staff, faculty, and alumni,” she said. “We provide opportunity for everyone, at a scale that is unequaled among the private schools. What a powerful mission.”

Hermalin will announce details about the appointment of an interim dean shortly. Hermalin said the goal is to begin the search for a permanent dean in early fall 2024, conduct interviews in late fall and/or early spring, and announce the new dean in spring 2025, aiming for a July 1, 2025 start date. The interim dean will likely serve through June 30, 2025, while a national search is underway.

Haas Voices: Tsadiku Obolu, BS 24, on the power of therapy

| by Haas News

Haas Voices is a first-person series that highlights the lived experiences of members of the Berkeley Haas community. Here, Tsadiku Obolu, who is graduating from the undergraduate Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology (M.E.T.) program this week, shares the wisdom he gained while working on his mental health.

man wearing commencement sash standing next to Berkeley Haas sign
Tsadiku Obolu is graduating from the Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology (M.E.T.) program this week.

While serving as the senior advisor for the Haas Undergraduate Black Business Association, or HUBBA, I typically ended each of our meetings with some ‘senior advice,’ or words of wisdom.

Some of that advice included ‘Know what you don’t want as much as what you do want,’ and ‘You don’t become a leader to be acknowledged by everyone. You are a leader when everyone acknowledges you.’

I was only able to give this advice because I learned it in therapy.

It’s strange to find myself talking about mental health therapy as a Black man. In our culture, men are already looked down upon for being vulnerable and aren’t given the space to talk about their mental health. On top of that, Black men are seen by many as hyper-masculine and are often forced to hide their emotions, so they don’t seem weak.

I started therapy 10 months ago because I had difficulties relaxing and was having issues with sleep and focus. I am a very deep thinker and a hard worker. This deep thinking has helped me to achieve high goals academically, which got me admitted into the highly competitive M.E.T. program four years ago (after my mom convinced me to apply!). But it also had a downside: I couldn’t stop fixating on my thoughts.

Since starting therapy, I’ve become a convert. Not only have I found it incredibly helpful to have someone who helps me work through my problems—the sessions also opened up a new way of thinking for me. My ability to deal with problems in a constructive way has increased tremendously. I started to look at the world differently. I think of therapy like the gym. If you want to train your body, go to the gym. But if you want to train your mind, go to therapy.

man sitting on a wall wearing commencement sash with campanille in back
“One of the greatest lessons I have learned in therapy, and at Berkeley, is the great power of vulnerability.”

 

One of the greatest lessons I have learned in therapy, and at Berkeley, is the great power of vulnerability. In being truly vulnerable and speaking my truth, I believe that I brought the people into my life who were meant to be there. I attracted the right circle of friends and pushed out the people who weren’t supposed to be there. It was only when I began being true to myself that I was able to create that community. I found true friends, and I accomplished more than I ever could have imagined.

Some of those accomplishments included being the first-ever Black person in my consulting club—a club that now has seven Black members. I recruited members by engaging with the the Afro Floor (short for the African American Theme Program, a community at Cal that enables students to exist in Black spaces, where they can learn from Black/African theorists, scholars, and organizers), and Black Wednesday, spaces that consulting clubs typically don’t enter because their members don’t come from these communities.

One of my close friends, UC Berkeley student Marcus Aina, and I also founded HUBBA’s first consulting fellowship for Black students on campus, which provides access to previously unavailable skills and resources to help them apply and make it into competitive consulting or professional clubs.

Lastly, therapy helped me redefine how I view success. Success goes far beyond career, money, or any particular job.

I believe that my success is defined by who I am, not where I will work after I graduate (though I am thrilled to be heading to Google). My beliefs are more aligned now with one of my favorite Japanese manga shows Jujutsu Kaisen. ‘Are you the strongest because you’re Satoru Gojo? Or Are you Satoru Gojo because you’re the strongest?

he asked. To me, that means you are not defined by the job or accolade you get; you are defined by the person you are to get it. Being the best version of yourself brings the achievements. You are not your best version because of what you achieved.

I believe everyone should get a therapist. I have helped people at UC Berkeley, friends, and even family connect with therapists. It can be difficult to take that first step, to make the phone call to your doctor and talk about your needs. But as someone who has been in therapy for the last 10 months, I couldn’t be more happy with how much I have grown.

Reflecting on my time at UC Berkeley, true success is measured by the positive impact you have on others and the world as a whole. My time at Berkeley was not successful because of a job I got. It was successful because of the people I was able to impact along the way.

The poet Rumi once said, ‘You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.’ To that, I say that when you impact a person’s life, you are not impacting a single drop. You are impacting an entire ocean.

New collaboration lets business and journalism students take classes across disciplines

|By Andrea Lampros

UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Haas School of Business—with support from Bloomberg News—have launched an initiative to enable journalism and business students to take classes across the two disciplines. The schools are pursuing a formal joint certificate in Business Journalism, with the goal of strengthening reporting in a field that is multifaceted, complex, and pertinent to everyday lives.

“All stories are business stories — whether you’re covering city hall, labor, the environment or education,” said Berkeley Journalism Dean Geeta Anand. “We’re teaching students how to hold power accountable and usually power lies where the money rests — in the corporations that dominate our country. We are diversifying the storytellers and giving them the tools they need to cover business responsibly, knowledgeably and robustly.”

Dean Ann E. Harrison, Anand’s counterpart at Berkeley Haas, emphasized the benefits of crossing disciplines. “In order to cover business, journalists need to understand how business operates and how money moves through the economy. And business leaders can benefit from having a deeper understanding of the media,” Harrison said. “This is a win-win for students at both schools.”

man wearing a suit teaching in a classroom
Bloomberg Senior Executive Editor Tom Giles teaches “Covering Silicon Valley.”

The Berkeley initiative kicked off with a class taught by Bloomberg Global Technology senior executive editor Tom Giles on “Covering Silicon Valley” in collaboration with Bloomberg News. The class seeks to provide a “foundation for reporting on a broad range of business topics, from IPOs and market swings to employment gains and trade flows,” emphasizing the Bay Area’s tech industry and players.

“Understanding how money is used to build businesses, create jobs, amass wealth and, too often, widen inequality has never been more urgent,” Giles said. “Our aim is to give journalists the tools they need to follow money, expose the misuse of it, and tell the story of capitalism clearly, unflinchingly and compellingly.”

