Amal Haq
IE Brown Executive MBA (IE Business School and Brown University)
Age: 41
“I’m curious about people, power, infrastructure, and the subtle forces shaping how societies function.”
Hometown: Washington, D.C.
Family Members: Parents, three siblings (two sisters and a brother)
Fun fact about yourself: Equally passionate about governance failures, process design, and poorly made croissants.
Undergraduate School and Degree: BSc (Syracuse University); MSc (Georgetown University)
Where are you currently working? U.S. Department of State; currently serving in the U.S. Embassy Ankara
Extracurricular Activities, Community Work and Leadership Roles: Throughout my career. My honors have reflected my focus on personal commitment, public service, crisis response, and institutional resilience – from undergraduate research awards at Syracuse University to U.S. Department of State recognitions supporting global health security, non-proliferation, and international crisis-response programs, as well as IE Business School’s Blue Torch Award for academic excellence.
Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? What I am most proud of during business school is that I was able to stay consistently engaged and produce strong work while managing major life transitions at the same time. This included an international move from U.S. Embassy India to U.S. Embassy Turkey, navigating transformational organizational change at work, and refurbishing a condo for rent. I am proud of the work my two EMBA teams produced, because we delivered thoughtful, consistent results throughout the program. I am also very proud of two milestone projects in my EMBA: my Key Reflection Project, completed in partnership with a close EMBA colleague, and my Global Trends analysis. In these projects, I explored Open RAN and cross-border Trade Corridors respectively, which allowed me to think more deeply about how complex systems and infrastructure can be designed to provide security, improve connection, and operate at scale. Just as importantly, I made time for one serious hike each term, which became my anchor and helped me stay grounded across all four terms.
What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? One of the professional achievements I am most proud of was supporting efforts in India to strengthen U.S.-India cooperation on strategic trade and trusted technology partnerships. The work required sustained coordination across institutions, long-term relationship building, and navigating complex regulatory and policy environments. What made it meaningful to me was the opportunity to contribute – even in a small way – to building more secure, trusted, and resilient systems for future technology cooperation. Earlier in my career, I also found deep meaning in supporting U.S. government responses to chemical weapons use in Syria and Iraq, and the Ebola outbreak in 2018. These experiences reinforced the importance of coordination, resilience, and patient institutional work during periods of crisis and uncertainty.
Who was your favorite MBA professor? It is difficult to choose just one professor because different parts of the program shaped me in different ways. From Brown, Professor Stephen Porder left a lasting impression through his seriousness, optimism, and thoughtful approach to climate change. I appreciated that he recognized people engage with difficult issues differently, and that meaningful progress often begins with connecting to their existing values and framing the conversation so they can begin to take an alternative perspective.
From IE, Professor Jill Paine had a similarly profound impact through the intentionality, attentiveness, and intellectual rigor about executive leadership. As one of my earliest courses in the EMBA, her class captured much of the promise, energy, and seriousness that defined the program experience for me.
Why did you choose this school’s executive MBA program? I chose IE’s Executive MBA because I wanted an international program that matched the global career I had built and the broader perspective I still wanted to develop. I had long been drawn to IE, from an info session I attended in the early years of my career in Washington, somewhere on K Street NW. In 2023, when I found the joint structure with Brown, it felt like the right fit, especially as an American working for the U.S. government with deep ties to the U.S. and a desire for a program that also carried elements of a formative American academic experience.
Most importantly, the program resonated with my Syracuse undergraduate education. Here my hard-science training was shaped by a broader liberal arts and humanities framework that influenced how I think about the world around us and leadership within it. I was drawn to a program that treated business education as a chance to think intentionally about responsible business, accountability to society, and our obligations to humanity, especially at a moment when the world’s normative and technological structures are changing so rapidly. It felt like the right place to gain breadth while staying true to my core.
