From banker to brewer…

Now, that’s a catchy headline!

And it sums up the journey of Helena Valentine. Just four years ago, she worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs’ London office. One of the firm’s youngest employees, you could find her presenting her financial analyses to members of Board of Directors and C-Suite during her early days. Ultimately, Valentine’s passion wasn’t a corner office overlooking the Square Mile. Instead, she wanted to be among people, to provide a space where they could re-connect and celebrate with “full hearts [and] full glasses.”

A TASTE OF THE FATHERLAND

Helena Valentine, Washington University (Olin)

On Valentine’s Day, she joined her husband in opening Great Heart Brewing in suburban St. Louis. Picture an 8,000 square foot Alpine-themed beer hall, surveyed by a spacious loft and cozy fireplace, walls adorned with watercolors of the German countryside. The ales and lagers are brewed using old world Bavarian methods, with the glassware carefully personalized to accentuate each recipe’s rich flavor. Even more, the menu features chef-prepared, farm-to-table favorites like Schnitzel, Gulasch and Kaesespaetzle.

Launching a venture of this scale would be daunting to any founder. Valentine made this happen while earning her MBA at Washington University’s Olin School – a program she chose for consistently ranking among the world’s best in entrepreneurship. Over her time in the Olin MBA, Valentine traveled to Barcelona to help a St. Louis chain crack the Spanish market, received an offer from PepsiCo after a successful internship, and earned Beta Gamma Sigma – the highest honor for any business student.

“Building a business from the ground up – from conceptualizing the brand to opening our doors to guests – has been the most challenging yet rewarding experience of my career,” Valentine admits. “Navigating everything from managing construction, making beers and hiring a team, all while ensuring we stayed true to our vision of creating a welcoming community space, has taught me invaluable lessons in leadership, resilience, and entrepreneurship. Seeing guests enjoy our beer and food, and watching our team thrive, has been an incredibly fulfilling achievement.”

THE QUALITIES OF AN MBA TO WATCH

Fearless, relentless, selfless – three words that personify Helena Valentine…and the 2025 MBAs To Watch as a whole. To compile this year’s list, which includes 122 members, P&Q reached out to 82 top full-time MBA programs to nominate their top graduates. Ultimately, P&Q received 222 nominations, which were split between May’s Best & Brightest MBAs and August’s MBAs To Watch. This year’s batch hails from 76 graduate business programs, including the University of Chicago’s Booth School, IIM Ahmedabad, INSEAD, MIT’s Sloan School, and the Wharton School. On this list, women outnumber men by a 62-to-60 margin. Non-American students also outpaced their American counterparts by a 64-to-58 difference. Employment-wise, Bain & Company hired the largest number of MBAs to Watch, with 6 graduates, followed by Deloitte (5), Boston Consulting Group (4), and Amazon (3).

Matthew Genovese, University of Texas (McCombs)

What makes an MBA To Watch? In many cases, their classmates and faculty describe them as being the pillars of their classes, the role models who act as coaches and champions. Quick with a smile and a kind word, no gesture is too small and no problem too big for the MBAs to Watch. They are the go-getters who persistently pursue growth – and have fun along the way. And they are the constants their classmates can count on to deliver. Some may not have it figured it out at graduation, but when they do – watch out!

At UC-San Diego’s Rady School, Mark Hammond, a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter pilot, is described as the “epitome of quiet power” by one professor – someone who “listens and thinks before he speaks” and “knows how to build a consensus across varying viewpoints.” In contrast, USC Marshall’s Adetokunbo Kosile-Palmer acted as a tireless force of nature – someone who took action and produced results rather than waiting for the right moment. For Jade DeKinder, a professor at the University of Texas’ McCombs School, Matthew Genovese – another U.S. Marine – embodied true leadership.

“The best leaders don’t just excel—they elevate. Matt doesn’t just lead; he inspires others to think bigger, act bolder, and do better. He brings courage and honesty when it’s needed and humility and humor when it matters most.”

In many ways, the MBA to Watch spirit is summed up by Patricia Harrison, who heads up admissions at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School. Here, she paid the ultimate compliment to Zoe Kaslow’s commitment (and organizational skills).

“If you need to get something done…give it to Zoe!”

LEAVING A PASSION BEHIND…AND RISING EVEN HIGHER

It is a spirit that the MBA Class of 2025 brought to campus with them. Take Tom Ford, who earned his MBA at the Cambridge Judge Business School. A rower who competed in two Olympics, he represents the ‘never quit’ mentality that enables students to persevere through the steep learning curves and unrelenting demands of business school…often by leaning into each other.

“Winning the Paris 2024 Olympics [was my biggest achievement], Ford tells P&Q. “This was the culmination of a lifetime’s work and was done so by implementing lessons I had learned from not quite achieving this at the Tokyo Olympics (I won a bronze medal in the Eight boat in 2021). I am proud of the way that the GB rowing team learned and developed and became stronger than the sum of our parts.”

Helen Fox, Vanderbilt University (Owen)

This year’s MBAs to Watch also excelled in the arts. After studying voice performance in the United States, EDHEC Business School’s Duncan Holzhall managed contracts and logistics for an arts management firm, even publishing a book on the future of the opera industry. In Taiwan, Wei-Chi Su – the class president for the University of Maryland’s Smith Business School – worked as a professional dancer and commercial actor. Before joining Vanderbilt University’s Owen School, Helen Fox performed as an actress before opening a Pilates studio. Her career-defining moment, she says, was leaving behind an art form she loved and an industry she loathed.

