Berkeley Haas welcomes 1st 4-year Spieker undergrads among new class

September 3, 2024| by Kim Girard

About 400 new undergraduate students—including the first class of freshmen in the new four-year Spieker Undergraduate Business Program—began their Haas journeys last week with an orientation that culminated with Haas Base Camp, a community-building weekend in South Lake Tahoe.

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The class, which includes 191 first-year Spieker Undergraduate Business Program students, 110 transfer students, and 100 continuing UC Berkeley students, were introduced to life at Haas during Aug. 26 orientation sessions on building leadership and community, an intro to Becoming a Changemaker (a course created by Haas Professional Faculty member Alex Budak), and advice on adapting to the program’s academic rigor. (The Haas Undergraduate Program ranked No. 2 in U.S. News & World Report’s 2024 Best Undergraduate Business Programs.)

“We are so excited to have each and every one here with us to launch your academic and personal journey here at Haas,” said Interim Dean Jenny Chatman. Chatman, a workplace culture expert who helped codify the Berkeley Haas Defining Leadership Principles, urged students to connect with professors, build relationships with classmates who come from different backgrounds, and follow their passions during their time in the program.

Haas announced in 2022 that its top-ranked two-year undergraduate business program would expand to become a four-year program, named the Spieker Undergraduate Business Program in recognition of the $30 million gift from Haas alumnus Warren “Ned” Spieker, BS 66, and his wife, Carol, BA 66 (political science).

Making changes

The undergraduate program office made many changes this year to orientation and the undergrad program, including splitting students into six cohorts, each with two leaders, and providing additional academic and mental health support programming for all. The undergraduate program is also moving toward UC Berkeley’s goal of attaining a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) designation, or a full-time equivalent (FTE) undergraduate student enrollment that is at least 25% Hispanic.

Katrina Koski, the director of Inclusion and Belonging at Haas, told the students that if they are feeling any sense of impostor syndrome at Haas, “you are definitely not alone.” That belief has nothing to do with accomplishments and successes, she said. “We admit zero impostors here,” she said. “Each one of you, regardless of what has brought you to this chair you are sitting in now, deserves to be here.”

Elias Goss, BS 28, said he was excited to be building community as part of the first Spieker class.

“As a young, underrepresented student and the first in my family to attend a four-year accredited University, just being at Berkeley has changed the trajectory of what I thought was possible for me and my family,” he said.

group of students in the courtyard — Continuing UC Berkeley students kick off their Haas journey. All photos: Brittany Hosea-Small.

After orientation, the new first-year Spieker and M.E.T. students gathered for Haas Base Camp, a Labor Day weekend trip to Camp Concord in South Lake Tahoe led by the Haas Program Office and supported by upper division cohort leaders. At Base Camp students took an exhilarating dip in Lake Tahoe, played an epic game of Capture the Flag, demonstrated their knowledge of Haas and Cal during a lively trivia game, learned Cal songs, and performed in an enthusiastically choreographed lip sync and dance contest. They also explored one of the Defining Leadership Principles, Students Always, with Haas staff members sharing how they developed a growth mindset, learned from failure, and built resilience as a response to setbacks.

Interim Dean Chatman, former Dean Ann Harrison, along with Ned Spieker and Michael Grimes, both members of the Spieker Undergraduate Program Advisory Board, joined the students during a lively reception.

“The weather was perfect, the weekend was fun, and the students seemed to enjoy and appreciate the experience,” said Katie Marshall, associate director of Admissions, Yield & Transition, at Haas, who was on the planning committee for Haas Base Camp. “I was touched to see the students really come together as a community by the end of the weekend, and many felt that they made genuine connections to their cohorts and classmates.”

Expanding program

Over recent years, the undergraduate program has added three multidisciplinary programs and one minor outside of the core program, including:

The Management, Entrepreneurship & Technology (M.E.T.) program, a collaboration between Haas and the UC Berkeley College of Engineering that grants graduates two bachelor of science degrees in business and an engineering discipline of their choice in four years, with the goal of providing deep leadership and technology skills. (This year marked the fifth entering M.E.T. cohort.)
The Robinson Life Science, Business, and Entrepreneurship Program, a joint venture between the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology in the College of Letters and Science and Haas that allows students to earn a bachelor of science in business administration and a bachelor of arts in molecular and cell biology.
The Global Management Program, a four-year international program that requires students to study abroad their first semester, fulfill a language requirement, and take specialized global business courses.
The Summer Minor in Sustainable Business and Policy, a collaboration between Haas and the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics in the College of Natural Resources that provides students with the skills needed for careers in business or government focused on sustainable business and policy.

Q&A: Saikat Chaudhuri on the new Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Hub

August 16, 2024| by Kim Girard

a smiling man wearing a suit on Haas campus — Saikat Chaudhuri, faculty director of the new Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Hub. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small.

Saikat Chaudhuri believes that the next 10 years will be among the most exciting in history—and that some of the most disruptive ideas will be hatched within the walls of the new Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Hub (eHub).

In a recent interview with Haas News, we spoke to Chaudhuri about his role as faculty director of the eHub, which will open to all UC Berkeley students this fall on the Berkeley Haas campus. Dawn McGee joins Chaudhuri as eHub executive director.

Chaudhuri, who arrived at Haas in 2021 from Wharton, is also the faculty director of the undergraduate Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology (M.E.T.) program.

You came to Haas from Wharton, where you taught management and ran the Mack Institute for Innovation Management. What do you believe sets UC Berkeley apart as a startup and innovation machine?

Berkeley is pretty phenomenal when it comes to producing all kinds of ventures. It’s not just the Apples and the Intels and the Teslas and the Databricks that we’ve co-founded. It’s also the OpenAIs, for instance, and other household names, and thousands of startups overall across sectors. I’m proud that we’re the No. 1 university in the world for producing venture-backed startups in the PitchBook rankings, but what truly sets us apart is that founders at Berkeley are driven by a mission to change the world for the better.

But what I think about is: How do we make that even bigger? How do we produce even more incredible startups that go and disrupt the world and create positive change? We do it by helping the entire ecosystem become more productive and build the pipeline.

How will the eHub build that pipeline?

We’ve got 60 to 100 different units on campus involved with entrepreneurship or innovation in some way, whether it’s labs, technology commercialization entities, or academic programs to help you get from an idea to a startup. We’ve got funding opportunities and all kinds of venture competitions and hackathons and an accelerator in SkyDeck as well. But there are a couple of things that are missing.

First, we need to do a better job with the business side. Science and technology ideas are great, but we need to make the ideas sustainable and economical. We also need a space for people to be able to collide, connect, and find other founders and co-founders and share experiences to build community. We also found that though we have many different resources on campus, students have a hard time figuring out where to go to take an idea forward.

Finally, there’s also no easy way to connect with mentors. We have so many alumni who are both entrepreneurs and investors, but there’s no easy way to connect with them. The eHub will unite the entire university ecosystem and bring the strengths of Berkeley Haas and UC Berkeley together.

Our mission is to make entrepreneurship easier and more accessible for all by allowing people from across campus to connect, build, and be discovered. Whether you just have an idea or already have a prototype, we will help you navigate the ecosystem, and thereby also feed all the amazing units on campus by complementing what they do.

Our mission is to make entrepreneurship easier and more accessible for all.

Why did you want to serve as faculty director of the eHub, in addition to your role running M.E.T.?

I firmly believe that to solve the world’s most pressing challenges, we need to take an interdisciplinary approach, and I love working across fields and schools at a great campus like ours. There are natural areas that come together with innovation and entrepreneurship. M.E.T is one of those programs that does so, and so is the eHub, where technology and science are coupled with the management and the business side. Since I was working on building that synergy across areas with M.E.T., it made sense to bring these things together in a different capacity. Former dean Ann Harrison asked me at some point if I was interested in building it out and serving the entire campus, and I just found it to be an extremely exciting opportunity.

The eHub building restoration is beautiful. How does the space align with the startup mission?

We hope that when you come in, you will be hooked by the beauty of the building—a Julia Morgan building and an architectural masterpiece that’s iconic in so many ways. But the building is more than just iconic. It’s designed to be a place where people will get to spend time getting exposed to new ideas, accessing resources that are free to them, and hanging out with like-minded folks.

So when students are in class with peers working on things that cut across these boundaries, they get excited, too. People want to collaborate with each other. This opens up opportunities. All I want to do is create more mechanisms to really get people to collaborate and unlock those synergies.

Why is learning about entrepreneurship important, regardless of whether a student will become an entrepreneur?

We call many students “entreprecurious,” or interested in entrepreneurship even though they haven’t tried it yet. Learning to be entrepreneurial matters in any industry and for any job role. Every industry is being disrupted in some way right now. Take artificial intelligence. Transportation is affected by AI, as are consumer goods, finance and health care. It’s not just affecting the tech industry. There are so many industries that will change; and students, even if they don’t become entrepreneurs, need to learn how to prepare for these changes.

So let’s take every single industry and revolutionize it, make it work in such a way that it’s more cost-effective, more productive, more impactful, and generates greater returns economically and for society.

How will you make sure that the hub draws many kinds of students from different programs?

I like to think about the commonalities rather than the differences across these different communities at Berkeley. We have people in Berkeley’s vast undergrad program, in our MBA program at Haas, PhDs across fields, as well as the faculty in disciplines ranging from English to biology to engineering to business, who have entrepreneurial ideas. There are entrepreneurs who are doing innovative things all over campus. We are looking to draw many categories of stakeholders to the eHub, including alumni who will come to campus to check out everything that’s going on. And I’m hoping we’ll be able to tempt the venture capital community in the South Bay to drive across the bridge because they don’t want to miss out!

Professor Jennifer Chatman named interim dean of Berkeley Haas

July 10, 2024| by Haas News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Commitment to Berkeley

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

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

Award-winning research

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

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

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

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

Berkeley Haas experts launch ‘The Culture Kit’ podcast with insights to improve workplace culture

April 2, 2024| by Laura Counts

A man and woman sit at a table wearing headphones and speaking into podcasting microphones. — Photo: Jim Block/Berkeley Haas

Berkeley, Calif.—The world of work is a work in progress. Hybrid work arrangements, emerging AI tools, ongoing layoffs, and an increasingly diverse pool of workers who want a voice and a sense of belonging at work—managers have a lot on their plates.

In their new podcast “The Culture Kit™ with Jenny & Sameer,” organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava tackle questions from business leaders wrestling with the seismic changes underway in the world of work.

Chatman and Srivastava are professors at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business who have dedicated their careers to studying and advancing workplace culture. In each 15-minute podcast episode, they draw on the latest academic research and their years of experience advising organizations around the world and share concrete strategies to improve workplace culture.

“What I’m most excited about with this podcast is that it brings together the worlds of academic research and industry practice,” says Srivastava, the Ewald T. Grether Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy. “Here, we get to take a deeper dive into a specific problem raised by a specific leader and really workshop it together.”

“Here, we get to take a deeper dive into a specific problem raised by a specific leader and really workshop it together.”

The podcast is an extension of the work that Chatman and Srivastava started six years ago when they launched the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation to bring emerging insights from academic research to business practitioners.

“With our new podcast, we hope to expand the reach of the work we’ve been doing through a new medium with the goal of reaching more people,” says Chatman, Paul J. Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management and Berkeley Haas associate dean for academic affairs. “Business leaders can submit culture ‘fixit tickets’ laying out the topics on their minds. Our goal is to give them actionable steps they can take to improve their organization’s culture.”

Season 1 of The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer launched today and includes thoughtful questions from industry leaders such as WD-40 CEO Steve Brass, Hubspot CEO Yamini Rangan, and former Google SVP of People Operations Laszlo Bock. New episodes will be released every two weeks on major podcast networks.

The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of the Haas School of Business, the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture & Innovation and Professors.FM, a new podcast network helping you make sense of the world with top scholars. Professors.FM is a collection of scholar-hosted shows that bring insights from research and make them relevant to today’s world.

About the Haas School of Business

As the second-oldest business school in the United States, the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley has been questioning the status quo since its founding in 1898. The school is one of the world’s leading producers of new ideas and knowledge in all areas of business. Located within the world’s top public university, Berkeley Haas is at the heart of what’s next in the Bay Area’s rich innovation ecosystem. Learn more about our six degree programs, our exceptional faculty members—including two Nobel Laureates in economics—and our community of big thinkers: haas.berkeley.edu.

About the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation

The Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation aims to usher in the next generation of organizational culture research, one that draws on a wide range of data sources and computational methods to uncover different facets of culture within and across organizations and industries. The center partners with organizations and academics from a wide diversity of disciplines and industries to lead these efforts, with the ultimate goal of leveraging research insights to help organizations function more effectively and advance academic understanding. The Culture Connect Conference, held in January each year, convenes leading academic researchers studying organizational culture and company leaders to deepen the dialogue about how to address culture-related challenges. Lean more about the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation.

Contact:

Laura Counts, [email protected], 510-643-9977

Berkeley Haas to host 2025 ClimateCAP Summit

March 6, 2024| by Kim Girard

two women with their arms folded. They're smiling — From L-R: Dean Ann Harrison and Executive Director of Sustainability Michele de Nevers.

Berkeley Haas has been chosen to host the prestigious 2025 Global MBA Summit on Climate, Capital and Business, or ClimateCAP, which prepares MBA students and business leaders to understand and respond to the business and investment impacts of climate change.

