Harvard Business School
NBA.com: “For Spencer Jones, forward with the Denver Nuggets, the NBA’s player engagement programs have provided an opportunity for growth and development, giving him a chance to build on his basketball career and chase success into the future.
Jones, along with 10 other current and former NBA players, recently enrolled in the Harvard Crossover Into Business program, an annual class linking athletes and Harvard Business School students that was developed through a partnership with the league.
“I’ve always looked at a career beyond basketball. These days, a career is only three to five years… so I knew I’d have to have a career afterwards,” Jones said after taking part in the program’s on-campus opening weekend. “You’re thrown into the business school process, and get a really good sense of what it’d be like.”
Jones said he has particularly enjoyed meeting students and taking in case studies at Harvard, as he grows his network and furthers his education.
As part of the program, students and athletes analyze the case studies – 10-to-15-page articles that describe decisions that companies and executives face, from LeBron James deciding between video-game endorsement opportunities to Live Nation’s partnership with Pharrell.”
To read more, click here.
DON’T MISS: 2024 MOST DISRUPTIVE MBA STARTUPS: TESTPARTY, HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Stanford GSB: “Among the legion of students whose affection and praise for the course they dubbed Touchy-Feely has made it a fabled part of the Stanford GSB experience, the Influence Line holds a special place.
Visualize 12 students sitting in a classroom. One by one, the students stand and place their classmates in a line based on how influential they believe each student is. They also rate themselves. By the end of the exercise, students may have appeared in the front of the line in some cases and at the end in others.
Hearing how your peers perceive you can be excruciating, says longtime course instructor Andrea Corney, MBA ’89, especially if that assessment is different from your own. “We tell students, you will be uncomfortable. You may have sleepless nights.” Although discomfort may result, that is not the aim: The rating is grist for discussion about why influence is gained or lost. And it is part of an ethos of truth-telling that gives Touchy-Feely its juice.
The Influence Line exemplifies the course’s immersive training in how to develop strong relationships and why doing so is crucial for successful leadership. “What are you learning about why classmates placed you there in the line, and what could you do differently to change it? A lot of students tell us the Influence Line was where they learned the most about themselves and how to change their behavior,” Corney says.
Interpersonal Dynamics is one of the most popular non-core courses in the history of Stanford GSB. More than 90% of MBA students enroll in one of the 12 sections offered each year, and it’s also popular with executive education cohorts. The course is now an indispensable piece of the GSB’s leadership training. But it wasn’t always that way.”
To read more, click here.
DON’T MISS: LIFTING THE CURTAIN ON ‘TOUCHY FEELY,’ STANFORD’S — AND THE WORLD’S — MOST ICONIC MBA COURSE
Stanford MBA students outside class. GSB photo
Stanford GSB: “Five second-year MBA students at Stanford GSB have been selected as 2026 Siebel Scholars in recognition of their outstanding academic achievements and commitment to building the future. The students — Victor Asiwe, Anne Rosenblatt, David Liang, Maxine Vainio, and Céline Vendler — were chosen by a committee of Stanford GSB faculty. They will each receive a $35,000 scholarship to be put toward their final year of study.
The Siebel Scholars program was established by the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation in 2000 to recognize the most talented students at the world’s leading graduate schools of business, computer science, bioengineering, and energy science. Each year, more than 90 graduate students at the top of their class are selected during their final year of studies. More than 1,900 Siebel Scholars currently serve as advisors to the Siebel Foundation and work collaboratively to find solutions to society’s most pressing problems.
The 2026 Siebel Scholars are:
Victor Asiwe
Victor Asiweopen graduated with distinction from the University of Cape Town with a BBusSci in Actuarial Science, one of only two students to achieve this honor while ranking top in his final two years, for which he received Discovery and Bain & Company awards. He is among the youngest Fellows of the Actuarial Society of South Africa, specializing in general insurance. Prior to Stanford GSB, he worked five years at Discovery Insure, where he established and led the technical pricing team managing a $25B+ sums insured portfolio at the global insurance innovation leader. At Stanford GSB, he serves as CFO of the Africa Business Club, was elected to the Academic Committee, and is a teaching assistant. This summer, he interned at Silicon Valley-based PayJoy. Victor served on the executive committee of the Association of South African Black Actuarial Professionals and mentors aspiring actuaries across Africa.”
To read four additional student profiles, click here.
DON’T MISS: MEET THE STANFORD GSB MBA CLASS OF 2026
Winter Garden at the University of Michigan’s Ross School
Ross School of Business: “In the 2025-26 academic year, the Ross School of Business welcomed 12 new faculty members. The professors and lecturers will teach across all degree programs and cover a number of areas of research expertise, including accounting, business communications, finance, marketing, strategy, and technology and operations.”
Daphne Armstrong, assistant professor of accounting, holds a BS and a Master’s of Accounting from Brigham Young University and a PhD in accounting from the University of North Carolina. Before embarking on her academic path, Armstrong was a tax preparer at EY from 2018-19. Her research focuses on federal regulators, with a special interest in tax. Armstrong studies how companies interact with U.S. government agencies, which monitor and constrain company behavior to protect various stakeholders. She will teach Financial Accounting (ACC300).”
To read profiles of 11 additional faculty members, click here.
DON’T MISS: THIS MICHIGAN PROFESSOR WANTS TO BLOW UP THE MBA AS WE KNOW IT
MIT Sloan Interior (Courtesy: Above Summit/MIT Sloan)
Sloan School of Management: “Innovating is always a challenge. Inventing high-impact solutions amid uncertainty, even more so.
Last week, 22 fledgling companies debuted their ideas at MIT’s 2025 delta v Demo Day startup showcase, the finale of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship’s delta v accelerator.
The delta v name comes from the measure of a change in velocity, an analogy that’s particularly apt this year, said Trust Center managing director Bill Aulet.
“Turn on a screen. Look anywhere around you. There are so many issues to be addressed right now,” said Aulet. “We built a whole entrepreneurial ecosystem not to keep [startups] here but to send them out into the world to have tremendous impact.”
The event encapsulates MIT’s tradition of using innovation to confront urgent issues, said Richard Locke, the John C Head III Dean of MIT Sloan, who listed health care, new manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and the creation of good-paying, highly skilled jobs as priorities.
Here are the 22 startups confronting those issues.
AutoAce builds AI agents for car dealerships to automate repetitive tasks, such as booking appointments.”
To learn about 21 additional startups, click here.
DON’T MISS: FROM FULL SCHOLARSHIP TO ENTREPRENEURSHIP: KANIKA RAJPUT’S JOURNEY AT MIT SLOAN
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Digital And AI Specialism Launched For Part-Time MBA Students at Warwick Business School