A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN
I’m pleased to present our FY25 Annual Report. Typically, a year with an interim dean at the helm—not to mention a year of enormous challenges to higher education—is one of transition, but because of your support, Haas has continued to rise to meet the moment.
As you’ll read on these pages, we welcomed our first students in the MBA/master in climate solutions program, a new dual degree with the Rausser College of Natural Resources, and the inaugural class of our new four-year Spieker Undergraduate Business Program. Having met these students, I can tell you they are brilliant, energetic, and genuine—the kind of leaders that instill great optimism about the future. We offer some 30 AI-related electives across the MBA program, and we’re fast-tracking an AI certificate for our students.
We owe this success in large part to our rock star professors—many of whom we recruit and retain thanks to your generosity. In fact, we now have about 100 ladder faculty—our largest research-based faculty ever.
Your unwavering support has also helped Haas to grow and elevate our reputation. Our evening and weekend MBA program is ranked No. 1, our undergrad program No. 2, and our MBA for executives program No. 6 nationally in U.S. News and World Report. Our full-time MBA program ranked No. 8 nationally in the Financial Times this year—a jump of five spots! And, our master of financial engineering program was ranked No. 1 nationally by the TFE Times.
We’ve done all this while staying true to our Defining Leadership Principles, values we’ve embraced for 15 years. We celebrated this milestone with numerous events during the spring, including hosting three alumni in our Dean Speaker Series: Marc Singer, BS 86, who recently retired from a 32-year career at McKinsey; Sean Li, MBA 20, founder of University FM, a podcast agency that produces the Haas podcasts (as well as my own podcast, The Culture Kit with Jenny and Sameer); and Elena Gomez, BS 91, the CFO of Toast.
Elena is the chair of our Haas School Board and, in addition to being an inspiring leader and an insightful advisor, is a generous benefactor to Haas. Her recent gifts have helped launch the new Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Hub and funded other initiatives related to entrepreneurship. I’ve been honored to partner with her and other board members on ways to advance Haas so we can continue educating path-bending leaders at the edge of innovation.
Now that I am officially your dean, I’m conducting a listening tour to learn from our numerous constituents. I look forward to connecting with many of you and hearing your ideas and insights. Our strength lies in our community’s expertise, ingenuity, and unwavering commitment to excellence.
Thank you for all you do for Berkeley Haas.
Go Bears!
JENNY CHATMAN, PhD 88
Bank of America Dean