Poets&Quants™ Names Best & Brightest MBAs of 2024

    SAN FRANCISCO, CA, May 10, 2024 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Poets&Quants, the leading news source for graduate business education, has released its 10th annual Best & Brightest MBAs feature, which honors 100 of the most accomplished full-time MBAs from the Class of 2024.

"I like to think of them as the classmates that everyone remembers," says Jeff Schmitt, Poets&Quants' senior writer, who launched the series in 2015. "Sure, they came to business school with impressive resumes. What set them apart is that they were the ones who always asked, 'How can I help?' Whenever their classmates interacted with them, they always left feeling better about themselves. They were prolific too. People always wonder how they get so much done. In the end, the Best & Brightest made their classmates better. They were the standard-bearers – and they'll be the same wherever they land."

This year's class features MBAs like the University of Oxford's Echika Obijiaku. She plans to move 10 million Africans out of debt through her Mwanga startup, which has scaled to 70 employees and 300,000 customers over the past five years. Laura Emerson, a University of Georgia MBA, tripled sales in Forever 21's Home & Gift division in just one year. Before joining Columbia Business School, David Russell arranged food delivery to Ukraine as a member of the Joint Enabling Capabilities Command. In the wake of ISIS using rape as a weapon of war, the White House tapped Saamia Noorali, now a graduate of the University of Virginia's Darden School, to help reunite Yazidi women with their children in Syria.

To compile this year's Best & Brightest MBAs, Poets&Quants reached out to 78 top graduate business schools to nominate their best candidates for the honor. Responses were judged by P&Q editorial according to four criteria: extracurricular involvement, academic and professional achievements, insightful responses, and faculty recommendations. Ultimately, P&Q received 226 nominations, including submissions from elite institutions like Wharton, INSEAD, and the University of Chicago's Booth School. By gender, Best & Brightest men outnumber men by a 55-to-45 margin, with 41 students hailing from outside the United States. This year, McKinsey and Deloitte each hired 5 Best & Brightest MBAs, the largest number from any employer.

As part of this feature, each MBA receives an in-depth profile, which covers subjects ranging from their proudest achievement to their favorite classmate. Over the coming months, Best & Brightest will also spotlight the best student responses related topics like their favorite faculty members, biggest school myths, and most interesting school traditions.

To read about the "100 Best & Brightest MBAs: Class of 2024", Visit here.

Poets&Quants, a part of Times Higher Education, is the leading resource for complete coverage of graduate business education. We feature multiple tools and authoritative content, including consolidated business school rankings, news and in-depth features, videos, podcasts, two searchable directories, and events, empowering our community with information needed to make decisions along their journey from pre- to post-MBA.

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