Haas was named host school during the 2024 ClimateCAP Summit held last month at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. At that event, the largest summit to date, Haas Dean Ann Harrison participated in a virtual Dean’s Roundtable on Climate and Business Education.

Asked by Professor Stuart Hart, a visiting lecturer at Michigan Ross, whether sustainability is “here to stay” or “something that you don’t want to bet the company on,” Harrison said:

“Business has to accelerate the transition to net zero. It has to reckon with the impact of climate change and shift away from fossil fuels. That is not a fad, it is not niche, and it is clearly, in my opinion, going to be a part of the business curriculum now and way into the future.”

“Business has to accelerate the transition to net zero. It has to reckon with the impact of climate change and shift away from fossil fuels. That is not a fad, it is not niche, and it is clearly, in my opinion, going to be a part of the business curriculum now and way into the future.” – Dean Ann Harrison

With more than 41 partner schools across the world, ClimateCAP hosts a summit every year at a different partner school. The event will bring up to 500 MBA students and business leaders from across the world to the campus for one weekend.

woman standing at podium at conference with a large screen behind her — Haas was named the 2025 ClimateCAP host during the 2024 summit at Michigan Ross.

“We are so pleased that Berkeley Haas has been chosen to host ClimateCAP next spring,” said Michele de Nevers, executive director of the Office of Sustainability and Climate Change at Haas. “The conference will provide a terrific opportunity to bring hundreds of climate leaders to our campus to showcase Haas and California’s leadership on climate change.”

ClimateCAP aims to give students a deeper understanding of markets with the biggest financial and operational risks due to the climate crisis, and introduces them to promising innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities, de Nevers said.

The Office of Sustainability and Climate Change will organize the event alongside a planning committee consisting of faculty, staff, and students.

Classified: What Uber (and others) teach MBA students about smart online marketplace design

February 27, 2024| by Kim Girard

“Classified” is an occasional series spotlighting some of the more powerful lessons being taught in classrooms around Haas.

woman holding a microphone in front of classmates and team — Marissa Maliwanag, MBA 24, pitching Tables Together during the Online Marketplace and Platform Design course. Photo: Jim Block

It’s a recent Tuesday evening at Berkeley Haas, and Marissa Maliwanag, MBA 24, has just five minutes to pitch her team’s idea for Tables Together. It’s an online marketplace that big corporations like Google could use to donate surplus food from their employee kitchens to organizations that feed people in need.

“There are matches that need to be made and we want to create a marketplace and solve the problem,” Maliwanag said, ticking off the amount of food that goes to waste in the United States each year.

After a few quick questions for the team, the rapid-fire pitch slam—part of the MBA class called Online Marketplace and Platform Design—continues. Students pitch ideas, among them a private plane rental marketplace to a community for matching skiers and snowboarders with coaches to a marketplace for tailors of bespoke clothing for events like weddings.

four students standing in front of a classroom pitching an idea — MBA students have just five minutes to pitch JetJunction, a private plane rental marketplace, during the night’s pitch slam. Photo: Jim Block

All of the pitches serve as practice for the students who are working toward final projects, says Assistant Professor David Holtz, who teaches the class, an elective that enrolls 68 students. The group is a split of mostly full-time and evening & weekend MBA students, on a journey that covers all aspects of online platforms—from A/B testing, network effects, and platform monetization, to reputation systems and discrimination in online marketplaces.

The class aligns with Holtz’s career experience as a former Silicon Valley data scientist. Most recently, Holtz worked for Airbnb, where he first became intrigued by online marketplaces. “I was exposed to a lot of interesting problems including reputation-system design, algorithmic pricing, and experiment design,” Holtz, a member of the Management of Organizations (MORS) and Entrepreneurship & Innovation Group at Haas, says. “To this day, these topics form the backbone of my research, because, in addition to being extremely interesting, they’re also extremely difficult to solve.”

Taking apart the case

During the first half of a recent class session, Holtz asked students to split into groups to discuss one of the week’s assignments: Pick a company on the a16z Marketplace 100 list—Andreessen Horowitz’s ranking of the largest and fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies—and come up with a new market mechanism that the company might trial using A/B testing.

One MBA student team wrote about the online specialty food marketplace Goldbelly, suggesting that the company might add a feature that prompts site visitors to indicate that they’re trying to buy a gift. Then, Goldbelly could customize searches and provide a more personal message option at checkout.

students sitting in classroom working on laptops — Students share their ideas for a new market mechanism that a company might trial using A/B testing. Photo: Jim Block

Holtz then runs students through a business case called “Innovation at Uber: The Launch of Express POOL, a case directly related to some of his marketplace research that examines experiment design in two-sided markets. Set in March 2018, the case follows Uber through the launch of a new product called Express POOL, which offers carpooling riders a cheaper ride if they agree to walk a short distance to and from pick-up and drop-off points and wait a few minutes before being matched to a driver.

In this case, Uber had to decide whether to keep rider wait times at two minutes or change the Express POOL wait time to five minutes mid-experiment. The big dilemma? Uber benefited from a cost-per-ride reduction with a five-minute wait time but didn’t want to make a change that could hurt the user experience. “Even if the company did decide that a longer wait time was preferable, what did that mean for the ongoing experiment the company was running?” Holtz says. “Should they change the product mid-experiment or let the experiment continue running as originally intended?”

In this case, Uber had to decide whether to keep rider wait times at two minutes or change the Express POOL wait time to five minutes mid-experiment.

Holtz then shifts to a whiteboard, where he outlines different types of experiments (also called A/B tests) that marketplace companies like Uber use to test new features.

First is the “bread and butter” user-level test, which Uber could have used to compare the behavior of riders with access to Express POOL to the behavior of those who did not have access to Express POOL. The second kind of test, a switchback experiment, would give all riders and drivers in a given market access to Express POOL for randomly selected 160-minute-long chunks. Over two weeks, Uber would switch Express POOL availability back and forth to compare behaviors.

The third type of experiment Holtz describes, which Uber did use with Express POOL, is a synthetic control experiment. It is the most accurate form of testing, Holtz says, but also the most complicated to run and the “noisiest.” Using the synthetic control experiment, Uber identified two sets of markets that, in aggregate, were as similar to each other as possible. The company then launched Express POOL in one set of cities, but not in the other. By comparing behavior in the two sets of cities, Uber could estimate the impact of both.

man in classroom teaching — The class aligns with Holtz’s career experience as a former Silicon Valley data scientist. Most recently, he worked for Airbnb, where he first became intrigued by online marketplaces. Photo: Jim Block

Holtz’s knowledge of how to apply A/B tests comes from deep research. He has conducted multiple large-scale experiments analyzing the effects of marketplace design choices on Airbnb. One study examined whether coupons would lead more Airbnb bookers to write more reviews—with the eventual aim of facilitating better matches on the platform and increasing revenue. Comparing behaviors of buyers who received coupons to those who didn’t, he found that the coupons led to additional reviews that were more negative, on average, and that the reviews didn’t affect the number of nights sold on the site or total revenue.

In a separate, widely cited study, he and his co-authors examined the effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers at Microsoft. They scoured anonymized, aggregated data describing emails, calendars, instant messages, video/audio calls, and workweek hours of more than 60,000 U.S.-based Microsoft employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, trying to estimate the causal effects of firm-wide remote work on collaboration and communication. Results showed that under firm-wide remote work, collaboration patterns become more static and siloed, with fewer bridges between disparate parts of an organization.

Impressive guest speakers

For Lena Corredor, MBA 25, knowledge gained in Holtz’s class is providing an opportunity to explore the challenges of building a successful entrepreneurship marketplace, which is her startup idea.

“This class is really eye-opening for me because it’s not as straightforward as it seems,” she says. “When you think about the different sides of a marketplace, one would think if you build it, they will come, but it’s not the case. The design elements he talks about are very important to business success.”

During most classes, Holtz opens with a guest speaker, and his roster includes an impressive industry bench of leaders including Sudeep Das, head of Machine Learning/AI at DoorDash; Martin Manley, co-founder of Alibris and former U.S. assistant secretary of labor; Ania Smith, CEO of Taskrabbit; and Briana Vecchione, a technical researcher at Data & Society’s Algorithmic Impacts Methods Lab (AIMLab); among others.

man sitting in classroom gesturing as he speaks — Roberto Pérez, MBA/MEng 24, said they were drawn to the class in part because of the impressive guest speaker roster. Photo: Jim Block

Roberto Pérez, MBA/MEng 24, an entrepreneur in Mexico before coming to Haas, said they were drawn to the class for two reasons. “First, I knew that the professor had a great background and first-hand experience on this topic,” they say. “Second, I knew that the class would have a lot of guest speakers and that was interesting to me as this level of exposure is very valuable.”

Looking toward the future of online marketplaces, Holtz said he’s excited to see where entrepreneurs will take new technologies, such as generative AI, AR/VR, and blockchain-based tech. To that end, he said he expects the students will hear more from a group of investors and VCs who are guest judges at the last class—Raphael Lee, Vickie Peng, and Lindsay Pettingill.

“They weigh business pitches all the time and will have a better sense than anyone of where we are headed,” he said.

Q&A: Teaching the business of Taylor Swift at Berkeley Haas

February 25, 2024| by Kim Girard

young woman with long curly dark hair — Miaad Madeline Bushala, BS 25, co-teaches a DeCal on Taylor Swift.

Miaad Madeline Bushala, BS 25, likes Taylor Swift’s music but doesn’t consider herself a die-hard “Swiftie.” What’s more intriguing to her is Taylor Swift’s evolution as a business leader who continues to top the music industry.

Bushala is now tapping into how the 14-time Grammy winner built her fortune, co-teaching a DeCal at Berkeley Haas called “Artistry & Entrepreneurship: Taylor’s Version” with Sofia Mei Lendahl, a sophomore Data Science and Statistics double major. The pair were in their fourth week of teaching the 13-week class when Bushala talked to Haas News.

You came to this class with both a musical and a business background.

Indeed, I did. I was a vocalist in the Popular Music Conservatory at the Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA) alongside my brother who is a fantastic drummer and my biggest musical inspiration. I attended Grammy Camp twice for vocal performance, a camp where high school students across the nation learn from and collaborate with music professionals.

My business background comes from watching and helping my parents with their real estate business, and then of course all that I’ve learned since being a student at Haas.

What interested you most about Taylor from a business perspective?

I heard somebody say that “nothing about Taylor Swift is an accident,” and I truly do believe that. Particularly as a business student, Taylor’s story has been so fascinating to me. At the end of the day, her songs, albums, merchandise, tours, etc. are all products, and for a product to have a life of almost 20 years not only says something about Taylor’s brilliance as an artist, but as a businesswoman. With that, I am interested in unraveling all those pieces about her and seeing what made her the success that she’s become.

I heard somebody say that “nothing about Taylor Swift is an accident,” and I truly do believe that.

How did you meet Crystal Haryanto, BA 23 (Economics, Cognitive Science, & Public Policy), who founded this class?

Crystal and I met through Lizzie Coyle, director of Major Gifts at Haas. Lizzie shared the excitement of the Taylor Swift course in the business school and I was encouraged to consider joining the team as the team was also seeking a business perspective. I was supposed to study abroad this semester in Spain, but this was my sign to stay and do something that I’d never done before.

As a business student, how did you help shape the class syllabus?

Taylor Swift performing — Singer Taylor Swift (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

I asked the hard questions—for every concept in our syllabus, I ensured that there was a viable link to business. We wanted students to view Taylor as an entrepreneur who differentiates herself within a market, manages customer acquisition and sustains customer loyalty, and impacts multiple economies. We wanted them to think about how, as future entrepreneurs and business leaders, to make their customers their biggest fans, like Taylor has done.

Can you give a few examples of how that plays out weekly in the class?

One of my ideas for our marketing unit was a deep dive into Taylor’s style evolution over her self-proclaimed eras, and how that has reinforced her principles of relatability and world building. While style was a more subtle signal that built up over time, I’ve also enjoyed speaking about her direct power moves. Last night, for instance, we discussed how Taylor negotiated her contract with AMC Theatres and took hold of the reins for the Eras Tour film project. She financed the film and received 57% of the movie profits. To me, that was her learning from the mistake she made when she was younger, when she signed over the masters to her music.

In business school, students study the importance of connection in building an authentic brand. How has Taylor become a master at that?

Taylor’s songwriting stands out on two primary levels. The first is that she puts her insecurities and struggles out there, emotionally stripping herself through art. The second is that she vividly weaves those vulnerabilities into stories. Unique structures, sonic devices, and figurative language add layered complexities to these stories that ensure that they are highly talked about among consumers as a hot commodity. These elements of songwriting craft also tailor each product to match the message it is sending, which strengthens its value to consumers. She’s able to create a dynamic, so people continue to feel like they can relate to her. She really knows her audience, and her songs cover every part of her ideal listener’s life.

What does Taylor teach us about how to lead?

Taylor’s grandmother, Marjorie, said it best: “Never be so kind, you forget to be clever / Never be so clever, you forget to be kind.”

Taylor shows us how to balance a good heart with strategic design. We bring it up in class—the bonuses that she gives her team and the ways that she gives back to the community. Philanthropy happens to also be a tax write off for her, but that isn’t a bad thing. I think people know when a brand is doing something that feels inauthentic, and that isn’t the case with Taylor.

