Alumni Magazine Archives | Haas News

By Any Measure

Summer 2024|By Michael Blanding| illustrations by Ryan Johnson

Unveiling the secrets behind B-school rankings reveals why the annual lists are, at best, a flawed exercise.

Google “best business schools” and you’ll see links to rankings from various publications, including U.S. News & World Report, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the Financial Times. These publications and others position themselves as arbiters of educational prowess. And like it or not, their results matter. The annual rankings are used to gauge prestige by prospective students, felt as a point of pride by alumni, and scrutinized by administrators concerned with enrollment rates

Despite their air of authority, however, business school rankings are facing a crisis of confidence. Within the last few years, both The Economist and Forbes have shuttered their rankings amid criticism over their methodologies. Other lists have been similarly called into question as schools jump or fall multiple spots from year to year without any seeming rationale or else appear arbitrarily sorted based on minute differences among them.

Last year, a trio of top business school deans, including Haas’ own Ann Harrison, spoke out publicly in a Financial Times op-ed arguing that rankings for undergrad business school programs—despite Haas ranking #2 in U.S. News—fail to account for improved social mobility: “The rankings concentrate too much on the prior accomplishments of students and too little on how much schools help to enhance their skills and improve their opportunities by the time they graduate,” they wrote.

To be fair, rankings aren’t all bad, says Ute Frey, Haas’ chief marketing officer, who has overseen the school’s participation in the rankings for decades. “They hold schools accountable when it comes to the student experience and career outcomes,” she says. “On the flip side, though, they’ve standardized the MBA over the past 40 years and stymied innovation.” Schools find themselves having to decide between teaching to the test, so to speak, or risking a drop in the rankings.

At the same time, schools can’t afford not to be listed. As prospective students compile their list of top places where they want to apply, many look to the rankings to cull their options. In some ways, schools appear to have little choice about participation. When Harvard and Wharton backed out of certain rankings in 2004, the publications ranked them anyway, causing the schools to quietly rejoin and thus be in control of the information provided.

“The rankings may not always get it right, but we need to remember that the visibility they bring is valuable,” says Courtney Chandler, MBA 96, senior vice dean and chief operating and strategy officer of Berkeley Haas. “In our case, the rankings and the accompanying stories have allowed Haas to advance its mission to develop principled, inclusive, and innovative leaders—Berkeley leaders.”

Caveats and pitfalls

The business degree ranked most frequently is the full-time MBA, as it’s more easily comparable across schools than part-time, specialty, or undergraduate programs. However, each publication has its own criteria for what makes a good MBA program, with their own potential caveats and pitfalls.

Take the U.S. News full-time MBA ranking: 25% is based on student selectivity, including incoming students’ GPAs and test scores; 25% on rankings by recruiters and peer institutions; and 50% on placement after graduation, including employment rates and starting salaries. Bloomberg Businessweek, on the other hand, bases most of its FTMBA rankings on surveys of alumni, students, and recruiters to measure compensation, learning, networking, entrepreneurship, and diversity. The London-based Financial Times relies on FTMBA alumni surveys of salary and satisfaction three years post-graduation, along with international criteria, such as diversity of country of origin of faculty and students, and newly added social factors, such as ESG (environmental, social, and governance) courses and carbon footprint.

The compensation measures themselves can be fraught. While graduate compensation metrics are standardized by the MBA Career Services and Employer Alliance, they only consider salary and signing bonuses but not stock options or other forms of equity for those in the tech industry or entrepreneurs who join startups after graduation. “Over 40% of our graduates get some form of equity that rankings do not consider in their post-MBA income,” says Abby Scott, assistant dean of career management and corporate relations. “We know that stock grants have real short-term value and options can become quite valuable over time, significantly bolstering our graduates’ lifelong wealth accumulation.”

While surveys, which allow for more qualitative information, might seem like a better way to go than statistics, the rub lies in who answers them. Often, fewer than 50 alumni respond to surveys that can represent as much as 40% of the ranking.

“We hear it all the time; our alumni may think we’re a Top 5 school and are disappointed when the rankings don’t reflect this,” says Chandler. “But their experience doesn’t translate into rankings unless they complete the surveys.”

Some schools experience wild fluctuations from year to year, and participation rates account for some of those. So do changes in rankings methodologies and other factors. Stanford ranked #1 in Financial Times’ global MBA rankings in 2019; in 2024 it was #23. For the past three years, Columbia has consistently been in the Top 3 for the FT. Meanwhile, in U.S. News’ 2024 MBA rankings, Columbia fell out of the Top 10 to #12 while tied for #1 was—you guessed it, Stanford.

Another issue is that much of the data that publications use is self-reported by schools and alumni. Auditing is sporadic or non-existent, leading to the potential for discrepancies in how items are measured, whether intentionally or not. For example, the Financial Times’ MBA ranking is in part based on two measures of full-time faculty: research publications and those who have PhDs. Schools had long interpreted full-time to mean tenured and tenure-track faculty. Makes sense, as 10% of the ranking is based on academic research publications by those faculty. But when the FT specified full-time to mean everyone teaching on a full-time basis, schools took a while to catch on. When Haas started reporting full-time professional faculty in its rankings data—while some schools continued to report having 100% faculty with PhDs—it dropped in the rankings.

Among top schools, the differences are pretty slim, making the relative order of the Top 25 or so business schools essentially little better than a coin flip.

Of course, prospective students and other interested parties just see that a school dropped out of the vaunted Top 10, says Erika Walker, senior vice dean for instruction. “Readers often accept rankings at face value without delving into the nuances, even if they review the methodologies behind them,” she explains. Unique methodologies mean different surveys will have varied results—but readers opt for simplicity when viewing them. “They often take whichever publication they hold in higher regard as truth,” Walker says. “This does not fully serve prospective students who have a keen interest in particular programs versus the overall reputation of the school.”

Surveying peer institutions as to the quality of a program—as U.S. News does for its business undergraduate and EMBA rankings (its sole criteria)—has its own pitfalls. “It comes down to how much a school is in the news or how well regarded it’s been historically. A school with a new, unknown dean might not rank as highly in the minds of peer leaders,” says Mariana Corzo, director of brand marketing and strategic initiatives who currently oversees Haas’ rankings participation. “What are your peers going to say about you—that you’re better than them?” she asks rhetorically.

While surveys, which allow for more qualitative information, might seem like a better way to go than statistics, the rub lies in who answers them. Often, fewer than 50 alumni respond to surveys that can represent as much as 40% of the ranking.

Surveying recruiters, as U.S. News and Businessweek do for their MBA rankings, can also be fraught. Rankings define recruiters broadly and may include HR contacts, hiring managers, or department heads from organizations of all sizes and industries, according to Scott of Haas’ Career Management Group. Those surveyed may not have data or experience with all schools they are asked to rank. Some may also have a natural bias toward their own alma maters.

Measuring what matters

School administrators aren’t the only ones taking business school rankings to task. Among the critics is, surprisingly, John Byrne, a former Businessweek editor who created the publication’s b-school rankings (one of the nation’s first) in 1988 to measure schools based on input from their main customers: graduates and employers. Those rankings, he says, were created with the best of intentions to counter persistent questions among employers about the value of an MBA and to find a way to keep business schools accountable. Byrne, now editor of Poets&Quants, an online publication for business school news that creates its own composite ranking, still believes the rankings have value for that reason today.

“Regardless of where your school ranks—whether it’s 3 or 10 or 20, these major publications are pushing it in front of people’s faces that business schools are important enough to be ranked,” he says. “Which means if you’re really serious about a career in business, you should consider graduate management education.” However, he agrees that much about the rankings is arbitrary.

The only way to legitimately read business school rankings, he says, is to “not put a whole lot of weight on a single ranking in a single year” but rather to consider a school’s overall ranking on multiple lists over time. Byrne notes, as others have, that among top schools, the differences are pretty slim, making the relative order of the Top 25 or so business schools essentially little better than a coin flip. The editor of the Financial Times, in fact, acknowledged last year that its full-time MBA rankings essentially broke down into four tiers, with 18 schools, including Haas, in the first tier.

