Janitra Taylor is one of the best in her field. A veteran of JPMorgan Chase, Ernst & Young, and Bank of America, Taylor has collected awards from these institutions for outstanding leadership and service. In 2025, she was named one of American Banker’s Most Influential Women in Payments – an honor reserved for only 20 people.
That award wasn’t Taylor’s only headline this year. In May, she completed the Executive MBA program at the Yale School of Management.
It has been an unforgettable journey for Taylor, who served as an admissions and social media ambassador at Yale SOM. Sometimes, these roles intersected. On a campus visit, a prospective student exclaimed, “You’re that woman from IG!” – a reference to Taylor’s popular Instagram stories highlighting the lives of her MBA classmates. For Taylor, this social media reflected the bond her class developed from events like Global Network Week.
“I shared photos and videos from nearly 70 EMBA students traveling across the world—from Switzerland to Cape Town to Ireland. We showcased local traditions, course highlights, and the global EMBA community in action. That week, I wasn’t just capturing memories; I was helping tell the story of what makes Yale SOM’s executive experience so dynamic and global.”
Janitra Taylor, Yale School of Management
AN INJECTION OF CONFIDENCE; A CHANGE IN VISION
And profoundly transformational too, Taylor adds. Iron sharpens iron, as the saying goes in business school. By working alongside expert faculty and talented leaders, Taylor found her voice. Away from her comfort zone, she would “speak up in class, present bold ideas, and trust my instincts in high-stakes discussions.” This new-found confidence carried over into her job as chief product officer at MoCaFi.
“[I was] advocating more assertively for ideas I believed could move the business forward,” she tells Poets&Quants. “Instead of second-guessing myself, I started confidently presenting strategic recommendations, backed by data and a clear focus on outcomes. This shift allowed me to influence key decisions, positioning me as someone who not only had strong ideas but the confidence to stand behind them. Building self-confidence didn’t just change how I showed up in the workplace—it fundamentally changed how I led.”
Even more, this confidence helped Taylor recognize her potential – and the opportunities awaiting her. “The Yale SOM experience has deepened my ambition and sense of responsibility. I no longer see my path as limited to joining the C-suite of an existing Fortune 500 company—I now have the vision and conviction to build one.”
WHAT DEFINES THE BEST & BRIGHTEST
Taylor is among the 68 Executive MBA who are members of P&Q’s Best & Brightest Executive MBAs from the Class of 2025. Now entering its 11th year, the Best & Brightest honors the top EMBA graduates – the ones whose academic performance, extracurricular involvement, and career achievements made them the most indispensable leaders in their classes. This year’s class – which includes 36 women and 32 men – were chosen from 58 of the highest-ranked EMBA programs, including the University of Chicago’s Booth School, INSEAD, London Business School, and the Wharton School. As a whole, the class ranges in age from 35-66.
Career-wise, the Best & Brightest list includes physicians, business owners, researchers, lawyers, lobbyists, and engineers. And they hold leadership roles in companies as diverse as Apple, Citigroup, Deloitte, Google, Mattel, Marriott, Verizon, and Visa. In their personal lives, they were parents and volunteers, who traveled across their country to coach their children at soccer tournaments. During business school, they gave birth, earned promotions, fell ill, and lost loved ones. Despite setbacks – and sometimes feeling overwhelmed and overmatched – they carried on, knowing business school would position them to fulfill a dream or help a population in need.
Ultimately, this grit would set the Best & Brightest apart among their classmates. They were the ones who consistently showed up. They always came prepared, contributing the best insights and questions. In the process, they became the voices of their classes. And their peers could rely on them to take notes when they were absent or hold tutoring sessions when they struggled. Be it over campus dinner or karaoke, the Best & Brightest were often the ones who brought their classes together.
“My cohort became more than colleagues, we became a family,” observes Christine Asack, a graduate of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College who worked in the nonprofit health sector. “We supported each other through professional breakthroughs and personal hardships, balancing work, late-night study sessions, and life’s unexpected challenges. That depth of connection transforms the experience, turning education into lifelong relationships.”
Brendan James Alleyne, Washington University (Olin)
FROM DROPOUT TO DOCTOR
The Class of 2025 boasts its share of inspirational stories. Take Brendan James Alleyne, who went from GED to MD. After finishing his two-year degree at Erie Community College, he went on study Biological Science at the University of Buffalo and earn an MD at Case Western Reserve University. Now, he works as a plastic surgeon, while holding an MBA from Washington University’s Olin School.
“I am most proud of going from high school dropout to doctor,” writes Alleyne, a bodybuilder in his free time. “I was proud to prove about 30 naysayers in my life wrong when I was accepted to medical school. I clearly remember the exact moment I shared my first medical school acceptance email with my mom (my main life cheerleader). However, what I have become most proud of is sharing my story with students who feel as though they are hopeless during their journey to becoming doctors.”
Alleyne isn’t the only inspirational figure in the group. Seven years ago, Emma Laws was among a few hundred veterinary neurosurgeons in Europe. However, “life had other plans,” she tells P&Q. Awakening one morning with a paralyzed arm, she soon learned that she suffered a rare autoimmune condition that ended her surgical career – and jumpstarted a new one in business.
“I moved into a strategy role within the overarching company, ultimately ending up in me leading a new specialty hospital in London that I dreamed, pitched and designed,” explains Laws, a 2025 graduate of the University of Chicago’s Booth School. “It was tough having to forge a new career, but I am proud of how I handled the shift and delighted that it led me to pursue the Executive MBA.”