Berkeley students are the first in the nation to use the just-released Bloomberg Guide to Business Journalism, which provides students and professionals with the essential tools for reporting on companies, industries, financial markets, economies, banks and government policies anywhere in the world. The book illustrates how to chronicle capitalism for different audiences — from general consumers of business news to market specialists — and how to present compelling stories across print, web, video, and audio formats.

Former Haas Dean Rich Lyons named new UC Berkeley chancellor

| by Haas News
man wearing a suit and tie standing on balcony in front of trees
Rich Lyons at home in the Berkeley Hills. Photo: Keegan Houser/UC Berkeley

Rich Lyons, former dean of the Haas School of Business and UC Berkeley’s current associate vice chancellor and chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer, has been selected to become UC Berkeley’s next chancellor.

Lyons will assume his new role on July 1, 2024, when current Chancellor Carol T. Christ retires.

University of California President Michael V. Drake announced his selection and the UC Board of Regents approved the appointment during a special meeting held today at UCLA. Lyons, who has devoted most of his career to UC Berkeley, will be the university’s 12th chancellor, notably the first UC Berkeley undergraduate alumnus since 1930 to become the campus’s top leader.

“I am naturally humbled and thrilled to be serving alongside all of you in this role,” Lyons said after the appointment was announced. “The University of California, as we know, is not just one of this country’s most important assets; it’s one of the world’s most important assets, and we steward that asset, and that is an enormous responsibility.”

“The University of California as we know is not just one of this country’s most important assets; it’s one of the world’s most important assets, and we steward that asset, and that is an enormous responsibility.” – Rich Lyons.

Christ lauded his appointment. “I am both thrilled and reassured by this excellent choice,” she said. “In so many ways, Rich embodies Berkeley’s very best attributes, and his dedication to the university’s public mission and values could not be stronger. I am confident he will bring to the office visionary aspirations for Berkeley’s future that are informed by, and deeply respectful of, our past.”

Members of the UC community congratulated Lyons and spoke on his behalf during the meeting, including Jo Mackness, MBA 04, an associate vice chancellor at UC Berkeley and a staff advisor to the UC Regents. “As an economist, as a finance professor, you bring the financial acumen and the creativity that will be required to finance UC Berkeley’s future,” Mackness, who formerly served as chief strategy and operating officer at Haas under Lyons, said. “And as good as you are at vision and strategy, you understand Peter Drucker’s old adage that culture does eat strategy for breakfast, and you are deeply committed to creating an organizational culture where it’s OK to question the status quo.”

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, MBA 92, commended Lyons’ extraordinary talent for fundraising, recognizing the passion Lyons brought to Haas “and your belief and your faith in the business school and how effective you were at bringing other people along to help achieve the vision you set forth.”

Deep Berkeley roots

Lyons, who grew up in Los Altos, arrived on the Berkeley campus as an undergraduate. He earned his bachelor’s degree in business and finance with highest honors in 1982 and went on to earn a Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1987. After six years teaching at Columbia Business School, Lyons returned to Berkeley in 1993 to join the faculty as a professor of economics and finance.

“No institution has come anywhere close to Berkeley in terms of shaping my life,” Lyons told UC Berkeley News this week. “There’s this favorite phrase of mine: ‘You can’t be what you can’t see.’ Neither of my parents had a four-year degree when I arrived at Berkeley. For so many reasons, in so many ways, I could have never seen the life I have lived were it not for my undergraduate years at Berkeley.”

As an international finance professor, Lyons was a six-time recipient of the Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching—the school’s top teaching honor—and also won UC Berkeley’s highest teaching award in 1998. In 2006, he took a leave to serve as chief learning officer for Goldman Sachs, focusing on leadership development among managing directors and partners.

Lyons returned to Berkeley in 2008 to serve as dean of the Haas School of Business. During his tenure as dean, Lyons oversaw the construction of Connie & Kevin Chou Hall, a state-of-the-art academic building that opened in 2017. He also forged stronger ties with other UC Berkeley colleges and departments, with a focus on dual degree programs that combine business with STEM fields, including the new Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program with Berkeley Engineering.

man speaking at a podium in Haas courtyard
Former Haas dean Rich Lyons at the naming ceremony for Connie & Kevin Chou Hall, which opened in 2017. Photo: Noah Berger

While leading Haas, Lyons is perhaps most well known for his creation of four distinct Defining Leadership Principles that spurred a sweeping cultural initiative at the school that stands out in the minds of many.

“We had never made anything explicit,” about the culture at Haas, Lyons said in an interview with Poets & Quants in 2018. “That felt like a giant opportunity so I began to ask myself, ‘What would being truly intentional on culture look like?'” The values that emerged: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself, have inspired and influenced students and alumni alike.

Speaking at today’s meeting, Lyons noted how the Haas culture has spread across the Berkeley campus, so “that when the chancellor of Berkeley says we are all about questioning the status quo—this mindset that there’s got to be a better way to do this—nobody bats an eye because it’s part of where we come from.”

An innovative changemaker

In January 2020, Lyons became Berkeley’s first chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer. In that role, Lyons worked to expand and champion Berkeley’s innovation and entrepreneurship activities. To that end, he helped launch the Berkeley Changemaker program in 2020, which now boasts some 30 courses that help undergraduates see innovation and entrepreneurship in action. The courses have quickly become among the most popular academic offerings on campus.

Lyons is particularly proud of the startup ecosystem on UC Berkeley’s campus. When UC Berkeley took the top spot last year for the number of venture-funded startups founded by undergraduate alumni, Lyons said he wasn’t surprised, noting that support for UC founders has accelerated dramatically over the past 20 years.

Noting Lyons’ unique focus on innovation in science and technology, Dean Ann Harrison, who succeeded Lyons as Haas dean, said he exemplifies “what is uniquely great about Berkeley.”

“This will be a historic new era, building on the strength of the foundation set by Chancellor Christ and leading to ever-greater achievements for Berkeley and its community,” Harrison said.  “As my predecessor in the Haas deanship, Rich inspires me every day; as a friend and colleague, he enhances my life and that of everyone around him. I am truly delighted by this news and look forward to collaborating with him on a whole new level.”

