Meet our new Senior Associate Director for Admissions

My singular desire to attend Yale SOM was simple. Yale was ranked number one for nonprofit management, and still is. As a candidate committed to continuing to work with mission-driven organizations, I saw that SOM was well ahead of its commitment to supporting non-traditional business students who wanted to continue working for governments or organizations at non-profit. SOM’s mission to educate leaders for business and society is – and always has been – central to the offerings it offers and its overall management. With the loan forgiveness program and professors like the late and much-loved Sharon Oster leading the way in nonprofit management long before it was a thing, Yale was the only place I wanted to go.

In two years at Yale SOM, I made lifelong friends, became obsessed with my cohort (BLUUUUEE!), traveled the world, and developed my confidence, public speaking, and overall skills in solving quantitative and qualitative problems. I have traveled to South Africa and Namibia as part of my international experience requirement, visiting leaders from non-profit, government and private sector organizations and even the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. I also participated in the Global Social Enterprise Club and subsequent course that was created based on the student-run club, traveling to Colombia to provide voluntarily advising Avina, who was working to support the waste pickers organization, and India to consult Pratham Books to explore distribution models to increase access to early reading materials for children in rural areas. Locally, I was responsible for Food for Thought, a student-run cafe that raised money for our classmates to do unpaid or underpaid nonprofit summer internships, and I consulted with a local preschool in New Haven to create a budget template. SOM has provided so many opportunities for problem-solving and real-world impact that I have pursued in my career.

Before graduating, I had already landed a job at Save the Children’s headquarters harmonizing operating standards across its 21 international offices. In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, I was asked to work on Save the Children’s five-year response strategy. This experience was profound. I worked with stakeholders that included Save the Children leaders from around the world, local staff and community partners to develop an immediate and mid-term global response plan to a tragic, chaotic and urgent situation on the ground . After the strategy was approved, I stayed in Haiti to implement the response in the capital of Port-au-Price. I call this “my SOM story” because I needed all the skills I had learned at SOM to manage a large multinational staff, a complex multi-million donor grant portfolio and large construction projects in five programmatic sectors, all in a very difficult context with a devastated situation. infrastructure and major political and security issues.

Throughout my professional life, and given my own first-generation experience, I’m very passionate about two things: the transformational nature of education and measuring impact. After working in emergency response at Save the Children, I wanted to focus on long-term solutions and spent nearly 10 years managing admissions, operations and finances for a highly competitive program which provides full scholarship and holistic support to Haitian high school graduates with extraordinary academic performance and financial need. My role has allowed me to use data and evaluations to make decisions and ensure that we invest in the right students and measure the long-term impact of higher education on individuals and their families.

As Admissions Officer at Yale SOM, I am thrilled to continue working and learning in this space and to have the immense privilege of supporting the aspirations of our future global leaders for business and society.

Feel free to ask questions or just chat! I look forward to hearing from potential students considering an MBA and current students exploring careers in international development.

Amber Walsh
Senior Assistant Director of Admissions

Admissions Office
Yale School of Management
165 Whitney Avenue
Box 208200
New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8200
203.432.5635, Office of Admissions
203.432.6380, Visitor Center
fax 203.432.7004
[email protected]