This year’s group of full-time students (129 in total) bring with them an average of 6.2 years of work experience. That background knowledge will serve them well as a foundation for the classes they’ll take, leadership opportunities they’ll seize, and complex, real-world business problems they’ll solve over the course of their two years at Emory University.

The benefit of the Two-Year MBA program for this class is a unique combination. They will be able to study with this level of elite faculty and classmates in a learning environment that is as small and close-knit as we are.

Brian Mitchell, associate dean of Goizueta’s full-time MBA programs

“It is an enormous benefit for students to be able to develop where they can be seen and heard as valued members of a strong community. They also get to have that experience in a world-class city where they still have access to many of the top organizations in the business world,” shares Brian Mitchell, associate dean of Goizueta’s full-time MBA programs and Goizueta Global Strategy & Initiatives.

The class of 2026 includes 32% women, 45% U.S. minority, and 45% international students.

Just a few of these stellar students include:

• – An ICU nurse who worked in surgical, transplant, and COVID units. This student was also a travel nurse in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Arkansas.
• – A recording artist who worked for Arcade Song Publishing, Sony Music, Columbia Records, and the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.
• – The founder and designer of the company Five One Three Designs, who also designed the book The World of Dad Jokes.
• – A Frito-Lay product manager who also served as the co-director of Camp Kesem and raised $70K to run this camp for children whose parents have cancer.
• – The founder of Tierra Unidad, Gwinnett County’s first bilingual community garden, which aims to teach Latinos about emerging farming practices. This student also created a risk assessment report for the Tokyo Olympics.
• – The co-founder of Activ24 Foods and Oils, a community focused on high-quality organic food products and cold-pressed edible oils that operates in 10 districts in India.
• – Some other incoming students include a professional race car driver, vice president of strategic client group at Truist, Coca-Cola brand manager, and a petroleum engineer.

The group also includes 19 members of the armed forces. Among the veterans, one is a decorated Green Beret officer, with a bronze star, who led a 12-month Special Forces team during the 10-day Battle of Hasakah.

“The Class of 2026 is exceptional in a number of ways,” reflects Mitchell. “They bring exceptional academic preparation, with an average undergraduate GPA of 3.5, across the widest range of majors and disciplines we have ever had in the program. Those perspectives are going to lead to enriched experiences inside and outside of the classroom. They are going to challenge each other – and us – to think about the world through different lenses. This is the key to building empathy as a leadership characteristic, so I have particularly high hopes for this class.”

Interested in learning more? Find out how the Goizueta MBA takes students beyond business as usual. 

The post Meet The Class of 2026: Two-Year MBA appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

“Goizueta is doubling down on global,” says Brian Mitchell, associate dean of full-time MBA programs and Goizueta Global Strategy and Initiatives.

The key to driving global impact? “Relentless collaboration,” Mitchell says. “The strategy is fueled by collaborations that help us create value for Goizueta. We’re delivering programs that are more interdisciplinary.” That requires a deeper level of partnership not only across Emory’s campus, but with Goizueta’s partners across the globe. To that end, Goizueta is working to strengthen existing partnerships with university entities, including Global Strategy and Initiatives, Atlanta Global Partnerships, and Advancement & Alumni Engagement. It’s doing likewise with organizations such as Partnerships in International Management (PIM), a consortium of top business schools around the world.

“We are creating programs and opportunities for students to be global citizens, global business leaders,” says Megha Madan, senior associate director of Goizueta Global Strategy and Initiatives.

Italy & France: Decoding Wine Markets

For more than a decade, Giacomo Negro, professor of organization and management, has researched wine markets in Italy and France. After interviewing more than 100 winemakers, critics, journalists, restaurant owners, and retailers in Piedmont, Tuscany, and Alsace, Negro and his co-authors Michael T. Hannan and Susan Olzak of Stanford University released, “Wine Markets: Genres & Identities.” The book describes how wine genres help reduce the great diversity of products and producers in the market and how collective identities from wine genres help producers organize their interests. The research focused on winemaking, but authors note the findings can “inform studies of all kinds of organizational settings in which market partitions like genres create new collective identities and boundaries.”

Osh, Kyrgyzstan: Transforming Kyrgyzstan’s Education

In 2019, Aselia Kupueva 99BBA co-founded Kupuev Academy in Osh, the southern capital of Kyrgyzstan. With more than 500 students and 80 full-time staff, Kupuev Academy is one of the top schools in Kyrgyzstan. The primary through high school curriculum focuses on math and science, Russian and English language, and IT. Elective courses and extracurricular activities, such as debate, financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and media, are designed to emphasize creativity and critical thinking. This September, the school will open a new building with 20 additional classrooms.