Gen AI, hybrid work, and DEIB are hot topics at 6th annual Culture Connect Conference

| by Haas News
All of the speakers from day two of the conference pose for a photo on stage.
Photo: Jordan Joseffer

More than 250 business leaders and academic researchers gathered at Berkeley Haas from Jan. 9-10 for the sold-out Culture Connect Conference, sharing challenges and insights on creating high-performing, inclusive cultures in the age of generative AI and hybrid work.

The sixth annual conference, organized by the Berkeley Haas Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation (BCC), featured talks by top leaders from IBM, Lyft, Pixar, LinkedIn, Hubspot, and other leading companies, along with hands-on workshops and discussions. It was led by the center’s Co-Founding Directors Jennifer Chatman and Sameer Srivastava, and organized by Program Director Audrey Jones.

Chatman, the Paul J. Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management at Haas, said she was struck by the stories leaders shared of trying, failing, and trying again as they have experimented in real time with AI and hybrid work. 

“My biggest takeaway is that an experimental mindset is critical as organizations approach these very significant changes that everyone is facing today,” Chatman said. “Organizations are going through seismic shifts in how they are thinking about and conducting work. The conference was fascinating because leaders shared their stories—the good and the bad—as they navigate these changes.”

People sit at tables listening to a presentations in a large event room with big windows.
Photo: David Ho

This was the first year the conference was open to the broader public beyond invited presenters and BCC partners. Attendees included about 100 academics and 150 industry leaders from a diverse range of industries, including health care, biopharmaceuticals, media, tech, financial services, film, government, and nonprofits. Seventy companies represented.

“The combination of research-backed evidence from academics and practical advice from seasoned industry leaders is difficult to bring together but when it happens, it yields a level of insight that could not be achieved by either perspective alone,” added Srivastava, the Ewald T. Grether Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy. “We’re immensely grateful to every speaker, workshop leader, facilitator, and participant who contributed to making this a meaningful event of learning and connecting.”

A person reads a poster about leading culture.
Photo: Jordan Joseffer

Day 1: Diverse perspectives on organizational culture academic research

The first day of the conference emphasized research, with presentations from 34 scholars from around the world who examine culture through the lens of sociology, social psychology, and economics. Keynote talks included Paul Ingram of Columbia on how people tend to conceal social class identities; Doug Guilbeault of Berkeley Haas on how gender biases tend to be stronger and more persistent in online images than in text; Anita Williams Woolley of Carnegie Mellon on how the drivers of collective intelligence in teams differ from individual intelligence; and Leo Bursztyn of the University of Chicago on how to create social change by correcting misperceptions about prevailing norms. 

Former Haas Dean Rich Lyons, Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer at UC Berkeley, and Laura Hassner, executive director at UC Berkeley Innovation & Entrepreneurship, reported on the success of the UC Berkeley Changemaker program, a campus-wide certificate program including about 30 courses addressing critical thinking, communication, and collaboration—and enrolling about 20% of undergraduates.

Doctoral student Yingjian Liang of Indiana University Bloomington won the Edgar Schein Best Student Paper Prize. Second place went to Danyang Li of Berkeley Haas.

Day 2: Deep dives into three key themes 

Future of work and hybrid workspaces

Yamini Rangan speaks on stage.
Photo: Jordan Joseffer

The second day of the conference was attended by about 200 industry leaders and academics. HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan, MBA 03 (left), sat down with Chatman (right) for a fireside chat. Rangan said companies should treat culture as a product that management consistently refine. “You have to evolve your culture every day, every week, like a product,” Rangan said. She also emphasized the importance of building a team of leaders, rather than building a leadership team to make culture inclusive. “Culture is how people behave when leadership is absent,” she said.

Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford, shared data on how firms are adapting to remote and hybrid work across different sectors of the economy. Bloom noted that the effect of remote work on productivity has been neutral, while the impact on productivity has been typically positive. “Organized hybrid has won,” he said. 

Kristen Sverchek, president of Lyft, detailed the company’s journey with hybrid work, and Martine Haas, a management professor at the Wharton School, offered a framework for thinking about a firm’s hybrid culture. 

Laszlo Bock speaks on stage.
Photo: Laura Counts

In a fireside chat with Srivastava (above right), Laszlo Bock, CEO and co-founder of Humu & Gretel.ai (above left), discussed how to help employees find meaning and connection while using hybrid work models. Bock, who formerly worked in People Operations at Google, shared an impactful exercise used at Google: Find three or four interesting stories about people within the company, and brief execs on these stories again and again so that they retell the stories. These stories aren’t PR, he said—they will resonate to help give a sense of a strong, cohesive culture.

DEIB focus

A panel of five people engage in a discussion on stage.
Photo: Jordan Joseffer

Shifting focus, Co-founder, Coach, and Consultant Kia Afcari (above left) moderated a roundtable on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. 

During the discussion, Reema Batnagar, vice president of people at Pixar (2nd from left), emphasized the importance of using personal stories as a way to foster inclusion and belonging at work. David W. Kim, chief DEI officer at NetApp (2nd from right), discussed why corporate leaders must maintain the momentum of their DEI efforts despite recent pushbacks. David Pedulla, a sociology professor at Harvard (right), highlighted the extent to which various forms of discrimination still persist in the labor market. 

Sa-kiera Hudson, an assistant professor at Haas (middle), shared recent research findings that emphasize the importance of understanding intersectionality, specifically how gender and race can work together to amplify or dampen various forms of bias. Hudson emphasized that people are complex and we should never assume that their experience within a group is aligned with their perceived identity.

Chris Bell and Jamie Woolf pose for a photo on stage.
Photo: Jordan Joseffer

CreativityPartners Chief Associate Chris Bell (above left) and Co-founder and CEO Jamie Woolf (above right) led a workshop on how to create a sense of belonging through mutual storytelling.

 

Generative AI’s transformative role

Nickle LaMoreaux speaks on stage.
Photo: Brandie Brooks

In a fireside chat with Chatman (above right), Nickle LaMoreaux, chief human resources officer at IBM (above left), described how she and her colleagues have been harnessing AI to transform the role of HR in the organization.

 

Three people engage in a discussion on stage.
Photo: Jordan Joseffer

MIT Professor Kate Kellogg (above middle) and Warwick Business School Professor Hila Lifschitz-Assaf (aboove left) discussed a generative AI field experiment conducted at Boston Consulting Group. Hatim Rahman (above right), an assistant professor at the Kellogg School of Management, shared research on the importance of technological certification in the labor market.

