Peak leadership: MBA students embark on Mount Everest Base Camp trek

At 15, Esa Tilija, MBA 26, joined a group of high school students through the nonprofit Girls on Ice to climb Alaska’s rugged Gulkana Glacier along the eastern Alaska Range, one of many outdoor adventures that would come to define her life.

“I feel most alive and grounded in the mountains,” said Tilija, a Nepali-American from Seattle, who is leading a UC Berkeley Haas student trek to Mount Everest Base Camp over spring break March 19-April 4. “This trek is meaningful because I get to experience the Himalayas with my classmates while building community and teamwork along the way.”

While Haas offers a wide variety of spring break trips, including treks to Patagonia and the Andes which are highlights of the Extreme Leadership class taught by Professor Omri Even-Tov, who launched the course in 2017 with organizational culture expert and Haas Dean Jenny Chatman. Even-Tov, Chatman, and Assistant Professor Erica Bailey, who teaches the MBA course Leading People, have served as the Everest base camp trek advisors. 

Fifteen MBA students will join the trek, a group that includes five women, several military veterans, and international students whose backgrounds range from outdoor novices to accomplished outdoorspeople. While they won’t summit Everest, they will hike to base camp at about 17,000 feet, which is considered extreme altitude. 

The trek took months to plan and will be led by world-renowned Everest climber Lakpa Rita Sherpa, Tilija’s close family friend. “Lakpa Uncle is an inspiration to the Sherpa community and to people around the world,” she said. “I grew up going to the annual Northwest Sherpa Association camp with him and his family.” 

Many students met Lakpa Rita Sherpa last fall when he spoke at Haas with Norbu Tenzing Norgay, executive director of the American Himalayan Foundation and the son of Tenzing Norgay, who was the first person to summit Everest with New Zealander Edmund Hillary in 1953. The event was co-sponsored by The Redwoods Club and The Net Impact Club.

“We talked about reclaiming Everest for Indigenous Sherpa communities, the impacts of climate change and the broader responsibility of the outdoor industry,” said Tilija, who is a student board member with the Center for Responsible Business (CRB) at Haas and a 2025 ClimateCAP Fellow. Tilija said an important part of the Everest trip will be learning about responsible business and stewardship—at a time when Mount Everest has grown increasingly polluted by an increasing number of climbers. 

A passion for mountaineering

Tilija moved from Nepal to Seattle at age two after her mother received a Fulbright Scholarship. She began climbing through organizations such as the YMCA and The Mountaineers, which expand outdoor opportunities for youth, women and people of color, and volunteers with the Nepal Seattle Hiking Community, an organization Tilija’s father founded with community members.

Her mountaineering experience includes several summits of Mount Baker, also known as Kulshan, in the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the North Cascades of Washington State. Tilija holds certifications in both avalanche training at high altitudes and ski instructor certification, and she worked in corporate strategy at REI Co-Op for several years before coming to Haas, another nod to her love of the outdoors. 

“All of these experiences showed me how much I love climbing and the sense of belonging I’ve found in nature. I wanted to help create that feeling for our Haas community through organizing this trip.” 

While Tilija’s family is Indigenous Magar from the Annapurna region and she has never attempted an Everest climb herself, classmate Mariah Hoots, who grew up in Colorado and is also an outdoors enthusiast, thought it would be a dream trip. 

“When I heard that Esa was from Nepal and that she hadn’t climbed Everest I said, ‘We should do this together because it would be such a cool experience,’ ” Hoots said. “Every time I saw her I’d say,  ‘Are we doing this?’”

Tilija had joined two previous Haas MBA student-organized trips to India, where Hoots joined her, and Japan. Hoots and Mike O’Herron, MBA 26, helped Tilija plan the Everest trip. 

Dion Watts, MBA 26, a former U.S. Army officer, said climbing to base camp appealed to him as a unique physical challenge. “This was an opportunity that I’d probably never get a chance to do again,” he said. “I was lucky to talk to Esa at the beginning of her planning and I thought it was a great idea.” 

Training for the climb

Later this month, Lakpa Sherpa will meet the group in Kathmandu before flying to Lukla in the Eastern region. Then they will kick off the 12-day trek to base camp, with students taking turns as group lead and spending time meeting local business owners, including visits to tea houses, reflecting on how locals operate businesses as ethically as possible. The trek concludes with two days in Kathmandu before the group flies home.

Training for the trip is intense, as the group will hike for six to eight hours a day, often on relentlessly steep uphills and downhills. Preparation includes weekly team hikes, weekly gym sessions that include hours on the Stairmaster, and some trail running. In an ideal world the group would be training at higher altitudes, Tilija said. Instead, the group has been climbing East Bay hills and will be carrying Diamox, an altitude sickness prevention medicine, on Everest.

“We will take it slow and everyone is working on their fitness,” Watts said, “I’ve been incorporating more and more cardio into my workouts and just hiking in general. I think the biggest challenge for me is going to be the altitude, which is really hard to train for.” 

Tilija also led a backpacking trip during Thanksgiving break at Point Reyes, which was the first time some of the students had tried overnight backpacking. 

Hoots said she has “made peace with the fact that this will be a really difficult hike.”

“At some point during this trek I know that we’ll have to put our heads down and do it,” she said. “Luckily we have really great Sherpas and we’re going with an experienced guide, a world renowned climber. I feel confident that if one of us gets sick we will be in good hands.” 

Debriefing after the trek

When the group returns, they will work on a debriefing exercise with Chatman, who co-authored 2020 research analyzing team dynamics among Himalayan mountain climbers.  Tilija is also co-hosting a six-week speaker series “Peak Performance” with Will Synott, MBA 26, which will feature American rock climber and North Face Athlete Mark Synott, indigenous Lakota skier Connor Ryan, and others.

Hoots said she expects the group to practice many different styles of leadership during the trek.

“There will be a lot of support for each other,” she said. “Once you are up there there’s no turning around and going home. There’s no, ‘I just give up.’ That will test our leadership abilities. Part of leadership is about asking for help and supporting the group.” 

She added that those skillsets will translate well to their careers.

“Hopefully when we finish this there will be no more questions from employers about whether you have grit or ‘Do you have what it takes to hustle?’ ” she said. “I think we do.”