MEDICAL TRAILBLAZERS
Lola Adeyemi, Northwestern University (Kellogg)
Several class members pursued the public service route before enrolling in business school. While studying at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, Matthew Beck headed up security at the New York Stock Exchange’s International Exchange. Before that, he worked as a special agent in the United States Secret Service – a role where candidates are hand-picked out of “tens-of-thousands” of applications. When Stephanie Dobitsch wasn’t earning her MBA at Georgetown University’s McDonough School, she served as a senior executive at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). At the same time, Lola Adeyemi holds master’s degrees in Public Health and Environment Health from Johns Hopkins and Harvard respectively – not to mention an MD. An entrepreneur in digital health and women’s mentorship, Adeyemi’s big break came when she was earning her MBA at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School. Here, she was named a special advisor on research and innovation by the Government of Nigeria.
“Advising the Ministers of Health and Education is a responsibility I deeply value,” she explains. “Over the past sixteen months, aligned with Nigeria’s presidential agenda, I’ve successfully enhanced the national research ecosystem, implemented digital solutions for ethical oversight, and fostered international partnerships to advance healthcare access and innovation across Nigeria.”
Indeed, the Best & Brightest EMBAs have been particularly passionate about healthcare innovation. Lewis Lipscomb, a ’25 graduate of the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler School, is a pioneer in robotic surgery. While being a student at the IE Brown Executive MBA program, Eduardo Paredes developed a new biotech treatment that has moved to patient trials. Just as impressive, Olga Nin is a medical director for two surgery centers that handle over 600 surgical cases a month. On top of that, Nin works as an associate professor and assistant chair in the University of Florida’s Department of Anesthesiology and serves on over a half dozen committees. Oh – and she is one of the top students in the Warrington College of Business at the university…and a mentor too.
“I mentor over 100 faculty in their clinical, research, and academic development, while also overseeing all clinical scheduling. Balancing this leadership responsibility alongside my Executive MBA has deepened my strategic thinking, strengthened my operational management skills, and reinforced my commitment to developing high-performing teams in complex healthcare environments.”
SAVING APPLE $1.2 BILLION – BILLION! – DOLLARS
Kishan Chalumuri, UC Berkeley (Haas)
In fact, class members built several top-performing teams. Just look at Apple. Here, Prateek Singh, a Cornell University MBA, pulled together a customer analytics engineering team that established a new product platform “from the ground up.” One of Singh’s peers at Apple, Kishan Chalumuri, constructed a team and spearheaded a digital transformation that he says saved $1.2 billion dollars over eight years. For Chalumuri, who received his MBA from U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School this spring, this accomplishment paled in comparison to something more impactful to the larger society.
“What meant the most to me was using those same skills to help people—designing COVID-19 testing and vaccination systems, supporting Apple’s medical teams, and helping turn Levi’s Stadium into a mass vaccination site for Santa Clara County. I am especially grateful to Apple’s operations leadership for trusting me with such a wide range of meaningful challenges.”
Make no mistake: the top companies trusted the Best & Brightest with some of their most sensitive roles. Neeraj Govil earned his MBA at the National University of Singapore while serving as Marriott International’s COO for the Asia Pacific region. Jabarri Reynolds led International Player and Team Operations for the National Basketball Association (NBA), while studying at New York University’s Stern School of Business. In this role, he has traveled to over 25 countries, while working with gold-medal winning teams at the Tokyo and Paris Olympics. Duke University’s Jonathan Jean-Pierre helped to design Google’s strategy for “re-imagin(ing)” its people practices and deployment of artificial intelligence. At the same time, Mahtab Soin, an engineer by training, transitioned to being a technologist who helped Schlumberger, the world’s biggest player in oil exploration, embrace machine learning across two of its biggest geographies.
“I don’t come from a programming background,” admits Soin, a ’25 graduate of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School. “But my passion for technology drove me to push past the steep learning curve. Over the course of the project, I built a talented team, developed over 20 models, and helped lay the foundation for a lasting digital transformation.”
SITTING UNDER THE LEARNING TREE WITH HERB KELLEHER
Arthur Bochner, University of Michigan (Ross)
When Arthur Bochner delivered the commencement to his cohort at the University of Michigan’s Ross School, he exclaimed that “a lot can happen in 21 months.” He would know. After all, he left his job as Disney’s Strategic Communications VP to become the Chief Communications Officer at News Corp as an EMBA student. Looking back, Bochner sees his nine years at Disney as something deeply symbolic.
“I started as a senior manager in a business unit, and in less than seven years became Chief of Staff to the CEO. When I reached the C-suite, I remember wondering what my great-grandparents, who arrived in America with nothing in their pockets, would have thought. It felt like the American dream coming true, and it was both heavy and exhilarating at the same time.”
A common business school expression is that you learn as much from your classmates as your professors. After all, you’re often exposed to the best practices from the best companies across various industries, regions, and roles. In some cases, like Northwestern University’s Kellogg School, students can learn from classmates who worked shoulder-to-shoulder awith some of the best minds in business. Case in point: Danny Canary, who got his start at Southwest Airlines.
“The professional achievement I’m most proud of is learning directly from Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher and President Emeritus Colleen Barrett, true pioneers in corporate culture and leadership development. Early in my career at Southwest Airlines, I had the privilege of developing leadership programs under their guidance, absorbing firsthand their insights on building organizations defined by purpose, culture, and care. This experience was transformative, and it deepened my passion and shaped my mission to support organizational growth through impactful learning and development.”
Page 3: 68 profiles of this year’s Best & Brightest Executive MBA grads.
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