Get With the Program.

Associate Dean Brian Mitchell is responsible for all aspects of the Full-Time MBA experience at Goizueta. A veteran of the pharmaceutical marketing and consulting industries, he leads the MBA program office and manages the academic, international, and leadership components of the program.

Claire Pavlak, a 2019 MBA candidate, and VP of Academic Affairs for the Graduate Student Association, recently sat down with Brian to pick his brain about all things Goizueta.

BRIAN: My vision has as much to do with student outcomes as it does with program outcomes. We aspire to have graduate students who are as prepared to serve our mission as a university, for service to humanity, as they are in their business professions. We’re graduating students who keep both of those in high priority. How to be excellent in your professional life and also have some balance in your service to humanity.

BRIAN: What’s unique about our culture is not the fact that we’re the smallest of the top business schools. I think that’s an important fact, but I think what makes that powerful is that it’s part of our culture as leaders, it’s reflected in our students, to engage. Being a small school doesn’t mean anything if you don’t pull that through: how we have an open-door policy with all of our students. How we are on a first-name basis with our students. I think that’s unique to us as a business school, and we’re only able to operate that way because of our culture and our size.

BRIAN: I believe that there are aspects of leadership that can be taught, and should be taught, in the classroom. But I also think that leadership as a whole has to be practiced, experienced, and observed. At Goizueta, we really try to take both of those components and add them into the program. All of our first-year core teams have at least one Delta Leadership Coaching Fellow on their team. These fellows guide them, so that they’re not only experiencing but also observing leadership in action.