New Frontiers in Business: Michigan Ross Dual Degree Students Paving Their Own Paths

Global challenges like climate change, corporate sustainability, and food insecurity are changing the landscape of the future of business. As students prepare to tackle these complex issues, they are increasingly seeking out degree programs with interdisciplinary approaches to problems faced by the modern workforce. FIND MBA, a directory of MBA programs worldwide, has noted that a growing number of business schools have begun offering dual-degree MBA programs in response to this demand — including Michigan Ross.

At Michigan Ross, 12% of the Class of 2025 consists of dual-degree students. Michigan Ross offers 22 established dual degree programs, plus the option for students to design their own dual degree to fit their unique path. Popular multidisciplinary degree choices include business in collaboration with sustainability, medicine, public policy, and law.

For students seeking to expand their knowledge in certain areas without earning a second degree, Michigan Ross also offers eight unique specializations: data and business analytics, design thinking and innovation, fast track in finance, healthcare management, real estate development, management science, global operations, and the new environment, social, and governance concentration.

Additionally, students have space in the curriculum to add to their degree and choose from over 25 available elective credits, granting them a knowledge base in anything from intellectual property law to the science behind leading a good life.

To learn more about how the flexibility of a Ross MBA can help maximize a candidate’s impact in their chosen industry, meet seven Michigan Ross dual degree students from the Class of 2024 who are using their interdisciplinary backgrounds to seek success across industries.
 

Supreya Kesavan

What degree(s) are you pursuing?
I’m pursuing a SEAS Master of Science with a concentration in environmental justice, while also earning a Michigan Ross MBA. I plan to graduate in 2024.

What is your career goal?
My goal is to pursue a career at the intersection of business, justice, and sustainability. I always say that I love the "chessboard" of how everything is connected as a system. I would love to work for the United Nations one day to help drive international climate policy from an equity/justice lens.

Why did you want to pursue a dual degree?
I chose to pursue the dual degree because I absolutely love "holistic" thinking. I love the University of Michigan because of all the incredible graduate schools here, which offer the opportunity to learn from great people everywhere. I knew I wanted to work in the sustainability space and explored many types of degrees, but ultimately chose the dual degree through the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, an academic partnership between SEAS and Michigan Ross, because I was passionate about the mission of the institute and loved the people I met who were also pursuing the degree.

What are some of the "pros" of having a dual degree that others might not know about?
I think the biggest strength has been being provided the privilege and opportunity for space and time to really think about what I want my next steps to be. The community here is unparalleled; some of the most conscious and kind people I know are willing to grapple with the big existential problems.

How has your unique education impacted your recruiting/internship experiences?
I truly believe that having a strong environmental science background has served me by providing clear skill sets and the ability to read through any language and base decisions on climate science. I spent two summers interning as part of Apple's environment and supply chain innovation team, working both in electronic waste recycling and supplier decarbonization efforts.

The skills I have gained and continue to gain as part of my dual degree experience have specifically taught me how to translate between business, technology, and sustainability.  Knowing the theory has also served me well. I was able to marry some of the rigor of academia to the pragmatism of the corporate world when tackling business problems with a sustainability lens.

Have you taken any interesting electives or other opportunities to explore career paths outside of business?
I have had the opportunity to learn about sustainability in Greenland, Alaska, Egypt, Israel, and Denmark during my two-and-a-half years here. I attended COP27 as part of the U-M delegation, was selected as a member of the UNLEASH Arctic Innovation Lab, and attended the Great Ocean Race as part of the Youth Sustainability Summit. These opportunities definitely would not have been possible without my dual degree. Gaining the perspective of what sustainability means in different parts of the world and the necessity of place-based implementation has been invaluable and propelled me toward a career path in the policy world.

How has being a dual degree student helped you network?
The Erb Institute is now nearly 27 years old and has an amazing alumni network! Erbers are everywhere.

Alex Perez-Garcia

What degree(s) are you pursuing?
I am pursuing a Master of Public Policy with a concentration in analysis methods at the Ford School of Public Policy and an MBA with a concentration in healthcare management at Michigan Ross. I plan to graduate in 2024.

What is your career goal?
My ‘north star’ is to become a cross-sector leader in the field of mental health, driving public-private partnerships to close mental health equity and access gaps. My dream job is either in the public or private sector to get closer to my overall career goal, but I am also giving myself the flexibility to continue to learn and grow as opportunities arise in the future. As such, I’m leveraging my graduate school experience to pursue a career in strategy consulting post-grad.

Why did you want to pursue a dual degree?
I wanted to pursue a dual degree in public policy and business because I saw the value of interdisciplinary education, given my interest in health. In the United States, healthcare markets are largely influenced by both public and private stakeholders. This is particularly true in the mental health field, where we have seen a massive rise in the number and valuation of mental health-related startups. By pursuing both a policy and business degree, I will be able to tap into experts in both fields who are trying to improve our healthcare systems.