I think people know when a brand is doing something that feels inauthentic, and that isn’t the case with Taylor.

Taylor has so much power. How do you see her using it to uplift women’s voices, big and small?

Taylor has spoken extensively on how navigating the industry as a woman is different than as a man, which she writes about in “The Man” and “mad woman.”

She wears clothes from small, women-owned businesses, which have seen huge jumps in customers and traction.

But arguably one of the biggest ways that Taylor has amplified women’s voices is when she was a victim of sexual assault and ended up suing her assaulter for a symbolic one dollar. For many women, especially young fans, hearing a beloved figure speak so openly about that emotional damage not only acknowledges their pain, but also models speaking out against intolerable behavior that has become normalized in our society.

I have to ask about her dating Travis Kelce and what that has done for her brand.

The question should be what dating Taylor Swift has done for Travis Kelce’s brand. We’ll discuss her influence in the NFL in class and perhaps the perceptions that come with being in a high-profile relationship.

How much longer do you think that Taylor will continue reinventing herself as an artist? Do you think she will be like Madonna, touring in her 60s?

A lot of artists, once they feel like they’ve reached a certain point, go off the grid. I don’t quite know, but I know this: Taylor will always be a songwriter. She’s even said that she would consider writing songs for other people at some point. She cites songwriting as her lifeline, passion, and purpose—singing and performing are extensions of that.

Note: Bushala and her team will present at the annual Berkeley Haas Alumni Conference on April 27. Registration is open.

How Haas is shaping a new kind of CFO

February 15, 2024| by Kim Girard

a female student in a suit — Lizzie Hoerauf, MBA 24, is part of the inaugural Impact CFO cohort.

When Lizzie Hoerauf, MBA 24, joined Berkeley Haas, she had a vision of what she wanted to do post-graduation.

“My goal was to bring the finance and operations business acumen I gained from an MBA program back to organizations with missions I care deeply about,” said Hoerauf, who has a background in nonprofit management, including working for Yosemite National Park.

At Haas, Hoerauf found her calling in the Impact CFO program, an innovative initiative designed to create a new generation of CFOs equipped to lead foundations, nonprofits, and other social enterprises.

She’s not alone in this journey; Hoerauf is part of the inaugural cohort of 14 MBA students united by a goal to develop strong finance and analytical skills while having an impact on society.

Founded by Adjunct Professor Nora Silver, founder and faculty director of the Center for Social Sector Leadership (CSSL) at Haas, and Assistant Professor Omri Even-Tov of the Haas Accounting Group, the program offers a specialized curriculum that marries financial acumen with social impact.

(Hear about Impact CFO from a few students in video below.)

Workshops, speaker series, and networking events complement hands-on projects and industry mentorship, ensuring a comprehensive learning experience. Another key program feature is an internship that bridges impact and finance, helping students gain insights into the evolving role of a CFO in the social sector.

Raising the financial leadership bar

Silver emphasized the program’s unique approach: “Today’s social sector organizations need more than just accountants who can close the books; they need strategic thinkers with an MBA-level understanding.” This sentiment echoes throughout the program, raising the bar for financial leadership in the social impact realm, she said.

“Today’s social sector organizations need more than just accountants who can close the books; they need strategic thinkers with an MBA-level understanding.” — Nora Silver.

Even-Tov highlighted the diverse backgrounds of the program’s candidates: from seasoned finance professionals seeking meaningful impact to experienced nonprofit professionals aiming to amplify their fiscal expertise. “The program challenges its participants to balance the mission of the organization with financial stability,” he said. “Without wise business decisions, these organizations will not be able to achieve their social missions.”

CFOs in demand

Demand for such specialized financial talent is high, especially in California, a hub for the social impact sector, Silver said. “Of the 86,203 U.S.-based foundations, 22,347, or 26%, are located in California and hold assets of more than $722 billion,” she said. The base salary range for a senior finance manager or director in the sector is $120,000-$140,000.

man in business suit in front of trees — Victor Ringeard, MBA 24, plans to intern at LifeLong Medical Care.

Mentorship is a cornerstone of the Impact CFO program—and mentors in the Impact CFO program hail from industries including education, health care, impact investing, government, humanitarian aid, housing, art & culture, and philanthropy.

Hoerauf’s mentor, David Samuels, MBA 86 and CFO of REDF, exemplifies this. Interning at REDF, Hoerauf uses her MBA skills in a real-world setting, applying her learnings from courses like Strategic Management of Nonprofit Organizations and Social Sector Solutions.

Victor Ringeard, MBA 24, who is transitioning from a healthcare consulting background, anticipates a transformative experience at LifeLong Medical Care under CFO Brent Copen. Ringeard aims to grasp the nuances of nonprofit finance in healthcare and learn how to influence stakeholders who may not have a financial background, all the while making healthcare more accessible in the Bay Area.

A deeper understanding of the role

Yvonne Mondragón, BS 16, MBA 25, is blending her investment banking career with her nonprofit commitments. “Understanding the CFO role deeper will enrich my contributions to both sectors,” Mondragón, who serves on the board of the East LA Community Corporation, said.

Delphine Sherman, CFO of BRIDGE Housing, is mentoring Alex Weinberg MBA 24, who is interested in low-income housing, a field where BRIDGE Housing is a major player.

Sherman, the former CFO of Haas, said she believes that the Impact CFO program is not only shaping future leaders, but “molding a new financial paradigm in the social sector.”

“Impact CFO will fill a huge need for strategic, forward thinking, systematic, efficiency-driven, change agent CFOs in the social sector,” she said.

Looking ahead, Even-Tov and Silver envision building one of the largest networks of finance professionals in the social sector within a decade.

“We want the Impact CFO program to stand as a beacon, illuminating the path for future CFOs committed to making a difference,” Even-Tov said..

28th annual Women in Leadership conference to celebrate resilience

February 9, 2024|By Stella Kotik

At a time when the world—and especially the job market—is full of uncertainties, it can often seem impossible to rise above the challenges many women face, from the workplace to their personal lives.

The 28th annual Women in Leadership conference aims to shed light on these challenges—and more specifically, the resilience that women exhibit. This year’s theme, “Leading with Resilience,” features speakers who will discuss their experiences in maintaining strength and overcoming adversity as women, from the personal to the professional to the physical. The conference will be held Saturday, Feb. 24, at the Haas School of Business, with an additional optional event the preceding evening at Ivy Room in Albany.

“Thinking about the theme for this year, we wanted to focus on what was happening in the broader world and physical environment,” said conference co-organizer Jillian Geary, MBA 24. “And this topic of resilience kept coming up for a lot of us in the room.”

Organized by the Women in Leadership club, the conference is one of the longest-running and highly attended events at Haas.

The conference will feature speakers such as Yasi Baiani, co-founder and chief product officer at Raya; Shripriya Mahesh, founding partner at Spero Ventures; and more.

closeup of a female student — Jillian Geary

Geary, who worked for a diagnostics startup amid the pandemic, discussed how her background in health care helped inspire the conference themes of leadership and resilience. She noted that, especially during such a time of uncertainty, she discovered the importance of collaboration.“I think of this conference in a similar manner—that we are smarter when we come together and create an atmosphere for people to share the challenges they’ve been through, rather than solely share their biggest successes.”

Co-organizer Alyssa D’Cunha, MBA 24, likewise noted that she hopes that the conference will help normalize difficult conversations surrounding hardship through a mixture of keynotes, a fireside chat, and panels on topics ranging from navigating male-dominated fields to living a balanced life.

She added that their ultimate goal is for attendees to leave the conference with a toolkit, having discovered their own resilience.

close up of female student wearing blue shirt — Alyssa D’Cunha

D’Cunha, who has a background in mechanical and materials engineering, highlighted the significance of addressing how women can navigate and succeed in male-dominated industries. Kellie McElhaney, Haas lecturer and founding director of the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership, will lead a conference workshop on the topic.

“I remember having a less than ideal conversation about having reached parity already, and how there is no longer this equality or equity problem that we need to address going forward,” she said. “We want to talk about how you navigate conversations like that with your superiors and what it means to be equity fluent.”

On Friday, Feb. 23, there will be a pre-conference “Story Slam,” inspired by Haas tradition of Story Salon, where students share their lived experiences with storytelling.

Conference tickets are available now.

What’s age got to do with it? 76-year-old MBA student “having the time of my life”

February 1, 2024| by Kim Girard

MBA student holding microphone — Neurologist Peter Fung came to Haas for an MBA to gain new leadership skills and financial expertise.

At a time of life when many of his peers are well into retirement, Peter C. Fung is having “the time of his life” as a student in the Berkeley Haas Executive MBA Program.

But for Fung, 76, a retired neurologist and self-proclaimed lifelong learner, retirement was never an option. It’s the reason he wanted to earn an MBA and why he connected immediately to Students Always, one of the four Haas Defining Leadership Principles (DLP).

“Age is not important,” said Fung, EMBA 24, who sits on the El Camino Health District Board of Directors and for a decade led the hospital’s stroke program, which is named after him. “When we’re using our brains in thinking or learning new information, neuronal pathways from neuron to neuron are formed. This is the best anti-aging therapy. Just like an old car, you have to keep it running to keep it from rusting.”

Developing leadership skills

As a physician, Fung, an advocate for health, wellness, and disease prevention, has spent more than 35 years improving health care quality and access. Now, he’s running for an open seat on the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors, where he hopes to tap what he’s learned at Haas on the journey.

In the EMBA program, Fung said he’s developed leadership skills that he believes will help him stand out as a political candidate. He’s also gained new expertise in economics and data analysis—and a deeper understanding of organizational finance that he hopes to apply to overseeing the county’s budget and tackling the deficit.

group of MBA students in a classroom — Peter C. Fung (middle) said he is impressed that his classmates—busy with careers and young families—are all still learning new skills, pivoting to new jobs, starting companies, and helping each other.

He said he is impressed that his classmates—busy with careers and young families—are all committed to learning new skills, pivoting to new jobs, starting companies, and helping each other.

“The cohort has been treating me as one of their own,” he said. “I was terrible with the computer, especially with Excel, when I started the program. But I was finally able to master this very powerful tool. I actually did quite well on my finals. I have enjoyed the challenge. It was a thrill.”

Fung believes he brings something unique to the program. His classmates agree.

Abdus Sattar, EMBA 24, collaborated with Fung during a recent business policy immersion trip the cohort took to Washington D.C. Their paper on “Medicare Drug Price Negotiation, “offered me an opportunity to delve into crucial healthcare topics,” said Sattar, who holds a PhD in electrical engineering.

Saya Honda, EMBA 24, said that Fung “pushes us and encourages us to challenge ourselves.” She said Fung embodies all four of the Haas Defining Leadership Principles: He questions the status quo by being unafraid to ask questions; he shows confidence without attitude by using humor in public speaking; he’s a student always as the oldest person in the cohort and as someone who believes in the importance of education; and he’s questioning the status quo by running for county supervisor.

A passion for learning

Originally from China and having grown up in Hong Kong, Fung came to the United States to study at the University of Michigan Medical School, where he became board-certified in internal medicine and neurology and also earned a master’s degree in neurochemistry and neuropharmacology.

doctor at the hospital standing in lobby — Dr. Fung sits on on the El Camino Health District Board of Directors and for a decade led the hospital’s stroke program, which is named after him.

“His passion for learning is not only impressive but also infectious,” said Elizabeth Stanners, executive director of the Haas Executive MBA program.

When a professor recommended a PhD program, Fung’s wife, who missed living in Asia and warmer weather, balked. “She said, ‘We’re going to move to California.’ he said. “That pretty much was an ultimatum. So we came to San Jose, where I was the only neurologist in my area of the city.”

For Fung, 1996 proved a turning point in life after his mother had a devastating stroke that left her paralyzed on one side and unable to speak. Fung managed to consult with the chief of the stroke program at Stanford about a new drug called tPA, which his mother received. “The next day, she asked, ‘Why am I here?’ Her arm was no longer paralyzed, and she was speaking fluently,” Fung recalled.

Running for supervisor

After that experience, Fung decided to study strokes, immersing himself in articles and at conferences for a decade. Along the way, he became the first physician in the Bay Area to be board-certified in stroke neurology. “I thought I would work as a stroke and vascular neurologist for the rest of my life,” he said. “But then, I started thinking about what else I could do.”

Running for office was part of that plan, to expand his commitment to improving access to care for everyone. Earlier in his career, Fung served as co-director of the El Camino Health Chinese Health Initiative, to provide education and access to the Asian community. The initiative is now the largest nonprofit organization catering to Chinese patients in California.

In 2014, he ran for the El Camino Healthcare District, which manages the budget for the district’s hospitals. The Santa Clara Board of Supervisors is the next step, where his work would have impact on a larger population.

If elected, he said he’d tap into the DLPs to help with decision making in critical areas that are top of mind for constituents: crime, safety, healthcare, inflation, education, and housing. “After thorough research and analysis, I would delve deeply into the issues at hand, engaging with fellow political leaders to gain diverse perspectives, and to develop well-informed and practical solutions,” he said.

Meanwhile, Fung is looking forward to adding an MBA to a long list of accomplishments.

“If I’m the oldest student to graduate successfully from Haas, and I go on to make a meaningful life after graduation, that will be something to write about,” he said. “That’s my goal.”