Two people engage in a discussion on stage.
Photo: Jordan Joseffer

Teuila Hanson (above left), chief people officer at LinkedIn, emphasized the need to take a people-centric approach when adopting AI tools and technologies, since human skills—including human intuition that AIs lack—are critical. “The future of work is still human,” she said.

A look back: Top Berkeley Haas moments of 2023

| by Haas News

Gearing up to welcome a new year is the perfect opportunity to look back at highlights from 2023 at Berkeley Haas. A toast to 2023 wouldn’t be complete without marking the big celebrations, distinct milestones, grand achievements, and more than a few welcomes (alongside some farewells). In no particular order, here are our Top 10 picks for 2023.

    1. 125 years of reimagining business: We celebrated a BIG milestone with a big party on the 125th anniversary of the day that Cora Jane Flood announced the gift that launched the College of Commerce—now the Haas School of Business. Students, staff, alumni, campus and Haas senior leaders, and founding donor Flood’s family member gathered to honor the school’s trailblazers —and our ongoing impact on business and society
    2. Dean of the Year: Dean Ann Harrison was recognized by the business school publication Poets & Quants, which lauded Harrison for leading a major diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and belonging effort; broadening the profile of the Haas faculty, school board, and student body; and helping fundraise a total of $227 million for the school, among other successes. She also made the cover of our fall issue of Berkeley Haas Magazine. Harrison returns from sabbatical in early January.
      Photo of Dean Ann Harrison on campus.
      Harrison gracing the pages of Berkeley Haas Magazine. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small.

       

       

    3. More major milestones: Berkeley Executive Education (BEE) celebrated its 15th anniversary and Cleantech to Market (C2M) turned 10. Exec Ed has provided top programs to thousands of individuals in leadership, entrepreneurship, and strategy and finance, as well as customized programs for companies, government, and university partners. Promising climate technologies that addressed everything from water desalination to Earth element extraction to lightening-fast battery charging took center stage at a bigger and better than ever December Cleantech to Market (C2M) Climate Tech Summit.

      large group of masters students on stage at Haas
      Students in the Cleantech to Market program at the 2023 C2M Summit.
    4. Our generous community: The Berkeley Haas Development and Alumni Relations team (DAR) team reported a record three-year period in the school’s fundraising history, raising more than $171 million from alumni, faculty, staff, students, parents, and friends. The funds raised this fiscal year—about $56 million—brought Haas to the finish line of its five-year campaign. 
    5. Student walking in front of Haas sign in front of campus
      Photo: Noah Berger

      5. Undergrad’s big shift: We began to bid farewell to our incredible two-year undergraduate program as the Berkeley Haas Undergraduate Program Office received its first round of applications from prospective first-year students for our inaugural Spieker class. The first class of four-year students will enter in the fall.

      Woman and man talking animatedly.
      Dean Ann Harrison with Ned Spieker, BS 66, who with his wife, Carol, funded the undergraduate program’s transformation.
    6. The rise of the Flex cohort: As part of the evening & weekend MBA program, students in the Flex cohort completed their first year of live remote courses, demonstrating an innovative educational model that will serve a greater range of students. Flex provides what many students say they need most: schedule flexibility in a top program. MBA student group gathered at Haas
    7. New brain power: Eight new ladder and 22 professional faculty members joined Haas in fall, bringing their intellect, passion, and unique perspectives to the school. With the new tenure-track arrivals, the ladder faculty—at 96 members—is now the largest it’s ever been and is closing in on Dean Harrison’s goal of 100. 
      A photo collage of all 8 new professors.
      From top row, left to right: New Berkeley Haas assistant professors Eben Lazarus, Cailin Slattery, Shawn Kim, Antoine Levy, Sam Kapon, Erica Bailey, returning professor Alexandre Mas, and new assistant professor Rachel Gershon.

    8. Making headlines: Our faculty were featured in national media outlets more than 500 times this year, bringing expertise to everything from the rising price of gas, to the Silicon Valley Bank fallout, to tech layoffs, to the future of AI.

      Image: AdobeStock

    9. Growth space: Construction continued on the new Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Hub, which will allow entrepreneurs at Haas—and across the university—to meet, brainstorm, and invent new startups. The Hub is expected to be completed in fall 2024.

      new entrepreneurship hub at Haas (rendition)
      A photo illustration of the home of the new hub, a Julia Morgan designed building under renovation. The building was constructed in 1908.
    10. Chart toppers: All of Haas’ degree programs once again performed well in key rankings. U.S. News & World Report ranked the EWMBA program #1 (again) and the undergraduate program #2; The Financial Times ranked the FTMBA program #7 globally and #4 in the U.S.; and the MFE program was ranked #4 by QuantNet.

UC LAUNCH teams gear up for Demo Day pitches

|By Aria Yang
drone shot of Chou Hall and campus
2023 Demo Day will be held in Chou Hall.

Student-led startup teams tackling a diverse range of challenges—from carbon emissions to the use of AI in education—will come together to pitch this week at the University of California LAUNCH Accelerator’s Fall 2023 Demo Day. 

The event, a chance for startups to pitch their ventures to a panel of judges, will be held Thursday, Nov. 30, at Spieker Forum in Chou Hall. All eight finalists will compete for up to $50,000 in non-dilutive funding.

Rhonda Shrader, MBA 96, executive director of the Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Program, noted the strong turnout of women this year.

“For the first time in UC LAUNCH history, seven of the eight finalists have at least one female co-founder,” she said. “We are super excited to celebrate them on Demo Day.” 

Scaling a company

The UC LAUNCH program guides students through the steps of scaling a company using the lean methodology, with mentorship provided by experts in the field. All teams must include at least one current UC student, alum, or faculty member. More than 250 startups that have participated in the program have gone on to raise more than $1.4 billion collectively, according to UC LAUNCH organizers.

