While earning an MBA degree from any institution is certainly an accomplishment, Haas students at the University of California, Berkeley have always wanted more than just a diploma. They are driven by a deep desire for transformational learning—seeking classroom lessons they can immediately utilize in their workplaces and lives.
Over the past months, we’ve chatted with several Evening & Weekend MBA students, all MBA 25 students in our inaugural Flex cohort, to learn about how they are taking their MBA learnings from theory to practice. Let’s look at some snippets of each of their stories and see the diverse ways Haas students are applying classroom knowledge to career and life.
Emily Harmon: mastering business strategy and wall street
Emily Harmon, an HR Business Partner at Microsoft, struggled in meetings with business leaders before pursuing her MBA. Her role involved advising them on people strategy, but her struggle to understand their business goals created a disconnect. She adds “Sometimes there is a feeling like HR needs to earn their seat at the table with business leaders.”
While she cites Data Analytics as being a particularly helpful class in her work, the program as a whole has greatly improved her confidence in working with these leaders. “I experienced a lot of personal growth in my understanding of how business works and in how I show up. The leaders feel like I understand what they’re trying to do, and I’ve immediately improved my partnerships.”
Emily chuckles as she shares another example of applying classroom learnings. She says, “After I took my Asset Management elective, I would watch news segments about Wall Street and the stock market, and I understand what they’re talking about now. There’s so much value in what we’re learning.”
Daniel Mitchell: becoming a mentor
Sometimes lessons learned in the classroom extend beyond the workplace and also influence students’ personal lives. Daniel Mitchell wasn’t expecting such personal growth from an MBA, but he shares about this unexpected outcome:
“One unanticipated way I’ve grown is through interpersonal skills. I’ve taken lessons from the communication courses, interpersonal skills, and Embodied Leadership classes and applied these to mentoring younger colleagues, and even in my personal life. These courses also gave me tools to bolster my public speaking capabilities.”
For Daniel, the ample opportunities for relationship-building within the program have been a catalyst to this growth. He notes that Haas provides plenty of avenues for relationship development and that students who seize these opportunities can uncover a great “personal treasure.”
Michele Obermeyer: evidence-based team leadership in a start-up
During her time in the Flex MBA program, Michele Obermeyer took a big risk and decided to move to a smaller company where she could make a greater impact. She currently works as the Director of Engineering at a Pre-Series A company with a small team. Being part of a start-up is providing endless opportunities for her to bring her classroom knowledge into her career.
To be able to sit in a class and immediately turn around and put it into effect shows that the professors really know what they’re talking about..."
For Michele, the Leading People class especially sticks out. “We spent a lot of time on general best practices for leading a team. That was all immediately relevant to what I was doing. To be able to sit in a class and immediately turn around and put it into effect shows that the professors really know what they’re talking about and you’re truly getting something out of the program.”
Because the team at her company was small, she had a lot of opportunities to build new processes in accordance with her learnings. She’s enjoyed putting more thorough development practices in place and has helped her team craft better goals and timelines. She draws confidence from Haas’ evidence-based curriculum and has found applying classroom learnings to her career to be nothing short of transformational.
Bryce Powerman: healthcare structure and negotiation
Bryce Powerman works for a genetic testing company, Natera, and shared how his courses helped him map out a team structure at his company:
“I took an Organizational Behavior and Healthcare class that was about the structure of healthcare organizations. That really got me thinking about the most efficient team structures for various corporate settings. We are contemplating a shift of my team—creating a true business unit and segmenting various responsibilities all into one area. So I’ve been able to use takeaways from that class to map out what the team could look like.”
Bryce also found a course on negotiation particularly beneficial. He says, “I do partnerships right now at my current company, so I’m in negotiations a lot, and I’ve applied this course quite a bit,” He adds with a chuckle that it’s also aided him in various negotiations with friends and family.