Inaugural Berkeley Haas Sustainable Business Research Prize awarded to paper on biodiversity risk

January 29, 2024| by Laura Counts

Berkeley — A team of researchers who developed tools for investors, academics, and businesses to measure economic risks from the loss of the planet’s biodiversity has won the inaugural Berkeley Haas Sustainable Business Research Prize.

The new $20,000 prize, which recognizes research with the greatest potential to spur immediate change in the face of environmental crises, has been awarded to the paper “Biodiversity Risk” by Stefano Giglio of the Yale School of Management, and Theresa Kuchler, Johannes Stroebel, and Xuran Zeng of New York University’s Stern School of Business. (Read paper summary.)

Giglio says he and his co-authors are honored to receive the inaugural prize and hope it will encourage further research and practical change.

“While research in the field of climate finance has been expanding dramatically over the last few years, a lot more work needs to occur to ensure that the ideas developed in academic research find practical applications in the business and policymaking world,” Giglio says. “This is even more important for topics like biodiversity risks and its financial implications, where much less work has been done so far.”

Actionable research

The prize is administered by the Berkeley Haas Center for Responsible Business (CRB) and was launched with the support of Allan Spivack, MBA 79, to encourage serious scholarship with real-world business applications related to responsible business, sustainability, and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) issues.

The judging panel’s focus for the prize’s inaugural year was on papers that investigate economic levers to motivate individuals, corporations, and markets to act with urgency on climate and resource-saving initiatives. The winner was selected from a competitive field of 63 papers submitted by academic researchers around the world.

Berkeley Haas Dean Ann Harrison, a noted economist, served on the judging panel. “Thank you to our winning researchers for calling attention to the emerging area of biodiversity risk. All too often, groundbreaking academic research fails to gain traction or get put into practice in the ‘real world,’” Harrison said of the prize winners. “Rewarding research with direct implications for business and policy is another way that Berkeley Haas can help stem the multiple environmental crises we are facing.”

Defining biodiversity risk

The winning paper noted that humans rely on biodiversity to thrive. For example, diverse ecosystems are key to food production, while medicines are derived from natural compounds found in plants, animals, and microorganisms. Yet damages caused by the loss of ecosystem services alone—such as the supply of raw materials like food and fuel—have been estimated as high as $20 trillion per year, according to the paper.

Using surveys, news coverage, and analysis of 10-K statements, the researchers developed multiple measures of biodiversity risk. They determined that it is a separate phenomenon from climate risk and concluded that the energy, utilities, and real estate sectors are most exposed. They also concluded that biodiversity risks are partially reflected in stock prices over the past decade.

The researchers recommend that businesses regularly monitor and report how their activities affect the biodiversity of the areas where they operate, both directly and indirectly. It is also important that these data are aligned with emerging standards and regulations.

The paper has immediate applications: Investors can now use the scholars’ findings to better understand how biodiversity risk affects current and future business performance and take better-informed positions on industries and specific equities. At the same time, researchers can use the new measures to delve more deeply into impacts in economics, business, and human welfare, the co-authors say.

Three finalists

In addition to the winning paper, the judging panel—comprising sustainability researchers and practitioners affiliated with Haas—chose three finalists:

“Cost-Efficient Pathways to Decarbonizing Portland Cement Production,” by Gunther Glenk, Harvard University and University of Mannheim; Anton Kelnhofer, Technical University of Munich; Rebecca Meier, University of Mannheim; and Stefan Reichelstein, Stanford University and University of Mannheim.
- The researchers developed an economic model for identifying cost-efficient pathways for decarbonization. Read full summary.
“CRISK: Measuring the Climate Risk Exposure,” by Hyeyoon Jung, Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Robert Engle, NYU Stern School of Business; and Richard Berner, New York University’s Stern School of Business.
- Figuring out how much risk financial institutions face from climate change poses challenges. To address these challenges, the authors suggest using market-based metrics. Read full summary.
Corporate decarbonization initiatives matter less than state climate policies,” by Benjamin Leffel, UNLV School of Public Policy and Leadership; Thomas Lyon, University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business; and Joshua Newell, University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability.
- Corporate America needs to decarbonize due to its massive contribution to climate change, but how? This paper seeks to understand the most effective way of closing the emissions gap by exploring if corporations can be left alone to govern themselves or if subnational (city and state) government policies should contribute to this fight. Read full summary.

The prize is part of Dean Harrison’s three strategic priorities for the Haas School: sustainability, entrepreneurship, and diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging (DEIJB). As the top public business school, Berkeley Haas is committed to addressing sustainability challenges by preparing its students to lead the transition to a sustainable and inclusive economy through designing and implementing new business models, policies, and solutions.

Read the Yale SOM announcement.

Berkeley Haas to offer new master’s degree in business and climate solutions

December 26, 2023| by Kim Girard

many students sitting in a classroom wiht professor at the front of the room — Senior Lecturer Andrew Isaacs teaches the Climate Change and Business Strategy class at Haas, which just launched a concurrent MBA/Master in Climate Solutions degree. Photo: Jim Block

The Haas School of Business and the Rausser College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley have launched a concurrent MBA/Master of Climate Solutions (MCS) degree program to prepare the next generation of sustainability and climate leaders.

The new program, enrolling for fall 2024, will allow full-time MBA students to earn both a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Climate Solutions degree in five semesters, or two-and-a-half years. The application deadlines for the first MBA/MCS cohorts are January 4, 2024, and March 28, 2024.

The MBA/MCS degree is designed for early-career professionals who plan to take their careers to a higher level of business leadership, grounded in understanding of sustainability and climate change challenges and opportunities.

Berkeley Haas Dean Ann Harrison said the new program will draw from the strength of both schools, allowing students to learn from some of the world’s top minds in climate change, sustainability, and business.

“Future business leaders will require a depth of training in both business and climate change to work across disciplines and execute competitive strategies,” Harrison said. “This new program will provide a breadth of skill sets, equipping our grads to lead in building a sustainable, low-carbon future.”

“Future business leaders will require a depth of training in both business and climate change to work across disciplines and execute competitive strategies.” — Haas Dean Ann Harrison.

The program aims to develop critical skills and knowledge in climate data science, carbon accounting, and lifecycle analysis, as well as technological and nature-based solutions.

Students in the MBA/MCS cohort will spend the first year completing MBA core coursework at Haas before moving to classes at Rausser. The rigorous MBA curriculum includes courses in leadership, marketing, management, finance, data analysis, ethics, and macroeconomics, along with sustainability courses.

Doubling down on sustainability

Under Harrison’s leadership, Haas has doubled down on sustainability through the creation of the Office of Sustainability and Climate Change and by revamping all of the MBA core courses to incorporate thinking about climate change and other sustainability challenges.

The new MBA/MCS degree program follows Rausser’s launch of its new Master of Climate Solutions degree. MCS courses will translate the fundamental science and groundbreaking discoveries of UC Berkeley experts, enabling professionals to learn how to evaluate technologies, develop just climate strategies, and remove barriers to implementing practical climate solutions. The MCS core curriculum includes teaching in the climate and environmental sciences, climate economics and policies, technological, business and nature-based solutions, training in analytical and quantitative skills, and applied exercises and engagements that emphasize adaptive thinking and problem-solving.

“The Master of Climate Solutions represents a critical step forward in expanding the interdisciplinary and highly interconnected community of practitioners needed to solve the climate crisis,” said David Ackerly, dean of UC Berkeley’s Rausser College of Natural Resources. “Students in the concurrent program will be able to leverage the critical climate knowledge and tools taught in the MCS, as well as the leadership and business skills that are core to Haas.”

“Haas and Rausser both have such impressive track records in climate research,” added Michele de Nevers, managing director of the Office of Sustainability and Climate Change at Haas. “This program combines our offerings at the master’s level, with a keen focus on professional students, who are clearly positioned to make an immediate impact, and who serve a critical role as translators of academic insights and enacting these insights in the world.”

Addressing the Climate Challenge

All MBA/MCS students will participate in a semester-long capstone program that gives students the opportunity to partner with organizations operating across the business, government, and non-profit sectors. A unique leadership course on organizational, political, and societal change for climate solutions will prepare students to be change agents and leaders in businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies.

“New research on climate solutions is still critical, but we already know many of the things we need to do to address the climate challenge,” said James Sallee, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and faculty director of the MCS program. “What we really need are people spread throughout society and the economy who are in a position to take action on climate, and who are equipped with the tools to make the right choices. Educating those students is the vision of the MCS program.”

Summer internships are also crucial to the MBA/MCS program. Students will complete two summer internships, which will allow for deep immersion in different disciplines and more time to build relationships.

Haas now has four dual degree programs, including the MBA/MPH (public health), the MBA/MEng (engineering), and the MBA/JD (law).

Salaries jump to record levels for 2023 FTMBA grads

December 5, 2023| by Kim Girard

Salaries for FTMBA grads continued to increase this year.

Setting a record, annual base salaries for the Berkeley Haas Full-time MBA Class of 2023 increased to an average of $162,831. That’s about $10,000 more than last year, with nearly 70% of the class nabbing signing bonuses averaging $36,777 as well. Notably, 39% received stock options or grants, adding significantly to total compensation.

“We’re thrilled that starting salaries and compensation packages have continued to grow, reinforcing the strong return on investment on a Berkeley Haas MBA,” said Abby Scott, assistant dean of MBA Career Management & Corporate Partnerships. “These outcomes are a testament to the high caliber of our students. Our alumni and career management team also play an instrumental role in helping them navigate paths to reach their goals.”

View the 2023 employment report.

Of the total class of 294 graduates, roughly 90% received job offers within three months of graduation, and even more secured opportunities within six months of graduation. Similar to previous years, more than half of the students accepted roles in the technology industry and consulting. A few more highlights from the Career Management Group (CMG):

Technology remained the largest industry employer, with about 30% of the class taking positions in the sector. Amazon was the top tech employer.
Nearly 28% of the class accepted consulting jobs; the largest number of graduates went to McKinsey (26 hires), followed by Bain (14 hires), this year’s two top employers overall.
Financial services hiring increased from 13.7% to about 14.5% of graduates; health care and biotech jumped from 5.1% to 7.5%. Energy-industry roles among grads jumped to 6.6% of graduates from 2% last year, reflecting the increase in climate tech.
About 22% of graduates embarked on “impact careers,” defined as jobs in sustainability, climate tech, healthcare, edtech, and some areas of finance and real estate.
A growing number of students (4.4% of the class) accepted positions in real estate, typically in development and investment roles.

McKinsey, Bain top employers

This year’s top employers for Haas—companies that hired three or more graduates—included Amazon, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company, Deloitte, Bain & Company, EY Parthenon, PayPal, Apple, Evercore, Microsoft, TikTok, and Tesla.

Matt Solowan, MBA 23, is now a consultant at Bain & Co., after interning there while at Haas, finding the people at Bain similar to the people at Haas: “very down to earth, very kind, very warm, very supportive.”

Portrait of MBA grad Matt Solowan — Matt Solowan, MBA 23, is a consultant at Bain.

While at Haas, Solowan said they worked closely with Julia Rosof, a career coach in the Career Management Group, to prepare for early recruiting opportunities scheduled during ROMBA, the annual LGBTQ+ MBA conference. “After that, I really leaned on the second-year peer advisors who provided me with on-the-job insights and helped to improve my casing and behavioral interview skill,” Solowan said.

In addition to consulting, the tech sector remained a top area of interest for FTMBA graduates, “so we were particularly pleased to see so many land roles this year, given all the churn in the field,” Scott said.

Highlighting the power of the alumni network, Henry Gordon, MBA 23, landed a position as strategy and planning manager at drone startup Skydio, after chatting with classmate Harrison Zhu, MBA 23. Zhu, a product manager at Skydio, had interned there while at Haas. “I knew he really liked the company and when I was looking for roles this one popped up in my LinkedIn,” Gordon said. “I texted Harrison to ask about it, and three weeks later, I had a job.”

man wearing a collared shirt in front of a tree — Henry Gordon, MBA 23, is a strategy and planning manager at Skydio.

Since joining Skydio, Gordon said he’s helped guide the company’s strategy as it pivoted from its consumer drone business to the enterprise market. “I was attracted to Skydio because of the enormity of the problems that they are trying to solve”—by providing drones to utilities, fire departments, and other industry customers. “About 30% of my job now is familiar, and the other 70% is totally new.”

Grads land in multiple regions

Lecturer Abigail Franklin, managing director of a program for careers in real estate who works with the Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics, said alumni working in real estate are particularly critical to her students’ success in finding roles. “Our 2023 graduates did so well in many geographic locations with the best compensation that I’ve seen in my 12 years here,” Franklin said. “It’s really a testament to the real estate alumni we have.”

One example, she noted, are the Haas alumni at privately owned real estate firm Hines, which hired two 2023 Haas MBA graduates this year—one in Chicago and another in Seattle, she said.

A number of 2023 graduates held out until the fall for the right opportunity, based on their specific career criteria—and the Career Management Group continues to support graduates until they find the right role, often reconnecting during future job transitions.

Before coming to Haas, Megan Nelson, MBA 23, worked for Uber in Australia. When she started in 2015, she was one of 20 employees in Sydney, a number that swelled to 400 people by the time she left as senior regional operations manager in 2021.

photo of a woman with long blonde hair — Megan Nelson, MBA 23, is chief of staff at JOLT.

