What I Learned from a Year of Lunching with C-Suite Executives
Bhavishya Ghanta ’25 offers reflections and photos from the many events that brought business leaders to campus during her first year in the Yale SOM MBA program.
The keystone class of the Yale SOM MBA core curriculum, The Executive, opens with a pre-class question: according to you, what do CEOs do? Strategy, management, vision building, culture; our answers ran the gamut. The class then opens to a more important question: why do they what they do?
During my second semester at SOM, some of the world’s greatest leaders and executives visited campus, addressing students in large auditoriums, classrooms, or over a meal. The same semester, I made a leap of faith towards starting my own company, a decision that was guided by the purpose-filled paths of numerous leaders who came to Yale.
Here are some of the most important lessons I learned from a semester of leadership training and SOM events:
Purpose, passion, profits. In that order.
Intrinsic, not extrinsic motivations laid the foundation for many executives’ continued success and achievements. Professor J. Baron’s course Workforce discusses this at length. Extrinsic factors such as money, prestige, and status eventually decline in importance for both employees and leaders. By contrast, intrinsic motivations such as purpose and impact leave a lasting impression on company culture—and, consequently, on performance. Rob Britton, a former executive of American Airlines, encouraged students to pick a career that outlasts short-term incentives, stressing the importance of longstanding, deep-rooted satisfaction. He advised students to seek out roles where they can make a meaningful impact and feel connected to the work they do.
High rewards are an outcome of high risk.
Lisa Su, the CEO of the semiconductor manufacturer AMD, joined the Executive course to chat candidly about her initial years at the company, which were marked by AMD’s cash deficit and growing competition with Intel. Her choice to cut back on underperforming units and focus on chip design was a risky one, but it resulted in a market capitalization that eclipsed Intel’s in 2024. Many stakeholders benefit from playing long-term games with high-risk ventures: AMD’s investors saw their shares rise from $2 to $180 in the last decade. When asked about how she thinks about the future, Su simply smiled and noted, “In a world where you could build anything, choose to build something with positive impact.”
Your team is everything.
Many leaders emphasized the importance of assembling the right teams, advising student leaders to hire people smarter than themselves so that they can begin with asking the right questions, even if they didn’t have all the right answers. This strategy enables executives to create an environment where employees take charge, prioritizing team buy-in for bolder, riskier decisions. When asked at what stage of a new venture leaders should start caring about culture, Reddit COO Jen Wong answered, “Why not day one?”
Innovate continuously, while staying true to your foundations.
As customers evolve, firms may adapt their products and mediums to attract more attention while fulfilling a core customer need. Bath & Body Works (B&BW) CEO and Yale Corporation member Gina Boswell ’89 highlighted the B&BW x Bridgerton collection when describing how the firm uses collaborations to appeal to newer audiences and to create brand-new associations for existing ones. Long some of the most familiar scents on the market, B&BW fragrances now benefit from the widespread popularity of the Netflix show. Other executives are harnessing innovation by developing “intrapreneurship” initiatives—programs that allow employees to act like entrepreneurs—and by advising breakthrough startups in their spare time.
Be unafraid to dream.
“Rent The Runway was my 126th idea,” laughed Jennifer Fleiss YC ’05, who founded the company that pioneered at-scale fashion renting. Fleiss, who previously worked in finance, had no experience in fashion when she made the switch. She admits that many of her ideas never saw the light of the day, and she didn’t have all the answers when she decided to launch Rent the Runway. She spent many weeks doing consumer research and speaking to executives of fashion and design houses before the team took the leap. Fleiss emphasized the importance of having the courage and resilience to keep pursuing your ideas, even when the odds may seem stacked against you.
Reflecting on these conversations, I’ve come to appreciate how these lessons are more than abstract concepts or notes on starting a business. Rather, they’re actionable strategies that will help me build a life and career that resonates with who I am and what I aspire to achieve. Dreaming boldly has pushed me to envision possibilities beyond my comfort zone and propelled me towards entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, understanding the value of a strong team has reinforced the importance of collaboration and trust and encouraged me to seek help from the SOM community. As I step forward, these conversations will be the compass that helps me navigate the uncharted territories of my entrepreneurial journey.