What are some of the "pros" of having a dual degree that others might not know about?
I have found that I am able to add a unique perspective that adds value to my peers’ learning. I often find that I can play, and take the perspective of, both the regulator and the business executive. By doing so, I have a deeper understanding of the potential trade-offs healthcare executives — or any business executive, for that matter — might face. Additionally, Michigan Ross has offered amazing interdisciplinary courses that touch on both my public policy and business degrees. For example, I was able to study abroad in Paris and Bordeaux for a short-term course on comparative healthcare markets and digital health in France, which touched on the differences in the regulatory environment and startup ecosystem for healthcare in the United States and France.

How has your unique education impacted your recruiting/internship experiences?
My dual degree was an important differentiator in the recruiting process. My first internship was at the City of Detroit Office of Budget, and my second internship was at Boston Consulting Group in Chicago, Illinois. Prior to Michigan Ross, I worked in the nonprofit and philanthropic sector and was looking to pivot into the public sector short term. Having two internships helped smooth that career transition process and gave me more time to grow as a prospective job applicant. By the time consulting recruiting began during my second year of graduate school, I had a strong understanding of my ‘why’ and what I was trying to pursue with consulting. This helped me to better position myself in a competitive recruiting cycle and make more meaningful relationships at target firms.

How has being a dual degree student helped you network?
Being a dual degree student has helped me double my network potential. In the Ford and Ross community, we like to say we have the ‘best of both worlds,’ and I believe that is true. It’s been great tapping into both networks, whether during the recruiting process or when navigating a career transition, and alums from both schools are so willing to help.

Patrick Nguyen Burden

What degree(s) are you pursuing?
In addition to an MBA at Michigan Ross, I’m pursuing a Master of Science in design science as part of the integrated systems and design program at the College of Engineering. Between both degrees, I’m also aiming to complete the environmental, social, and governance concentration at Michigan Ross and the Graduate Certificate in Healthy Cities at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. I plan to graduate in 2024.

What is your career goal?
I see myself as a future impact-centered, design strategist focused on shaping purpose-driven strategies and facilitating the design of new products, services, and ventures that help organizations drive a positive impact on the world.

I want my career role to take an innovative approach to doing impactful work. Whether it’s via a design consulting role, managing new programs at a foundation or city government, or becoming a ‘chief social innovation officer,’ I’ll be happy as long as I’m focused on addressing the societal challenges of today by inventing the solutions of tomorrow.

Why did you want to pursue a dual degree?
I believe business can be a positive force for good, but this can only manifest if we help organizations question and reimagine their role in driving value for society and their stakeholders. This means having an understanding of how corporations work today and a mindset equipped for interrogating existing structures and designing future breakthrough solutions – which is why I chose to do a dual degree.

Pursuing an MS in design science afforded me this by giving me the opportunity to explore relational methods across engineering, sustainability, public health, urban planning, and many other disciplines to produce coherent, systematic approaches to problems.

What are some of the "pros" of having a dual degree that others might not know about?
One of the most unexpected strengths of being a dual-degree student is the perspective you bring to different spaces and conversations. When I walk into my business classes, people look to me to be the designer in the room. When I walk into design school, people are quick to see me as another business person, whatever that might mean to them. There’s an assumed understanding that I can bring a familiar yet differing perspective to the table that helps expand others’ worldviews and that can build bridges between different disciplines – and I think that’s fundamentally the value add of having a dual degree.

Having a dual degree has been incredibly helpful in strengthening my ability to switch between contexts when diving into any new subject matter and when working at disciplinary intersections, and I think there’s a need for that now more than ever to address the complex problems we have today.

How has your unique education impacted your recruiting/internship experiences?
In some ways, having a dual degree has made recruiting easier, and in others, more challenging because I wanted very unique and specific experiences. I was always looking for opportunities that married my two passions together equally while keeping an impact focus, and I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with two organizations that were already leveraging the combinatory power of business and design for social good: IDEO.org and 17 Asset Management.

Have you taken any interesting electives or other opportunities to explore career paths outside of business?
Outside of my business courses, I’ve had the opportunity to take electives across eight other departments at U-M. Some of my favorites include Health By Design, an architecture course focused on interrogating how we set the stage for better health using design and the built environment, and Behavioral Science for Creating Change, a public policy course dedicated to exploring behavioral science and systems thinking approaches for addressing social issues.

I think taking both courses outside of business, and those cross-listed with business, have helped expand my purview enough to understand what role business can play and who else needs to be at the table in order for enduring change to happen.