Nelson decided to take a few months off after graduating from Haas before beginning her search for strategy and operations roles last August. With a goal to move back to Australia and work at a startup or scale-up, she jumped to apply for a position as chief of staff at Sydney-based startup JOLT, a company working to support the transition to electric by providing free, fast, and clean EV charging.

Her new role at JOLT aligns with her love for working for a company at an early stage. “I am focused on a bit of everything, including expanding our CEO’s capacity so he can steer the ship. I’m supporting both Australia and our international markets, and helping build the internal operating structures to enable our teams to sprint.”

Classes at Haas provided a professional lens that Nelson said she applies in the workplace.

“Haas built my confidence,” she said. “I realized that my background was really valuable. Hearing the perspectives of my peers in the classroom, the courtyard, and over drinks—the people were the best part of Haas. It’s having those rich experiences and interactions, and being able to share my own…it’s these types of learnings that have helped me the most.”

Berkeley Haas launches O’Donnell Center for Behavioral Economics to lead the next generation of research

November 20, 2023|By Mickey Butts

Established with a philanthropic investment of almost $17 million from Robert G. and Sue Douthit O’Donnell, the new center will bring together the best minds from a wide range of fields.

Berkeley, Calif.—Ever since Nobel laureates George Akerlof and Daniel Kahneman created a 1987 UC Berkeley course that broke the rigid barrier between psychology and economics, the university has led the way in bringing the once-disparate disciplines together into the field of behavioral economics.

More than 35 years later, the Haas School of Business is launching the Robert G. and Sue Douthit O’Donnell Center for Behavioral Economics to advance the field toward its next stage of evolution.

Portrait of a woman with shoulder-length dark blond hair and purple blazer. — Professor Ulrike Malmendier (Photo: Copyright Noah Berger)

“We went from neoclassical economics that considered humans to be perfectly rational, to behavioral economics that brought in social psychology,” says Ulrike Malmendier, the Cora Jane Flood Professor of Finance, who will serve as the center’s faculty director. “Now we want to move the needle further, bringing together the best minds for rigorous research on human behavior from the sciences more broadly—including neuroscience, cognitive science, biology, medicine, epidemiology, and genetics.”

Funded with a philanthropic investment of almost $17 million by Bob O’Donnell, BS 65, MBA 66, and his wife, Sue O’Donnell, the center aims to become the preeminent hub for the maturing fields of behavioral economics and finance, bringing together leading researchers from a wide range of disciplines for collaboration, conferences, and bootcamps, as well as funding promising PhD students and postdoctoral scholars. The center will also host the prestigious Behavioral Economics Annual Meeting (BEAM), co-founded by Malmendier, every three years.

A nexus for cross-disciplinary research

O’Donnell says he was inspired by the pioneering work of Kahneman, Akerlof, Malmendier, and others who gave Berkeley its leading position in behavioral economics. “UC Berkeley is dedicated to integrating business education with other disciplines on campus, which is essential in this area,” he says. “It should have a center devoted to continuing this work.”

The center, says Berkeley Haas Dean Ann Harrison, will create a far-reaching impact across UC Berkeley, a research powerhouse with many areas of strength. “The goal is to cut through barriers that traditionally hinder research across disciplines, such as different ways of presenting data and publishing results, and bring people together in a different way than what’s usually done,” she says. “The O’Donnell Center will be the nexus of a new form of cross-disciplinary collaboration that pushes behavioral economics toward the future.”

Beyond ‘homo economicus’

Traditional economics was based on the assumption that human beings are perfectly rational, profit-maximizing “robots”—sometimes referred to as “homo economicus” or “economic man,” Malmendier says. Behavioral economics brought in insights from psychology and human behavior to explore the predictable foibles in our thinking, such as decision-making biases, fears of losing out, lack of self-control, and overconfidence. A classic example is Kahneman’s pioneering work with Amos Tversky on loss aversion, which showed that people are willing to take greater risks to avoid a loss than to secure a gain.

These ideas have been integrated into economics and finance departments around the world and have deeply influenced public policy and practice. For example, after Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein developed the concept of the “nudge”—interventions that spur people to act in their own self-interest, such as enrolling in a retirement savings plan—hundreds of “nudge units” were established in governmental and private-sector organizations around the world.

Many other Berkeley Haas researchers helped pioneer this intellectual revolution, including finance professor Terrance Odean, BA 90, MS 92, PhD 97, the Rudd Family Foundation Chair, who was convinced by Kahneman to pursue a doctorate in finance rather than psychology and whose work reveals investors’ flawed decision making.

O’Donnell, the center’s founding donor, says he often applied insights from behavioral economics during his career as a portfolio manager for a large mutual fund group. “It represents a further step in the evolution of financial theory comparable to the development of the efficient market hypothesis,” he says. “When combined with existing financial theory, I believe that its insights enhanced results for my clients.”

Yet, during the 17 years he taught an investment class in the Berkeley Haas MBA program, O’Donnell says he sometimes encountered skepticism when he introduced ideas from the field. “Indeed, one student asked, ‘Isn’t all this kind of woo-woo?’”, he says. “Several years later, that student told me how perspectives from behavioral economics had helped her career in finance.”

Experience effects

Now, after more than three decades of foundational work, it’s time to move behavioral economics past its adolescence, Malmendier says. “Behavioral economics made progress by including psychology, but we didn’t include all the other sciences.”

Malmendier, whose groundbreaking work on “experience effects” earned her a Fischer Black Prize in 2013 for the top economist under the age of 40 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017, has focused on complex economic behaviors. She has studied how stressful experiences with recessions, layoffs, inflation, housing bubbles, and political repression make consumer and investor behavior more cautious and risk averse for years afterward, and she has explored how stress can affect our health, careers, education, and other aspects of life in dramatic ways.

To further that work, Malmendier aims to bring a wider range of researchers together and break down silos. For example, collaborating with neuroscientists, neuropsychiatrists, biologists, medical researchers, and epidemiologists who have studied stress and trauma could more precisely demonstrate how past experiences shape our actions today and across generations. Stress impacts the big variables that economists study, such as completing an education, choosing an occupation, and deciding to have a family, she says.

“As we walk through life, our outlook on the world changes, especially if we suffer trauma,” she says. “Neuroscience says our brain gets rewired. There may be a long-term impact of stress on our longevity, on our aging, and on our health.”

Questioning the status quo

Malmendier, who now serves on the German Council of Economic Experts, is passionate about the potential of behavioral economics to help leaders create better solutions to the most complex and urgent problems of our time—from fighting climate change to battling inflation and avoiding financial crises. “If leaders keep in mind people’s emotions, their personal histories, and their psychologies, they can engineer ways to make things more predictable and give people more control over events help them live better lives,” she says. “That is our ultimate goal.”

Photo of a man with light skin, short brown hair, and glasses, wearing a navy blue jacket with white collared shirt. — Professor Stefano DellaVigna

Moving the field forward will also involve rigorous research to reexamine what has come before. For instance, a recent paper by center co-founder Stefano DellaVigna, the Daniel E. Koshland Senior Distinguished Professor of Economics and professor of business, with Elizabeth Linos of Harvard, suggests that leaders should get more realistic about nudge policies—and better at incorporating them into practice. Two government nudge units opened their records to allow the researchers to look at all their interventions. By examining 126 randomized controlled trials of nudge policies involving 23 million people in the United States, the researchers found that nudge interventions are on average effective, increasing the desired outcomes by about 8%. However, the effects are less than those in published academic papers—about one-fifth the size. The authors attribute the difference to publication bias, or the tendency toward publishing only large, surprising results.

“Our study stresses the importance of research transparency,” DellaVigna says. “This transparent access is quite unique and shows a further innovative impact of behavioral economics, which has led to more evidence gathering within governments.”

In a second paper, DellaVigna and Linos, along with Department of Economics doctoral student Woojin Kim, found that even when nudge policies are found to be effective, public agencies implement them only about a quarter of the time, often due to organizational inertia.

In addition to Malmendier and DellaVigna, the center will include a host of affiliated researchers from Berkeley Haas and Berkeley Economics, as well as from across the university. They include Berkeley Haas professors Ricardo Perez-Truglia, Ned Augenblick, Don Moore, and Gautam Rao, PhD 14—who will join Haas in January from Harvard University—as well as Dmitry Taubinsky of Berkeley Economics and others. The founding gift will establish a permanent endowment to support the center and some of its ongoing activities.

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Media Contact: Laura Counts, [email protected], 510.205.9570

Berkeley Haas launches new Climate Solutions Fund

November 7, 2023| by Laura Counts

Aerial view of a massive array of solar panels — An aerial view of Dominion Energy’s Scott Solar farm in Powhatan, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

The Haas School of Business is launching the first student-led Climate Solutions Fund, the latest addition to its comprehensive curriculum to equip the next generation of business leaders with the financial skills to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Beginning in fall 2024, MBA students can enroll in a new course where they serve as investment managers for the $2.37 million fund, learning how to structure financing in complex private markets by co-investing in real-world deals focused on solutions to climate change.

“As the world moves toward a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, we need financial leaders with the skills to navigate the economic revolution we are facing,” says Professor Adair Morse, co-founder of the Sustainable and Impact Finance Center (SAIF), who conceived of the fund and will lead the course. “This economic revolution will be staggeringly disruptive yet will also be a source of more business opportunities across all parts of the country than we’ve seen in 250 years.”

“As the world moves toward a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, we need financial leaders with the skills to navigate the economic revolution we are facing.” —Professor Adair Morse

The new fund was made possible by a lead gift from Allan Holt, MBA 76, along with generous founding donations from Larry Johnson, BS 72, Charlie Michaels, BS 78, and his wife Doris, Scott Pinkus, and Professor Laura D. Tyson, former Haas dean and co-founder of SAIF.

“I am thrilled to help Haas take the lead in training leaders in the emerging area of climate finance,” says Holt, a Senior Partner and Managing Director of The Carlyle Group. “Decarbonizing our economy is the critical issue of our time, and I am committed to supporting future leaders who can spur this transition.”

“Decarbonizing our economy is the critical issue of our time, and I am committed to supporting future leaders who can spur this transition.” —Allan Holt, MBA 76

The multi-asset class private Climate Solutions Fund augments Haas’ unique curriculum under SAIF, which teaches investment management with hands-on experiential learning. It rounds out the public markets-focused Sustainable Investment Fund—the first and the largest student-led sustainable investing fund within a leading business school—and the Haas Impact Fund, a seed/startup capital offering.

A new area of finance

The Climate Solutions Fund curriculum will teach students new designs and uses of finance not traditionally taught in mainstream finance courses, where there are dire needs for leadership, according to Morse, who saw the need for this financial expertise while serving as deputy assistant secretary of Capital Access in the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 2021-23.

Financing the climate transition requires a diverse and technical tool kit: An estimated $4 trillion to $5 trillion per year will be needed to reshape global energy, transportation, food, and waste infrastructure, and to help companies reinvent supply chains and integrate new technologies, Morse says.

“This level of reinvestment will require every finance tool available, including designing financial structures to mobilize government programs and work with community and industry partners,” she says. “Our goal is to expand how we teach students to provide the leadership and expertise that corporations, financial entities, startups, governments, and philanthropies will need to navigate this transition.”

“This level of reinvestment will require every finance tool available, including designing financial structures to mobilize government programs and work with community and industry partners.” —Professor Adair Morse

The fund, and the associated MBA course, are the first at a major business school to focus on complex financing strategies within private markets, including growth equity and debt equity; public-private partnerships with federal and state programs; risk mitigation; identifying the underlying technologies to fuel the low-carbon transition; and envisioning new financial products.

Students enrolled in the Climate Solutions Fund course will assess investment opportunities in U.S.–based for-profit companies, working with outside investment partners to structure deals. Following a pitch competition, student managers will select one finalist to co-invest $100,000 to $300,000 annually. The fund is intended to generate positive returns over time so that future generations of students can build off the capital.

Stock photo of a biogas plant and farm (Adobe Stock)

Comprehensive curriculum

In addition to the “fund-as-curriculum” courses, SAIF also offers other applied innovation courses such as the Impact and Climate Investing Practicum, where faculty guide small teams of MBA students who are paired with impact investing firms to to gain hands-on experience with impact investing strategy, mapping, and measurement projects.

The courses count toward the Michael’s Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Business. Open to both full-time and evening and weekend MBA students, the certificate requires 9 units of required coursework. Students can create a pathway that’s focused on either bringing a sustainability lens to a mainstream business function or building expertise into a specific industry such as renewable energy or green infrastructure.

In addition to Morse, SAIF is led by Professor Panos Patatoukas, The L.H. Penney Chair in Accounting, and Tyson.

Five major areas of sustainability

The new Climate Solutions Fund is part of Haas’ larger effort to ensure that all students are educated in the fundamentals of sustainability. Haas launched the first student-managed SRI fund in the early 2000s and is now the only top business school to work across five major sustainable business areas: energy, sustainable agriculture and food, real estate and urban economics, corporate accountability, and sustainable finance and accounting.

The school has combined research on energy conservation and storage, building efficiency, renewable energy sources, and sustainable food with efforts to include climate and equity into the core business curriculum across all programs. All told, Haas offers more than 25 courses with a focus on sustainability.

For students planning careers in managing sustainability challenges in organizations, Haas is also planning to launch a new joint master’s program in 2024 with the Rausser College of Natural Resources to offer an MBA/MS in Climate Solutions.

