School Notes: School of Management
May/June 2021

Student project examines racial disparities in retirement savings

A team of students in the MBA for Executives program created an initiative last fall that explored ways to encourage retirement planning in African American and Latino populations. The project grew out of the first-year core Customer course, taught by K. Sudhir, the James L. Frank ’32 Professor of Private Enterprise and Management and a professor of marketing.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, Sudhir broadened one of the course’s raw case studies, which explores how to market TIAA retirement plans to populations that have traditionally not done well at saving for retirement. The case originally looked at two populations: millennials and women. Sudhir added African American and Latino populations to the mix.

Student proposal wins Reimagine Challenge

A student proposal to create a learning platform for the marginalized migrant and refugee communities hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic has won the Reimagine Challenge 2020 Global Competition. Manas Punhani ’21MBA is one of 20 students selected as winners of the annual competition, which solicits fresh ideas on how to improve the world through science and technology.

Punhani’s project envisions a learning platform that would enable migrant and refugee communities to access globally accredited certifications and degree-granting programs, by mobilizing professional-development resources and permitting migrant payments to be drawn from future income. 

Research project tracks corporate greenhouse gas emissions

As part of a summer research project, Daniela Chona ’20MBA and Pete Edmunds ’20MBA helped coauthor a report tracking greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and efforts to curb them, among the biggest companies in the United States. The report, written with Professor Lesley Meng and published recently by the Yale Center for Business and the Environment, examines the varying standards for how companies report emissions, identifies the biggest emitters, and looks at company goals and initiatives for emissions reduction, among other insights. “Net Zero: The Next Frontier for Corporate Sustainability” includes nine data visualizations analyzing GHG emissions from the S&P 100 across various dimensions.