First Person
Elisabeth Warren
Elisabeth Warren
MBA 09
Director, Product Portfolio Management
Genentech
South San Francisco, California

Previous degree:
BS, Human Biology
Stanford University, California

Previous job :
Manager, Quintiles Transnational
San Francisco, California

 

Inspired by the Haas Women in Leadership Conference, Lis Warren helped launch a local chapter of Genentech Women Professionals. The process of developing the group’s strategy and aligning it with Genentech’s business competencies was, she says, "an incredibly valuable and innovative way to use my Haas education" on the job.

"I like being able to choose my own adventure at Haas. I have the flexibility to put together a schedule that combines classes that are doable with those that are really intense."

"I relished every minute of my Leadership class with Frank Schultz. It was like living in a leadership lab, always being expected to try new approaches. Sometimes I did it fearlessly, sometimes I wondered if I would make it out the other side. Either way, I always knew that I would be applying the new tools I had gained on the job within 12 hours, which is one of the biggest EWMBA levers and values."

"In our classes, we often role-play, for example, making pitches to 'boards of directors' made up of volunteers our professors bring in from the business community. We get real feedback from people who have been there and done that."

"It's easy to read a book by Peter Drucker or Malcolm Gladwell and pick up their approach to problem-solving. Our course readings at Haas aren’t prescriptive. Instead, the readers give us the ingredients and the professors challenge us to figure out the recipe and the end product."

"I went to South Africa on an international seminar in 2008. In part, it gave me a macroeconomic perspective on where the country has come nearly two decades after apartheid. But even more, it gave me a meta-perspective on how the country's businesses and nonprofits think about the issues facing them, how they whittled and narrowed down their strategies until they had something they could accomplish."

"Being on campus is one of the best things about the program. There is a buzz, a great vibe and an energy level that you don’t find elsewhere."

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