Tag: Haas Voices

Haas Voices: Doug Leeds on making ADHD his superpower

| by Kim Girard

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

bearded man wearing a suitDoug Leeds, BA 92 (political economy), is a lawyer turned serial tech executive who formerly worked at Yahoo! and as CEO of Dictionary.com and Ask.com. Diagnosed with ADHD earlier this year, Leeds discusses how that diagnosis changed his life and his work as a teacher—and is driving his plan to launch a support group for Haas community members with ADHD.

Leeds, a professional faculty member, teaches the undergraduate classes Creativity in Leadership and Leadership by Persuasion.

“I went to Berkeley undergrad on the six-year plan. I made the five-year people look good. Now, I can look back and say that there was a lot of ADHD going on with me and that was why it took me six years to understand how to study.

Even before coming to college, I was a ‘good-bad student’ who did well on tests but couldn’t handle sitting in classes. I remember skipping most of my classes at Berkeley. I just learned in different ways. 

What is clear to me now is that my entire family has ADHD. My dad, my mom, my brother, and, as it turns out, all of my closest friends. But none of them knew that until I got diagnosed in January—and I started thinking that my diagnosis also applied to people I know. 

In many ways, I was lucky growing up because I didn’t feel different. I was surrounded by people who had ADHD, too.

The things that made me struggle were the things that made my mom and dad struggle. And they told me how to deal with it. It was never my fault. I just had to learn in a different way.

When I was in seventh grade, my parents went to back-to-school night and met my math teacher. We were six weeks into school. He looked up my name and said, ‘He’s missing 45 homework assignments.’ 

This is how lucky I am: My parents blamed the school for not calling them. So, the next year, I went to a different school, which provided a different way of learning. We had small classes, and you knew your teachers. I did much better in those types of classes and was able to get to Berkeley. 

At Berkeley, it all started again. I almost never went to class, and I almost failed out. Then, two things happened. A Letters & Science advisor saved my life by allowing me to drop all of my classes when I was expecting to get all Fs so I could start over. He advised me to enroll in classes again and focus not on perfectionism and getting As but on just getting Bs. 

Then I met my girlfriend, who is now my wife. She told me if you want to hang out with me, I’m going to be at the library, and I’m going to be in class. I still didn’t go to class as much. But I went to the library to study with her. Later, I learned about a thing called ‘body doubling,’ which is having to be around other people to get stuff done as a person with ADHD. 

My wife helped me do well in school, and I helped her, too. Then, I went to law school—not because I knew what I wanted to do, but because my dad went and said I’d like it. And I did. You study in study groups, which was perfect for me. I rarely went to class, but I didn’t need to because everyone who went to class would hang out and talk about class. 

I started to practice antitrust law, but litigation wasn’t right for me because it’s not collaborative. But I got very lucky again. I had my second child and came back to work after a week of paternity leave, and the partner who was my boss got mad at me because my billable hours were down. He asked me to make a choice: Are you going to be a family man or a firm man? I said, ‘Thank you, goodbye. I’m going to be a family person.’ So leaving law was for my family, but I found life as a business executive much more interesting and fulfilling, because we worked in teams, solving tough problems. It was in business roles that I really found my groove.

man teaching a class talking to a student
Leeds says he designed his Creativity and Leadership class to be a class that he would want to attend.

In my Creativity and  Leadership class I’ve used what I now know about ADHD to help create a course that I would have wanted to attend. We play a lot of games; we’re moving around; I’m out of my seat; and we’re learning. I’m having fun. I teach, but I also learn from who I’m teaching. The class capstone project is a social action project. So the students will go out into the community and try to make some positive change. I was interested in teaching leadership by actually having people practice it—not just talk about it.  So I now ask what tools I can give them. And one of them is: How do you persuade people when you don’t have status? When you don’t have status, you’re not in control, but you can motivate people to your way of thinking, which is a definition of leadership.

