Topic: Social Impact

Meet the MBA class of 2026: Imaobong Essien, UC Berkeley (Haas)

| by Maya Mirsky

Meet the MBA class of 2026: Jorge G. Rodriguez, UC Berkeley (Haas)

| by Maya Mirsky

Why women must be empowered to drive AI

| by Maya Mirsky

Being sugar-deprived had major effects on these children’s health

| by Maya Mirsky

Britain’s postwar sugar craze confirms harms of sweet diets in early life

| by Maya Mirsky

Amy Chan, BS 06, joins Haas as Chief Sustainability Officer

| by Kim Girard

Amy Chan comes to Haas from AppleAmy Chan, a Berkeley Haas alumna who helped drive key sustainability initiatives across Apple’s supply chain for over a decade, has joined Berkeley Haas as new Chief Sustainability Officer. 

Chan, BS 06, will lead the school’s Office of Sustainability and Climate Change, championing climate and sustainability initiatives at Haas and working to expand the school’s position as a sustainability leader.

Her job will touch business topics in areas including energy transition, sustainable and impact finance, corporate sustainability reporting and disclosure, sustainable sourcing and supply chain management/sustainable food and regenerative agriculture.

Interim Dean Jenny Chatman said Chan, who begins her new role this week, truly embodies the Berkeley Haas Defining Leadership Principle ‘Beyond Yourself.’

“She’s passionate about addressing the climate challenges that affect all of us—and all future generations,” she said. “Under her leadership, we’ll be able to draw on the incredible expertise of our faculty to find innovative, meaningful solutions that will help shape the future of business in a way that’s sustainable for the planet.”

A Bay Area native who earned her undergraduate business degree from Haas and an MBA from Harvard University, Chan said she was drawn to the job to make a difference. She called her new role a big and meaningful challenge. 

“No single individual, company, or government can solve the complex climate challenge alone,” she said. “Together, as a Haas community, we will build on the outstanding initiatives that are already underway, creating a positive ripple effect that extends beyond our campus to drive meaningful change for our shared planet.”

With her team—including Danner Doud-Martin, director of Haas Campus Sustainability, Kat Baird, director of the Office of Sustainability and Climate Change, and Ku’u Tai, program coordinator —Chan will lead the direction of the school’s new MBA/Master of Climate Solutions concurrent degree program with Rausser College and prepare the school to host the prestigious 2025 Global MBA Summit on Climate, Capital and Business, or ClimateCAP.

With more than 41 partner schools across the world, ClimateCAP will bring up to 500 MBA students and business leaders to Berkeley Haas from Feb. 28-March 1. At last year’s summit, former Haas Dean Ann Harrison participated in a virtual Dean’s Roundtable on Climate and Business. 

Harrison appointed Haas’ first climate leader, hiring Michele de Nevers in 2020 as executive director of Sustainability Programs. As the school’s second leader to hold the school’s top sustainability post, Chan will tap her industry experience, which includes over a decade at Apple, where her work included launching programs related to smarter chemistry, safer design, greenhouse gas reduction, energy efficiency, and labor and human rights. In her most recent role at Apple, she led sustainable product design and innovation initiatives for Apple’s hardware global supply chain operations. 

Under her leadership, Apple achieved the EPA Safer Choice Partner of the Year award in 2023 and 2024 for advancements in promoting safer and sustainable manufacturing practices. 

Before Apple, she worked at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank, structuring investments with a dual focus on financial and social returns. She began her career in investment banking at Credit Suisse. 

S2 E2: Should corporate leaders speak out on social and political issues?

| by Gionna Younger

Research shows how corporate social responsibility messaging can backfire

|By Dylan Walsh

Amid widespread public “big business discontent,” companies’ messages about their good acts can—counterintuitively—reduce public support.

Illustration of businessman's hands around a plants growing in a heart shape against a background of parched, cracked earth.
Image: AdobeStock

It’s lately been considered good business for companies to show they are responsible corporate citizens. Google touts its solar-powered data centers. Apple talks about its use of recycled materials. Walmart describes its support for local communities.

But these narratives, according to new research by Haas Associate Professor Tim McQuade, have some downsides. With Emanuele Colonnelli and Niels Gormsen of the University of Chicago, McQuade demonstrates how positive corporate messaging can evoke negative associations among consumers, in turn nudging them away from policies that support corporations in times of crisis.

“Even if you frame information in a positive way, consumers with pre-existing negative beliefs regarding social responsibility might draw up mostly negative experiences from memory,” McQuade says. “In this manner, the messaging can do the opposite of what’s intended.”

Their results were published in The Review of Economic Studies.

Working with faulty memory

These results hinge on an updated model of how consumers call information to mind when making decisions. Traditionally, economists assumed consumers to be rational actors sifting through all the relevant knowledge they have when making a decision. McQuade and his colleagues draw on a more recent understanding of cognition in which people have limited recall—meaning they generally only draw on a limited set of information to make decisions—and in which specific cues can influence what information they use.

Much of advertising relies on this premise. For instance, if people are cued with the old Snickers tagline, “Hungry? Why wait,” they may buy the candy simply because they are prompted to think about their hunger and not consider whether they need the calories or could better spend money on something else.

With this picture of consumer psychology in place, the researchers recruited nearly 7,000 participants to complete a four-part survey. The survey took place in May of 2020, when many companies were struggling under pandemic restrictions and the federal government was discussing the possibility of bailouts.