This year’s finalists include CarbonSustain, providing a way for companies to efficiently track and analyze carbon emissions. 

man wearing a light blue shirt standing in front of a tree
Paul Bryzek, MBA 24

Co-founder Paul Bryzek, MBA 24, said the team interviewed more than 85 potential customers, competitors, business owners, and subject matter experts while in UC LAUNCH. “Our interviews yielded 10 potential customers, three distinct customer target groups, an understanding of their willingness to pay, and gaps with the existing solutions,” he said. “We’re grateful for the mentorship from Rhonda Shrader and the UC LAUNCH volunteers who helped us to achieve product-market fit.”

Finalist Rumi’s platform helps schools integrate AI to enhance student learning through writing. 

Co-founder Mohammad Hossein Ghasemzadeh, MIMS 16, said the team did extensive research in forming the startup and believes that AI will play a key role in the future of education. “We’ve talked with over 150 instructors across the country, and we’re very excited to share our story and provide some insights into what the future of AI in education will look like,” he said.

Eight finalists pitching

Other LAUNCH finalists include OmBiome, a regenerative health company creating algae-based products for oral and gut health; Rely, simplifying property management for landlords and offers renters a comprehensive real estate meta-search engine; Materri, a materials marketplace focused on sustainable materials for footwear and apparel; Insta Chef, which is providing nutritious, easy-to-prepare meals to senior living facilities; Essence Labs, an AI-powered platform optimizing work schedules for female employees based on hormonal cycles; and AidRx, providing custom AI charting solutions to ease the documentation burden for pharmacists and other non physician clinicians.

The judging panel includes Ben Goldfein of WilmerHale, Jed Katz of Javelin Venture Partners, and Kat Mañalac of Y Combinator.

Register to attend Demo Day.

Berkeley named top university for number of venture-backed companies

| by Haas News

PitchBook has ranked Berkeley #1 for its number of venture-backed companies founded by undergraduate alumni and #2 for its number of founders, according to the 2023 PitchBook University rankings.

The 2023 PitchBook rankings also named Berkeley the #1 public university for startup founders.

A total of 1,433 Berkeley undergrad alumni founded 1,305 venture-backed companies, a virtual tie with Stanford, whose 1,435 founders started a total of 1,297 companies, according to Pitchbook.

Taking into account all graduate alumni, Berkeley ranked #5 in startups and founders. Berkeley Haas MBA alumni ranked #9, with a total of 447 founders who started 413 venture-backed startups. (The ranking doesn’t include many more startups that have been founded without venture capital funding.)

The 2023 PitchBook University rankings are based on the total number of founders whose companies received a round of venture funding between Jan. 1, 2013, and Sept. 1, 2023.

The analysis is based on PitchBook data for global VC investment, as well as the educational information of more than 150,000 founders. Since companies can have more than one founder, and founders may attend multiple schools, it is possible for the same company or founder to count toward multiple universities.

Read UC Berkeley’s article about this ranking.

Berkeley Haas is #10 in Bloomberg Businessweek ranking

| by Haas News

Berkeley Haas rose to #10, tied with MIT Sloan, in the 2023 Bloomberg Businessweek ranking of full-time MBA programs. Haas rose four spots this year, up from #14 last year. 

Based on input from recent full-time MBA graduates, alumni, and employers, as well as school-provided data, Bloomberg rates MBA programs on what Businessweek considers to be the five fundamental elements of business school education: graduate compensation, learning, entrepreneurship, network, and diversity. Each area is weighted according to its importance among the alumni and employers who are surveyed for the ranking.

In these five areas, Haas ranked:

#6 in entrepreneurship

#6 in learning

#15 in compensation 

#15 in networking

#16 in diversity 

Among the top 25 schools in this ranking, only one school, Georgia Tech, beat Haas in the learning category. In diversity, Haas was rated third among the top 10 and fifth among the top 20 schools.

Bloomberg Businessweek is known as a volatile ranking — and this year was no different. Harvard Business School, Northwestern Kellogg, MIT Sloan, and Yale SOM dropped by multiple points, leaving room for other schools to rise into the top 10, including Virginia Darden and Michigan Ross, which moved up six spots. Stanford Graduate School of Business remained at #1.

Donors fuel three record years of Berkeley Haas fundraising

| by Haas News
Haas campus at sunset with the Campanile
Haas at sunset. Photo: Noah Berger

Building on three years of fundraising momentum, Berkeley Haas raised more than $56 million for the school in fiscal 2023.

Under the leadership of Dean Ann Harrison, the Berkeley Haas Development and Alumni Relations team (DAR) team reported a record three-year period in the school’s history, raising more than $171 million from alumni, faculty, staff, students, parents, and friends.

“The Haas community continues to come together to provide incredible support to the school,” Harrison said. “These generous gifts will be used to help us continue to expand our faculty, enrich our students, and empower our alumni as we work for a more sustainable and equitable future. We are truly grateful.”

The total amount raised in 2023 includes $4.1 million from 3,554 donors to the Haas Fund, which is used to retain faculty and provide student scholarships, as well as to support alumni programs and career services.

Haas also achieved its UC Berkeley-wide Light the Way campaign goal of raising $400 million in July, six months before the close. Launched in 2014, The Light the Way campaign is a historic effort to raise $6 billion. The campaign ends on December 31, 2023.

More notable highlights this year for Haas include:

Alumni engagement highlights from the past year:  

Alumni volunteers, advisors, mentors, and speakers again stepped forward to serve the school in the past year, in efforts including:

Berkeley Haas also returned to a full slate of alumni events this year, hosting three special regional events with Dean Ann Harrison in London, Los Angeles, and New York. Over 2,400 Haas community members participated in our signature events, with more than 1,200 returning for the annual MBA Reunion Weekend and Alumni Conference.

“We are incredibly grateful to all of our generous donors and alumni volunteers who continue to support our short- and long-term vision as a top business school,” Assistant Dean and Chief Development Officer Howie Avery said.

For more information about investing in the school’s priorities and/or becoming a volunteer please contact Howie Avery or the Development and Alumni Relations office.

FlowGPT cofounder on his visionary AI project that’s speeding ahead in the AI market

|By Aria Yang

Startup: FlowGPT
Co-founders: Lifan Wang, MBA 22, and Jay Dang, a former UC Berkeley Computer Science major

photo of a man in black and white
Lifan Wang, MBA 23, co-founder of startup FlowGPT (Wang used Lensa AI to generate the image.)

In this interview, Lifan Wang discusses how he met his FlowGPT co-founder, Jay Dang, at UC Berkeley, and why speed was critical for his startup in entering the AI market.