In my Creativity and  Leadership class I’ve used what I now know about ADHD to help create a course that I would have wanted to attend.

I’ve been open about my diagnosis with my students. I try not to be a diagnostician because I’m not qualified to do that. But I’ve had a bunch of students come up to me because I’m transparent, and they say, ‘I have it, too.’ In class, I emphasize skills like collaboration, active listening, and empathy that are particularly resonant for people with ADHD but are also useful for everybody. I’ve also discovered some really helpful tools, like a website called Focusmate, a wonderful tool for body doubling. You set up a free Zoom call with somebody, and you say, ‘Hey, I’m working on this. And they say, ‘Hey, I’m working on this,’ and you both work on your project separately but together, and it helps you get stuff done. 

superman breaking a pickle jar
Superman breaking a pickle jar. Courtesy of Doug Leeds

After informally meeting people on campus with ADHD, I approached Don Capone, a psychologist with Mental Health and Wellbeing at Haas, and said I wanted to create a group where people can exchange information, tell their stories, and get access to what’s worked on campus for them.

What I’d really like to do is meet people on the faculty and staff and just get a conversation going. ADHD can be a struggle. But it can also be really empowering when you know how it works.  Those of us with ADHD are on a journey together. I want to share the travel stories. 

I now genuinely think of ADHD as my superpower. But I’m Superman holding a pickle jar.

I have super strength, but sometimes, I forget I’m different, and when I try to do seemingly simple things, like opening a jar of pickles, I forget my superpower and break off the lid. Then it can get messy and bad things can happen.  I can get frustrated, or splash the people around me in smelly pickle juice. But if I remember who I am, my strengths and my limitations, I can not only avoid the mess, but really use my ‘powers’ to do some good in the world. That’s incredibly motivating to me.”

 

Hayden Estes, MBA 26, on the importance of boosting intergenerational wealth for Native Americans

| by Kim Girard

Haas Voices is a first-person series based on interviews with diverse members of the Haas community.

man wearing blue collared shirt
Hayden Estes

Hayden Estes, MBA 26, a member of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, plans to focus on creating intergenerational wealth for Native American tribes after he graduates. An established accountant before he came to Haas, Estes will be one of the first Berkeley Haas MBA students to receive full-tuition aid next year under the new University of California Native American Opportunity Plan.  

“My father grew up on the Luiseño Indian reservation. As a kid, he would put a stick in the ground and draw a line in the sand. My grandma would go to work and would tell him that when the shadow crosses that line, you start walking to school.

The Luiseno tribe lives just outside of Escondido, about an hour east from the coast. Our tribal land used to be located more to the west, but we were pushed a little more east, and there’s definitely a temperature change. It can get hot there. 

There are many areas across the U.S. that are tough to live in, and a lot of reservations are in those areas. Ours is right by Palomar Mountain, which is beautiful, and a lot of people will hike there or travel through to go to the desert. They’ll camp or go off-roading. Neighboring towns include Temecula, which is wine country, and Julian, which is famous for pies and apple picking. 

People drive through reservations today, and it’s really just kind of a pass through. I would love for reservations across the U.S. to be destinations.

My ideas about giving back to the Native American community come partly from visiting my grandpa, who still lives on the reservation. He didn’t have internet access until two years ago, and he got a cell phone last year. It will get to over 100 degrees, but he’ll only turn on the AC at certain hours to try to save money here and there. 

My father left the reservation for college when he got a baseball scholarship to play for Chico State. Athletics were a big part of his life, and getting the scholarship was really his only opportunity to go. Both he and my mom earned education degrees at Chico State. There were job opportunities in Colorado in the early 1990s, so they made the move and ended up working for the same public school district. I grew up in Broomfield, Colorado, between Boulder and Denver. With parents for teachers, I think there’s a certain standard that you don’t really want to cross. They definitely instilled a value of education. 

a family standing on a porch together
Hayden Estes (left) with his family. His father left the Luiseño Indian reservation to attend college.

