Fellows of SOM: Jason Rondinelli ’27, Aspire Fellowship
As an artist and educator, Jason Rondinelli didn’t always think an MBA was for him. Fellowship funding helped him reimagine his career and pursue his interest in arts leadership.
The Office of Community Engagement and Dialogue asked students how fellowship support shapes their community experience, enables their SOM education, and furthers their post-graduation goals. Learn more about fellowships and other funding sources.
Why did you pursue this fellowship, and what does it mean to you?
The Aspire Fellowship means a great deal to me, both personally and professionally. I grew up in a low-income household in the Rust Belt of Pennsylvania, where my parents had service jobs to provide for our family, and my grandfather was a small business owner who ran a neighborhood pizzeria. He crafted his space in ways that left a lasting impression on me, filling the dining room with paintings and singing to his patrons. His restaurant was more than a business; it was a gathering place where art, community, and commerce coexisted. That early example shaped my understanding of how we can intentionally create spaces to foster dignity and belonging.
I carried that lesson with me into my career as a public school teacher in New York City. In my classroom, I sought to create a similar environment, one where students could explore artistic expression while also developing confidence and skills to expand their opportunities. I developed advanced art programs that helped hundreds of working-class and immigrant students gain admission to specialized art high schools.
Later, as a district-level DEI coach working with teachers across Brooklyn and Staten Island, I focused on facilitating thoughtful conversations about belonging and equity. I came to see belonging not as a peripheral goal, but as foundational to education and upward mobility.
After more than two decades in public education, I felt compelled to broaden my impact beyond individual classrooms and into the institutional structures that shape cultural and economic opportunity. Yale SOM’s focus on business and society made it a natural next step.
However, as a career public school educator, the financial commitment felt daunting. Receiving the Aspire Fellowship made this transition possible. It represented not only financial support, but an affirmation that my background and aspirations belong in this space.
My hope is to pay that investment forward by strengthening arts nonprofits and cultural institutions, helping to make creative careers more sustainable, and supporting economic development within artist communities.
How does your status as a fellow impact the way you engage with your community and contribute to your overall SOM experience?
The financial support from the Aspire Fellowship has been transformative. It covers a significant portion of my tuition and provides the flexibility I need to support my 13-year-old daughter during this important transition in our lives. As a parent, it means a great deal to me to model lifelong learning, show that growth does not have an expiration date, and help her understand that it’s always possible to pursue new ideas and paths. Being able to step into this next chapter while maintaining stability for my family has been an extraordinary gift.
What lessons have you learned that will help you contribute to business and society at SOM and beyond?
Transitioning into a curriculum centered on quantitative analysis and business strategy was not seamless for me. My prior career was rooted in public education and the arts, and adapting to an entirely new technical language required humility and persistence. At times, that transition meant not receiving opportunities I had hoped for. Yet I’ve learned that opportunity at Yale is abundant. When one door closed, another often opened. Through continued persistence, I found meaningful alignment in places like the Social Impact Consulting Club and the Inclusive Economic Development Lab (IEDL), which have helped me move toward my goals.
Equally transformative has been the acquisition of academic tools I had long felt I needed to become a more effective leader. In the IEDL, I’ve worked alongside urban planners from the Yale School of Architecture and community leaders from the Greater Dwight Development Corporation. Together, we are exploring how city planning can reflect community priorities. We have learned to approach this work methodically: developing asset maps, analyzing historical data, attending community board meetings, reviewing city plans, and identifying tangible areas of need, from tree canopy gaps to potential sites for cultural centers and affordable housing. These frameworks have given me a disciplined way to translate values into strategy. For me, the IEDL has opened a window into the kind of place-based work I hope to pursue long term.
What’s one highlight of this experience?
One of the most meaningful aspects of my experience at Yale SOM has been the opportunity to learn and grow alongside Adama Kamara ’27, my close friend and classmate. Adama and I share a similar orientation toward the world as artists who are deeply interested in using business tools to strengthen arts communities. She is the founder of a startup that supports local humanities and cultural institutions, and I find her leadership both inspiring and aspirational. Working alongside someone who thinks expansively about the intersection of creativity and enterprise has pushed me to clarify and elevate my own ambitions.
It was a privilege to collaborate with Adama in organizing our exhibition at 63 Audubon, titled Drawn Together: Notes on a Shared Future. The exhibition invited local artists to reflect on what makes a city and paired their visual work with interdisciplinary conversations about urban planning, housing, and economic development. In curating the show, we were able to bring together our artistic instincts with the stakeholder engagement frameworks we’ve learned at SOM. It allowed us to explore questions of economic development through a medium that felt authentic to us.
Now, as we move into the fourth quarter and formalize our work through the Inclusive Economic Development Lab, we are building on that experience with greater structure and analytical rigor. What began as a creative inquiry is evolving into a more systematic exploration of how arts, policy, and economic strategy intersect. I feel deeply fortunate to be on this journey with someone who shares my values and curiosity. Having a partner in this work has made the experience richer and more grounded.
What advice do you have for other students interested in this fellowship?
Just go for it. At 45, I made the decision to transform my life by imagining something larger than what I previously believed was possible. Choosing to pursue an MBA at Yale SOM was not the conventional path for someone with my background, but it felt like the right place to stretch and reimagine the scope of my impact. The Aspire Fellowship turned what felt like a distant aspiration into a lived reality.
I would encourage any non-traditional student like me—who grew up low-income, who comes from an unconventional professional path, who is a parent, or who feels they may be “starting late”—to remain open to the full range of what their life can become. Growth does not have an age limit. Reinvention does not require permission. Sometimes the most important step is placing yourself in environments where possibility exists and allowing programs like the Aspire Fellowship to meet you there.