Some tinkering of methodologies can make rankings marginally better. Last year, U.S. News included a factor considering the difference in pay scales of various industries as a fairer measure than overall average salary of graduates, rewarding schools that prepare their students well to land top compensation in their desired fields. (The change, incidentally, corresponded with a jump by Haas from #11 to #7—putting it back into the Top 10.)

For now, it’s essential to read rankings with a wider lens, understanding what they tell us and what they don’t. Methodologies evolve, but not always in the way business programs are evolving. And Haas’ standing as a top business school is solid—despite minor fluctuations from one year to the next. Because what distinguishes Haas from other schools, says Frey, is not a ranking. “It’s our community and our culture. It’s the spirit of Berkeley and the Bay Area. It’s business with purpose.”

Beyond Herself

Summer 2024|By Emily Gordon| Image: Noah Berger

Toasting our dean’s lasting impact

In July, Ann Harrison stepped down from her duties as dean to continue her economics research, join the Council of Foreign Relations, and rejoin her family in New York. She’ll continue to be a half-time tenured faculty member.

Since becoming dean in January 2019, Harrison has elevated and advanced Haas across the board. Poets&Quants, when naming her Dean of the Year in 2023, called her tenure an “unimaginable and nearly breathtaking record of achievement.”

One of her top priorities was to embed a sustainability mindset in all of Haas’ programs and operations. Her dedication resulted in a new MBA dual degree and certificate program, a new undergraduate minor, curriculum enhancements, and hiring Haas’ first chief sustainability officer.

She orchestrated a major diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging (DEIJB) effort that included hiring the school’s first chief DEI officer and broadening the profile of the school’s faculty, board, and student body as well as creating learning opportunities and anti-bias training for the community.

Her focus on innovation and entrepreneurship resulted in a new faculty group and an entrepreneurship hub, slated to open this fall, for students from across Berkeley to envision new ventures.

In addition, Harrison expanded the school’s degree offerings with the Flex online MBA cohort and hired 40 new ladder faculty, 19 of whom are women. She also stepped up fundraising and raised $236 million since 2019, including the largest single gift in the school’s history—$30 million—to turn the upper-division undergraduate business program into a four-year program. Not to mention her own generosity. She’s a Builder of Berkeley and named Chou Hall’s Jose P. Madrigal Classroom in honor of her husband’s late father.

Here are some Haas voices on the ways Harrison’s top priorities have changed their lives.

Thank You So Much, Ann, for…

…raising the bar during unprecedented times.

“Under Ann’s leadership, Haas navigated the pandemic and a complex macro environment, allowing Haas to continue to thrive despite these challenges. In addition, Ann has been instrumental in her fundraising efforts, which will significantly enrich our academic programs for years to come. On behalf of the board, we are grateful to have had such an amazing leader and celebrate Ann for her profound impact on Haas today and in the future.”

—Elena Gomez, BS 91
Chair, Haas School Board and CFO, Toast

…hiring and retaining top academic talent.

“Ann’s commitment to expanding the faculty has been tremendous. It has been an exciting time for me to join an expanding and diverse community of talented and emerging scholars. We have a dynamic group of junior faculty, and research ideas are flowing.”

—Solène Delecourt
Assistant Professor, Berkeley Haas

…envisioning a totality of possibility.

“Ann has been driven to realize the full potential of Haas within UC Berkeley. She hasn’t stayed in one lane. She has expanded the faculty, raised record funding, grown our programs, and more. That is incredibly impressive.”

—Courtney Chandler, MBA 96
Senior Vice Dean & Chief Operating and Strategy Officer, Berkeley Haas

…making sustainability a necessity.

“Haas has been transformative for me. It connected me with a community of passionate, impact-driven people and equipped me with the skills I needed to grow as a climate leader. Seeing Haas’ commitment to sustainability has inspired me to continue my journey toward building a sustainable future for all.”

—Arnaud Paquet, MBA 24
Power Origination Manager, Crusoe

…amplifying entrepreneurship and increasing innovation faculty.

“Ann Harrison has been like rocket fuel for Berkeley entrepreneurship and innovation. Generations of future founders will be thanking her for bringing the new eHub to life (opening this fall!), helping grow SkyDeck, and doubling our entrepreneurship faculty.”

—Brett Wilson, MBA 07
Member, Haas School Board and General Partner, Swift Ventures

…championing inclusion with real resources.

“The HBCU fellowship at Haas has afforded me an incredible network of bright, forward-thinking peers and mentors committed to challenging the status quo in our fields. The spirit of inclusivity and belonging is alive and real at Haas. I am now VP of DEI for the student body, motivated to continue the mission of advocating for diversity and enhancing the experience for all students at Haas.”

—Brittany Jacob, MBA 25
Inaugural HBCU fellowship recipient

Electric Storm

Summer 2024|By Michael Blanding| Photo: Istock

Political divide creates roadblock for EVs

President Biden has laid down the gauntlet: By 2032, 67% of all new vehicle sales must be electric vehicles (EVs). Carmakers who fail to meet these quotas will face fines.

For the most part, manufacturers have embraced this goal, with GM adopting the even more ambitious plan to phase out gas vehicles entirely by 2035. To bolster the plan, the government announced $623 million in grants to spur buildout of 500,000 public charging stations by 2030.

There is still one big factor holding back widespread adoption of EVs, however: our country’s political divide. New research by Professor Lucas Davis found that EV adoption occurs overwhelmingly in “blue” counties—those with a high percentage of Democrats—and the divide doesn’t seem to be getting better. “The results point to a strong and enduring correlation between political ideology and EV adoption,” says Davis, the Jeffrey A. Jacobs Distinguished Professor.

Combining a proprietary database of auto registrations by Experian with voting trends by county, Davis and his MIT and HEC Montréal co-authors found that one-third of EV adoption between 2012 and 2022 occurred in the top 5% most-Democratic counties; half occurred in the top 10%.

Not surprisingly, the West Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington led EV adoption nationwide. But even when those states were excluded from the analysis, households in majority-Democratic counties were more than twice as likely to purchase an EV than those in majority-Republican counties. The correlation holds even after controlling for other factors like household income, population density, and gasoline prices.

“Over this time period, the number of EV models available has increased from only two to more than 100, yet EVs are still overwhelmingly going to the most-Democratic counties,” Davis says.

While some technologies take time to catch on, Davis and coauthors were surprised to find little evidence that the correlation with political ideology has decreased over time. If there’s hope for widespread adoption of EVs in the next decades, those championing the shift will have to build a highway-sized bridge over the divide.

Code of Conduct

Summer 2024|By Laura Counts| Illustration: Maria Corte

Managing in the age of AI

The release of ChatGPT in late 2022 opened the public’s eyes to the rapid pace of AI development, set off a wave of excitement and apprehension, and ramped up competition among tech giants and upstarts to deploy new AI technologies.

Professor Zsolt Katona, who holds PhDs in both computer science and marketing, began using generative AI in 2019, when he developed and began teaching business of AI classes to MBA students and through Berkeley Executive Education. He has recently focused his marketing research on AI as well.

We talked with Katona, the Cheryl and Christian Valentine Professor, about business applications and what skills marketing professionals need to thrive.

Berkeley Haas: What are the biggest misconceptions about AI?

Zsolt Katona: One is just the word “generative,” because people are applying it to everything.

People use generative to mean that the application generates something. But many of the uses people are familiar with are more like a kind of search. Also, most of the applications that are most lucrative are not generative in nature. I read an article that said Mastercard uses generative AI for fraud detection. But it really was just a tool that detects outliers, suspicious transactions.

Otherwise, the biggest misconception is that these things can work fully autonomously. That’s essentially non-existent in most applications. What you must do for pretty much every application is figure out how to make the AI portion and the humans work together.

Are we still in the hype phase while companies figure out lucrative commercial applications?

They’re figuring it out, and it’s just a matter of time. Some of the fancy stuff is not there yet because companies are having problems getting their data in a format that allows them to easily use simple AI applications—or they might not even own the data. But the non-flashy stuff is the most lucrative. For example, using cameras in a factory to detect manufacturing defects. It’s just looking for little differences on those pictures.

In your business of AI class, what skills do you say managers working with AI technology need?