How has being a dual degree student helped you network?
Being a dual degree student has been helpful in connecting me with other people outside of business school but also in connecting people to the business school itself. It’s always exciting when I can help someone by bridging a meaningful connection. I think fostering new relationships between both of my programs and colleagues I’ve met across my electives has not only multiplied my network at a peer and mentorship level but has also bolstered my aptitude for being a better facilitator and convener of a cross-disciplinary community.

Elijah Forrester

What degree(s) are you pursuing?
I’m a dual-degree graduate student at the Erb Institute. I’m earning an MBA at Ross and a Master of Science at SEAS, and I am planning to graduate in 2024.

What is your career goal?
My career goal is to accelerate the transition to a carbon-free global economy. In an ideal situation, I’ll do this while working somewhere where one unit of work translates to more than one unit of impact.

My dream job is to be the chief sustainability officer at a Fortune 500 company. Reducing corporations’ greenhouse gas emissions is key to reducing the worst effects of climate change and will lead to substantial business and environmental benefits. My coursework, internships, and extracurricular involvement have helped me focus my career goals and grow as a student as well as a leader — deepening my understanding of sustainability, how to use business as a force for good in the world, and what it's going to take to integrate corporate leadership in the fight against climate change.

Why did you want to pursue a dual degree?
Climate change presents one of the greatest challenges of our lifetime, and, as it grows more dire, I feel compelled to respond. My goal is to learn the key resources and insights that I will need to make a difference in grad school. Some of these were clear to me as I was applying, and others have come into focus over the last two years and include interdisciplinary education, career advancement, and personal growth.

What are some of the "pros" of having a dual degree that others might not know about?
Being part of the community at two schools provides access to a diverse and influential network of alumni, faculty, and industry leaders. There are way more events, workshops, and networking opportunities than I could attend, but being able to cherry-pick the ones that resonate has been valuable, both personally and professionally. Doing two degrees at once is tough but awesome. My time management skills are constantly being tested, but the dual degree is extremely rewarding.

How has your unique education impacted your recruiting/internship experiences?
With a dual degree, you get a second summer, which means you get to do a second internship. It's a great chance to test different ideas and not feel pressured to find the right fit on the first try.

During my first summer, I did two internships. The first was with Steelcase, a U.S. furniture manufacturer, where I led the development and design of several pilots on circular economy and business model innovation. The second was an entrepreneurial project where I continued work on the Africa Innovation Hub, a student-led initiative at U-M. It serves as a hub of collaboration between students, startups, small and medium-sized enterprises, campus groups, and external stakeholders to recruit, educate, and support innovative companies working in Africa.

My second summer, I moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and worked on the corporate sustainability team at DuPont. My work focused on innovation handprinting, a sustainability metric that quantifies downstream benefits. You may have heard of an environmental or carbon footprint, which refers to the negative environmental impacts caused throughout the life cycle of a product or service. In contrast, a handprint represents the positive environmental impacts.

Jillian Brown

What degree(s) are you pursuing?
I am pursuing an MBA and a Master of Science in sustainability through the Erb Institute Program, concentrating on sustainable systems. I plan to graduate in May 2024.

What is your career goal?
One of the main reasons I came back to school was to pivot my career into the food industry. As we think about the future of food, it is unclear the right tactics to grow and scale for industry-wide sustainable change (e.g., regenerative agriculture, indoor agriculture/vertical farms, precision farming, etc.). I aspire to be a driver and thought leader in this space, working for a large company that is at the forefront of sustainable food production and has market power. My goal continues to be to make the business case for sustainability and implement change in the way we produce, consume, and discard food.

Why did you want to pursue a dual degree?
Before graduate school, I worked as an innovation consultant, using human-centered design methodologies primarily. I loved solving big challenges with unclear solutions but did not love the types of challenges I was solving anymore. This prompted me to reflect on what got me excited in my past career and education, which was sustainability and contributing back to the world positively. I searched for "green MBAs" and found the Michigan Ross dual degree program uniting sustainability and business. I knew this was exactly the program for me. I wanted to operate in the business world while going deep in sustainability and driving that impact forward.

What are some of the "pros" of having a dual degree that others might not know about?
I think one big strength of a dual degree is that it separates passions from pursuits. What I mean by that is it is one thing to be interested in something like climate/sustainability, but it is another thing to be devoting your time, energy, and career to it. I believe getting a master’s in this discipline has offered me more credibility than if I had just taken a few classes in it.

How has your unique education impacted your recruiting/internship experiences?
Something that is truly a gift of the dual degree program is having two internships and three years to complete the program. This gives a student time to explore! I have used this opportunity to try many different roles and companies. For my first internship, I worked for an agtech startup within a sustainability team. For my second internship, I was a brand management intern at a large, food consumer packaged goods company. I have also taken advantage of different project opportunities, capstone projects for each master's program, etc.