What is the biggest lesson you gained during your MBA and how did you apply it at work? The biggest lesson I gained during my MBA is that disruption rarely arrives at a convenient time, whether it is personal or systemic. You cannot wait for perfect conditions; you have to respond with the tools, resources, and judgment you have at that moment. In disruptive times, we often talk about resilience, which is easy to conflate with preserving and persevering; instead, it’s about adaptive change and creating value through change. I have applied this lesson during a period of major restructuring at work by actively looking for where I could add value, retiring old assumptions, and adapting my approach as the organization evolved.
Give us a story during your time as an executive MBA on how you were able to juggle work, family and education? Shortly after our Providence residency, I learned that my transition from U.S. Embassy India to U.S. Embassy Turkey had been finalized and that I would need to move very quickly. What followed was one of the most demanding periods of the EMBA for me. Within a short span of time, I was managing an international relocation, closing out my role in New Delhi, preparing for my transition to Ankara, overseeing a condo renovation in Washington, and keeping up with work and coursework at the same time. Compounding this, there were serious health issues within my family during this period, including an urgent situation involving my grandmother when I had to make a 14-hour round trip by road, immediately before embarking on a flight. Looking back, I do not think I balanced everything perfectly, especially when it came to family, where you always feel you could have done more. But balance should not be conflated with perfection; its more about remaining present and steady across multiple competing priorities, which I think I managed to do.
What advice would you give to a student looking to enter an executive MBA program? My advice would be to reflect carefully on your priorities and your stage of life before starting an EMBA. It is a serious commitment. You need to be ready to be fully responsible to yourself first, because you are doing it for your own growth. That level of commitment helps you get the most out of the program, but it also matters to your classmates, since EMBAs are highly collaborative and people rely on one another to show up fully. If you are not in a place to bring that energy yet, that does not mean you should never do it – it just means you may need to wait until the timing is right.
What was your biggest regret in business school? One regret is that there was not more time. I would have welcomed the chance to sit with the material longer and deepen my thinking even further. However, the EMBA was intense and fast-paced, with several courses and long-term projects running at once and alongside the demands of professional and personal lives. I often had to focus on delivery and deadlines rather than spending as much time as I wanted thinking through and learning certain topics more deeply. If anything, my regret is simply that I would have gladly given even more time to the program if I had more of it.
What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? I recognize there are very different schools of thought around AI in academic settings. I think many of the concerns are well-reasoned because AI challenges traditional approaches to learning and assessment. At the same time, I believe institutions need to begin adapting now, even if the process involves experimentation and occasional missteps. That’s because we will only learn how pedagogy should evolve by actively engaging with these tools. I appreciated that the program took a cautious but forward-leaning approach. They encouraged responsible AI use and provided students with access to subscriptions and licenses that allowed us to become familiar with these technologies early on. I think the next step for business education will be exploring how AI can be integrated more directly into classroom learning itself while still maintaining academic integrity and critical thinking.
What was the main reason you chose an executive MBA program over part-time or online alternatives? I chose an executive MBA rather than a fully online or part-time alternative because I wanted a true in-person cohort experience and a program that would keep momentum high. I did not want the learning to drag on, and I valued the commitment and connection that come from being physically present with classmates. In person, it is easier to build trust, show up for one another, and remember that there is a real person on the other side of the work. That matters both for accountability and for compassion.
How did you finance your EMBA and what did you do to make tuition and associated costs more affordable? I was fortunate to receive some financial aid from my institutions, which was a key determinant in making the EMBA possible. For the remaining cost, I relied mainly on savings, made some divestments, and made deliberate choices about how to use my money and leave while living abroad. That meant prioritizing residentials and the program over trips home or vacations, so I could keep the commitment manageable without taking on additional loans.
What is your ultimate long-term professional goal? My long-term goal is to help build the next generation of systems that allow less-resourced economies to participate more meaningfully in the global economy through trusted technology adoption, infrastructure, and institutional coordination. I hope to contribute to work that materially shifts how opportunity, connectivity, and economic participation are structured at scale, in ways that are more inclusive and resilient.
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