The number one thing is to understand the fundamentals of how it works. It’s even better if they have some coding skills, and I do make my students go through an exercise with code so they have at least a feeling for the building blocks. Other than that, they need to understand how to manage technology, which is not that specific to AI.

“Translating the ‘objective function’ of a model…to the business objective is a critical task that somebody has to do, and it’s not going to be a data scientist. It’s rarely going to be the engineer.”

Can nontechnical people learn enough to be effective?

My colleague who teaches marketing analytics likes to say that it’s easier to teach managers analytics than to teach data scientists to be good managers. I share that thought, and again, they don’t have to be as technically advanced as the engineers. But they should understand how the data goes in and how it results in a desired outcome.

Managers should learn enough about how it works to talk to the people who make these things, especially with respect to data needs. Translating the “objective function” of a model (i.e. what it should do) to the business objective is a critical task that somebody has to do, and it’s not going to be a data scientist. It’s rarely going to be the engineer.

Will there be jobs for marketing managers without engineering backgrounds?

I think there will be. Marketing is such a subjective topic that it’s hard to evaluate all the things AI needs to do. It comes down to a lot of human judgment. If AI can do every job in the world, then yes, marketing people will be replaced as well. But it’s a very complex type of work and it’s hard to show that a machine can do it better than humans.

New Interim Dean

Summer 2024|By Kim Girard & Emily Gordon| Photo: Jim Block

Alumna and longtime professor leads Haas

Professor Jennifer Chatman, who is known for pioneering research in organizational culture, was appointed interim dean of Berkeley Haas, effective August 1.

Chatman, the Paul J. Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management, joined the Haas faculty in 1993. As associate dean of academic affairs from 2022 to 2024, she 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 in 1981 and her PhD in business administration in 1988 from Berkeley.

“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,” Chatman says. “Let’s continue to let our Defining Leadership Principles inspire the best in us.”

A renowned organizational psychologist, Chatman studies how organizational culture, group norms, leadership, and group composition influence behavior. She co-created one of the most widely used tools to assess organizational culture, and her research has garnered numerous accolades, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Management.

She also 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 help solve listeners’ workplace culture problems.

As a teacher, Chatman is much lauded. She’s won the Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching and was named among the “World’s Best B-School Professors” by Poets&Quants. She’s also shared her expertise with some of the most innovative and successful firms through consulting services and by teaching in the Berkeley Executive Education program.

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

Measuring Up

Summer 2024|By Mickey Butts| ILLUSTRATION: DAN PAGE/THE ISPOT

Rethinking ESG scores

The ESG investing industry has attracted trillions of dollars in part by telling investors they can “do well by doing good.”

Thousands of funds and other investment products have been created around the idea that identifying companies with rising scores on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) measures can lead to market-beating returns.

Yet a paper co-authored by Professor Panos N. Patatoukas and published in The Accounting Review suggests that outperformance attributed to improving ESG scores—as measured by current standards—may be a mirage.

“Sorting out correlation from causation is critical in the debate over ESG investing, and we found correlation, not causation,” Patatoukas says.

The researchers—who include Byung Hyun Ahn, PhD 21, of Dimensional Fund Advisors and George S. Skiadopoulos of London’s Queen Mary University—found that relatively larger, more stable, more profitable companies are more likely to have their ESG scores upgraded because they have the most resources to fix weaknesses in those scores and promote improvements. Any above-market returns attributed to ESG scores disappeared when Patatoukas controlled for revenue, growth potential, and other fundamental stock-screening factors.

“Trillions of dollars of capital have been allocated according to the idea that you can rely on improving ESG ratings to beat the market,” Patatoukas says. “Our data challenge this idea.”

His research does not suggest that companies should lessen efforts to reduce carbon footprints or relax plans to be better corporate citizens. Instead, those goals must accelerate in the face of the climate crisis, Patatoukas says.

To give investors the transparency to make decisions in line with their values, he believes the ESG measurement system needs a major overhaul to include information beyond what is already in corporate financial statements.

Patatoukas disagrees with the premise that more responsible portfolios need to necessarily outperform the market—the very idea of doing well by doing good. Investment outperformance is not necessarily an indication of environmental or social progress but rather a measure of capital transfer across investors, he says.

Efforts at greater transparency could falter if firms fail to accurately measure and disaggregate indicators that capture each of ESG’s individual performance dimensions, says Patatoukas. Creating a better measurement system will require a collaborative effort across finance, accounting, economics, operations, climate science, and software engineering. Meanwhile, companies will operate with a patchwork of laws and regulations for the near future, with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s long-awaited climate-disclosure rules blocked by litigation.

“The massive opportunity here is to go beyond identifying companies that are good at checking all ESG rating boxes and develop a way to measure those making real strides toward decarbonization,” Patatoukas says. “Better measurement will facilitate more efficient allocation of capital and speed transition to a more sustainable future.”

Giving a Boost

Summer 2024|By Carol Ghiglieri| Photo by Saroyan Humphrey

Haas program is a powerful engine of social mobility for teens from underserved communities.

When Kaitlyn Chiok began thinking about college, her high school guidance counselor steered her away from Berkeley, describing it as beyond her reach. “She told me to target state schools and not to apply to Berkeley or any of the UCs,” says Chiok, who graduated from UC Berkeley in May. Fortunately, Chiok had other advisors in her camp.

At the time, she was attending a program for high school students from underserved communities called Boost@BerkeleyHaas. The fully subsidized, four-year program (formerly known as Young Entrepreneurs at Haas) helped Chiok see that not only could she get into Berkeley but that she could thrive there. And that’s exactly what happened. She took the MCAT in June in preparation for med school.

Chiok is one of more than 1,350 students who have graduated from Boost since it was founded in 1989 by then-Haas Dean Raymond Miles. Each year, Boost provides mentorship, business skills training, and college advising to about 120 Bay Area teens. Unlike Chiok’s guidance counselor, the program encourages students to dream big.

The Boost advantage

There are many reasons why a college education matters. One is economic: A 2024 study found that median annual earnings of full-time workers were 86% higher for college graduates than for those with only a high school diploma. Others are less tangible: a chance to reach one’s potential, find satisfaction, and have an impact on the world.

Simply put, Boost offers kids the gift of possibility. And it works: 96% of students who participate—the program refers to them as Boost scholars—are from low-income families and ethnically diverse backgrounds. Of those who go on to graduate from college, 94% are the first generation in their families to do so. This is a significant success: A 2019 study found that only 20% of adults whose parents didn’t attend college had a bachelor’s degree, compared to 60% of adults who had one parent with a bachelor’s.

Program director Lucas Abbott, who’s in his 18^th year with Boost and whose passion and vision have been instrumental to its success, says that Boost is quite likely the only program of its kind. He notes that while there are community programs that run for several years and short summer programs on college campuses, he isn’t aware of anything else that brings together the key ingredients that make Boost such a powerful engine of social mobility.

A bald man in a white shirt speaking into a microphone. He's standing in front of a poster of graduates wearing caps and gowns. — Longtime Boost Director Lucas Abbott speaking at the May 2024 Boost graduation. Photo: Jim Block

Just what are those key ingredients? Number one is Haas itself. The majority of Boost activities take place at the business school, and the classes and projects are led by Haas undergrad and graduate students, both current and alumni, who serve as supportive mentors.

“That’s part of the special sauce,” Abbott says. “Having the kids physically on campus breaks down some barriers. And then having these extremely high-achieving academic role models sitting with them at the same table and teaching them is really impactful.” In many cases, the mentors are only a few years older than the Boost students, and some—like Chiok—are themselves Boost alumni who volunteer with the program, showing the Boost scholars that they, too, can pursue their dreams.

All of this, says Abbott, helps chip away at the feeling some students may harbor that they don’t belong in such a hallowed, prestigious place. From day one, the program emphasizes that Berkeley, and campuses like it, are exactly where they belong.

It was an important message for Antonio Hernandez, who didn’t always plan on college. His Mexican immigrant parents worked long hours at fast-food restaurants to raise their three kids in Antioch, California. “They were always supportive and encouraged us to pursue our dreams,” Hernandez says, “but I think their main aspiration for us was to make sure we graduated high school. Anything beyond that was bonus points.”