How did you  come up with the idea for FlowGPT?

We started this project in January. We both were power users of ChatGPT when it first came out. We would spend around 10 hours a day exploring different use cases of ChatGPT prompts and trying to leverage AI to increase our productivity. As we used it more, we realized that there are so many more use cases that people haven’t discovered.  So we started doing extensive research by talking to people who use ChatGPT and prompts. We talked with approximately 100 people from various online communities, such as Discord channels and found that people constantly post and share ChatGPT prompts with each other, which gave us the idea to create a dedicated platform for prompt creators to share their prompts.

How did you get started in entrepreneurship at Haas? 

Haas is a great place for aspiring entrepreneurs. I’ve taken several entrepreneurship classes, including a class with Rhonda Shrader, executive director of the Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Program, that helped me understand the process of launching a startup — from searching for ideas to conducting user research to creating a prototype. 

Haas is a great place for aspiring entrepreneurs.

In the Business of AI,  taught by Pieter Abbeel, a renowned professor in the engineering school, I interacted with generative AI and learned about neural networks and the GAN (Generative Adversarial Network), which pits two different deep learning models against each other in a game. I also explored various technical imaging technologies. I firmly believe that AI, especially generative AI, is going to be a significant trend that will revolutionize the world.

Where did you meet your co-founder?

Jay and I met during our time at UC Berkeley SkyDeck, where we attended various events. Jay was seeking funding for his startup in his freshman year. As a part-time venture partner, I was interested in potential investment opportunities. He pitched me his startup, which connected to the work I had previously done in the industry. We had extensive discussions and got to know each other well.

Are you both seeking funding right now?

We secured our C round of funding in May and are currently preparing to launch a new funding round this month or next. Our user base has experienced robust growth, and based on the data we’ve gathered, now is the perfect time to accelerate expansion.

What are some of your concerns about the future of AI or its impact on work and society?

With every technological advancement, there are inherent risks. When computers were introduced, illegal activities emerged on websites and regulations evolved. Our aim is to empower people to be more productive and generate a positive impact while prioritizing safety. We must ensure the safe use of AI, which will become a powerful tool, similar to the internet and software. Many people are already leveraging new AI tools like ChatGPT and Prompt Engineering to increase their productivity. At FlowGPT, we use ChatGPT daily for coding, product management, messaging, and marketing, covering various aspects of our operations. AI represents the next generation of powerful tools that elevate human productivity to new heights.

Our aim is to empower people to be more productive and generate a positive impact while prioritizing safety.

Do you have any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? 

Execution is crucial. That is the most important thing I learned from Jay, my co-founder. 

We launched the product in January, just one and a half months after ChatGPT’s release. Unlike many competitors, who were still in the ideation stage, we were already ahead. When competitors attempted to imitate us, we had already iterated three times and gained a million users. 

My advice is to start building right away. You don’t have to be an expert at product development to get started. During my time at Cal, I noticed many people getting stuck in the same phase. Some might say, “I’ve got all the business plans figured out, and all I need is one programmer to build the product.” However, as time passed, they were still searching for programmers. The ability to launch is crucial, especially in the initial stages.

 

Ned Augenblick receives 2023 Williamson Award, highest faculty honor

| by Haas News

Associate Professor Ned Augenblick, a behavioral economist who studies the ways in which people systematically stray from rational thinking, has received the 2023 Williamson Award—the highest faculty honor at the Haas School of Business.

Headshot photo of Professor Ned Augenblick
Ned Augenblick

The award is bestowed on the faculty member who best exemplifies the school’s highest values, including excellence in research, teaching, and service to the school. It is named for long-time faculty member and Nobel Laureate Oliver Williamson, who died in 2020. 

Augenblick, the 7th recipient of the award, received multiple nominations from faculty colleagues who cited his contributions as a “super citizen” of the school. His leadership was particularly appreciated in helping to bring new faculty to Haas and his work on school culture.

At Haas since 2010, Augenblick holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University and teaches strategy and game theory in the MBA programs. His research employs theoretical models and experimental data to study deviations from rational thinking in a wide range of settings, from the voting booth to the stock market.  

Read more about the Williamson Award. 

Wendy Guild named new assistant dean of MBA programs

| by Haas News
photo of a woman behind a painted background
Wendy Guild

Wendy Guild has been named the new assistant dean of MBA programs, overseeing the admissions and program teams of all three Berkeley Haas MBA programs.

Guild, who begins her appointment on May 30, comes to Haas from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, where as the assistant dean of MBA programs she led marketing, recruitment, admissions, student services, curriculum, and operations of full-time, evening, and global MBA programs.

In her new role, Guild will engage deeply with students, faculty, and leadership within Haas and across the university to create a vision for the future of the school’s full-time MBA program, evening & weekend MBA program, and executive MBA program. She will champion the student experience; develop strong relationships across the Berkeley campus; and support and advance a culture of diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging.

“I know Guild will build on her outstanding work at her previous institutions and bring her academic intelligence, administrative gifts, and zeal for education to our students,” Dean Ann Harrison said. “We are very much looking forward to welcoming her and collaborating on the next great era of the Berkeley Haas MBA.”

“I know Guild will build on her outstanding work at her previous institutions and bring her academic intelligence, administrative gifts, and zeal for education to our students.” – Dean Ann Harrison.

Prior to her career at Foster, Guild served as assistant dean of strategic initiatives at UCLA Anderson School of Management, where she strengthened program development, board engagement, and strategic initiatives management. She taught leadership in executive education at the Yale School of Management and served as a program director and faculty member at the University of Colorado Denver’s Business School.

Guild is also an impressive scholar, Harrison said.  She earned a PhD in organization studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where her research focused on creating engaging experiential learning content. At Foster, she taught numerous courses, with an emphasis on leadership, strategy, field studies, study tours, and sports and entertainment management.

Guild succeeds Jamie Breen, assistant dean of MBA programs, who is retiring.

Matt Solowan, MBA 23, on questioning the status quo and finding a fit at Bain consulting

|By Matt Solowan

Haas Voices is a first-person series that highlights the lived experiences of members of the Berkeley Haas community.

person sitting in commencement attire on Berkeley Haas sign
Matt Solowan, MBA 23, worked in marketing at L’Oréal before coming to Haas. They’re heading to Bain & Company in New York after graduation.

