Nancy Hoque, MBA 19, Sales Finance Director, Adobe

When Nancy Hoque started the EWMBA program at Haas, then-Dean Rich Lyons, BS 82, shared a piece of advice that at the time didn’t fully resonate: “It’s really important to learn how to work through others,” she recalls him saying. 

Previously an engineer and entrepreneur, Hoque wanted to broaden her impact from building products to shaping business strategy. She started in product marketing at Symantec while earning her MBA, then moved to strategy, operations, and finance roles at Adobe after graduation.

Hoque now supports revenue strategy for the multibillion-dollar sales organization, translating financial insights into go-to-market decisions. Her work brings her in close partnership with sales and GTM leadership teams across Adobe. It was that collaborative work and innovation within a large corporation that made the advice about working through others click. “The tools will change, but the ability to align people around insight and action—that’s where real leadership lives,” she says.

Currently, Hoque’s interest is AI. She serves on the advisory board for the University of San Francisco School of Management’s Strategic AI Program, helping ensure that working professionals receive an ethical and impactful AI education.

In her own work, she’s exploring how AI can automate and transform finance. Hoque meets regularly with fellow Haas alumni to share AI knowledge: assessing tools, designing their own agents, and discussing workplace applications. It all comes back to that early advice. “Sometimes, we just need to sit in a room and have a dialogue and learn from the collective knowledge,” she says. “Because there’s still so much to learn.”