Hernandez’s college ambitions began to take shape during his Saturdays at Boost. “Berkeley was the first college campus I ever went to and the first exposure I had to a four-year university. It made it a tangible reality that this was something that not only existed but was something someone like me could pursue.”

And pursue it he did. He earned a BA in economics from Stanford, and now he’s getting his MD at UC Davis and a master’s in education at Stanford. What’s more, he also serves as the president of the Antioch School Board.

“Having the kids physically on campus breaks down some barriers. And then having these extremely high-achieving academic role models sitting with them at the same table and teaching them is really impactful.”

—Lucas Abbott

A practical education

Another crucial aspect of Boost is its length, which spans all four years of high school. Each summer, a new group of rising freshmen attends a weeklong summer academy. Then, over the next four years, they come to campus one Saturday a month. Every year has its own curriculum, with an emphasis on business and entrepreneurship, financial literacy, college readiness, and the college application process.

Prospective college students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to have access to informational resources about college, a gap that helps perpetuate disparities in educational attainment. So, as it’s evolved, Boost has put greater emphasis on college readiness and the application process. But students also spend significant time on real-world business case studies and leadership communication skills. They also conceive of a product or service and develop a business plan, which they then present to a panel of judges. Summers include internship opportunities and college tours.

Two years ago, Boost also added financial education to the mix with the help of the Charles Schwab Foundation. Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz, the foundation’s former president and a Haas School Board member, suggested the program. The yearlong curriculum, known as Moneywise America, teaches teens about savings and budgeting, investing for retirement, and debt management. It’s taught by Schwab employees, some of whom are Cal alumni.

Measuring impact

Boost is part of Haas’ Institute for Business & Social Impact. Last year, IBSI’s new executive director, Adam Ross, wanted to understand Boost’s influence. Nearly everyone who comes into contact with the program agrees it’s powerful, even life changing. But there was little hard data to back this up. “We had lots of anecdotal evidence and some basic statistics about how many graduates had gone to college,” Ross says. But he wanted a retrospective study to better understand the outcomes in order to inform future program design and fundraising efforts.

Devoted Boost volunteer James Schlinger, BS 06, agreed. “We’re a college readiness program, and we help students get into college,” he says. “But how ready are they? How do they do?” To find out, Schlinger built a database to track down the 275 Boost alumni who completed the program between 2010 and 2019.

“Coming from an immigrant Hispanic family and being a first-generation student, I didn’t have knowledge about the process and the requirements for college.”

—Michelle Mariscal-Lona

The results were astounding. More than 98% of the Boost graduates enrolled in a higher education institution, and more than 80% got their bachelor’s degree—nearly half from a UC school and nearly a third of those from Berkeley. Comparatively, in 2016, just 35% of low-income students in California enrolled in a post-secondary program upon graduation from high school. Boost is flipping that script.

Two men, one older and one younger, with their arms around one another. — Boost’s Volunteer of the Year, James Schlinger, BS 06 (right), with his father, Norman Schlinger, BS 75, who is Boost’s biggest financial supporter. Photo: Jim Block

Ripple effect

Growing up in San Pablo, California, Michelle Mariscal-Lona was no stranger to the Berkeley campus. She remembers walking with her parents and younger brother along the paths and imagining one day being a UC Berkeley student. Her parents are immigrants from Mexico, and from an early age, Mariscal-Lona had her sights set on college. Back then, she only dreamed of attending Berkeley, but this fall she’ll be part of Cal’s freshman class, an accomplishment Boost helped her achieve.

More than 98% of the Boost graduates enrolled in a higher education institution, and more than 80% got their bachelor’s degree.

For youth like Mariscal-Lona, the many steps needed to get into college can be mystifying. “Coming from an immigrant Hispanic family and being a first-generation student, I didn’t have knowledge about the process and the requirements for college, which is why I’ve always looked for opportunities—like Boost—that help me achieve my undergraduate and professional goals,” she says.

Mariscal-Lona and her family learned so much about the educational process that they made the decision to switch her to a different high school so she could take rigorous, advanced classes. She also completed online college courses each summer. Her effort paid off. In addition to being accepted to Berkeley, this spring she was one of six students to receive Boost’s Ray Miles Scholarship, a $1,000 annual award (renewable for four years) named for the program’s founder. Now Mariscal-Lona is sharing much of what she learned in Boost with her younger brother, who’ll soon be applying to college himself.

A young woman smiles broadly and holds a certificate while her parents and brother gather around her. — UC Berkeley-bound Michelle Mariscal-Lona celebrating with her family at her Boost graduation ceremony in May, where she learned she was the recipient of one of Boost’s Ray Miles Scholarships. Photo: Jim Block

This ripple effect is one of Boost’s underlying strengths. Alumnus Steve Leke—the third in his family to attend Boost—is a rising junior at Berkeley and the first Boost graduate to be accepted into Haas’ competitive Management, Entrepreneurship, & Technology program, which awards dual degrees in business and engineering. While still in high school at Oakland Tech, Leke had internships at BlackRock and elsewhere—which his Boost mentors helped him apply for. Now, in the M.E.T. program, Leke is growing the company he founded, Blacked Solutions LLC, which houses his various software-development programs. One, called VeeVee, helps restaurants and corner stores optimize food-delivery platforms to increase their sales and visibility.

“The Boost program played a significant role in helping me navigate the process and gain a clearer understanding of my options.”

Boost ripples out in other ways, too. After attending the program, Cecily Martinez-Caloca and her younger sister, Monica Rodriguez, achieved a significant milestone as the first in their family to graduate from college. Martinez-Caloca reflects on the experience, saying, “The Boost program played a significant role in helping me navigate the process and gain a clearer understanding of my options.” She currently serves as a faculty assistant at Haas. Meanwhile, Rodriguez has flourished as a lead motion designer specializing in animation, editing, and art direction at Philo, a TV streaming company. Their mother was so inspired by their college journeys that she recently returned to school and earned an associate’s degree.

Three smiling women standing in a line. — Sisters Monica Rodriguez (center) and Cecily Martinez-Caloca (right) were the first in their family to graduate from college. But their mother, Jo Anna Rodriguez (left), was so inspired she returned to school and earned an associate’s degree. Photo: Saroyan Humphrey

Making a difference

Students aren’t the only ones inspired by Boost. Boost’s board chair, Anthony Brekke, MBA 03, says it was one of the most satisfying experiences he had as a Haas student. “Working with a small group of kids and helping them get on the path toward college was very fulfilling,” he says. A few years after he graduated, Brekke re-engaged with the program and has been a part of it ever since, both on the board and as a significant donor.

Schlinger, too, has found his Boost involvement to be hugely rewarding. He’d long known about the program: His father, Norman Schlinger, BS 75, is Boost’s biggest financial supporter, but it wasn’t until 2020 that he sat down with Abbott and asked how he could help. In addition to producing the alumni impact report, Schlinger has spearheaded several key projects, and in May he was named Boost’s Volunteer of the Year.

A man with a whistle around his neck sitting on stadium bleachers. — After graduating from Boost, Charles Conner graduated from Texas A&M. He now teaches business and coaches football at a high school outside Dallas. Photo: Cooper Neill

Now, Boost is fundraising to grow the program. The incoming class will have a cohort of 53 students, an increase from 35. The aim over the next four years is to nearly double the number of students Boost serves—and, by extension, the impact those students provide to their communities.

Charles Conner has long wanted to inspire others with his Boost experience. He grew up in a rough neighborhood in Richmond, Calif., and enrolled in Boost at the urging of his mother. Any initial uncertainty he had about going to college soon dissipated.

“I realized I wanted to be able to enjoy my life,” he says, “and not be stuck trying to figure out how to make it day to day.” He saw a college education as an opportunity to better his situation and maybe influence those around him. “Considering the area I grew up in and the people I was around, I wanted to show them it was possible,” he says.

In 2016, Conner graduated from Texas A&M, and since 2020 he’s been teaching business and coaching football at a high school outside Dallas. This year he taught a class on entrepreneurship. Conner, who won the business plan competition when he was in Boost, is now teaching his students to give similar presentations. “It’s crazy how it’s come full circle,” he says.

