Video: At Panel of Peers, EMBA Students Connect with Classmates

When they arrived at Yale SOM, MBA for Executives students Jasper Daniel ’19 and Brad Wayman ’19 were wowed by their opportunities each weekend to engage with world-class faculty and visiting leaders from academia. But they saw an opportunity to learn more from an accomplished group closer to home: their classmates.

 “We felt like what we didn’t get to know was the people and the power of the people in the class itself,” says Daniel. “We asked, ‘what if we could do a panel just with our classmates in their day-to-day jobs?’”  

The result was Panel of Peers, a new regular, student-run forum, which has been held every class weekend since January 2018. Each assembles a panel of students to discuss a topic–sustainability, for example–or shared interest; one recent discussion was led by military veterans in the program. The panelists share a mix of personal and professional stories, a format that showcases the diversity of the class and provides new ways for classmates to get to know each other and build friendships and partnerships.

In June 2018, the panel expanded beyond Yale SOM to the Global Network for Advanced Management, with schools across the world hosting a Panel of Peers events during Global Network Week.

“Seeing the whole world being able to connect like this has been really rewarding,” Daniel says.