Ann Harrison named ‘Dean of the Year’ by Poets & Quants

October 4, 2023| by Kim Girard

dean Ann Harrison in pink jacket standing outside — Dean Ann Harrison was named 2023 Dean of the Year by Poets and Quants. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small.

Berkeley Haas Dean Ann Harrison, a renowned economist lauded for keeping Berkeley Haas’ six business programs ranked among the world’s best and significantly expanding the breadth and depth of the faculty, has been named Dean of the Year by Poets & Quants.

Poets & Quants Editor-in-Chief John Byrne announced the news to a global audience at a Thinkers50 virtual conference today. Byrne engaged in a sweeping conversation with Harrison that covered the impact of globalization on workers, the responsibilities of government and business in fighting climate change, the critical role of diversity on campus, and the enduring importance of the MBA.

“The MBA is a wonderful degree,” Harrison said. “It combines the rigor of statistics, data analysis, hard-core quant skills with skills like how to work with people, marketing, and how to sell,” she said. “What’s wonderful about an MBA is that it allows you to combine these different skills. Other degrees don’t offer that combination.” Haas MBA students care about making an impact, she added, “not just a great paycheck.”

Harrison has amassed an unimaginable and nearly breathtaking record of achievement. —John Byrne, Poets & Quants

In his Poets & Quants article, published today, Byrne wrote that Harrison has amassed an “unimaginable and nearly breathtaking record of achievement” during her four-and-a-half years as dean. Harrison, who has led Haas since January 2019 and was reappointed to a second term last February, said she was “deeply humbled” by the honor.

“I am so lucky to be surrounded by a tremendous community at Haas—students, staff, faculty, and alumni who are always going beyond themselves,” she said. “It’s only together that we can seek solutions to climate change, build a more inclusive society, and fuel innovation in all its forms. This is a business school that embodies excellence. I feel great pride in our past and am thrilled to have the opportunity to create impact for the future.”

Harrison is the second woman to lead Haas; Professor Laura Tyson served previously. As the former director of development policy at the World Bank and a longtime professor, Harrison has focused her research on international trade and global labor markets.

Big Changes

Since joining Haas from Wharton, Harrison has made big changes, Byrne noted. She has led a major diversity, equity, inclusion, justice & belonging (DEIJB) effort, broadening the profile of the Haas faculty, school board, and the student body. The school’s entering full-time MBA class this year is 41% women, 47% U.S. minorities, and 13% U.S. underrepresented minorities overall.

Harrison has woven sustainability content deep into the curriculum while maintaining the school’s historical focus on entrepreneurship and innovation.

“The challenges of climate change permeate all aspects of business: supply chain, economics, management, and finance,” she said. “In the latter field, we have pioneered new ways of investing. We need to hire in all these dimensions. It is a big agenda and we are making a lot of progress in a lot of different ways.”

Harrison also oversaw the launch of the first Flex online MBA cohort at any top business school. Applying learnings from the pandemic, Haas used new technology to make the MBA available to expanded groups of international students and working parents who require flexible schedules.

Under Harrison’s leadership, Haas also stepped up fundraising, raising a record total of $227 million, including $56.1 million during the last fiscal year. The school also secured the largest single gift in the school’s history—$30 million from alumnus Ned Spieker, BS 66, and his wife, Carol, BS 66—to turn the undergraduate program into a four-year program.

Figuring it out together

In the Poets & Quants article, Courtney Chandler, Chief Strategy & Operating Officer and Senior Assistant Dean at Haas, noted that Harrison “hasn’t stayed in one lane as dean.”

“She’s ambitious, and she sees the full potential of Haas within UC Berkeley and is driven to realize that potential,” she said. “She has not been that one-dimensional dean and that is incredibly impressive.”

“She’s ambitious, and she sees the full potential of Haas within UC Berkeley and is driven to realize that potential.” —Senior Assistant Dean Courtney Chandler

Harrison’s record as a highly cited scholar has also helped her lead the school’s professors, Byrne said.

“It’s hard to get faculty to buy-in to a dean’s vision, but she has been able to do that effectively,” Erika Walker, senior assistant dean for instruction, who has been at Haas for nearly 20 years, told Byrne. “She relates so well to them…. Ann is very thoughtful about where we should be going. A lot of her success stems from her ability to get the buy-in and then enlist others to figure it out together.”

Professor Catherine Wolfram (left) talks with Dean Ann Harrison (center) and Professor Ulrike Malmendier (right) at a Dean’s Speaker Series event.

During her second term, Harrison said she will continue to work with her team to build upon the school’s academic excellence as well as the student experience at Haas. One important goal is to ensure that the school’s degree programs remain the best in the world, she said.

In its 2023 b-school ranking, the Financial Times named the Berkeley Haas Full-time MBA Program #7 worldwide and among the top four U.S. programs, a record high. The Evening & Weekend MBA Program ranked #1 among part-time MBA programs in U.S. News & World Report, and the highly-selective Haas Undergraduate Program ranked #2. The Financial Engineer ranked the Master’s in Financial Engineering (MFE) Program #1 in the world.

Harrison earned her BA from UC Berkeley in economics and history, and her PhD from Princeton University. She held previous professorships in UC Berkeley’s College of Agricultural and Resource Economics, as well as at Columbia University and the Wharton School, where she was the William H. Wurster Professor of Management.

An avid hiker, Harrison told Poets & Quants that returning to UC Berkeley and California has allowed her to use time off to explore the state’s cliff-lined beaches, redwood forest, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, “a paradise for those who love the outdoors.”

Harrison is the 13th dean and the third woman to be named Dean of the Year by Poets & Quants, which covers business school education.

Putting her story in the Haas story: 125th anniversary celebration honors founding donor Cora J. Flood

September 14, 2023|By Laura Counts & Kim Girard

Exactly 125 years after Cora Jane Flood announced the gift that launched UC Berkeley’s College of Commerce, Haas students and staff packed the school’s sunny courtyard to celebrate this milestone.

Haas is not only the second-oldest business school in the country and the first at a public university. “Haas is the only leading business school to be founded by a woman, Cora Jane Flood, who was known as Jennie,” said Professor and Acting Dean Don Moore. “Haas is also the first top business school to be led by two women deans—Laura Tyson and Ann Harrison.”

Dean Ann Harrison unveiled a new plaque honoring Flood. “Now, students, staff, faculty, alumni, and visitors can learn her name and be inspired by her far-sighted philanthropy,” said Harrison, who is on sabbatical this fall but returned for the event.

Flood, the daughter of silver baron James Clair Flood, gave a gift of securities and real estate with an estimated value of $463,133.39, constituting the largest private gift received by the then-30-year-old university. According to the book “Business at Berkeley: The History of the Haas School of Business” by Sandra Epstein, “By 2013, the gift’s value had grown to over $25 million, comprising one of the largest endowments on the Berkeley campus.”

The courtyard event was part of an ongoing celebration this fall of Haas’s 125th anniversary. See photo highlights and check out the video and transcript below, and read more about how Haas has been reimagining business for more than a century in a special issue of Berkeley Haas magazine.

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Transcript

Erika Walker, Senior Assistant Dean for Instruction

Good afternoon. I am Erika Walker, Senior Assistant Dean for Instruction at Berkeley Haas.

As we gather for today’s ceremony, we want to acknowledge that UC Berkeley sits on the territory of xučyun, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo speaking Ohlone people, the successors of the sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. This land was and continues to be of great importance to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and other familial descendants of the Verona Band.

We recognize that every member of the Berkeley community has benefitted, and continues to benefit, from the use and occupation of this land since the institution’s founding in 1868. Consistent with our values of community, inclusion and diversity, we have a responsibility to acknowledge and make visible the university’s relationship to Native peoples. As members of the Berkeley community, it is vitally important that we not only recognize the history of the land on which we stand, but also, we recognize that the Muwekma Ohlone people are alive and flourishing members of the Berkeley and broader Bay Area communities today.

I would now like to welcome Professor and Acting Dean Don Moore to the podium.

Professor Don Moore, Acting Dean and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

Thank you, Erika. And welcome, everyone! Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. What an honor it is to serve as the acting dean of this exceptional business school while Dean Harrison is on sabbatical. I hope you are all having a great start to the semester so far.

This year, we look back on 125 years of reimagining business at Haas, all the way to 1898, the year of our founding as the second-oldest business school in the United States.

In 1898, we might have been listening to “The Entertainer” on our gramophones, watching the short film The Astronomer’s Dream on the kinetoscope, or trying on a new bowler hat. California had recently transitioned from Mexico to the United States. Berkeley had a population of 5,000. The bicycling craze was giving women a new avenue of independence. That year, the Golden Bears beat Stanford at the Big Game, 22-0!!

This was also a pivotal time for business, which was coming into its own as a profession on par with law and medicine. Smart management was sorely needed in an era of wild economic growth, robber barons and corruption, fortunes made and lost in immense new enterprises. These new businesses needed to make sense of thousands of employees, strategic mergers, and ballooning divisions.

This was also a pivotal time for business, which was coming into its own as a profession on par with law and medicine. Smart management was sorely needed in an era of wild economic growth, robber barons and corruption, fortunes made and lost in immense new enterprises. These new businesses needed to make sense of thousands of employees, strategic mergers, and ballooning divisions. —Don Moore

Where better than a great university in the pioneering West to order and transform the way we worked? Good sense was not enough; mass scale was a necessity; and only the skilled and sophisticated would thrive. Learning the systems and theories of professional management was a logical—and necessary—next step. A new institution would need to draw scholars from the rest of the world to Berkeley, and produce brilliant minds of its own.

And so it did. The College of Commerce, which we now know as Haas, was founded with just three students. Now we have over 2,500 students in six programs, more than 300 ladder and professional faculty members, and more than 43,000 alumni in 81 countries around the world.

We are also the first business school founded at a public university. Haas is the only leading business school to be founded by a woman, Cora Jane Flood, who was known as Jennie. Haas is the first top business school to be led by two women deans—Laura Tyson and Ann Harrison, respectively.

And we are the first school built entirely with private donations on the UC Berkeley campus. We are incredibly grateful to all of the donors who have supported our school.

Of course, the Berkeley Haas legacy includes more than a century of stellar researchers and teachers, including two Nobel laureates. We are fortunate to be able to attract exceptional staff. And we are more than the sum of our parts. My colleague and fellow acting dean Jenny Chatman will say more about what really makes us exceptional.

Professor Jennifer Chatman, Acting Dean and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

Thank you so much, Don. I am honored to be serving the school with you this fall.

As a scholar of culture, I want to note that Berkeley Haas stands out in yet another way: in being the preeminent mission-driven business school, as Poets & Quants has described us.

The Haas School’s values stretch back a long way. The man for whom our school is named, Walter A. Haas, Sr., graduated from the College of Commerce in 1910. He held forward-looking views on social welfare and public affairs that were influenced by the school’s first woman instructor, Jessica Peixotto. That influence led him to grow Levi Strauss & Co. into one of the country’s largest socially responsible businesses.

All of these priorities grew into our four Defining Leadership Principles, which I know you know well: Question the Status Quo; Confidence Without Attitude; Students Always; and Beyond Yourself. To put these principles into action in our three core areas: innovation and entrepreneurship, sustainability, and inclusion.

Of course, they are all inextricably linked. Berkeley Haas boasts a world-class team for diversity, inclusion, justice, and belonging. The school has built and continues to build remarkable access, while simultaneously equipping all of us to be more inclusive leaders. Sustainability and entrepreneurship are always top of mind at Haas. And thanks to our location in Berkeley—the epicenter of innovation—we have been and continue to be the heart of what’s next.

Finally, I am so pleased that several members of the chancellor’s cabinet are joining us today. Berkeley Haas’ deep ties with Cal are precious, and we don’t take them for granted.

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Ben Hermalin has a special connection to Berkeley. He has held a significant number of roles at Haas: as professor, associate dean, interim dean, and winner of multiple teaching awards. Ben, thank you for being with us today.

Ben Hermalin, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, UC Berkeley:

Thank you, Jenny!

It is true that Berkeley Haas is dear to my heart. But it is also a treasured and essential star in the Cal constellation. This is a vibrant, visionary school that provides students, faculty, staff, and alumni much of the meaning that I believe gives us purpose as individuals and as institutions. One way the school does that is by attracting award-winning scholars, who illuminate their classrooms and advance the world’s knowledge. Berkeley Haas strives to teach and shape business in ways that are valuable to a broad spectrum of people, in profound and material ways. We try to go beyond in deed and not just in word. We always have a lot more work to do—to be as inclusive and just; bold and confident; smart and ethical as we can. That is the best way for us all to stay true to those who built this institution and to our counterparts in the future. Congratulations on this momentous anniversary!

Don Moore:

Thank you, Ben.

This occasion is so special to the Berkeley Haas community that Dean Ann Harrison has returned today (from her sabbatical this fall) to share it with us. Ann, please join me onstage.

Dean Ann Harrison:

Thank you so much, Don! What a beautiful day, as it so often is in Berkeley. I am thrilled to be here with you all. I do feel as though I am reaching across more than a century and saying thank you to Cora Jane “Jennie” Flood. I am grateful for her confidence, generosity, and foresight, and believe she would have found today to be a powerful testament to her intention. We are so fortunate that there are Flood family members here with us today celebrating this occasion.