Look Up

Summer 2024|By Michael Blanding| Photo: Adobe Stock

How smartphones erode trustworthiness

Studies show that every day, the average American checks their phone almost 100 times, spending more than five hours staring down at a screen. While this may seem like a fine diversion, a new study by Sandy Campbell, PhD 24, shows that it may come at a social cost.

Campbell and Professor Uri Gneezy of UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management found that being on our phones instead of engaging with other people can affect our trustworthiness.

For their experiment, published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, groups of six students waited together for 20 minutes. Some groups were allowed to have phones; other groups were not. The researchers then paired up students for a trust game that gave them the chance to earn more money back by sharing more with their partner up front—if they trusted the partner to actually split the final pot.

Among people who didn’t have phones, those who also interacted with others in the waiting room tended to share more up front than those who didn’t interact. The partners without phones also gave back more than those with phones—and more than those with phones initially received. Campbell attributes this generosity to the trust engendered when people connect. “If you’re not looking someone in the eye, you’re almost treating them as less than human—it’s just money,” she says. “But if you’d looked up and smiled and chatted, then you’d developed more of a sense of who this person is.”

A Turbocharged Summer

Summer 2024|By Carol Ghiglieri| Photo: Adobe Stock

Giving M.E.T. students cutting-edge startup experience

Internships that students in Haas’ Management, Entrepreneurship, & Technology (M.E.T.) program pursue aren’t your typical summer jobs.

The prestigious M.E.T. program, which awards dual degrees in business and engineering, aims to propel students into the thriving innovation scene of Silicon Valley. The goal is for them to graduate as industry visionaries themselves, whether at new or established companies.

The Entrepreneurial Fellows Program (EFP) accelerates that learning curve by providing 10–12 weeks of experience at startups from the top accelerators, including SkyDeck, Y Combinator, Techstars, and more. The EFP Fund offers students grants of $6,000.

Pracheeti Shikarkhane, BS 26, interned last summer at Glyphic Biotechnologies, where she worked directly with Glyphic’s chief technology officer on a machine learning script to sequence peptides. “It was really great for me in terms of actually implementing what I’d learned in my classes and applying it to a real project,” she says. “But the most exciting part was seeing the project’s impact on the company’s success.”

Making a difference was one of many things Sasank Aduri, BS 26, loved about interning last summer at RTHM, a young company using AI to improve treatments for complex illnesses. “You can feel your impact a lot quicker, and you’re wearing 10 different hats,” he says.

These kinds of student successes are why Jasvinder Khaira, BS 04, an M.E.T. Advisory Board member, donates generously to the Entrepreneurial Fellows Program Fund. “I’m a big believer in entrepreneurship as an engine of growth and an exciting way for young people to turbocharge their careers,” says Khaira, a senior managing director and founding partner of the Tactical Opportunities Group at Blackstone.

At the same time, he knows that finding the right internship opportunity isn’t easy. “This program provides mentorship and guidance in the selection process,” he says. “That seems like the right way to do it.”

Mistaken Identity

Summer 2024|By Laura Counts| Photo: Adobe Stock

Improved chatbot interactions

To err is human…and in the age of AI, it may be humanizing.

A study co-authored by Associate Professor Juliana Schroeder found that people view customer service agents that make typographical errors—and correct them—as more human and sometimes even more helpful.

“For decades, people worked to make machines smarter and less prone to errors,” Schroeder says. “Now that we’re living through real-world Turing tests in most of our online interactions, an error can actually be a beneficial cue for signaling humanness.”

In a paper published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, Schroeder and colleagues from Yeshiva University, Stanford, and the University of Colorado Boulder developed their own chatbot and conducted five studies involving over 3,000 participants. Across all studies, participants rated agents that made and corrected typos as more human than those that made no typos or left typos uncorrected. They also viewed them more warmly.

The effect was strongest when participants did not know if the agent was a bot or a human, but it held even when participants were told this information.

Prior research dating back the 1960s—dubbed the “Pratfall Effect”—showed that under certain conditions, making mistakes can increase a person’s likability. But other studies have shown that communicators who make spelling mistakes or grammatical errors are seen as less competent than those who don’t. Schroeder suggests it’s what happens after an error is made that can make the difference.

“We suspect that correcting an error is humanizing because it shows an engaged mind,” she says. “It’s a sign that the communicator cares about how they’re perceived.”

The researchers do not suggest that companies intentionally program their chatbots by inserting typos—which could be seen as manipulative and raise ethics questions. Recent policy efforts in some states require bots to disclose their identities or companies to watermark AI-generated content. Yet, if a genuine mistake is made and the chatbot (or person) can address it, this may impress customers.

Overall, the findings suggest that it may be possible to improve chatbots by implementing humanizing cues (like fixing mistakes) while still being transparent. These cues, the researchers say, “can signal a company’s dedication to connecting with consumers, potentially offsetting the impersonal and dehumanizing nature of text-based interactions.”

Good Talk

Summer 2024|By Laura Counts| PHOTO: ISTOCK

Our skewed sense of political debate

Spend time on social media or news sites and it feels like America is in constant argument. Off-hand remarks often spark fierce screaming matches. Partisanship is up, Gallup tells us, while trust in institutions is down.

However, a new study, co-authored by Assistant Professor Erica R. Bailey and colleagues from Columbia Business School, suggests this perception may not accurately reflect the nature and frequency of political debates among everyday Americans. In three studies involving nearly 3,000 participants, researchers found most debates occur not with strangers on social media but among family and friends.

The most common debate topics were aligned with major topics in the news—including gun control, reproductive rights, vaccines, climate change, and democracy. Moreover, participants often felt positive after such discourse, suggesting that discussions, even on divisive topics, often ended on a constructive note.

“We theorize that we have these misperceptions because of algorithmic amplification of negative media and negative interactions on social media coupled with the fact that we tend to remember negative information,” says Bailey. “It creates a perception that we’re all just fighting with strangers.”

In fact, one study with a representative sample of nearly 2,000 Americans showed that people overestimate how frequently others engage in debates—a misperception that is especially pronounced for debates with strangers online. This has psychological costs.

“Our findings suggest that Americans may experience a false reality about the landscape of debate which can unnecessarily undermine their hope about the future,” the researchers wrote in the study, published in Scientific Reports. By assuming that debates are overwhelmingly negative and frequent, people may feel a sense of futility about political engagement and discourse. (The researchers cautioned that this connection was largely correlational.)

Educating the public about the actual dynamics of debates could help mitigate feelings of despair and encourage more constructive and hopeful engagement with political processes.

Andrew T. Rudd, MBA 76

Summer 2024|By Staff

Entrepreneur, Innovator & Benefactor

Andrew T. Rudd, an entrepreneur and stalwart supporter of Haas and UC Berkeley, died April 2, 2024, in Berkeley, Calif. Rudd, 74, maintained deep connections to UC Berkeley from 1972 until his death. He earned an M.S. in operations research in 1972, an MBA in 1976, and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering and operations research in 1978, all from UC Berkeley. Rudd also graduated with a B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Sussex in England. He was a UC Berkeley Foundation Trustee and a Builder of Berkeley.

After graduating from Berkeley, Rudd taught finance and operations research at Cornell University and became a leading authority on modern portfolio theory. In 1975, he co-founded Barra Inc., a financial software company headquartered in Berkeley with offices located around the world. Under his leadership, the company developed risk-management and investment tools, most notably the Barra Models, which forecast risks for equity, fixed income, and derivatives. Barra Inc., now MSCI Barra, was acquired by Morgan Stanley in 2004.

Rudd’s desire to enhance the financial ecosystem persisted after Barra’s sale. He launched Advisor Software, which developed wealth management products for investors. He also acquired and ran Advisor Partners, an investment advisor with sophisticated quantitative products. Rudd and his businesses left an indelible mark on Wall Street.

He will be remembered dearly for the impact he had on others as well. Rudd’s time at Berkeley profoundly shaped him and helped harness his drive, curiosity, keen intellect, and optimism. He and his wife, Virginia, founded the Rudd Family Foundation, which focuses its efforts on education and providing opportunity to others. At UC Berkeley, the Foundation endowed faculty chairs at the Haas School of Business, the College of Engineering, and the Blum Center for Developing Economies, which has transformed the Rudd Family Big Ideas Program into one of UC Berkeley’s most esteemed accelerators. The Foundation also supported the V&A Cafe located in the College of Engineering.

