Typically, by the end of January, nearly half of everyone who made New Year resolutions has given up on them.
Not Isa D’Elia, MBA 26.
While her detailed list of resolutions covers an entire page, Isa has distilled them to four words: Push hard through fear.
The Berkeley Haas full-time MBA program is the ideal place for that. “This is my sandbox, my place to try a bunch of ideas with less risk,” she said. Even better, it is “a community that shares many of my visions, missions, and even specific goals. My best friend at Haas is a venture capitalist who gave me feedback on the first iteration of my start-up’s pitch. Every week, I rock climb with the person who sat next to me on the first day of class. I’ve even signed up for the Napa Half-Marathon with a group from my class. I’m grateful to be surrounded by high-achievers who enjoy working hard and find pleasure in cheering each other on in each of our wins, no matter how small.”
Isa earned her undergraduate engineering degree at UC San Diego with an emphasis on environmental engineering and technology. She followed her passions—aerodynamics, data analytics, even aerospace—before settling into a job as a business intelligence engineer with Amazon. “In all of my jobs, my passion has been to improve how things work: making a race car more aerodynamic, reducing the flow of pollution, improving sustainability, coding more efficiently,” she said. “But in a company as big as Amazon, it is inevitable that the mission gets murky. It is harder to see your impact in the finished product or process. I often felt my voice would be more valuable in the room where decisions are made.”
Isa sensed it was time for her “to create something, to take the leap.”
For Isa, that meant entrepreneurship, a familiar concept. When she was 15, her family left Venezuela, a country “wracked by crime and hyperinflation” for better, safer opportunities in the U.S. “Venezuelans are very entrepreneurial. They see a need and create a business to fill it. That is what my father did, like many other friends,” she said. Now, Isa sensed it was time for her “to create something, to take the leap.”
The choice of Berkeley Haas was easy given its long history of nurturing entrepreneurship and its extensive network of founders and funders. Nonetheless, Isa was surprised by the value in being just a BART ride away from San Francisco. “I have probably gone over 20 or more times on weekdays just to meet with founders and people in the start-up community. People are so willing to talk and generous with their advice. And these aren’t even Haas alumni,” she said. “Haasies love to come to campus, where it is even easier to meet them at Tech Club and Berkeley Entrepreneurship Association events.”
As Isa prepares to launch her start-up, GoalBridge, those conversations and other Berkeley resources will propel her forward. She recently pitched GoalBridge at Pitch Night, sponsored by the student-run Courtyard Ventures fund investing in early-stage start-ups. “Our mission with GoalBridge is to make managers in corporate roles more effective. By reducing logistical tasks using AI, we clear some space in a manager’s plate, which lets them focus on the human aspects of managing people,” Isa said. Pitch Night is a competition to enter the elective class, Lean Launchpad, where founders learn a proven methodology for building a start-up from the ground up.
Her start-up team includes Siddarth Kalia, MBA 26, a member of Isa’s first-year study group, and three graduate students in UC Berkeley’s School of Engineering. Isa plans to dedicate the summer to raising money, landing their first client, and getting into an accelerator. “SkyDeck would be ideal, but it is very competitive. We plan to cast a wide net, including UC Launch and Y Combinator,” Isa said. That plan depends on Isa and Sid receiving one of the stipends Berkeley Haas provides to aspiring founders who eschew a traditional internship. If that doesn’t work out, they are confident they will find summer internships with an early-stage start-up. Either way, Isa and Sid will continue to hone their entrepreneurial skills.
Isa also will continue to deepen ties with her classmates and what she calls her “crews”: the people she rock climbs and run with (she is the co-VP of Rock Climbing in the Redwoods@Haas Club), her Hispanic community, and her “C-family.” That “C” is shorthand for the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management. Being a Consortium student “meant I had already met some of my classmates before the first semester started. That meant Haas wasn’t such a new place on Day One. We are a community of black and brown students who cheer each other on, no matter what. I’m proud to be a co-liaison for the Consortium.”
But mindful of the need for balance in life, Isa is careful “to resist the impulse to lead everything. Instead, I want to attend everything that appeals to me. That leaves me space for the rest of life.”