How has being a dual degree student helped you network?
Being a member of the Erb Institute has been an asset in networking. It is an incredibly tight-knit group. I believe the reason is that we share a similar value set, even though all of us can be so different from each other, interested in different industries, and have different backgrounds. Something I find continually is that Erbers, no matter when they graduated, are so willing to help other Erbers. This has become a great community to lean on for job opportunities, support, mentorship, friendship, and more.

Karon J. Green

What degree(s) are you pursuing?
I am earning an MBA focused on management organizations and strategy. In addition, I am pursuing a master's in information science with an emphasis on big data analytics and user experience design at the School of Information. I plan to graduate in May 2024.

What is your career goal?
I aspire to become a product manager at a leading organization, building upon my diverse background in human resources, operations, and my eight-year tenure in the U.S. Army. This foundational experience has instilled in me the leadership skills essential for product management, coupled with the ability for cross-functional collaboration.

Why did you want to pursue a dual degree? 
My lifelong dream has been to earn a degree in STEM. While pursuing an MBA was a natural choice to propel my career forward, I recognized that combining it with an MSI degree could be a game changer. This dual focus provides a robust understanding of both business and technology. Although I didn't have a technical background, I believed securing a technical degree would establish credibility and set me apart.

What are some of the "pros" of having a dual degree that others might not know about?
Dual degrees typically last three years, and mine provided a comprehensive graduate experience. I co-founded a startup, Cele, engaged in a Multidisciplinary Action Project, undertook two mini-consulting projects for tech firms, secured second place in the Ross Business+Tech Case Competition, was a third-place finalist in the Michigan Business Challenge, held leadership positions in four clubs, and had a global experience in Tel Aviv, Israel. My dual degree has empowered me to become both a generalist and a specialist, broadening my functional knowledge while allowing me to explore diverse career paths and foster strong connections in both programs.

How has your unique education impacted your recruiting/internship experiences?
My dual degree has been instrumental in my recruitment journey, leading to senior product management internships at Amazon and T-Mobile over consecutive summers. These internships enriched my expertise, particularly in UX design and research, cross-functional team leadership, and stakeholder engagement. Recruiters and product leaders have been impressed by my breadth of knowledge in user experience and product roadmap planning, which has positioned me as a subject matter expert during my internships.

Have you taken any interesting electives or other opportunities to explore career paths outside of business? 
I have been able to delve into the realm of artificial intelligence by co-founding the startup Cele with fellow graduate students. This venture deepened and solidified my experience beyond business, immersing me further into technology and generative AI algorithms and integration.

Kourtney Pony

What degree(s) are you pursuing?
I am pursuing an MD/MBA dual degree. I am in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship track for my MD program. I plan to graduate in 2024.

What is your career goal?
My long-term career goal is to become a leader at the intersection of healthcare and business, with the ultimate aim to influence and improve the healthcare system in the clinical, economic, and political realms. I aspire to make impactful decisions that enhance the delivery of healthcare services on a global scale.  

Why did you want to pursue a dual degree?
I have a longstanding interest in both healthcare and business, so I knew that I wanted to pursue an MBA when I started medical school. Although I didn’t know exactly what my future career would look like when applying for the dual degree program, I knew that earning each degree would provide me with the best skill set for a career at the intersection of both fields.

What are some of the “pros” of having a dual degree that others might not know about? 
Dual degree programs allow you to build a knowledge base in two separate areas. When considering the growing amount of overlap across industries in our interconnected world, a professional with a dual degree will be better positioned to address increasingly complex issues that span multiple industries.

How has your unique education impacted your recruiting/internship experiences?
Training at a quaternary care academic medical center gave me incredible insight into clinical practice and medical research. I also learned about the experiences of individual patients, especially through my work on the lupus community advisory board. My experiences in medical school were also highly valued during my internship in investment banking.

During my internship, I worked with companies that were developing novel technologies and pharmaceuticals. My background provided me with a head start when it came to reviewing medical literature and clinical trial data, which allowed me to contribute meaningfully to my teams as an intern. It was fascinating working in this space because I felt like I was getting a preview into future technologies that would later become routine treatments used by providers in clinics and hospitals. I was also surprised by the degree to which I could engage with my interest in both healthcare and finance.

How has being a dual degree student helped you network?
Pursuing an MD/MBA at U-M connected me with an expansive network of leaders and recent graduates in healthcare and business. Connecting with colleagues and mentors at varying stages in their careers gave me perspective on how I wanted my career to develop. It also gave me a deeper understanding of how I could impact healthcare in areas outside of the clinical practice of medicine.