I have a younger sister at the Colorado School of Mines studying geology and a younger brother in Denver who graduated from Denver University and is a social activist. I’m more interested in funding my causes, whereas he’s more boots-on-the-ground. The dinner table definitely got a little contentious at points, but I think we always want to achieve the same thing.

As an undergraduate at the University of San Diego, I thought I wanted to major in biology. My dad was a biology teacher, and my mom taught seventh-grade science. But when you get your first C-minus in an intro course, it’s eye opening. Growing up, I loved numbers and puzzles, Monopoly and Sudoku. So when I had to choose a major, I thought accounting would align because it’s part of everyday life. 

After I graduated, I established myself as an accountant at KPMG, but I hit this point where I asked what else was out there. Applying to business school was on my checklist for a long time. 

So I applied to Haas through The Consortium, a great program that’s enhancing diversity and inclusion in business schools. Through The Consortium, you’re able to look at the different member schools and choose which ones you’re really interested in. I didn’t know much about Haas, but a second-year student reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I’d love to chat with you if you have any questions.’ It was impactful for me to talk to her and get her insights. She told me about the focus on diversity and inclusion within the school and the Bay Area and the great alumni base. It’s super exciting to have a football team, too. 

man and golden retriever
Estes (with puppy, Daisy) wants to use his MBA to alleviate problems on reservations. “The question for our tribes is: How do we create our own opportunities? Do you build casinos? What do you try to do to help the people of your tribe without losing that culture?” 

When I learned this year about this program that the UC system established to pay Native Americans’ tuition, I thought it was phenomenal opportunity, considering that I worked three jobs during undergrad — as a barista, at a surf-bike shop, and as a waiter to pay for school. 

It’s just so hard to start off in debt. It’s like starting off a game of Monopoly with debt instead of collecting $200 when you pass ‘Go’. It makes everything so much harder. And it can be particularly tough for Native folks who want to go back to their tribes to start a business with $100,000 in debt. 

The retention rate is also low for Indigenous students. It’s so hard to go from a tight-knit community on your reservation to a big school like Berkeley. So, I am interested in increasing the graduation rate for Indigenous students. At the start of the year, I reached out to Patrick Naranjo, the director of the American Indian Graduate Program, to ask if there was anything I could do for our undergrads, whether that’s teaching accounting or helping with accounting classes. 

I want to find a way to alleviate problems on reservations. The question for our tribes is: How do we create our own opportunities? Do you build casinos? What do you try to do to help the people of your tribe without losing that culture?

A lot of first-years have drive and passion for sustainability, and I am here to figure out how we can generate sustainable energy for tribes through solar. There’s so much opportunity to set up solar panels and wind turbines on reservations across the U.S. 

I’ve been talking with my classmates, which is helping me gain the confidence to work on these solutions. I’m also interested in understanding more about real estate investing. I’m learning new skills through my core class in negotiations, which ties into negotiating real estate deals.

A lot of tribes have casinos, which generate income. But now, with legalized online gambling, you can just pull out your app in a lot of states to gamble. That definitely is a hit to casinos. So, it’s now just about trying to find other ways for tribes to get sustainable perpetual income. The thought would be to have all tribes pool their money together with the purpose to acquire real estate in metropolitan areas such as Albuquerque, Denver, and Phoenix.

An MBA at Haas will help me develop the skills and leadership expertise needed to make a more meaningful impact on my community. And once that rental income is coming in every month it will go right back to the tribes to build parks and community centers and schools.”

Janki Patel, MBA 22, on embracing her queer identity

|By Janki Patel
A group of men and women sit in a gazebo
Janki Patel, second from left, with friends after graduation.

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

Janki Patel, MBA 22, is a recent Haas graduate who identifies as a first-generation, queer, Indian-American woman. In this Pride Month perspective, she shares her story of discovering and embracing her queer identity at Haas.  

