Lupe Alonzo-Diaz, MBA 26, is a public servant in the broadest definition of that phrase. While she believes that government “exists to solve complex problems, especially in the areas of health care, education, and social services,” she recognizes that government can’t do everything on its own. “The nonprofit and private sectors need to be part of the solution,
she said. “I believe strongly in the value of the ‘double bottom line’: being a strong fiscal steward while also being of service.” Honing her financial acumen is one of the reasons Lupe enrolled in the Berkeley Evening & Weekend MBA program.
Already a veteran of the C-suite—she is currently president and CEO of Physicians for a Healthy California and vice-president of continuing medical education for the California Medical Association—Lupe’s goal for her MBA studies is less about personal career advancement and more about connecting with others who want to be “change agents who disrupt and innovate for the greater community good.”
As a member of the Flex cohort Lupe is Challenging the Status Quo of what business school should look like. “I could not have considered an MBA program without the Flex option. I am a mother to two school-aged kids, a wife, and the daughter of an 80-year-old abuelita who lives with our family. I’m a CEO, a PTA vice president, and a nonprofit board member. The Flex option is designed for people with full lives who aren’t afraid to have their cup runneth over.”
There is something magical about taking a pause during the workweek to put on your student hat. That student hat reminds you that you are worth investing in, and that you are setting an example for your kids that there is always enough time in our lives to make an impact beyond ourselves.”
With core classes online in the evening, the Flex option offers expanded options for evening, weekend, online, and in-person electives. Still, Lupe admits that “saying yes to the EWMBA program has meant temporarily saying no other things. I am very intentional with my time and energy. You will find me doing homework during soccer practices, scheduling walk-and-talk meetings at work so I can get some exercise, and using the voice-to-text feature on my phone to write first drafts of my papers.”
Technology has helped Lupe and her cohort build strong bonds via their “prolific use of Slack.” She is quick to note that all Haas student clubs have a VP-Remote Experience position, a step toward ensuring remote MBA students can contribute to and benefit from the wide range of extracurricular activities. Some of those extracurricular activities are designed specifically for Flex students, and they form bonds with the other evening and weekend cohorts at events like WeLaunch and ReLaunch.
Initially relieved that the EWMBA program is “only three years long,” as she starts her second year, Lupe is “already saddened that I only have two years left. There is something magical about taking a pause during the workweek to put on your student hat. That student hat reminds you that you are worth investing in, and that you are setting an example for your kids that there is always enough time in our lives to make an impact beyond ourselves.”
Several of Lupe’s school lessons have proven impactful on the job. “For one of our Accounting class projects, we had to evaluate profit-and-loss statements, something I do regularly. I trust my peers so I asked my study group if we could do a trend analysis on my organization’s P&Ls from the last six years. We found unexpected insights into, for example, ways to streamline costs and improve our operating margin. Having a different set of eyes—my smart, trusted classmates’—opened my eyes to a different perspective.”
The value of taking a different point of view was underscored on a project for her Operations class, when students were assigned to reverse engineer a workflow process. “Instead of examining the process from step one to step seven, we started with the last step and worked backward. We started asking if every step was needed. What would happen if we went from step six to step four?” she said. “It was a great lesson in learning to Challenge the Status Quo, to examine pain points and decision points.”
The lesson from the core Data & Decisions course—by far the most difficult class for Lupe—was more personal. “I struggled,” she admitted. “And not just with the subject matter. That class forced me to recognize that yes, I had to take the class. Yes, I had to pass the class. But no, I did not have to get an A+ in the class. I needed to learn what would be useful for me to take away from the class. That relieved the pressure.”
In her choice of electives, Lupe is looking to “gain an academic grounding” in activities she has been navigating for years, like Negotiations and Power & Politics, as well as subject matter that is new to her, like Game Theory. She also is focusing in on the double bottom line with electives offered in Berkeley’s other graduate schools, like Professor Hector Rodriguez’s class, Organizational Behavior and Management in Healthcare in the School of Public Health.
Other classes have both reinforced and forced Lupe to reconsider her perspective on leadership, starting with the core Leading People course. In the first class session, when asked to describe her leadership style, Lupe said she relied on instinct to make decisions. “The professor’s feedback was clear: Stop that. Instinct isn’t enough. Now, I start by considering the impact I want to have with a decision or an action. I look first at the data, the evidence, the facts. Then, I can factor in my gut instinct and intuitions. It is similar to balancing the big picture with the technical details. A good leader can connect the dots across the organization and industry, but still needs to know enough of the operational details to be able to answer the phones at the call center.”