In her declaration to the Regents of the University of California on September 13th, 1898, Jennie Flood wrote of her bestowal that it “shall be devoted to some branch of commercial education.” The bold idea to create a College of Commerce had been proposed by Berkeley graduate and entrepreneur Arthur Rodgers in 1883. Jennie Flood turned Rodgers’s vision into reality.

125 years of groundbreaking education is a remarkable achievement for any business school, especially given the immense changes the world has undergone. Having reimagined business, we are well positioned to lead in a world of change. We look back with pride, but we move forward to make an impact for future generations. Keeping our eye on innovation and entrepreneurship, sustainability, and inclusion is more important than ever.

It is high time that we make Jennie Flood a permanent part of our campus. I am honored to unveil this plaque, which commemorates our founder and allows us to put a name—and a face—to the origins of Berkeley Haas. Now, students, staff, faculty, alumni, and visitors can learn her name and be inspired by her far-sighted philanthropy. Her father, James Clair Flood, was the son of immigrants who took an eighth-grade education and an entrepreneurial spirit to become one of the “Silver Kings” of Gilded Age San Francisco and a UC Regent. Jennie often accompanied him to his business meetings, and I would go so far as to say she was an informal student of business herself!

And now, we’ll reveal our new plaque in her honor.

What a beautiful addition to our campus and to our continuing story. Berkeley Haas has staying power. We’re not going anywhere—we’re just getting better.

Please come over during the reception and check it out!

Don Moore:

Thank you so much, Ann. To tie together the whole web of Haas-tory from our esteemed founder to our current dean, I am happy to report that former dean Rich Lyons is here with us to celebrate. He is such an important part of our legacy, both philosophically and musically. To that end, he has brought his guitar to send us out snapping our fingers. Take it away, Rich!

Rich Lyons, Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

(Lyons performs a special Haas-themed version of “The Bare Necessities,” singing and playing acoustic guitar.)

Don Moore:

A perfect note to end on. Thank you so much to everyone for joining us today. Please enjoy some refreshments and bask in this beautiful day and community. Here’s to the world-changing 125 years behind us, and to all the triumphs ahead.

Go Bears!

Haas welcomes hundreds of new undergrad, MBA, PhD students to campus

August 23, 2023| by Kim Girard

Berkeley Haas welcomed an accomplished group of nearly 700 new full-time MBA, undergraduate, and PhD students to campus, kicking off the start of the fall 2023 semester. (The new evening & weekend and executive MBA classes arrived on campus earlier this summer.)

Full-time MBA program

A total of 244 new full-time MBA students kicked off five days of Week Zero orientation last Monday. Orientation included sessions on academic life at Haas, diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and belonging (DEIJB), team building, and career planning.

Wendy Guild, the new assistant dean of MBA programs at Haas, welcomed the class. “I want to celebrate the fact that you are here,” she said, noting that 2023 is a special year for Haas, marking the school’s 125th anniversary. “We have staying power,” she said. “We’re not going anywhere… We’re just getting better.”

A total of 244 new full-time MBA students in the Class of 2025 arrived last week for Week Zero orientation. Wendy Guild, assistant dean of MBA programs, welcomed the group, noting that Haas is celebrating a special 125th anniversary this year.

The new MBA class is comprised of 41% women; 20% are first-gen.

Prof. Don Moore, acting Haas dean, urged students to reach out to each other and take advantage of the resources at Haas, especially when the curriculum gets tough. "All of us want to see you succeed," he said.

Introducing the Gold Cohort!

Introducing the Axe cohort!

Introducing the Oski cohort!

Introducing the Blue cohort!

The Haas Undergraduate Program team welcomed 421 new students Monday. A total of 3,306 students applied to the program.

The undergraduate class includes103 transfer students and 240 continuing UC Berkeley students.

New students met up in the Haas courtyard throughout orientation.

All photos by Jim Block and Noah Berger.

New students participated in a whirlwind of orientation activities—from a scavenger hunt to an ice cream social to cleanup work at a local nonprofit that supports people who are homeless.

The MBA students are an accomplished group, with an average of nearly six years of work experience, with 20% coming the tech sector and 24% from consulting.

Remy Freire, MBA 25, was a consultant at Bain & Company in Washington D.C. before coming to Haas.

“I’m interested in climate tech and renewable energy and I thought that the MBA would be a chance to take classes and do an internship in that area, and get some hands-on experience. A lot of folks are interested in this at Haas and I’ll be meeting people with similar interests to mine.”

woman with short hair wearing large earrings — Imogen O’Connor, MBA 25

The class boasts 41% women and is richly international, including students from 39 countries.

Imogen O’Connor, MBA 26, worked as an analytical manager with the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK before she came to Haas.

“What really prompted me to do an MBA was around change management and leadership because I was coming up against a lot of barriers in the NHS,” she said. “I really care about health care and just helping people. I think I need to develop certain skills in order to do that properly.”

The class has an average collective GMAT score of 732, and GREs of 163 quant and 161 verbal, and an average GPA of 3.63.

Eric Askins, director of MBA admissions, told the students to expect to learn from peers who come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. Notably, 20% of the students in this class are the first generation of college students in their families. Fourteen of the new students are pursuing a dual MPA/MPH (public health) degree; nine are enrolled in the MBA/MEng (engineering) program.

Orientation week alumni speaker Lo Toney, MBA 97, founding managing partner at Plexo Capital, shared his wisdom with the class, encouraging students to explore and take advantage of the breadth and depth of the UC Berkeley and Haas campus resources, focus on academics in the first quarter in particular, and reach out to alumni to build a network.

Undergraduate program

The entering undergraduate class is 421 students strong this year. The new class includes 103 transfer students and 240 continuing students, as well as new undergraduates students enrolled in special undergrad programs including The Global Management Program (GMP), The Robinson Life Science, Business, and Entrepreneurship Program (LSBE) (25 students), and the Management Entrepreneurship and Technology (M.E.T).

Acting Dean and Professor Don Moore, whose research covers leadership and confidence in business and beyond, welcomed the students.

“You’re joining a community of innovators, renowned researchers, entrepreneurs, and movers and shakers who have made a profound impacts on business and on society,” he said.

“You’re joining a community of innovators, renowned researchers, entrepreneurs, and movers and shakers who have made a profound impacts on business and on society.” – Acting Dean Don Moore

Moore said the long list of leaders who embody the Berkeley Haas Defining Leadership Principles (Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always and Beyond Yourself) includes professional golfer Collin Morikawa, BS 19, who won the 2020 PGA Championship; Nabeela Syed, BS 21, the first Muslim Indian-American and the youngest woman to serve in the Illinois House of Representatives; and gaming entrepreneur Kevin Chou, BS 02, who with his wife, Dr. Connie Chen, provided the largest-ever personal gift to UC Berkeley by an alumni under the age of 40 to help fund Chou Hall.

undergraduate student group in the haas courtyard — Undergraduate students mingle in the Haas courtyard. Photo: Noah Berger

Emma Hayes Daftary, assistant dean of the undergraduate program, told the students that “the DLPs will challenge you to shift from what you, as an individual, can achieve, to what we, as a community, can accomplish.”

“We are living in a time of tremendous global transition, and within this time of upheaval and transition comes an urgent call for informed, collaborative, effective leaders,” she said. “There are urgent issues that are facing us—urgent issues that will require extraordinary leadership to develop and execute solutions to solve them.”

PhD program

The PhD program welcomed its largest-ever cohort of 19 new students from around the world—including Russia, China, Ethiopia, India, South Korea, Nigeria, Portugal, Canada, and Germany.

New students include Abdulmuttolib (Abdul) Salako, Ziyi Liu, Sean Chen, Sarah Danner, Hanna Yu, Sara Shemali, Jordan Mickens, Nikita (Nick) Akimov, Wenxiao Yang, Srikanth Janjirala, Yutao Chen, Maggie Ye, Skyler Chen, David Gravanita , William Zhang, Zi Yang Chen, Nathan Godin, Nick Otis, and Fikremariam (Fikre) Gedefaw.

View PhD student profiles here.

new Phd students at Haas in a group photo in Chou Hall — (From back row left-right) Abdulmuttolib Salako, Ziyi Liu, Sean Chen, Sarah Danner, Hanna Yu, Sara Shemali, Jordan Mickens, Nikita (Nick) Akimov, Wenxiao Yang, Srikanth Janjirala, Yutao Chen, Maggie Ye, Skyler Chen, David Gravanita , William Zhang, Zi Yang Chen, and Nathan Godin. Missing from photo: Nick Otis, and Fikremariam (Fikre) Gedefaw. Photo: Jim Block

Berkeley Haas anniversary marks 125 years of reimagining business

July 26, 2023| by Kim Girard

Haas this year is celebrating 125 years of reimagining business. Our Defining Leadership Principles , including Question the Status Quo, are etched in the stone of the Haas courtyard. Photo: Jim Block

Berkeley Haas this month is kicking off its anniversary celebration of 125 years of reimagining business. The festivities commemorate a significant milestone in the school’s history as a leader in advancing management education, corporate responsibility, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Founded in 1898 as the College of Commerce with just three students, Haas has expanded to nearly 3,000 students across six programs, all of which rank in the top 10 and boast a world-renowned global faculty. Haas has 44,000 living alumni worldwide, spanning more than 20,000 organizations in 81 countries.

“A 125th anniversary is a remarkable achievement for any business school, especially given the immense changes that business and business education have gone through,” said Berkeley Haas Dean Ann E. Harrison. “As the world’s number one mission-driven business school, we take pride in developing innovative business leaders who consider the long-term impact of their actions—and increasingly, that requires a lens for sustainability and inclusion.”

Cora Jane Flood. — Cora Jane Flood gave the university’s then-largest gift to establish the “College of Commerce” in 1898.

Haas has always been a pioneer. It is the first business school founded at a public university, and the second-oldest in the U.S. It is the only leading business school to be founded by a woman, Cora Jane Flood.

It’s also the first top business school to be led by two female deans, Professor Laura Tyson (1998–2001 and 2018), and Harrison (since 2019).

And from the start, the school has had a distinctive culture.

That culture was formally codified in 2010, when the school unveiled its Defining Leadership Principles (DLPs): Question the Status Quo, Confidence without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself. Shepherded by then-Dean Rich Lyons and anchored by the organizational culture research of Professor Jennifer Chatman, the DLPs are a source of pride for the community—and a competitive advantage.

Senior Assistant Dean Courtney Chandler, Haas’s Chief Strategy and Operating Officer, described the principles as much more than mere aspirations or platitudes. They are, rather, aligned tightly with the school’s strategy. “Powerful leaders think about culture all the time,” Chandler said. “If done well, everything relates back to the culture, from how we set priorities to how we get buy-in from people to how we show up as a community.”

“Powerful leaders think about culture all the time. If done well, everything relates back to the culture, from how we set priorities to how we get buy-in from people to how we show up as a community.” — Senior Assistant Dean Courtney Chandler, BA 90, MBA 96.

Life-changing Research

The Haas legacy includes generations of researchers and teachers who have changed how industry leaders think and do business. That legacy includes two Nobel laureates. The late John Harsanyi won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1994—along with John Nash from Princeton University and Reinhard Selten from Bonn, Germany—for advancing the study of game theory, and in particular, how parties act in negotiations with incomplete information.

The late Oliver Williamson became the school’s second Nobel laureate—along with Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University—in 2009 for bringing together economics, organization theory, and contract law to invent the field of transaction cost economics, fundamentally reshaping understanding of how firms operate in the marketplace.

Prof. Oliver Williamson with his Nobel coin.

Many other Haas faculty members have ushered new ideas into the world, including Henry Chesbrough, PhD 97, who created the novel theory of Open Innovation; and David Aaker, the father of modern branding, who defined brand equity and the idea of the brand portfolio.

Professor David Teece established his groundbreaking theories of dynamic capabilities in 1997; and Ikujiro Nonaka, MBA 68, PhD 72, a knowledge management expert, envisioned knowledge as a living and breathing entity that must be shared among workers to reach its full potential.

Finance Professor Ulrike Malmendier, who researches how individual biases affect corporate decisions, stock prices, and markets, illuminated many ways in which human psychology and systematic biases influence economic behavior. For her work, Malmendier won the prestigious 2013 Fischer Black Prize.

Women at Haas have also made pioneering contributions as visionary leaders—since Mary Dickson became the first woman to get a degree from the school in 1906. Professor and former Dean Laura Tyson served on President Clinton’s cabinet, and was also the first woman to chair the Council of Economic Advisers and direct the National Economic Council.

Professor Emeritus Janet Yellen, who taught macroeconomics at Haas for 25 years, is now the first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and was the first to chair the Federal Reserve.

Accelerating Innovation

Berkeley Haas has also been a hub of innovation and a launching ground for entrepreneurs over the years. In 2022, for the fourth straight year, UC Berkeley was named the nation’s best public university for startup founders, and the second-best university among both private and public schools, according to Pitchbook’s annual ranking.

In 2022, for the fourth straight year, UC Berkeley was named the nation’s best public university for startup founders

In 1970, six years before Apple Computer was founded, Dean Richard Holton taught one of the country’s first entrepreneurship classes at Haas with Leo Helzel, MBA 68. Lecturer Steve Blank took the teaching of entrepreneurship in a cutting-edge new direction in 2011 with his Lean LaunchPad method. Blank taught students to build a company by developing business models rather than traditional business plans, iterating models quickly based on customer feedback. This approach is now accepted practice for entrepreneurs.

students sitting at Skydeck three of them together in a group talking — SkyDeck in downtown Berkeley, where many Haas students collaborate with founders from across the campus.

