Heller MBA students are a special crowd. We believe that our program attracts people who are uniquely innovative, hardworking, collaborative, warm and dedicated to social change. Our students hail from diverse backgrounds and professional experiences but all of them cultivate the skills and professional relationships here at Heller to graduate and manage for a mission.
Student Profiles
Oliver Torres, MBA’24
Recipient of the Heller Diversity and Inclusion Scholarship
After graduation, Torres hopes to use his MBA to continue his leadership in community-centered impact. He is exploring career options in impact investing, philanthropy, and non-profit consulting in order to bridge gaps between grassroots movements and newly emerging financial advocacy spaces. He aims to transform non-profit funding structures so that impacted community voices will lead movements and advocacy.
“Heller is perfect because the Social Impact MBA couples quantitative skills and management skills with a social impact lens, and to me, that helps to answer the question of how to be a community-centered leader,” he says.
Luca Procaccianti, MBA'24
Reaching Out MBA (ROMBA) Fellow
Procaccianti enrolled in Heller’s Social Impact MBA program in fall 2022, where they’re focusing on labor and workforce issues. “I never thought I would have ended up in a business program, ever, and as someone who’s anti-capitalist it was really hard for me to grapple with that. But for me, business school was the answer.”
Procaccianti wants future students to know that a business degree can absolutely be the right choice for many people who might otherwise not seriously consider it. “As somebody who did not feel that they were meant for business school or the business world: I am. Just because the world might not be ready for that, doesn’t mean that I’m not going to make it happen. Just because you might not fit the mold for what a business student is, doesn’t mean you shouldn't come. In fact it’s probably the reason why you should.”
Adriana Neira, MBA/MA SID’24
Neira is interested in exploring topics like income disparity, access to healthcare, access to education, and human rights in general. With the skills she is gaining through the MBA and MA SID programs, she hopes to be involved in working with these issues after graduation, and wants to have an impact on international policy. Neira is still exploring the options available to her at Heller and beyond, but she is happy to dive head-first into projects that make a positive difference in the world.
“I knew I wanted to work in policy, because policy affects every aspect of every person’s life. And once I started looking at Heller, I realized the school’s values aligned with mine,” she says.
“I knew I wanted to work in policy, because policy affects every aspect of every person’s life. And once I started looking at Heller, I realized the school’s values aligned with mine,” she says.