Chancellor Rich Lyons, former dean of Berkeley Haas, fondly remembers working with Rudd and Virginia to transform the student experience for generations to come. “The things that Andrew and Virginia connected to—the Chair in Behavioral Finance, the need for more courses in financial literacy, more support for campus social entrepreneurs in Big Ideas—these were all things that helped point the way to Haas’ and Berkeley’s future,” Lyons said.

To his family and his friends, Rudd was much more than an entrepreneur and visionary. He is remembered by many for his optimistic outlook on life, sharp wit, and sense of humor. He was an extensive traveler with many tales to tell, hiked mountains across various continents with his son Chris and daughter Natalie, authored two books, had an amateur sailing career, was a patient math tutor to his kids, and loved games of skill. He lived what felt like many lives in his 74 years.

More than anything, Rudd loved his wife and kids, all of whom miss him dearly. He is survived by his wife, Virginia (Jinny); son Chris; daughter Alexi; son Nick and daughter-in-law, Emilianne, and their three children: Jagger, Spencer, and Cooper; and daughter Natalie, MBA 14. He is also survived by his brother, Peter, and sister-in-law, Kate, and their family.

IN MEMORIAM

Evelyn Knop, BS 48
Jean Blois, BS 49
Gordon Crowell, BS 53
Charles Gianola, BS 54
Edward Mayeda, BS 57
Eugene Brigham, MBA 57, PhD 62
Frederick Ebey, BS 58
Gilbert Esparza, BS 58
Joe Stine, BS 58
James Snell, BS 59
Oliver Hook, MBA 59
Neal Miura, BS 60
Harry Dingman, MBA 61
Alfred Cuthbert, BS 62
Walter Baker, BS 64
Darryl Marshall, BS 64
Kent Newmark, MBA 64
Wayne Batavia, BS 76
Michael Russell, MBA 80
Marilyn Bolognesi, MBA 86
Alexander Hiam, MBA 86
Brett Estes, BS 87, MBA 90
Colleen Stratton, MBA 91
John Barela, MBA 93
Karen Brown, MBA 07
Elfriede Robinson, Friend

Kind of a Big Deal

Summer 2024|By Amy Marcott| Photo by Brandon Sanchez Mejia

Former Dean Rich Lyons, BS 82, takes the helm of the mothership as chancellor of Berkeley

In the hours following his announcement as UC Berkeley’s 12^th chancellor, Rich Lyons made headlines in major media outlets in California as well as national publications, including The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Sports Illustrated (since he’ll be overseeing Cal’s athletics program). News of his appointment was later splashed onto giant screens at the New York Stock Exchange. If ever there was a time to toot one’s own horn, this was it.

But on Lyons’ X account, to which he posts frequently, the 63-year-old former Haas School dean had just six words: Today was kinda a big day. He then expressed appreciation for all the “lovely messages” he’d been sent. Those who know Lyons know this wasn’t a humble brag. He is, quite simply, humble: an authentic leader who exudes enthusiasm for all things Berkeley, where he’s worked for the past 31 years—not to mention his years as a student. In fact, he’s the first UC Berkeley undergraduate alum to become the campus’s chancellor.

During his 11 years as the rock-star dean of Haas, Lyons racked up numerous successes: the construction of the nation’s greenest academic building, Chou Hall; a curriculum revamp that emphasized experiential learning and soft leadership skills, like creative problem framing; new dual-degree programs with Berkeley Engineering and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology; and, perhaps most notably, a strong culture codified in the four Defining Leadership Principles (DLPs): Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself.

Since his move to the broader campus in 2020, he’s built out the entrepreneurship and innovation efforts at the university with an eye toward increasing opportunities for all members of the community and creating new sources of revenue. His role oversaw Berkeley’s startup accelerator SkyDeck (which he helped found as Haas dean) and its expansion to both Italy and Japan, as well as the technology transfer office, managing IP licenses for breakthroughs like Nobelist Jennifer Doudna’s CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing. And he initiated a data project that led to Berkeley’s #1 ranking for its number of venture-backed companies founded by undergraduate alumni and #2 for its number of founders in PitchBook’s 2023 rankings.

Now his leadership will be tested at an impressive scope as he guides some 70,000 students, faculty, and staff and the world’s top public university into the future.

How will his leadership skills honed at Haas translate to the university level? Will the DLPs go Berkeley-wide? What’s his vision for the university? And will he still play his guitar in public? Read on for the answers.

Culture champion

As chancellor, Lyons will continue to focus on culture. “If I’m obsessive about anything,” he said in a Berkeley News article about his appointment, “I’m obsessive about how leaders work with their people to strengthen culture.”

But that doesn’t mean the DLPs, so pivotal to Haas’ identity, will be adopted by the university. “Berkeley is a wonderfully complex organization,” Lyons says. “If somebody thinks I’m starting by thinking about how am I going to get those four principles to the campus level—no. It’s a much bigger set of opportunities for values leadership.”

For Lyons, “values leadership” means identifying and elevating the qualities that distinguish Berkeley from other great institutions of higher education. One place to start, he believes, are UC Berkeley’s principles of community, which were developed collaboratively by students, faculty, staff, and alumni. The seven principles call for, among other things, civility and respect in personal interactions and participation and leadership in addressing society’s most pressing issues.

“The principles of community are profoundly important to this university,” Lyons says. “But people don’t know how many there are. They can’t even name very many of them.” Partly, he says, this is because the principles of community weren’t designed to be differentiating. “We don’t just codify values in order to be differentiated,” says Lyons. “But I think we have some headroom to be more differentiated at the campus level.”

Values leadership is one of three “domains of opportunity”—along with resource leadership (fresh funding opportunities) and research leadership (life-changing discoveries in all disciplines)—that Lyons says will be key for Berkeley’s future success.

Long-term societal benefit

Though Lyons is still in the listening phase of his tenure and expects his ideas to get shaped and adjusted, he does articulate a vision for Berkeley. “I’ve been here for a long time,” he says, “so I do have some thoughts.”

On a macro level, he wants to continue pursuing what he refers to as the core of the 10-campus, UC-wide mission statement: Long-term societal benefit. “But I want to pivot on that and then start asking questions,” he says. “Like, how does Berkeley, with all the long-term societal benefit that it already provides, go up a level or two on that?”

Within 10 years, Lyons says, “We’re going to make Berkeley the university of choice for faculty, staff, and students. Period.” And that means embracing being a public school. “All the other great research universities that come first to people’s minds in the U.S. are not public,” he says. “We are the only public that’s in the pantheon.” But no Ivy League school, for example, comes close to Berkeley’s operating scale with undergraduates, nor can those schools match Berkeley’s reputation for challenging convention (like birthing the Free Speech Movement). “That doesn’t make everybody want to be at Berkeley, but it makes a lot of people want to be at Berkeley, because there’s so much meaning and purpose here,” Lyons says.

A bear mascot smiles at a man whose hands are thrown up in surprise. — Oski surprised Lyons at an alumni event in Southern California the day after his appointment was announced at the UC Board of Regents meeting in Los Angeles. Photo: Keegan Houser

A Berkeley narrative

In his previous role, as Berkeley’s first-ever chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer, Lyons began developing that sense of purpose. Part of his charge was to harness Berkeley’s myriad opportunities and make entrepreneurship and innovation more inclusive campuswide.

One of Lyons’ solutions was the Berkeley Changemaker program, a series of more than 30 undergraduate courses across disciplines that share three through lines: critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. Inspiration for the program came from the course, later a book, called Becoming a Changemaker by Haas professional faculty member Alex Budak, who was the first lead faculty for the Berkeley Changemaker gateway course. To date, some 20% of Berkeley undergrads (a subset that tends to be more diverse than the general undergrad population) have enrolled in Changemaker courses, which involve more than 60 faculty from over 30 academic departments and 11 schools and colleges.