Haas students have been honing startup skills for years in programs like the UC Berkeley LAUNCH accelerator; SkyDeck, a partnership between the Haas School of Business founded in 2012 with the College of Engineering, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research; and The Cleantech to Market accelerator program, which for 15 years has been pairing students with entrepreneurs to help bring promising climate tech innovations to market.

Visionary entrepreneurs

Over the years, Haas students and alumni have founded hundreds of companies as part of the UC Berkeley startup ecosystem. Among the school’s notable alumni entrepreneurs:

John Hanke, MBA 96, CEO of Niantic Labs, was instrumental in creating Google Earth, Maps, and Street View, which brought sophisticated geospatial data visualization to the masses. Hanke then masterminded the wildly popular augmented reality Pokémon Go game.
Paul Rice, MBA 96, founded Fair Trade USA, whose Fair Trade Certified seals signify products made according to fair trade standards.
The late Priya Haji, MBA 03, co-founded Free at Last, a national program for substance abuse treatment and HIV/AIDS intervention; World of Good,a sustainable/fair trade product marketplace acquired by eBay in 2010, and served as CEO at SaveUp, a rewards game for saving money and reducing debt.
Patrick Awuah, MBA 99, launched Ashesi University, Ghana’s first liberal arts college, in 2002, which pioneered a multidisciplinary core curriculum that challenged the dominant rote-learning culture in many African schools.
Danae Ringelmann and Eric Schell, both MBA 08, co-founded Indiegogo with Slava Rubin, building a crowdfunding platform for all creative, cause, and entrepreneurial projects.
Danae Ringelmann and Eric Schell, MBA 08s, began working on Indiegogo, one of the world’s first crowdfunding platforms, while students at Haas and used their Haas connections to develop the company. Photo by Genevieve Shiffrar.
Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez, both BS 09, grew mushrooms from used coffee grounds in their Haas class, which led to their startup Back to the Roots—now a national brand with products sold in thousands of stores.
Jason Bellet, BS 14, along with engineering alumni Connor Landgraf, BS 13, MEng 14 (bioengineering), and Tyler Crouch, BS 14 (mechanical engineering), founded Eko in 2013 and developed an FDA-cleared platform of AI-powered stethoscopes for early detection of cardiovascular disease.

Roots of social responsibility

The Haas tradition of educating leaders who prioritize the social impact of business dates back more than 100 years.

The school is named for Walter A. Haas, Sr., BS 1910, whose family at Levi Strauss & Company outfitted Western miners in a new kind of work pants that evolved into Levi’s iconic blue jeans. Haas Sr.’s views on social welfare and public affairs were influenced by the school’s first female instructor, Jessica Peixotto, and led him to grow this apparel manufacturer into one of the country’s largest socially responsible businesses. Later, as Levi’s CEO, he noted that the company “owes responsibility to the communities in which we do business.”

The company “owes responsibility to the communities in which we do business.” — Walter A. Haas, Sr., BS 1910

During the late 1950s, Earl F. Cheit, the future dean, ushered in the study of corporate social responsibility through research and teaching. Cheit organized the first national symposium on the subject in 1964, and Berkeley’s coursework became the model for other leading business schools with support from Professors Dow Votaw and Edwin Epstein.

Decades later, The Center for Responsible Business in 2002, brought Haas into the modern corporate social responsibility and business sustainability movements. Six years later, The Financial Times named Haas number one in the world in this area.

Prioritizing inclusion

Socioeconomic mobility is core to both the UC Berkeley and Haas missions. Over the past six years, Haas has made substantive changes to increase diversity and representation, engender lifelong learning around equity and inclusion, and cultivate belonging.

Woman standing next to sign that says we are one Haas — Chief DEI Officer Élida Bautista leads a team building a learning environment where everyone belongs and everyone can thrive.

When Harrison joined as dean, she made Diversity Equity Justice and Belonging (DEIJB) a priority by meeting with student leaders; significantly increasing student support; modifying the core MBA curriculum to require a course on leading diverse teams; and diversifying the Haas faculty and Haas School Board.

Haas also appointed Chief DEI Officer Élida Bautista to oversee a six-person team focusing on admissions, community-related DEIJB issues, and, uniquely, faculty support.

Building on the Defining Leadership Principles, the school’s DEI Strategic Plan, first drafted in 2018 and updated in 2021, outlines aspirations for a learning environment where everyone belongs and everyone can thrive. The plan aims to equip all members of the Haas community to effectively lead diverse teams. (Research from Haas faculty and the work of the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership (EGAL) makes the business case that diversity on teams can drive performance.)

The Heart of What’s Next

Looking forward, Haas continues to build on its academic strength in undergraduate, graduate, and non-degree executive education offerings.

The school also continues to embrace new ideas. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the school’s foray to digital education, inspired by Berkeley Executive Education’s early adoption of virtual classroom teaching.

Students from the top-ranked Berkeley Haas Master of Financial Engineering Program in the classroom. Linda Kreitzman launched the program in 2001 with John O’Brien. Photo: Noah Berger

The virtual classrooms now anchor the Flex MBA program,—now in its second year—which combines academic courses in a live online environment with the option to come to campus for electives. At the undergraduate level, the school’s two-year program is expanding to become the four-year Spieker Undergraduate Program. The first four-year cohort will enroll in August of 2024.

Stepping up to address the severity of climate change, Haas created the Office of Sustainability and Climate Change to support teaching and research across agriculture, real estate, energy, finance, and corporate sectors. The school’s investment in sustainability includes the greenest academic building in the U.S., Chou Hall, having earned TRUE Zero Waste certification at the highest possible level along with a LEED Platinum certification for its energy efficient design and operation. Plans are now underway to launch a joint MBA/master’s in climate solutions degree with Berkeley’s Rausser College of Natural Resources.

Grads at 2022 MBA Commencement at the Greek Theatre.

Many of the school’s advancements have been made possible through the support of its loyal alumni, who continue to make Haas stronger through their engagement as teachers, mentors, employers, partners, and donors to the school.

Harrison said she is looking forward to celebrating the school’s many milestones and to what the future will bring, noting, “We look back with pride, but we move forward to have impact.”

Watch for more details about the anniversary in the forthcoming summer issue of the Berkeley Haas Magazine or read more Haas history on the website.

‘Empathy and curiosity:’ How queen jaks is helping Haas make teaching more inclusive

July 10, 2023| by Laura Counts| Photos by Brittany Hosea-Small

Dr. queen jaks listens during a consultation with a faculty member. (Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small)

When Dr. queen jaks walks into a Berkeley Haas classroom and sits in the back scribbling notes, students wonder what’s going on.

“They think the professor is in trouble and I’m there to get the dirt,” says queen, who writes her name with lowercase letters.

But as the school’s first diversity instructional support consultant, queen is not an enforcer. She’s there as an invited guest of faculty members who want help in making their teaching more inclusive.

“It’s so important to make it clear that I’m not there to tell people they’re doing something wrong. I’m not there to hear both sides,” she says. “I’m there because the instructor wants support.”

Unique role

Over the past year, queen has been helping Haas faculty navigate the minefield of changing mores and heightened awareness around a range of topics often referred to as diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging (DEIJB). Her role is unique: Rather being called in to mediate when things heat up, she coaches instructors individually—by observing classes, offering suggestions on course content, or consulting on issues that come up in class. She also teaches best practices through brief workshops and exercises.

Holding both an MBA and a PhD in organizational behavior, queen is fluent in the language of academia, while also drawing on her own experiences of feeling like an outsider who broke into that world as a first-generation student from an impoverished community. She grew up in San Diego and earned a BS in business administration from UC Riverside, going on for her MBA from the University of Redlands and her doctorate from Case Western Reserve University.

She approaches the job with empathy, curiosity, and a natural sense of humor.

“We’re all learning, we’re all going to make mistakes, and that’s okay,” says queen, whose own research focuses on the contributions of marginalized communities. “Society is evolving, and people want change really badly, so everything that comes out of your mouth in the classroom is going to be scrutinized. I’m here to say ‘I feel you. Now let’s turn it around and see how that might be perceived.’”

A woman with long dark hair wearing a white blouse sits in an office chair talking to a man wearing black t-shirt and yellow pants — DEI Instructional support consultant queen chats with Professor Steve Tadelis in his office. (Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small)

Haas Chief DEI Officer Élida Bautista dreamed up the new role in response to growing demand from students for more diversity in course content and on the faculty. In addition to the work Haas is doing to hire more diverse faculty members and an effort led by the Center for Equity, Gender and Leadership to compile a library of business cases featuring diverse protagonists, Bautista wanted to find a way to directly support current faculty. Dean Ann Harrison greenlighted the pilot position.

“When I looked around for consultants and talked to my counterparts at other business schools and universities, no one was doing this—so we didn’t really have a model,” Bautista says. As a clinical psychologist, she designed the role so that all services would be confidential and voluntary.

“Anytime you force people to do something, there’s an inherent resistance and that decreases the efficacy,” she said. “Some people think that when you make something voluntary, you end up preaching to the choir. But even the choir needs tuning: People who are bought into these ideas still need skills to carry them out, and they’ll end up bringing others along.”

Sensitive content

That’s what has happened. Associate Professor Juliana Schroeder—who championed the new role along with associate deans Jennifer Chatman and Don Moore and served on the hiring committee—offered to be a guinea pig for queen to observe her leadership class.

Schroeder is a social psychologist who has thought carefully about diversity and psychological safety in her teaching and materials. Still, on the day of the observation, when she was referencing the 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle explosion to shed light on decision-making pitfalls for a case study about car racing, a student had a “PTSD-like” incident in her classroom.

“He was an Army veteran, and this was directly relevant to his experience,” Schroeder says. “I was so glad queen was there that day, and I was blown away by how great her feedback was. It really illustrated what a benefit it was to have someone well-trained in these topics right there in my classroom.”

After the session, queen gave Schroeder a detailed report with suggestions on adjusting her script and offering both a written and verbal alert for sensitive topics. It also included a list of things she was doing well, and some practices to add—such as repeating back answers that were lower in volume, acknowledging students who were waiting to speak, and using contrasting colors on slides—as well as including photos in her slides that would show diversity beyond race and gender.

Word of mouth

Schroeder thought it was so helpful she asked to share it with other faculty members, and soon queen had a full calendar.

“Every single person I’ve worked with has been so receptive,” queen says. “I’ve spent a lot of time at business schools, and it’s been jaw-dropping how much Haas has embraced this.”

Associate Professor Mathijs De Vaan invited her to sit in on a session focused on DEIJB in his MBA course Leading People. De Vaan, who grew up in The Netherlands, is mindful that his class includes international students who may be new to American culture, as well as students with backgrounds that have been marginalized in the U.S.

“It’s a challenge. There’s always a group of students who are very knowledgeable and very vocal, and others who know these are sensitive subjects and are afraid to speak at all,” says De Vaan. “I wanted students to be on the same page in understanding the scope of the problem that racism and discrimination represent in the U.S., so I gave them a number of examples of where companies fell short.”

That’s important, queen told him, but it can also be stressful for some students. “For minority students in the room, it might reinforce the idea that their group is marginalized,” he says. To address this, in the next iteration of the class he focused less on examples of problematic situations, and more on possible solutions to societal challenges.

Phasing out the ‘cold call’

A man sits in an office chair talking with a woman who has her back to the camera and is typing on a computer. — Professor Steve Tadelis chats with queen about summer plans. (Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small)

As an instructor in the Israeli Air Force almost 40 years ago, Professor Steve Tadelis says he learned how to teach through feedback from required classroom observations. But the DEI workshops he had taken hadn’t helped him with the specific challenges he faces as an instructor. “I was very open to this,” he says.

After working with queen, Tadelis stood up at the fall faculty meeting to give her an enthusiastic endorsement and encourage others to seek her out. He says he appreciated that she gave him straightforward ways to improve his teaching, including rethinking how he was calling on students.

“I do relatively little of the classic business school ‘cold calling,’ because of the artificial aspect of it. It’s rare in the workplace that a senior leader would suddenly turn to someone and say, ‘What do you think we should do about this?’ They would want more preparation,” Tadelis says.

But after consulting with queen, he realized he could give people even more choice in how they participate without lowering his requirements. “My goal is to give each student a set of tools that they can use as decisionmaker, but I’m not there to change their personalities,” he says.

Debate and experimentation

Tadelis, an economist, still worries about how to create a safe classroom space without shutting down honest debate, and how to let people have moments of discomfort in a respectful way.

“How do we create language that is precise, knowing that some words are clearly off limits but not everyone is going to love every word?”, he says. “There are so many historical wrongs that need to be acknowledged and addressed. But it would be nice if there was less combativeness and more debate, exploration, and experimentation.”

That’s one of the reasons queen’s approach has been so effective. She believes that instructors need to pay attention to students’ needs as individuals beyond their grades, and that many practices need updating. At the same time, she believes in collaboration—and good intentions.

“How we define and integrate DEI is constantly changing, which means that no one—myself included—has all the answers,” queen says. “We just all have to keep giving each other feedback and grace, looking at what we can do better next time.”