Category:Famous MBA Graduates
The Master of Business Administration is a graduate management degree, first taught in the United States at the start of the twentieth century and now the standard credential for corporate general management. It is the only qualification on this wiki that shows up in force at both ends of American public life: the chief executive suites of the largest listed companies, and the floor of Congress. That double presence, rather than any single institution or industry, is what this category actually records.
Background
The MBA was designed as a general management degree rather than a technical one, which is why the people in this category so rarely share a functional background. Some came through finance, some through operations, some through the military, and a substantial number treated the degree as a mid-career pivot out of one field and into another. Two-year full-time programs dominate the roster, and the schools represented are the ones whose alumni networks are themselves the point. The degree tends to appear in a biography as a hinge: the paragraph before it describes one career and the paragraph after it describes another.
The chief executive suite
The current occupants of the largest corner offices are heavily represented. Tim Cook took an MBA at Duke before Apple; Satya Nadella one at Chicago before Microsoft; Sundar Pichai one at Wharton before Google and Alphabet; Andy Jassy one at Harvard before Amazon; Doug McMillon one at Tulsa before Walmart. Energy and consumer goods follow the same pattern with Darren Woods at ExxonMobil, Wael Sawan at Shell, Ulf Mark Schneider at Nestlé and Ramon Laguarta at PepsiCo. Defense contracting supplies Kathy Warden at Northrop Grumman and Phebe Novakovic at General Dynamics, and communications and logistics supply John Stankey at AT&T and Raj Subramaniam at FedEx. Susan Wojcicki and Neal Mohan ran YouTube in succession, both with the degree.
Financial services is denser still. Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, Jane Fraser at Citigroup, Charlie Scharf at Wells Fargo, Stephen Squeri at American Express, Adena Friedman at Nasdaq, Larry Fink at BlackRock and Stephen Schwarzman at Blackstone all hold one. The international entries follow the same shape: Tidjane Thiam took an MBA at INSEAD before running two European banks, and Susanne Klatten took one at IMD in Lausanne before a career managing industrial holdings.
The degree in elected office
This is the part of the roster that separates the MBA from every other credential on this wiki. George W. Bush holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and served as President of the United States. Robert McNamara took the same degree, taught at the same school, ran the Ford Motor Company and served as Secretary of Defense. Colin Powell earned an MBA at George Washington University during his army career and served as Secretary of State.
In Congress the degree turns up on both sides of the aisle. Senate members include John Thune and Gary Peters and Tina Smith. House members include Pramila Jayapal, Abigail Spanberger, Kevin McCarthy, Seth Moulton, Marilyn Strickland and Suzan DelBene. Governors include Doug Burgum, Glenn Youngkin, Ned Lamont, Pete Ricketts and Ryan Zinke. City hall is represented by Kate Gallego in Phoenix and Justin Bibb in Cleveland, and Eleni Kounalakis holds statewide office in California. In most of these entries the degree precedes a business career, and the business career is what the candidate ran on.
Investors
The investment entries are the ones where the degree is most often mentioned as a specific formative experience. Ray Dalio, Seth Klarman, Bill Ackman, Mario Gabelli, Peter Lynch and Li Lu all hold one. So do the venture investors Vinod Khosla, Roelof Botha and Josh Kushner, and the founders Scott McNealy, Katrina Lake and Tony Xu. Michael Bloomberg belongs in this section and the previous one at once: he took an MBA at Harvard, built a financial data company and then served three terms as mayor of New York City.
See also
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