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An active member of the Booth community as a student, Jay Weichselbaum, '89, practiced the same commitment to service in his life as a graduate.
In 1988, Weichselbaum, along with nine classmates, joined Harry Davis, Roger L. and Rachel M. Goetz Distinguished Service Professor of Creative Management, in developing a course meant to teach the "soft" management skills that would complement Booth's famously quantitative program.
The result was LEAD, or Leadership Exploration and Development, a cohorted course required of all first-year Full-Time MBA Program students and taught by returning second years. It remains the only required course in Booth's curriculum.
"This is the only program I know of that puts second-year students in charge of one required MBA course," said Davis in a Chicago Booth Magazine article on the program. "The administration set up a broad playing field and encouraged students to come in and do something, not just talk about it," said Davis of the efforts to develop LEAD, which included a weekend brainstorm with 50 students in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
Weichselbaum, who passed away August 31, 2011, is remembered by his family, friends, and 1989 classmates including Janice Beavin, Luis Miranda, Wim Steemers, Bruce Rigal, and many others. He was 54 years old and had survived a yearlong battle with brain cancer.
“Jay believed that we all have a responsibility to make our communities great,” said Rigal, a LEAD collaborator, who also noted Weichselbaum’s involvement in neighborhood associations and running for public office in his hometown of Rochester, Minnesota. Weichselbaum even helped out by “picking up other people’s trash,” added his wife, Enid Gjelten.
Weichselbaum earned a bachelor’s degree from Carleton College in 1979 and worked at Harrah’s Casino in Reno, Nevada, before attending Booth. After receiving his MBA, Weichselbaum went on to a career in management consulting. He married Enid, a close high school friend, and the two of them had a son, Ben, in 2005.
—Kate Fratar