When Emily Nagler ’26 enrolled at Yale SOM, she planned on spending a few years in consulting before returning to the nonprofit world where she began her career.
By the end of her first year, however, she was seeing opportunities to make a difference within the for-profit sector as well. “I’m thinking more expansively about the different kinds of companies and organizations that can have a positive social impact,” she says. “Because they have more funding, organizations that aren’t traditional philanthropies or nonprofits can arguably have a stronger impact.”
Nagler, who earned her undergraduate degree in public policy and global health at Duke University, has worked for nonprofits in the United States and Latin America, including fundraising roles for the Guatemala-based Women’s Justice Initiative and the International Rescue Committee. In order to ascend in such organizations, she realized, she needed to expand her skills and experience. Yale SOM’s emphasis on business and society stood out, she says.
“I want to work at a higher, structural level—that’s why I chose an MBA,” she says. “I knew if I wanted to grow and advance, I wouldn’t be able to develop those skills through my work alone.”
She’s worked to maximize her time on campus, serving on the planning committee of the annual Yale Philanthropy Conference and the portfolio support team of the Meng Impact Investment Fund. She also took the elective course Global Social Entrepreneurship, through which she and other students worked with a social enterprise accelerator in Brazil. This year, Nagler will serve as a teaching assistant for the course.
“I’ve learned how to manage different personalities and working styles,” she says. “Being a leader doesn’t necessarily mean charging ahead and doing things yourself, but rather finding a way to motivate others and compromise.”
Nagler, who interned with Deloitte’s human capital team this past summer, is the recipient of a scholarship funded by Christina Baird Minnis, a 1987 graduate of Yale College. She says the support has been “a complete gamechanger.”
“I have so many more opportunities without the burden of student loans,” she says. “It’s definitely freed me up.”
The SOM education made possible by that scholarship, she says, has changed the way she thinks.
“The business world felt like a black box to me,” she says. “Now, I have more of an understanding about how socially responsible businesses can improve people’s lives.”
