A Day in the Life: Blake Christensen ’26
We followed first-year EMBA student Blake Christensen as he traveled to New Haven, attended class, and socialized with friends—all with two kids in tow. Photos by Tony Rinaldo and Blake Christensen.
Wednesday night
After work on Wednesday, I drive 2.5 hours from Pocatello, Idaho, where I live, to the airport in Salt Lake City, where I take a red-eye flight to JFK. When I arrive in the morning, I go to the Yale Club and spend most of the day sitting in the library, doing work and homework. Once the work day ends, I get on the train to New Haven.
Thursday, 7 p.m.
It takes me 10 to 12 hours to get from home to school, not including my work time at the Yale Club. It’s a long trip! But I’ve learned to make the best of it. Once I arrive on campus, I often have dinner with classmates. We have a rotating crew of about 20 people, which we jokingly call our “Thursday night dinner discussion group,” and we usually pose a question or a theme to talk about. Those dinners are one of my favorite parts of the EMBA experience. It was the people and culture that really drew me to the program, and I continue to learn so much from my classmates.
This week was a little different, because my two boys—Collin, who’s 14, and Avind, who’s 11—were on spring break, and I brought them to New Haven. It was our first time on a red-eye together, and we made it a great family bonding experience. When we got to Yale on Thursday night, we walked all around campus and had a fabulous meal at Yorkside Pizza. There were a lot of families and students watching a Yale men’s basketball game that was going on, and the Yorkside staff really adopted us. It was a quintessential college town experience.
Friday, 8 a.m.
I stay at the Omni Hotel and generally walk to campus in the morning; because I’ll be sitting in class all day, it’s a good way to create some mental clarity. We ate some breakfast in Evans Hall and took a little tour, since the boys had never been there. Introducing them to my classmates and learning team was really neat. They’ve heard many stories about my great classmates—like J.C., who is a doctor but also owns a pineapple farm in the Dominican Republic, or Johnny, who recently broke the Guinness World Record for fastest travel to all seven continents and the record for popping 200 balloons the fastest with a nail. But the biggest highlight for them was probably the foosball table in the student lounge.
9 a.m.
Our first class on Friday morning is Sourcing and Managing Funds. The class teaches you how to take an innovative idea and determine if it’s worth pursuing by valuing it correctly, deciding how much capital to raise, and then effectively managing that funding. Before we started, I picked up my name tag and chatted with many classmates. I enjoy catching up and have been able to develop great relationships with a lot of people in the class.
10:30 a.m.
Class is fast-paced and I take a lot of notes, so the break is a great time to re-energize and chat. There are a lot of online MBA programs, but SOM was attractive to me because I wanted that in-person interaction. I wanted a reason to be in class with others and get to know them in a more personal way.
12 p.m.
After class, we went down to Charley’s Place for lunch. Between lunches and dinners, I’ve also had many opportunities to get to know the class ahead of me. In fact, I’m working with two members of the Class of 2025 on a potential consulting venture. On a normal day, I would sit with a big table of classmates. Today, I grabbed a table with the boys, who had been across the street at the amazing Peabody Museum.
1 p.m.
The program regularly brings in a speaker from one of the three focus areas—healthcare, sustainability, and asset management—to give a colloquium on campus. They tell us about what they do, how they got there, and the decision-making that guided them. It’s a great opportunity to hear from someone who’s been in the trenches and done work that many of us are hoping to do or currently doing. A lot of folks make connections with the speakers and stay in touch with them afterward. I came into the program interested in the healthcare area of focus, because I work for a healthcare-oriented university and collaborate closely with our clinics. But I’ve also heard from amazing sustainability speakers, which has certainly made me consider switching.
That day, Suzanne Lagarde ’14, the CEO of Fair Haven Community Health Care, was visiting. She spoke about transitioning from a medical role to being an administrator and overseeing the facility, and about how she builds relationships with other entities, politicians, and stakeholders. I took two pages of handwritten notes, typical for me because I genuinely get so much out of what these speakers are saying.
2:30 p.m.
Our next class was the core course Innovator. It’s co-taught by Tristan Botelho and Balazs Kovacs, but that day we had a guest lecture from Barry Nalebuff, an SOM professor and one of the founders of Honest Tea. We had a great class session learning about his experiences, which I found both fascinating and instructive, and then we all gave 60-second pitches about our own ideas. Mine was about turning underutilized dorms at public universities into multigenerational housing communities where retirees and college students can live and learn together. The time limit really forces you to articulate your idea in a persuasive and powerful way.
5 p.m.
After the presentations, we broke out into learning teams to discuss our ideas and choose one to work with for a series of assignments. The learning teams give you a natural place to work through the problems that come up in class. We meet on Zoom every week to work on projects together. Sometimes we use our professional expertise to teach each other as well; for example, Alex, who works in finance and capital management, has been an incredible resource for getting better at Excel and surviving our Investor class.
7:30 p.m.
I ended the day by going to dinner with 14 classmates and my kids at Viva Zapata. Sometimes we stay out way too late talking and laughing together, even though we have class Saturday morning. But those shared experiences are the things that build trust and make your classmates want to help out when you pick up the phone and call them.
That night, they made the boys feel so welcome. More than half the students at dinner are parents themselves, and many of us have brought kids or spouses to class weekends. It’s been really neat to see how much my classmates include each other’s families. When I was looking at business schools, I wanted a place where my family would feel involved; that sense of community was one of the things that drew me to SOM, and I definitely benefitted from it that week. The whole way home, my boys were talking about how much fun they had on campus.
