Yale SOM Welcomes MBA for Executives Class of 2020
The class has “gone through the most competitive process in the history of the MBA for Executives” at Yale SOM, said Assistant Dean Silvia McCallister-Castillo.
By Karen Guzman
The Yale School of Management’s new MBA for Executives class arrived on campus July 13 for a three-day orientation during which students had the chance to become acquainted with each other and with the Yale SOM community.
After orientation, the Class of 2020 began a two-week session of intensive coursework on campus. For the remainder of the year, the students will return to campus for coursework every other weekend.
The new class totals 71 students, with 38% focusing on healthcare, 37 % on sustainability, and 25% on asset management. The class is 35% women, up from 26% for the Class of 2019. Students born abroad constitute 38% of the class. They were born in countries including Brazil, China, Canada, Cuba, Ghana, India, Iran, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Romania, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
The class is academically accomplished, with 46% holding advanced degrees in areas including medicine, pharmacy, nursing, dental surgery, law, public policy, and public administration.
In professional background, 73% of the class come from the for-profit sector, while 21% come from nonprofit, and 6% from the government. The class includes portfolio managers, lawyers, physicians, dentists, nurses, chief operating officers, and entrepreneurs.
In the healthcare focus area, there is a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon, a dental implant surgeon who serves as the dentist for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, and an associate principal scientist at Merck. The asset management focus area includes a policy analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a portfolio manager at Magister Capital Management, and a vice president at State Street Corporation. In the sustainability focus area, there’s a customer business manager at Unilever, a vice president of risk management at JPMorgan, and a director from Connecticut-based Verde Energy USA.
“This year, the program saw a 25% increase in applications, and so this class has gone through the most competitive application process in the history of the MBA for Executives,” said Assistant Dean Silvia McCallister-Castillo. “These are talented, hard-working professionals who strongly identify with the Yale School of Management’s mission and who seek to make an impact on their sector and the world around them.”
During their first year in the program, students will take Yale SOM’s integrated MBA core curriculum while participating in colloquia that bring leaders in each focus area to campus. In the second year, students take advanced courses in management and in their focus areas.