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Growing up as a first generation Indian-American woman, I didn’t know anyone in my community who was queer. And as a cis-woman who is attracted to cis-men, I just thought any attraction I had to a woman was a “girl crush”. But when I started applying to business school, I realized some of my girl crushes were a bit more serious than the average girl crush. While I sometimes regret the fact that it took me so long to realize that I was queer, I am thankful that I am now closer to knowing myself fully. Every queer journey looks different and I’m sharing mine in case it helps anyone learn more about themselves, queer or not. 

Business school was the first place where I felt I could be openly queer. It was also the first time I was part of a queer community. It was beautiful to belong to a community that understood a part of my identity that others did not. Though the queer community at Haas still has work to do to center the experiences of BIPOC,  trans, and non-binary students, I am thankful I was welcomed into it at a time when I had more questions than answers. During my first year, three classmates shared their coming out journeys with other students for a special Story Salon. I was struck by how each coming out story differed from the next: from the moment my classmates realized they were queer to how they came out, to their loved ones’ reactions. I saw a bit of myself in all of these stories. After that event, I knew that I was getting closer to being ready to come out, but I wasn’t quite there yet. 

My classes both at Haas and across the UC Berkeley campus taught me about what it means to be a kind, humane, leader and what queerness means to me. Courses such as Sustainable Capitalism in The Nordics and Managing Human Rights in Business equipped me with the tools I needed to pursue a career at the intersection of business and justice. And an African American Studies class on the novels of Toni Morrison exposed me to language I could use to speak about my queerness in a way that felt authentic to myself and that eventually gave me the confidence to come out to my immigrant parents. 

Woman and man on a hike. They take a moment to take a photo.
Janki Patel, MBA 22, on a hike with her partner.

My professor Daerick Scott helped me understand what I loved so much about Morrison’s novels, especially “Sula.” Sula questions society’s expectations of women throughout the novel, and her relationship with her best friend, Nel, though not explicitly sexual, is one of equal partnership and deep understanding. It’s a queer relationship. Not simply because it is between two women, but because it questions the norms of how love exists. Re-reading Sula helped me articulate to myself and to others that I am queer. Not only because I like women, but also because my attraction to people and my views on my role in a relationship do not fit into the mainstream. With that new language and the help of my closest friends at Haas, I was able to write a letter sharing how being queer has shaped my world view and share it with my parents. Although my parents have been struggling to accept what I have shared with them, they are trying. I am thankful that I am no longer hiding a core part of myself from them and luckily, I have been able to lean on my siblings and friends who have been endlessly supportive. 

I came across a quote that in typical Toni Morrison fashion is incredibly eloquent: 

I still write about the same thing, which is how people relate to one another and miss it or hang on to it… or are tenacious about love. About love and how to survive—not to make a living—but how to survive whole in a world where we are all of us, in some measure, victims of something. Each one of us is in some way at some moment a victim and in no position to do a thing about it. Some child is always left unpicked up at some moment. In a world like that, how does one remain whole—is it just impossible to do that? 

Morrison’s distinction between surviving and making a living is one that I think about frequently, especially as I decide on next steps after Haas. Although I’m not sure where my post-Haas journey will take me (I’m hoping it’ll be somewhere at the intersection between climate and DEI), I plan to keep questioning if I am surviving or making a living. I’ll also question if I am helping others survive and remain as whole as possible. As for my queerness, I’m happily dating a cis-man and feel as queer as ever. I met my partner at a time when I wasn’t planning to date cis-men. But he helps me with my tennis serve (it’s still not great but way better!), bakes delicious lemon bars, and somehow genuinely enjoys doing dishes. All of this was a very unexpected bonus of my Haas journey.

Haas Voices: ‘There’s no excuse but to be great’

| by Natasha Payés
Black man in a navy suit with orange tie.
Portrait: Jordan Bell, MBA 23.

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

In honor of Black History Month, we spoke with Jordan Bell, MBA 23, an Oakland native who’s determined to rise to the C-suite and open doors for younger generations of Black youth interested in finance careers.