Matt Solowan, MBA 23, embodies the Berkeley Haas Defining Leadership Principle Question the Status Quo in both work and life.  In this Haas Voices column, Solowan discusses their commitment to workplace inclusivity, their work as a marketer at L’Oréal, and a love of all kinds of dance. Solowan will join Bain & Company in New York after graduating this month.

“Dance has always been a passion of mine. Growing up on Long Island, I did tap, jazz, ballet, lyrical, and hip hop lessons from a very young age. In high school, I was on the kickline team and we performed at football and basketball games and competed in local and national competitions. Dance was my entire life. But when I got to USC as an undergrad, I realized that it wasn’t something I wanted to do professionally, so I took it as a minor and then picked up economics, along with Italian, as a major.

As a junior at USC, looking for a summer internship, I remember this one interview I had with a bank. At that time, I presented quite femininely. I had longer hair and wore makeup. I sat down and saw this smug guy looking over my resume. I had a 4.0 as an economics major and he spent the entire time grilling me about my dance minor, correcting me that dance was my “hobby” when I called it a “passion.” That was all he could see. He didn’t care that I had a 4.0 in economics. I could tell he’d written me off the minute that I walked into the room.

I had a 4.0 as an economics major and he spent the entire time grilling me about my dance minor, correcting me that dance was my “hobby” when I called it a “passion.”

I left that interview feeling so dejected and made a point that this was the type of person that I would prove wrong in my career. Luck would have it that within the next week or two, I went to an event that L’Oréal was hosting on my campus.

At that time, I didn’t even know that you could market beauty products as a career. But when I met with the L’Oréal recruiter it was a total 180 from what I had experienced at the bank interview. Without looking back, I accepted an internship, which turned into a career working on the marketing teams across a handful of L’Oréal-owned brands, including IT Cosmetics, Maybelline, and Garnier.

Making a mark at L’Oreal

Here, I learned that having as many diverse voices as possible on work teams is so critical as it impacts everything from the makeup shades a company markets to how the company hires for its advertising campaigns. There is a pervasive culture in large beauty organizations, where beauty is viewed through the eyes of the white male gaze—white, European features, thinner, and younger women. But you have junior talent who are ready to break away from that and the old-school view of beauty.

Two models posing in an advertisement
Solowan (left) modeled in campaigns while working for L’Oreal brands.

On one brand launch I worked on I was given was a rainbow-handled makeup brush for Pride Month. I immediately flagged the launch as “rainbow-washing,” —which is when businesses use rainbow colors to suggest support for the LGBTQ community without making any tangible effort to positively impact the lives of LGBTQ people. I reached out to L’Oréal’s employee resource group for LGBTQ employees, who put me in touch with a local charity and I worked with them on a plan to have some of the sales from the brush tie back to a center for LGBTQ youth.

I was devastated when my plan was rejected by a company manager due to budget cuts. But then one of our key retailers put the brush on their website earlier than anticipated and immediate backlash from consumers started flooding in. I could have had a “told you so” moment.

Instead, I reached back out to that charity, and got things back in motion and we officially launched the brush tied to this charity. Doing what’s right isn’t always easy, which I experienced first-hand modeling for some of the brand campaigns. These multimillion, sometimes billion-dollar brands, often have employees shoot videos and images to post on social media. I was featured in quite a few of their marketing materials that went up on our Instagram. As a model, I would get very nasty hate comments from some of our consumers. That was very hard for me to reckon with. I was an employee of this brand putting my face forward and some of the consumers of this brand had a negative reaction to seeing me. 

 Doing what’s right isn’t always easy, which I experienced first-hand modeling for some of the brand campaigns.

But looking back, it is something I’m very proud of. I helped push a brand forward. My motto has always been, if I can have one person look at that image, and see themselves represented and feel like there is a space for them, that means much more to me than a hundred negative comments from people who really do not matter to me. It’s a trade off I’m willing to make. 

Why an MBA?

At L’Oréal, I met a few people I admired for the way they spoke and presented, and the way that they tackled problems. I found out that a lot of them had MBAs and had previously worked in management consulting. It was a formula that I thought might be a good path for me.

large group of people standing in front of a curtain
Solowan (back row, middle) with Q@Haas friends at the 2022 ROMBA Conference in Washington D.C. Solowan served as VP of Careers & Alumni for Q@Haas last year.

When I came into Haas I was determined to land an internship in consulting. One of the most helpful resources to me at Haas was the second year peer advisors who had just gone through the recruiting process. They were the ones who looked at my resume, reviewed my cover letters, and were practicing cases with me during the fall and into winter break. We have a very strong pay-it-forward culture at Haas. I ended up becoming a peer advisor myself, working with both the second-years in my class who were recruiting for full-time roles in consulting and the first-years recruiting for internships. I think that was one of the most rewarding things I did at Haas.

We have a very strong pay-it-forward culture at Haas.

Heading to Bain

I chose Bain over other firms I received offers from because, even though it has a generalist model and I am hoping to specialize in retail and consumer early on, I loved all of the people that I met at Bain during the recruiting process. They were in many ways similar to the people I know at Haas: very down to earth, very kind, very warm, very supportive. I knew that consulting would be a tough job. I knew the hours would be long. It’s a rigorous role to go into post MBA. I wanted to make sure that I was surrounded by a good support system and I felt like I had met people there who would be cheerleaders for me. That carried a lot of weight.”

Haas MBA student team nabs $75,000 for supply chain startup at Impact Pitch Competition

|By Aria Yang
Team Clicampo (holding check) took first place at the Impact Pitch Competition. (Left to right) Course instructor Bulbul Gupta, former Haas Dean Laura Tyson, who is former faculty director of the Berkeley Haas Institute for Business and Social Impact; Vivian Hare, EWMBA 23; Mateus Loesch, MBA 23; Gui Klingelfus, MBA 23; Byungwoo Han, MBA 23; and Arsal Khanani, EWMBA 24; course instructor Jeep Kline, and Mary Jo Cook, the team’s mentor. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small.

An MBA student team won first-prize funding for a startup that’s helping to make supply chains more efficient for small Brazilian farmers at last Friday’s Invest for Impact Pitch Competition.