Nour Abi Samra: stepping up to management
Nour Abi Samra shared a bit about the ways she has seen herself grow in her role as a Project Solutions Architect since beginning her MBA at Haas:
“The program has helped me think more strategically and align my work priorities with what benefits the company the most. More importantly, being in the program has empowered me to recognize that I am capable of performing beyond my current role, and that I am ready to step into a leadership and management position.”
Gene Lee: foundational knowledge for a startup
One of the reasons Gene Lee wanted to pursue a part time online program is that he saw the value of simultaneous learning and implementation, instead of just full time classes. When he joined Flex, he was serving as the Chief of Staff to the President at a higher education startup, Reach. Like in any startup, staff wear many different hats, and one of the hats Gene wore was coordinating the auditing process with a consultant. He was able to immediately implement his learnings from his Accounting class for this project.
Gene says, “I think it’s really important to be able to learn the fundamentals and then do it. The nice thing about being in a smaller startup is that you really get the chance to apply a whole swath of things across the board—general management, finance, accounting, to strategy. I found the classes to all be very applicable for these areas.”
Another example he gave was an in-person course he took about Business Models. During the class, they would look at a case and then a guest speaker from that case would come and speak with the class. He says Reach was sorting through some of the same questions covered in the cases, so he also found that to be very applicable for his work life.
Mei Headley: perfecting the art of data presentations
Mei Headley says she has seen significant growth in her professional life since beginning the program. This especially manifests through increased confidence in presenting data in compelling and authentic ways. She says, “Previously, I sometimes found it challenging to command attention and convey complex information effectively. However, classes like Leadership Communications and Inclusive Leadership have been transformative.”
She shared an example of a specific speaking technique that particularly resonated with her: The Vertical Takeoff:
“This technique emphasizes beginning a presentation with a powerful statement or story that immediately grabs the audience's attention. The week following this class, I had the opportunity to apply it directly in a high-stakes situation. I was tasked with a speaking role at our Annual General Meeting in front of our Limited Partnerships, a critical audience for anyone in the industry. Remembering the class discussion, I crafted my opening to make an impactful start, aiming to capture and hold the LPs' attention right from the beginning. The result was noticeably more engagement and a positive feedback loop that boosted the rest of my presentation.”
Now equipped with the skills and confidence to effectively present data, Mei has become a more persuasive communicator. For her, this has “marked a substantial step forward” in her career development.
Tony Lee: an unexpected journey of entrepreneurship
During the second on-campus immersion experience, Leadership Communication, Tony Lee and his classmates were tasked to write a letter from their future selves and then read the letters to their classmates.
The letters revealed that he and classmate Ike Ma had remarkably complementary goals. Tony envisioned a change in the health care delivery system while Ike dreamed about new generative AI opportunities. Tony approached Ike after class and proposed they work together to create a new healthcare startup.
Together they founded AidRx with the goal to “revolutionize the clinical documentation process making it more streamlined, accurate, and efficient, thereby empowering healthcare professionals and ultimately improving patient care.”
Starting from the ground up, they’ve leveraged insights from a variety of classroom topics, immediately implementing those lessons into their startup. They have also been able to leverage Berkeley Haas’ resources and do an accelerator program through UC Launch.
Two threads in a powerful combination
While the dreams, careers, and life goals of Berkeley Haas students are diverse, two common threads unite their journeys in the Flex program: closing knowledge gaps and building the confidence to reach new heights in life and career.
Whatever challenges or knowledge gaps students faced upon entering the program are addressed through practical, evidence-based, and immediately applicable classroom learning. But beyond just filling knowledge gaps, Haas instills in its students the confidence to act. Whether it’s speaking up in meetings, leading teams, mentoring colleagues, strategizing in business, changing jobs, or even launching startups, Flex students gain a transformative confidence that propels them forward.
This powerful combination of evidence-based, practical content and a renewed confidence equips students to take bold steps toward their dreams—proving the real value of a Berkeley Haas MBA degree reaches far beyond the classroom.
