By Meredith Crawford
The mission of the Yale School of Management, to educate leaders for business and society, remains as vital to students today as it did at the school’s inception more than 40 years ago, Dean Edward A. Snyder told members of the MBA Class of 2020 during orientation on August 20.
In fact, Snyder said, “that mission is more important now because the nature of problems [facing leaders] has changed.” Many of business and society’s most pressing issues—poverty, income inequality, education—are interrelated, he said, requiring leaders to work across sectors to effect change.
“Even if you’re going to stay [at work] in one sector, what’s going to happen is you’re going to have to work with other sectors,” said Snyder. “It’s very interesting to me that this founding mission of the school… actually fits the trends that are happening in the world now and fits the question of what you are going to do for business and society given the [interrelated] nature of those problems.”
In an interactive portion of the discussion, Snyder challenged students to articulate how the school and its mission will help them reach their professional goals.
During his talk, Snyder also discussed the opportunities available to students as members of the larger Yale University community and emphasized the importance of the skills they’ll develop while working in learning teams.
