Student Perspectives

The immersions let me explore leadership in all its aspects.

Applied Innovation tools align with my work at Putnam, while giving me a new way of thinking about what I do and how, especially in terms of incorporating design thinking concepts.

Leadership Communications showed me that I have leadership stories to tell and gave me a tool—“the river of life”—that I am already using to get to know with my teams at work better.

We met a phenomenal array of founders during the Silicon Valley immersion, giving me a remarkable introduction to the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem. And spending a week on Public Policy in Washington, D.C. was unexpectedly interesting.

A class that is exhausting, energizing, and incredible

The elective Turnarounds, taught by Peter Goodson, was the most incredible culminating class in our last term.

It tied the bow on everything we had learned: leadership, finance, strategy, operations, and crisis management.

It helped me realize that I want to be an operational leader, to solve problems, improve outcomes, and to run a company.

From coaching to exploring, look to the Career Management Group

I enjoy my work at Putnam and there is a lot of range here. But I have so many questions: Do I want to be on the client side in biotech or pharma? What about global health or a start-up? CMG has supported my exploration, encouraging me to reach out to alums.

The dedicated resources for EMBA students are top-notch: Luke Kreinberg gave me great career advice and Natalie Brain and Hoyt Ng helped me through leadership challenges with executive coaching.

I still meet regularly with Natalie. She helps me see issues through a different lens or come up with a new framework. This is a lifelong benefit from Berkeley Haas that I am grateful for.

Learning from other industries

I came to Berkeley Haas to put myself into a new learning environment, come back reinvigorated and contribute more to Putnam, in additional unique ways.

Putnam is the only job I’ve had. Everything I know is from that perspective. I knew it would be useful to see consulting from the perspective of people who work at other firms.

There’s also so much opportunity to learn from other industries, whether that is from classmates or faculty, guest speakers or alumni.

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