The winning team, pitching on behalf of startup Clicampo-Arado, included Arsal Khanani, EWMBA 24, Byungwoo Han, MBA 23, Gui Klingelfus, MBA 23, Mateus Loesch, MBA 23, and Vivian Hare, EWMBA 23.

Clicampo, now rebranded as Arado, secured a $75,000 investment, awarded by a panel of industry judges, including Michelle Kiang, managing partner and co-founder at Impact Science Ventures; Matt Caspari, managing partner at Alumni Ventures, and Joshua Posamentier, managing partner at Congruent Ventures.

The students who pitched are enrolled in the Haas Impact Fund course and program, part of the Sustainable and Impact Finance Initiative at Haas, which gives MBA students hands-on impact investing experience. The fund’s MBA student partners invest in early-stage impact startups throughout the spring semester, leading sourcing and conducting due diligence.

Klingelfus said he was thrilled by the team’s first-place win. “What set our team’s pitch apart was the fact that we highlighted both Arado’s social impact and its financial success, demonstrating that they are ready to scale.” 

Man in pink shirt gesturing while speaking on stage.
Gui Klingelfus, MBA 23, with members of the team that pitched for Arado. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small.

Loesch said pitching during the competition helped prepare him if he chooses to pursue a career in venture capital or entrepreneurship, as he learned about how industry pros analyze a startup’s potential.

“I don’t believe that I would have had the same experience in other classes in the MBA program,” he said.

Reducing food waste

Five MBA student teams pitched during the competition addressing some of the world’s most pressing challenges, including food waste, financial access, health, and renewable energy. The teams included Team Health & Wellbeing representing startup Shezlong; Team Sustainable Supply Chain representing startup Diferente; Team International Development representing Farm to Feed, and Team Climate Tech representing Oceans-Sway.

four students on stage pitching a startup
Students pitching impact startup Diferente. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small

Arado’s prize comes on the heels of two other funding rounds over the past year for the startup: a $7.5 million seed round and $12 million series A funding round. Founded in 2021, Arado connects small to midsize farmers in Latin America directly with restaurants and food retailers.

“Food waste is one of the main problems in the world now, and Arado came up with an innovative solution that increases the system’s efficiency and that contributed to the success of our pitch,” Loesch said.

The day also included a report from the Sustainable Investment Fund course, the first and largest student-led SRI fund within a leading business school. It offers MBA students real-world experience in delivering both strong financial returns and positive social impact in public markets. Since 2008, the student principals have more than tripled the initial investment to over $4 million.

Freada Kapor Klein, the founder of the Level Playing Field Institute, who gave a keynote at the event, noted the importance of investing in impact startups that help close opportunity gaps for communities of color and low-income communities.

In investing, “we look at one’s lived experience,” she said. “What hurdles do they encounter along the way, and how did those hurdles give them an idea for a startup that might solve the problems?”

U.S. News ranks the Berkeley Haas EWMBA Program #1 again

| by Haas News

The Berkeley Haas Evening & Weekend MBA Program ranked #1 among part-time MBA programs in U.S. News & World Report, reclaiming its top spot.

The Berkeley Haas Full-time MBA Program came in at #11 and the Berkeley Haas MBA for Executives ranked #9 in the 2023-2024 Best Graduate Schools report, published today. 

The changes in the part-time and full-time MBA outcomes are largely due to drastic changes in the rankings factors. 

The Berkeley Haas EWMBA Program, which includes our evening, weekend, and Flex cohorts for working professionals, regained the top spot after four years, thanks to its improved peer assessment and an increased emphasis on the significant work experience of Haas students. Chicago Booth dropped to #2 from #1. 

The FTMBA program tied with Columbia and Duke for the #11 spot this year. Columbia and Haas previously tied for #8, while Duke ranked #12 in 2022. U.S. News increased the weight of placement success—compensation and employment within three months of graduation—to 50%, compared to 35% previously. The weighting of quality assessments, including the peer and employer polls, decreased to 25%, compared to 40% previously. 

Haas reported significant increases in career outcomes for the FTMBA Class of 2022. Starting salaries were up more than $10,000 from the prior year, and 92.7% of graduates had started jobs three months after graduation. Amazon, Bain Consulting, and McKinsey & Co. were the top three hiring firms, followed closely by Adobe, BCG, Deloitte, and Google. While many Haas graduates benefit from stock options, which do not factor into U.S. News, and some take lower salaries initially to land the jobs of their choice, their lifetime career earnings are among the top three of all business schools, according to Payscale.

“The ROI of the Berkeley Haas MBA remains strong,“ said Jamie Breen, assistant dean of MBA Programs. “According to the Financial Times, our alumni reported earning the fifth highest salaries in the world three years after graduating.” 

View the ranking methodologies for full-time MBA programs and part-time MBA programs.

The Berkeley Haas MBA for Executives Program ranked #9 among EMBA programs, compared to #7 last year. This ranking continues to be based entirely on peer assessment by deans and full-time MBA directors.

In the U.S. News specialty rankings, based on peer assessment, the FTMBA ranked in the top 10 in the following areas:

Overall, the five ranked Berkeley Haas degree programs appear in the top five in key rankings:

Financial Times ranks Haas FTMBA #4 in U.S.

| by Haas News

The Berkeley Haas Full-time MBA rose to #4 among U.S. schools and #7 internationally in the 2023 Financial Times Global MBA Ranking. Haas joined Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford as this year’s top four U.S. programs.

Haas raised its ranking due to improvements across several factors, including increased faculty research publications; greater gender balance in the student body, faculty, and Haas board; an improved alumni career progress rank; and a higher employment rate of 93% for the full-time MBA Class of 2022.

In addition, Haas ranked #6 globally for its efforts in lowering its carbon footprint, a new measure for the Financial Times, which is increasingly evaluating business programs based on their ability to advance environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts. Haas also improved its rating for teaching ESG concepts in its MBA program.

Alumni salaries continue to be a strong point, placing Haas fifth in the world for both average salaries and for weighted salaries that are adjusted for variations across different sectors—the two most important aspects of the ranking.

More than 50% of the ranking is based on a survey of FTMBA alumni who graduated in 2019; the remainder is based on data provided by participating schools. Last year, Haas tied for #9 in the US and tied for #14 internationally.

Read the article and full ranking.