The idea is to encourage entrepreneurial thinking in humanists and scientists alike and to offer a signature Berkeley way of being: questioning the status quo to benefit society. The curriculum helps students articulate their passions, develop a sharper sense of what they want to accomplish, and understand how to make that happen.

“Berkeley Changemaker is emerging as a narrative and an identity,” Lyons says. “There are students who are saying, ‘That’s who I want to be. And I might apply and go to Berkeley because I’m seeing that narrative and a curriculum to back it.’”

Currently, students can earn a certificate, though Lyons and his co-lead in the effort, Haas professional faculty member Laura Hassner, EMBA 18, would love for it to be a minor. And while there are a few Changemaker courses available to graduate students, he’d love to build that out too.

Man in a suit coat surrounded by several smiling people. — Lyons made a surprise appearance at April’s annual Alumni Conference where he greeted members of the Haas community soon after being announced as Berkeley’s next chancellor. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small

Novel revenue streams

Of course, all the purpose in the world isn’t going to resonate if there isn’t money to support the top faculty, students, and staff. Berkeley simply doesn’t have the coffers to rival top private institutions. To remedy this, Lyons is seeking unconventional funding opportunities, beyond advocating to legislators in Sacramento and courting major donors. He’s galvanized by this question: “How does Berkeley participate more in the economic value that it creates in ways that are consistent with its mission and values?”

It’s not a new question for Lyons. He’s spent the last four years seeking novel revenue streams for the university via Berkeley’s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.

His vision has involved capacity-building platforms to combine the many thriving ecosystems on campus while still keeping them decentralized. One such platform is the Berkeley Research Infrastructure Commons, which makes scientific instruments on campus, say a mass spectrometer or a DNA sequencer, available to industry users for commercial purposes when they’re not in use. These external companies pay fees to Berkeley but retain their intellectual property, a system that significantly lowers the cost of R&D.

“We’re going to make Berkeley the university of choice for faculty, staff, and students. Period.”

Another platform involves shared-carry (or shared-return) venture funds, which pay the university a portion of their profits. The idea is this: In any venture fund, there’s a general partner and a limited partner. Typically, the general partner receives 20% of the return on the whole portfolio. For the seven UC Berkeley shared-return funds, the general partner gives back to Berkeley half of its return, or 10% of the total. The funds, while a separate entity from the university, can use Berkeley branding via an affiliation agreement.

Inflows stemming from Berkeley’s IP portfolio are a small slice of the cash flow that will be needed to secure Berkeley’s future. People have started bringing Lyons transformative ideas, he says. One could potentially generate $300 million in unrestricted dollars in 10 years, which could be used for the core and the harder-to-fund things, like doctoral students, research in the humanities, and deferred maintenance on research facilities. This is the magnitude of the solutions he’s seeking. “If we have nine or 10 ideas that could generate a $100 million cash flow that’s unrestricted and can fund the core over the next 10 years,” Lyons says, “that’s where I see a lot of opportunity.”

Authentic leadership

Family of four sitting on a staircase with a dog. — Lyons with his wife, Jen; son, Jake; daughter, Nicole; and dog, Winston. Photo: Courtesy of Rich Lyons

Lyons says he’s going all-in as Chancellor—which includes breaking out his guitar for a song now and again. “I don’t want to overdo it,” he says, but he will, “when the time is right.” He and his wife, Jen, are moving into University House on campus. “We’re going to be totally present,” he says. “For example, I’m going to pop in sometimes when I walk by a tour with prospective students and their families and just say, ‘Hey, welcome to Berkeley! I’m the Chancellor. Thanks for being here.’”

Those personal touches—the kind he was known for at Haas—should serve him well. In one of outgoing-Chancellor Carol Christ’s final campus interviews, she was asked what it takes to lead UC Berkeley. In addition to having good listening skills and tolerance for different opinions and protests, she said, “It takes liking students, understanding the time in life it is for them.”

For Lyons, interacting with students is one of the joys of his work at Berkeley. “I love to teach, and I love staying connected to students,” he says. “And students can sense authentic connection or the lack thereof from a mile away.”

Professional faculty member Thomas Fitzpatrick, MBA 11, witnessed this authentic connection firsthand at Caffe Strada the month before Lyons was named chancellor. Lyons had been deep in conversation with a colleague at the cafe, and when he was leaving, a student caught his attention.

Lyons didn’t appear to know the young man, but they spoke for a few minutes, then Lyons took off a pin he was wearing on his lapel and gave it to him. “They were both beaming,” Fitzpatrick says. Even more than the kind gesture, Fitzpatrick, who specializes in leadership development and communications, was struck by Lyons’ demeanor throughout the interaction.

“He wasn’t so busy that he couldn’t pause what looked like an important conversation to connect with a student,” Fitzpatrick says. “He didn’t rush it. He was really enjoying the encounter.”

The student turned out to be Owen Knapper Jr., a then-sophomore majoring in political science. Knapper didn’t know Lyons, but he wondered where he got the pin he was wearing, a 3D gold bear in mid-stride. Knapper explained that he often wears suits to student-government meetings, and he’d been looking for one just like it.

Three weeks later, when Lyons was announced as chancellor, Knapper told his fellow members of student government his crazy story about meeting him. “It looked like he was in a hurry, but he did stop to engage with me,” says Knapper, who’s been wearing his pin at his summer internship in Washington, D.C., with Congress member Barbara Lee. “And I think that’s what’s important, because he stopped and listened and had a conversation.”

Knapper, who’s currently a student senator, is one student among some 45,000, but it was a good first impression. “Having that interaction with him was impactful, and I can’t wait to see the amazing work he does,” Knapper says. “I would love to learn some of his plans for communities of color on campus, transfer students, formerly incarcerated students. Just seeing how he will listen to students and try to create tangible solutions. I only can vouch for him so much, but I hope that he will be off to doing great things.”

Challenges and optimism

For all his enthusiasm, Lyons acknowledges that he’s becoming chancellor during a fraught time for college campuses nationwide, including Berkeley. Demonstrations, sometimes volatile, have fractured campus communities, leaving some feeling angry, scared, and alienated.

“Every moment in history is complicated, but this is an especially complicated time in higher education by a lot of objective measures,” Lyons says. “People are feeling the pressure societally, these tectonic shifts.”

Which is why the values leadership he espouses is so important for Berkeley’s future. Getting it right will be a true test of his skill as chancellor.

“My goal as a leader then and now is to facilitate and sustain a culture that supports diversity of perspective, provides every student with a true sense of belonging, and encourages educational innovation,” Lyons told Berkeley News.

That’s not going to be easy for any college or university leader, but Lyons has a quiet confidence that, years from now when his term is over, Berkeley will be in an even better place. “I see 10 years out that we could really make some remarkable advances and deliver even more into that mission of long-term societal benefit,” he says. “So I go in with eyes open and lots of optimism.

Kamini Lane, BS 02
CEO, Coldwell Banker Realty

Summer 2024|By Andrew Faught| Photo: Bris Photography LLC

As president and CEO of Coldwell Banker Realty, Kamini (Rangappan) Lane makes sure that the company’s 52,000+ realtors have the support and tools to dream big.

“I have the ability to supercharge tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, as real estate agents are one of the biggest classes of entrepreneurs in the U.S. economy,” she says.

Lane assumed her role in March 2023, after holding leadership roles at Sotheby’s International Realty; the peer-to-peer designer fashion platform Tradesy; Compass, Inc.; and eBay, where she led the men’s and women’s accessories category.

It was at eBay that she recognized and developed a passion for empowering entrepreneurs, “from somebody who’s selling a handful of Beanie Babies a month to someone who has a pro shop and is selling millions of dollars of merchandise,” she says.

While real estate is uncertain given fluctuating interest rates and projections that 2024 home sales will continue to lag behind their pre-COVID sales totals, Lane is promoting tools that will help realtors navigate challenges. Chief among them is Coldwell Banker Realty’s Listing Concierge—a proprietary service that gives realtors access to professional photography, digital and printed brochures, websites, and video services.

Lane says she seeks to nurture company leaders who take the time to mentor, educate, and navigate their agents through difficult conversations.

