Students

A former Fortune 500 executive launches a cloud-computing start-up with three classmates. A student whose global conservation work explores agribusiness in Brazil seeks insight from a Brazilian classmate who works in that country’s financial industry. A Nigerian-born student who works in high technology wants to learn from his classmates about the clean tech sector, a vital and troubled industry in his home country.

Your EMBA classmates represent a remarkable diversity of experience and interests with key characteristics in common: drive, talent, ingenuity, and a thirst for knowledge that will inform their workplace today and transform their careers over the long term. “I have no doubt that everyone in this program will do something unique and powerful in their careers,” says Guadalupe Nickell, MBA 2011.

Learn from Your Peers

Current Berkeley-Columbia students include a Hollywood producer; a real estate developer from Bogotá, Colombia; a former assistant to the ambassador to Iraq; and the owner of a shoe factory in Fuzhou, China. A number of our students lead the new generation of clean tech experts and innovators, and others are pioneering executives in technology, real estate, retail, marketing, and finance.

You will learn from your peers in class, where professors engage the experiences of a room full of high-achieving executives. When students in Peter Goodson’s Mergers and Acquisitions course were studying the Roche Genentech takeover, sitting right in the classroom was a student from Genentech. “He was defending against the Roche offer,” Professor Goodson explains, “then, after the takeover, headed a major division of the combined company. We milked that experience for all we could learn. It’s so much more interesting for students when one of their classmates is involved.”

With the program’s intensive campus-based structure, you will also get to know your classmates while socializing over dinner, cheering at a Forty-Niners or Yankees game, discussing a campus speaker, and via email and phone between sessions. It’s what one student called “immersion networking,” a benefit that will pay dividends throughout your career, whether you are looking to advance in your current company, change industries, or launch a start-up.

Leverage Connections

The most successful students learn to draw on the strength of the entire community. There is geometric progression to growth in this program: working with your study group of four or five, connecting with dozens of your classmates at school functions, getting to know many of the hundreds of students in other programs at both schools, and allying with the extensive alumni network of two premier business schools. Your access to people at established and start-up companies allows you to tap a vast network of knowledge and practice, whether for consultative advice or professional opportunities.

The network—both your classmates and the wider alumni network—also offers the invaluable opportunity to demonstrate your strengths and skills. While still in the program, some students use the network to position themselves and their companies for future growth. Students stay in touch inside and outside of classes and program activities, sharing aspirations with fellow classmates. “These are friends for life, on both the professional and personal levels,” says Sonal Sinha, MBA 2011. “These alliances will help you in whatever you want to do in the future. I’m already getting business ideas from my classmates.”

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