Dear Haas Community,

As the campus comes back to life after winter break, I am excited to begin the new year with each and every one of you. I am delighted to welcome 2023 with a tentative agreement to the UAW strike, which challenged us all in the fall.

Every January presents an opportunity to reflect on our values and mission, to celebrate personal challenges and triumphs, and to set new goals for ourselves and our communities.

This fall, Berkeley Haas will celebrate its 125th anniversary. Throughout our history as the nation’s second oldest business school we have led business education by taking the long view. Haas was a pioneer in studying the interconnection of business and society. Today we know that business is critical if we are to address the greatest challenges our world faces.

For this reason, we have articulated a bold vision to prioritize innovation and entrepreneurship, inclusion, and sustainability at Berkeley Haas. Innovation and entrepreneurship provide the backbone for change, progress, and wealth creation. Inclusion means that a better life is possible for all of us. Sustainability ensures lasting benefits. The three are inextricably linked.

This year we look forward to building on our progress for all three. I am excited to share that in 2023, our Sustainable and Impact Finance team will host an important conference on “Mobilizing Climate Finance to Achieve Net Zero by 2050” on March 22. As we continue to witness catastrophic blizzards pummel the East Coast and torrential rain storms wreak havoc across California, this topic could not be more urgent. We will also start construction on our Entrepreneurship Hub later in the year, which will become an integral part of Berkeley’s innovation system.

By summer, we expect to hire another faculty cohort, advancing our goal to increase our ladder faculty by 30% since 2019-2020 and making our faculty more diverse. We will enroll our second cohort of Flex MBA students. And in August, we will begin accepting applications for our new four-year Spieker Undergraduate Business Program!

Together we ensure that some of the smartest minds in the world are ready to step into new leadership roles to address some of the world’s greatest challenges and that our faculty’s ground-breaking research insights will guide their way.

I look forward to what is to come and I wish everyone a fruitful year!