Real estate is a relationship business, says Lane. “What matters is the relationship between agent and client and the relationship between agent and brokerage leadership.”

linkedin.com/in/kaminilane

Adrien Lopez Lanusse, MBA 99
Consultant & Adviser, ALL Insights

Summer 2024|By Andrew Faught| Photo: courtesy adrien lopez lanusse

As the child of immigrants, Adrien Lopez Lanusse recalls being a “cultural ambassador” to his French and Mexican parents.

“I was an interpreter—not just with language. I tried to understand how they could be relevant to different audiences,” Lanusse says. “My dad was a gardener, and there was an entrepreneurial spirit in the home, which helped me understand target audiences and not try to be one thing to everybody.”

It’s a skill Lanusse has used to considerable success.

From 2012 to 2021, he was the first vice president of consumer insights at Netflix, leveraging consumer insights to grow the company from $2 billion in annual revenues to $25 billion. He also helped the streaming giant expand to 190 countries.

“Traditionally, research data came from surveys or interviews. Now there are additional sources, whether it’s behavioral data or unstructured textual data in the social media space,” Lanusse says. “The expanded tool chest gives an accurate depiction of customers. It’s not just who they are and what they do but what motivates them.”

These days, he’s a consultant and adviser at ALL Insights in San Mateo, Calif., where he helps companies ranging from startups to large tech firms better understand audiences and develop strategies to drive business. The work makes a transaction feel “personal” to customers, he says.

“Algorithms allow us to create a product that adapts to an individual’s needs, but that alone doesn’t make it feel personal,” he adds. “Having a product that is relevant but feels like it comes from a human and not a machine is something a lot of companies strive to do.”

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Emily Ewell, MBA/MPH 12
Founder & CEO, Pantys

Summer 2024|By Meilan Carter-Gilkey| Photo: courtesy pantys

When Emily Ewell introduced her line of boxers for transgender men who menstruate, she sparked much debate in an industry that has traditionally marketed to women.

“It was very shocking, but it was by far our most successful launch in terms of brand awareness, reach, and press,” Ewell says. “We showed that diversity and inclusion is central to our brand and identity.”

The boxer is one of many washable menstrual hygiene products Ewell’s company, Pantys, has launched to offer a sustainable solution for the planet and for people who have periods.

“All of our innovation is focused on health and sustainability. Those pillars drive our mission, communications, research and development, and every aspect of the business,” she says.

Pantys made its debut in Brazil in 2017 with a highly absorbent, leak-proof, menstrual underwear using its clinically approved pantyliner technology. Since then, the company has grown in popularity and has added new products, including swim, maternity, and incontinence undergarments.

With a strong online presence and three stores in Brazil and Europe, Pantys is successfully creating change in a market dominated by disposable products.

“We’re in the business of changing people’s habits, which is a difficult business model. We don’t use eco-shaming in our marketing. We inspire people to make the change,” she says.

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Chris Boerner, PhD 02
Board Chair & CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb

Summer 2024|By Suzi Morales| Photo: courtesy chris boerner

How does a kid from Arkansas who hated science and wanted to be a professor end up leading a Fortune 100 biopharmaceutical company?

By pursuing meaningful work and valuing the people around him, says Chris Boerner, who was recently named board chair and CEO of Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS).

Boerner swore off science after completing a college biology course and instead majored in economics and history. With an eye toward academia, he enrolled in Haas’ PhD program, where he researched how biotech companies are influenced by organizational factors when developing new products.

After graduation, Boerner joined McKinsey & Co. to consult for biotech clients—a role that changed his life. “I loved working for companies focused on improving patients’ lives,” he says. “I decided then not to go back to academia.”

Boerner went on to Genentech’s oncology department but realized that he needed to learn “the language of science” to achieve success. He spent hours questioning the company’s scientists about their work “to be just smart enough to get through the next day,” he says. His aspiration to enhance patients’ lives was cemented when a cousin died of cancer.

In 2014, he joined BMS to head U.S. operations. Now, as a CEO navigating a changing healthcare industry, he reflects on how his strong sense of community shapes the way he leads.

“I want to be surrounded by brilliant people who are great at what they do and who are also decent humans.”

linkedin.com/in/christopherboerner

Cynthia Morrow, BCEMBA 05
Co-founder, More Luxury Club

Summer 2024|By Natasha Payés| Photo: Bhav Sonigra

After spending the early 2000s consulting Fortune 500 companies on building high-performance workplace cultures, Cynthia Morrow decided it was time for a second act: creating an innovative business.

She first caught the entrepreneurial bug shortly after college when she worked for the now-defunct People Express, a low-cost airline. Morrow felt it again while taking an entrepreneurship class with former Haas lecturer Steve Blank. She was tasked with writing a business plan for a clothing brand.

“You just get bitten by that bug, having an idea and wanting to see it to fruition,” Morrow says.

Never losing sight of her aspiration, Morrow is now getting into the fractional ownership space with More Luxury Club, a circular fashion marketplace.

Unlike the rental market, where consumers often lease items once and never convert to repeat customers, fractional ownership allows people to buy shares in luxury goods. Clients who join More Luxury become co-owners of a designer handbag for 20% of the retail price. They can then reserve and use their handbag for up to 10 weeks a year, one to four weeks at a time.

“Our circular business model is environmentally sustainable and constantly gives shoppers that hit of newness, that dopamine rush that they love,” she says.

As the global secondhand market grows and is expected to reach $350 billion by 2028, according to ThredUp’s 2024 Resale Report, More offers a solution for those looking for a savvy way to own luxury.

“I want to make this experience joyful for people and save them 80% of what they’re spending on high-end goods,” Morrow says.

linkedin.com/in/cynthiacovett

PACT Apparel

Summer 2024|By Andrew Faught| Photos: courtesy of pact and bleckmann

Alumni pioneer ethical, stylish, sustainable fashion

Jeff Denby and Jason Kibbey, both MBA 08, made stewarding the health of the planet fashionable. The pair set out to create a unique, design-driven, organic clothing brand with a fully transparent supply chain. And they did just that. PACT introduced sustainably manufactured cotton garments that don’t harm the Earth—with 10% of sales proceeds benefiting various environmental and humanitarian causes. Starting with a line of underwear for adults and the puckish tagline “Change starts with your underwear,” the company soon expanded to other clothing and baby items, creating both a fashion brand and a social movement.

2008

After graduating from Haas, Kibbey and Denby travel to four continents seeking the right factory. In Turkey, they assemble one of the first fully transparent apparel supply chains. Everything from seed to finished product occurs within a 100-mile radius.

2009

PACT Apparel launches with a line of sustainable underwear for adults made from organic cotton. Each print collection promotes a cause and a nonprofit. Items are packaged in a reusable cloth bag made from scraps and shipped with a compostable bag and address label. Online, customers can shop by cause, fit, or print.

2010

The company’s contribution to sustainable eco-fashion earns them multiple International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), a Core77 Design Award, and a prestigious Brit Insurance Designs of the Year Award.

2011

Now sold at Nordstrom and on Amazon, PACT becomes a certified B Corp, solidifying its commitment to social good. It’s acquired by Boulder, Colo.-based Revelry Brands. Kibbey steps down to join the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, eventually becoming CEO. Later, he founds Worldly, a platform for climate-impact intelligence.

2012

T-shirts and socks are added to the line. PACT socks launch in Whole Foods in the Midwest, California, and Texas. The supermarket chain will eventually become PACT’s biggest client, selling the clothing in nearly every store nationwide.

2014

PACT partners with farmers and factories in India to launch an organic cotton Fair Trade Certified line, including baby clothes. A second round of equity financing with Revelry aims to add new products to the line, which now includes camisoles, leggings, and long johns. Since 2011, PACT has grown revenue nearly 800%.

2015

Denby steps down and co-founds The Renewal Workshop, which transforms unsellable or excess store inventory into salable items. It is later acquired by international logistics company Bleckmann. Today, he’s an investment consultant and chair of the board of Fashion Takes Action, which advances sustainability in the fashion system.

2024

PACT product offerings now include home goods, accessories, maternity wear, and more. The Give Back, Wear Forward program allows customers free shipping of gently used clothing (even non-PACT items) for donation to one of five charities.