A landscape of “big business discontent”

The first portion of the survey asked basic questions about socioeconomic background. The second contained four different animated videos—three of which were used to cue distinct patterns of thought, and one used to create a control group.

The control group watched a video detailing basic instructions to complete the survey along with definitions of concepts like “corporate bailout” and “stakeholders;” the rest of the videos started with this control segment but included additional content. One framed big companies as relatively bad citizens—polluting, overpaying executives, underinvesting in communities, and so forth. The second video framed them as good citizens. The third mentioned nothing of corporate citizenship but talked instead about the economic stability provided by corporate bailouts.

After participants watched one of these four videos, they were asked the degree to which they thought large companies were doing what they should when it comes to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. Another section asked participants how strongly they supported economic bailouts for large corporations. (The ordering of sections three and four varied randomly.)

The raw results from this survey found that people have an overwhelmingly negative view of corporate citizenship. “Our first key contribution showed that, on a variety of dimensions, there is this broad perception in society that corporations are not doing what people think they should be doing,” McQuade says. “We call this ‘big business discontent,’ and it becomes a necessary condition for what we find next.”

How positive messaging elicits negative associations

The researchers looked next at public support for bailouts.

They found that survey participants who were cued by videos to think about corporate social responsibility—whether the video framed this work positively or negatively—expressed much lower support for corporate bailouts than those who watched the video about stabilizing the economy. In fact, those who watched the video framing companies’ ESG efforts positively expressed lower support for bailouts than those who simply watched the control video.

“When we primed people to think about these policies through a corporate social responsibility lens, even when we put that work in a positive light, the fact that there is this pre-existing big business discontent meant that the messaging backfired relative to giving them no information at all,” McQuade says. “Because recall is imperfect, the positive framing still brings to mind negative experiences,” such as the Enron accounting scandal, various environmental disasters, or poor wages.

This effect was even stronger among the survey participants who were asked how well they thought companies were doing on ESG goals before being asked their level of support for bailouts. This particular ordering of questions, it seems, dredged up more negative memories. Lack of support for bailouts was also strongest among young people and liberals, who expressed the highest levels of big business discontent.

Finding a message that works

Survey participants who were instead shown a video discussing how bailouts contributed to economic stability expressed support for the policy. In other words, the topic that people are cued to consider—in this case ESG goals versus economic health—significantly influenced their policy preferences.

The implications extend beyond corporate messaging into all realms of influence or persuasion. As McQuade notes, groups often try to update people’s beliefs by providing positive information on some policy or action. Companies talk about their good citizenship; politicians talk about their achievements.

“But if the domain or topic they’re talking about is one that many people have negative views on, then it is probably not the most effective way to gather support, since the framing effect could outweigh any positive PR effects of the communication,” he says. “Rather, they might want to refocus attention on some other policy domain. This insight shifts the way we think about optimal communication and optimal messaging.”

Read the full paper:

Selfish Corporations
By Emanuele Colonnelli, Niels Joachim Gormsen, and Tim McQuade
The Review of Economic Studies, 2024

Jake Kloberdanz, ONEHOPE Winery co-founder

| by Maya Mirsky

The Rise of Blockchain-Based Prediction Markets

| by Gionna Younger

The favorite courses of MBAs

| by Maya Mirsky

Giving a Boost

Summer 2024|By Carol Ghiglieri| Photo by Saroyan Humphrey

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

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

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

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

The Boost advantage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Lucas Abbott

A practical education

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

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

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

Measuring impact

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

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

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

—Michelle Mariscal-Lona

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

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

Ripple effect

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Making a difference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pedro David Espinoza, BS 17
Founder & CEO, Pan Peru USA

Summer 2024|By Gail Allyn Short| Photo: Courtesy Pedro David Espinoza

Headshot of Pedro David Espinoza BS 17 Growing up in Lima, Peru, Pedro David Espinoza watched his mother fundraise for a library for the impoverished village of Pampas Grande and establish an NGO called Pan Peru.

“My mom’s an engineer, and one of her dreams was to give back to her hometown,” Espinoza says. “She taught me the power of making a difference and the power of generosity.”

Those lessons have guided Espinoza’s career path ever since.

When he applied for a scholarship to Berkeley, an interviewer gave Espinoza an idea: Turn Pan Peru into a social venture connecting nonprofits with large corporations seeking to make social investments.

So in 2014, Espinoza launched SmileyGo.com. The startup produced an app that matched companies with nonprofits to help them track their corporate responsibility investments and measure the impact.

SmileyGo grew to more than 30 branches in 51 countries, indexing the data of 1.4 million nonprofits in the U.S. alone, Espinoza says.

Espinoza eventually left SmileyGo to launch Pan Peru USA—a nonprofit that helps underserved communities in Peru, and Alpaca Pan Peru—an online marketplace and entrepreneurship program for women of Pampas Grande to sell handmade alpaca apparel. About 100 women have joined the program.

“These women have been able to pay healthcare and educational expenses for their kids while learning about product design and marketing,” he says.

Now, he’s inspiring others toward social entrepreneurship.

“I speak at Fortune 500 companies about my immigrant, entrepreneurial story to inspire thousands of people to be relational rather than transactional and to serve rather than receive,” Espinoza says.

linkedin.com/in/pedrodavidespinoza

This CEO mapped a path to leadership with the Boys & Girls Club of Sonoma-Marin

| by Maya Mirsky

MBAs to watch: Class of 2024

| by Maya Mirsky