Bell is the community engagement officer for the Haas Black Business Student Association; a “manbassador” for the Women in Leadership Club; and a fellow of the Robert Toigo Foundation and the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management. He’s also one of 11 Finance Fellows at Berkeley Haas. This summer, he will work at Amazon as a senior product manager.

Tell us about your family and upbringing?

I was born and raised in East Oakland, California, the second oldest of three sons. My parents are college-educated, working-class people. They strongly believed in the value of getting a quality education as the way to change the future. They scraped every extra dollar they had to send my brothers and me to private schools. I went to St. Mary’s College High School in Berkeley, and after graduation, I went to Morehouse, a historically Black, all-male college in Atlanta, Georgia. To this day, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere other than Morehouse.

What led you to go to a historically Black college (HBCU)?

I wanted to go to a college outside of California where I could grow and learn more about being a Black man. I also wanted to study in a place where I was not a minority. For many Black people in the U.S., there’s this extra thought process that we go through whenever we leave our homes and enter public places. Things like, “Do I belong?” “Am I doing enough?” “Do I fit in?” “Am I assimilating into a society that is not really built for me?” All of these questions are burdensome. Studying at Morehouse alleviated that stress because almost every other person around me was an African American man. There is literally no place in America where an African American of any sex can see so many Black professionals in one setting other than at an HBCU. 

Black male students line up to form the letter M
Bell attended Morehouse College, a historically Black, all-male college in Atlanta. Pictured left, second student from the bottom.

I chose Morehouse specifically because it has an amazing history and legacy of producing Black leaders. I think about the alumni who came before me—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., actor Samuel L. Jackson, civil rights activist Julian Bond—and I think about all of the barriers they broke through to lay the groundwork for future generations of young Black men. They inspire me to be the greatest I can be. There’s no excuse but to be great.

What led you down a career in finance, and why did you choose Haas?

During sophomore year at Morehouse, I attended a speaker series featuring former CEO of Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein. He spoke about how going to college and choosing a career in finance changed the trajectory of his life. His speech convinced me to explore the world of corporate finance and capital markets.

After college, I landed a full-time job at J.P.Morgan as a capital markets research analyst. There, I learned the importance of networking and honed my technical, presentation, and client-facing skills that are transferable to any industry. Two years later, I moved west to work at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco as a financial regulator. I worked my way through the ranks from a junior to a senior examiner. After seven years, I was at a crossroads: Should I keep going down the financial regulator path, or should I go to business school? I chose the latter. Haas was one of the best decisions I ever made. I appreciate how collaborative Haas is. While business schools can feel very competitive or cutthroat, there’s a different kind of competition at Haas. We bring out the best in each other. We rise together is how I see it.

While business schools can feel very competitive or cutthroat, there’s a different kind of competition at Haas. We bring out the best in each other. We rise together is how I see it.

 

Two older black women and one Black man. The women wear Berkeley shirts
Bell with his grandmother and mother.

What does Black History Month mean to you?

Black History Month means recognizing the accomplishments and struggles of African Americans. It allows us to tell our own narrative on our own terms. Black people were brought and enslaved here. We didn’t come here voluntarily like other cultural groups. And yet, we survived and are thriving. Our collective stories make me feel so proud to be a Black man. I wouldn’t want to be anything other than a Black man. During the month, I celebrate by reading a story daily about a historical figure, or I talk to the elders in my family to soak up their wisdom, especially the Black women in my family. They’re the strongest people that I know and the structural glue of my family.

Our collective stories make me feel so proud to be a Black man. I wouldn’t want to be anything other than a Black man.

What are your goals, and what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?

In the short term, I hope to become a senior product manager or fintech strategist. My long-term goal is to be in the C-suite. I want to be a chief executive officer for a technology or financial services company. I want little Black boys and girls to see that there are Black people performing at the highest levels in executive positions. I want to show them that it’s possible to occupy these spaces.