Earning the MBA Becomes More Family Friendly
Women have always faced certain biases when it comes to business. Pay gaps, maternity leave and the overall balance of work and family life have limited women to positions that are available to them. However, over the last few years the number of women in leadership positions at Fortune 500 companies and in political office has increased. According to the Pew Research Center, “Women have made inroads in this area slowly over time.”
Twenty years ago, there were no female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Now, women make up 5 percent of CEOs in the country’s Fortune 500 companies, 17 percent of the corporate board members among Fortune 500 companies and there are now 104 women who serve as members of Congress, according to the Pew Center. The number of state legislators who are women has also risen from 4.5 percent in 1971 to 24.2 percent in 2015.
The corporate and political worlds are not the only places where women are beginning to see changes. Colleges and Universities are now seeing more women enrolled in MBA programs than ever before. According to Pew, in 2013 women earned 36 percent of MBAs. Specifically, the Sloan School of Management at MIT welcomed the largest class of women in the school’s history in 2014. The incoming class of MBA students at Sloan in the Fall of 2014 was 40 percent female, up from 33 percent from the last year.
Wharton Prof Listed in Best Business School Professors Under 40 List
Wharton Professor Keisha Cutright, has been named the no. 2 professor in Poets&Quants’ Top Business School Professors Under 40 list. Cutright teaches marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Professor Cutright’s research focuses on the psychology of consumption, personal control and structure, branding, religion. She has authored and co-authored several published research paper in the field of marketing.
Fortune describes all of the professors on the list as having similar qualities, including, “They are all supremely well educated, highly talented researchers, exceptional teachers and, perhaps most important of all, they inspire students and their students inspire them.” The professors featured in the list are what Poets and Quants calls the “total package,” because of their “excellence in research combined with world-class teaching prowess.”
Wharton Welcomes New Director of MBA Admissions
The Wharton School has hired Frank DeVecchis as the new Director of MBA Admissions. Before his appointment to this position, DeVecchis was an academic advisor for around 200 Wharton MBA students. DeVecchis came to Wharton in 2009 as the Associate Director of the Wharton Fund. In 2011, he became the director of the Global Immersions Program and in 2013 he briefly served as the interim director of MBA Program Academic Affairs. He most recently served as the Director of MBA Academic Operations.
DeVecchis does not plan to make any big changes in the program immediately but will take time to find what he can do to improve it over the next few years. However, he does plan to make two immediate changes to the office by hiring a data analyst and a Senior Associate Director, who will be specifically focusing on the diversity of the applicants.
Wharton Online Biz Journal Discusses Engaging Leaders
The Wharton School‘s online business journal, Knowledge@Wharton, recently interviewed Charlene Li, CEO and founder of Altimeter Group on the importance of leaders direct connecting with those they lead. Li is the author of the book, “The Engaged Leader: A Strategy for Your Digital Transformation.” The book focuses on the importance of social technologies for leaders in order to connect with customers and employees.
The Wharton interview begins with Li explaining how a leader can be a leader, with out being engaged with employees and customers. “Today so many leaders are completely absent from the digital and social channels where their customers and employees are,” Li said. “They are not engaged at all. They feel like they need to be, but they don’t really want to be. They don’t know how to do it.” Li explains that she wrote the book because “t’s time for them to actually figure out how to do this, why to do it and how to be successful at it.”
Wharton Expands Social Venture Fund
The Wharton School has announced that is has partnered with OurCrowd, an equity-based online crowdfunding platform, and investment firm Locust Walk Impact Partners to provide students with world-class experiential training in impact investment and to greatly expand the student-run Wharton Social Venture Fund.
The Wharton Social Venture Fund is a program run under the Wharton Social Impact Initiative (WSII), the School’s hub for social impact activities, research and opportunities. This new partnership has made Wharton’s offering the largest and most active student-run impact investing fund in the world.
Wharton Holds Application Tips Webinar
The Wharton School will be hosting a webinar for prospective students. The webinar will focus on tips for completing a successful application for the MBA program at the Wharton School. The webinar will be held March 10 from 4 to 5 p.m. The webinar is free for all prospective students to attend. Registration for the webinar can be completed online.
During the webinar, prospective students can join members of the Wharton MBA Admissions team for an overview of the application process. There will also be a short presentation about the MBA program at the Wharton School, followed by an opportunity for participants to ask any questions about the program and application process.