“As an actor, I operated in a consistently dysfunctional and abusive industry. What does changing a decades-old, noxious culture look like? I knew as a performer that I didn’t have the power to enact change, and having recently-graduated undergrad, I knew I also didn’t have the skills. Quitting acting was my way of recognizing my worth and my abilities to transform without having to compromise on my wants, needs, or values. Through this experience, I gathered innumerable skills and opened myself up to opportunities I’d never even thought were possible, like being named an Ingram Scholar at Vanderbilt or getting a job at Deloitte.”

STRONG MILITARY PRESENCE IN MBAs TO WATCH

Fox wasn’t alone in pivoting to an entirely different career path in business school. Two years ago, Brianna Roque performed clinical research in breast oncology. After finishing her MBA at Boston College’s Carroll School, she joined Sanofi in business development. Duke Fuqua’s Colette Spriggs upgraded from managing phone and payment systems at the Georgia Aquarium to tackling ‘big hairy audacious’ client goals at the Boston Consulting Group. After working as an assistant principal at an elementary school, Anthony Hill Jr. transformed into a JPMorgan Chase banker after two years in TCU’s Neeley School. For Matthew Johnson, NYU’s Stern School’s marketing programming fueled a homecoming. A Hershey native and biomedical engineer by training, Johnson started as a brand manager at the Hershey Company this summer.

Military veterans, in particular, thrived in MBA programs. Boston native David Brown piloted an AH-64D Apache Helicopter before returning home to join MIT Sloan’s MBA Class of 2025. Unfazed by risk – he has completed 400 skydives after all including 150 in a wingsuit – Brown co-founded a venture in Sloan’s delta v accelerator that converts industrial carbon waste into chemical feedstocks. Oh, and he became a first-time father as an MBA student too. Jim Maley, a U.S. Navy officer and Raytheon hire, found an alternative way to serve during his time at Arizona State’s W. P. Carey School.

Gianluca Perino, IMD Business School

“I’m most proud of my work in the Televerde program, where I had the opportunity to help female inmates prepare for their professional lives upon release. It was meaningful to see how a bit of guidance and mentorship could provide a lasting impact on someone’s future, helping them build new skills and confidence. This experience deeply resonated with my values of empowerment and leadership.”

At IMD Business School, Gianluca Perino was elected class representative. Here, he was known for bringing classmates together with sailing excursions and tiramisù. Before earning his MBA, Perino flexed his leadership muscles in the Italian Navy, where he made his name by overseeing the integration of his ship in a U.S. carrier strike group.

“At the outset, I was overwhelmed and doubted my ability to handle such a significant task,” admits the Bain & Company hire. “There were no guidelines to follow, which only added to the pressure. However, as I was going through each challenge step-by-step over seven intense months, I started to see progress. The experience was transformative! It made me realize my entrepreneurial mindset and taught me the critical importance of effective stakeholder management and building strong relationships. By the end, I felt a deep sense of pride and accomplishment, knowing that perseverance and collaboration had led to a successful outcome.”

PLOTTING OUT THE FUTURE OF COCA-COLA

The MBAs to Watch brought a long line of successes to campuses too. In China, Vanderbilt Owen’s Anna Batty launched cross-cultural educational training program, while Yale SOM’s Rui Li turned Faction into one of the nation’s top ski brands. It only took Hong Kong University’s Anu Hodge six months to turn a slumping Nestlé product into a category leader. By the same token, Risa Ichwandiani oversaw the rollout of Pandago’s On-Demand and Last Mile services. In the process, the Asia School of Business grad solidified the Pandago’s position as the Asia-Pacific’s premier food delivery service. While one of Brooke Sharee Luster’s “big ideas” didn’t pan out, the Georgia Tech MBA can take comfort in being ahead of her time.

Tyki Wada, Emory University (Goizueta)

“I was able to anticipate the future of retail and fashion by doing extensive customer discovery while navigating the startup space in 2018. Through this experience, I built an MVP for the HGHLT version one, a video shopping platform which allowed video viewers to shop directly from the videos they were watching. Our biggest obstacle in 2018 was garnering enough industry support for a video shopping platform, years prior to the TikTok Shop and other social commerce platforms. I learned that “no” doesn’t always mean that your idea is a bad one. Sometimes, you’re too early!”

Alas, some MBAs to Watch were right on time. IESE Business School’s Christa Zacharia worked as the lead structural engineer on a project with Kengo Kuma, the legendary architect behind Tokyo’s National Stadium, the centerpiece of the 2021 Summer Olympics. SDA Bocconi’s Elvio Rossini was the lead author for a scientific publication on Pharmaeconomics – “despite not being a PhD student.” When Coca-Cola’s chief sales officer asked the North American analytics group if they were “positioned to win in the next 10 years”, Tyki Wada stepped up and supplied the answer.

“I played an important role in studying macroeconomic trends to uncover inherent risks totaling half a billion dollars and in building a data-driven segmentation framework that uncovered over $10B in future opportunities for our brand and revenue growth teams to act on,” writes Wada, a graduate of Emory University’s Goizueta School. “The icing on the cake was how our strategic recommendations didn’t end as strategy. I also held a product ownership role that connected our uncovered opportunities to in-market execution activities by building out a store plan optimization product with developers and data scientists.”

Pages 3-4: 122 profiles of the MBAs To Watch (Class of 2025)