Atlanta, USA: African Leaders Explore Emerging Technologies

This July, two dozen Young African Leaders Institute (YALI) fellows from 18 African countries visited Goizueta to learn about emerging technologies. The event was hosted by Benn Konsynski, George S. Craft Distinguished University Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management. It featured sessions by Goizueta faculty and a team from Microsoft. Topics included ChatGPT and the future of work.

International Modules Broaden Horizons, Bolster Careers

In May, students from across MBA cohorts visited South Korea, South Africa, Germany, and Austria. They trips are part of Goizueta’s Global Experience Modules (GEMs). These modules introduce students to business practices and challenges on a global scale. Students not only experience cultural immersion, but walk away with practical business knowledge they can use in their careers.

Seoul, South Korea: Exploring the International Film Industry

During this GEM trip, students were treated to an intimate lunch with alumnus Woo Taek Kim 90MBA. Kim is founder and CEO, Next Entertainment World (NEW). He has also served as executive producer of dozens of films, many reaching global audiences. Students toured Haedong Younggungsa Temple while on the tip. They also learned about technological innovations in South Korea through a lecture from Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology.

Germany & Austria: Lessons in Business and History

In Vienna, students visited manufacturing company Asamer, run by alumnus Manfred Asamer 86MBA, to discuss business strategy. A visit to Mauthausen Concentration Camp reinforced that the absence of principled leadership can have tragic consequences.

Cape Town, South Africa: Learning from Local Entrepreneurs

Goizueta students traveled to South Africa and engaged in a number of experiential learning opportunities. Their journey began in Cape Town and extended to Johannesburg, South Africa’s industrial and financial center. There, the students visited Emory’s longtime partner, the Gauteng Provincial Government Innovation Hub. The organization was established to promote the region’s economic development and competitiveness by fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. Students met with local entrepreneurs and heard about how the Innovation Hub helped them grow their businesses.

Antigua, Guatemala: Coffee’s Climate Implications

As part of the specialty coffee programs for Goizueta’s Business & Society Institute, a group of BBA and MBA students visited specialty coffee growing communities in Guatemala. Students toured coffee farms to learn about the climate implications of coffee production. They also spoke to local farmers about the injustices in the coffee supply chain.

Cairo, Egypt: Attending the United Nations Convention on Climate Change

Last fall, a delegation of Emory undergraduate and graduate students—including Danni Dong 23MBA 23PH—attended the first week of the United Nations (U.N.) Framework Convention on Climate Change in Egypt. As official U.N. observers, the students sat in on negotiations and co-hosted a panel discussion, “Youth: From Resistance to Power,” in conjunction with the Climate Justice Program. Young activists from Pakistan, Kenya, Mexico, and the Philippines also took part in the discussion.

British Virgin Islands: A Lesson in Leadership on the High Seas

One of the premier leadership development programs for Full-Time MBA students is Goizueta’s Advanced Leadership Academy’s curriculum. It takes place in the spring semester of the students’ final year. One of the highlights of the program is a weeklong sailing trip in the British Virgin Islands. Gen. Ken Keen and Professor JB Kurish lead the trip. On a 50-foot sailboat, students serve in several roles— captain, cook, helmsman—and face a unique challenge each day. Students hone their listening and communication abilities and put the problem-solving skills they learned in the classroom to the test in an unfamiliar and intense environment.

Durban, South Africa: Applying Multi-Disciplinary Training to Maximize Healthcare Impact in Africa

Advancing Healthcare Innovation in Africa (AHIA) is a 15-year-old Emory-based program. It leverages multi-disciplinary faculty and students to facilitate workshops for African startups. AHIA aims to maximize the impact that these startups make on local healthcare systems across Africa. Over the past year, AHIA has led workshops in Durban, South Africa, as well as Cairo, Egypt. Over 200 African entrepreneurs and graduate students have participated in the workshops. AHIA also runs virtual training and educational programs on the business aspects of building and scaling health-related social enterprises.

Goizueta’s global strategy is designed to be flexible in order to adapt to new opportunities and a changing geopolitical and higher education landscape. Meant to serve as a framework for Goizueta’s global engagement, the strategy outlines initiatives designed to equip students to meet the opportunities and challenges of an increasingly interconnected world, empower faculty to lead and influence global scholarship and research, and position Goizueta as a school known for its global impact. Learn more about how Goizueta is going global.

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