Griffin McQuilling ’25

In the wealth management field, high performers sometimes end up in managerial roles not because they were trained to be there but because they excelled in their earlier positions. Too few have formal leadership training or have developed a framework for structuring and managing teams. I thought an MBA would help me prepare not just to make the next step in my career but to thrive in the long term.

The knowledge I’ve gained about leadership and managerial topics has been immediately applicable. Our Workforce course, for example, opened my eyes to a whole new view of organizational behavior. Having these frameworks as I think about building out my team—from hiring to structuring healthy incentives to creating a virtuous culture designed to attract and retain talent—has given me new perspectives, as well as new tools to deploy.

When you work in a singular industry, particularly finance, many of your day-to-day interactions are with like-minded colleagues. Coming to Yale has exposed me to classmates who are doctors, marketers, engineers, and scientists. The diversity of perspectives and insights taught me to look at business problems in new ways.

One of my favorite experiences was Global Network Week, which I spent at Oxford University. Not only did I gain the UK perspective on business, but a global perspective as well. I had classmates from Kenya, India, the Philippines, Sweden, China, and the UAE, just to name a few. My work is mostly U.S. based, so having the opportunity to learn from peers around the world was invaluable.

Earning an MBA while working has by no means been easy, but it has been a great lesson in time management and prioritization. One of the benefits at SOM that has helped immensely is the learning team structure. In the EMBA program, we work with the same classmates on all group assignments. We get to know each other extremely well, strengths and weaknesses alike, and we get to help each other. There are times where I have the capacity to pull more than my weight, and there are times where I need to rely on my team members to get me to the next class weekend. Working together, we all succeed, and that is the most valuable lesson in teamwork.