Five students from Chicago Booth’s Full-Time MBA Program were selected as 2024 Siebel Scholars. This year’s class includes Michelle Cao, Christian Eron, Anna Hillel, Kinaan Patel, and Lucy Reading.
Scholars—typically in the top 5 percent of their class—will receive a $35,000 grant for their final year of studies from the Siebel Scholars Foundation. They’ll also join a network of more than 1,800 former Siebel Scholars, selected over the past 23 years of the foundation’s existence.
The program annually recognizes nearly 100 exceptional students from the world’s leading graduate schools of business, computer science, and bioengineering. This year, the foundation awarded scholarships to 83 students across 16 universities in the United States, China, France, Italy, and Japan. Scholars were selected by the deans of their respective schools after a review process.
“Every year, the Siebel Scholars continue to impress me with their commitment to academics and influencing future society,” said Thomas M. Siebel, chairman of the Siebel Scholars Foundation. “This year’s class is exceptional, and once again represents the best and brightest minds from around the globe who are advancing innovations in healthcare, artificial intelligence, financial services, and more.”
Prior to Booth, Cao worked as a management consultant with Deloitte’s healthcare analytics and A.I. practice in Chicago. Since starting business school, Cao has been reflecting on how she wants to use her voice to innovate in the healthcare space and improve health equity.
“Being at Booth is helping me continuously refine those skills as I learn how to be an effective, motivating leader,” Cao says.
She’s planning a career in healthcare investing and may even start her own venture one day. To help with these goals, Cao is pursuing concentrations in finance and entrepreneurship as well as completing UChicago’s Certificate Program in Health Administration and Policy. She also had a pre-MBA internship at a precision health company and a summer job at a venture capital firm.
Cao is proud of all the work she put in to earn the Siebel Scholars award, and says the recognition reinforces that hard work pays off. She looks forward to meeting other Siebel Scholars and continuing to refine her voice, knowledge, and path forward. “I’m excited to have my own perspectives challenged and stretched through my involvement in this program,” Cao says.
Just before moving to Chicago to attend Booth, Eron climbed 13 miles to summit Colorado’s Pikes Peak in the Rocky Mountains. At the top, he proposed to his girlfriend. It was his proudest moment. After being named a Siebel Scholar, he was just as proud and immediately rushed home to tell his now wife the good news.
Eron initially studied to be an engineer at Colorado School of Mines. He later pivoted to finance, climbing his way up the career ladder to become vice president of corporate development at Circle Graphics, a large-format digital printing service in Longmont, Colorado.
At Booth, Eron is continuing his upward ascent through the school’s Entrepreneurship through Acquisition program, which provides students with the tools they need to acquire and grow small businesses. Thus far, Eron says that the Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity class with Steve Kaplan, the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance and the Kessenich E.P. Faculty Director at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, has been the “perfect capstone” for his finance and equity studies.
Eron feels honored to be named a Siebel Scholar and to join a community of global innovators. The scholarship will help him with the next part of his career climb: fundraising for and launching his own search fund after graduation. He plans to buy and run a small business that will serve investors and employees equally.
While working as a life sciences consultant at Charles River Associates in her hometown of Boston, Hillel was moved by projects that felt like they could have a tangible social impact. For example: patient-assistance programs for a new depression drug, and curative therapies that could change the pharmaceutical industry.
“That’s the motivation that pushed me into the healthcare VC space,” says Hillel, who is pursuing concentrations in finance, entrepreneurship, and healthcare at Booth.
Already, she’s interned at three healthcare VCs and has been building her network of peers, mentors, and alumni. Hillel has taken the VC labs course, become a VC career advisor, and won first place with her team at Booth’s Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) last year. She’s appreciated every moment of learning during her MBA experience. “I truly look forward to going to all my classes,” Hillel says. “The faculty make the three hours fly by.”
She especially loved Health Economics taught by Matthew Notowidigdo, the David McDaniel Keller Professor of Economics/Business. Hillel and her classmates evaluated the economics of healthcare from the perspective of patients, payers, providers, and other stakeholders. “I have applied the concepts learned in that course to the lens I use to evaluate healthcare companies from an investor perspective during my VC internships,” Hillel says.
She’s excited that the Seibel Scholar network will help her exchange ideas with others in the healthcare innovation field. Her career polestar is working at a healthcare VC and making a social impact, whether that means one day launching her own VC fund or creating a health-tech startup. “I’m really just looking to promote innovation in the healthcare space,” Hillel says.
After growing up in Dallas and studying chemical engineering, Patel began working as a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. There, he saw just how much impact he could have on the world.
For a project at BCG, Patel helped one US state roll out COVID-19 vaccines in their early days. The rollout was so effective that the state was able to reach a wider population, all the while promoting equity and reallocating the state’s idle vaccine inventory.
The results inspired Patel, who plans to return to BCG as a project leader after graduating from Booth with concentrations in behavioral science, economics, entrepreneurship, and finance.
He hopes to use his time as a Siebel Scholar to build up his network of connections, become a better manager of people, and learn to grow mission-driven enterprises. His ultimate goal is to create a more equitable society through his consultancy work.
Patel is proud to be a Siebel Scholar, especially after seeing how many smart, driven students attend Booth. “I look forward to gaining a new community to further my thinking around the impact I can have and the innovation possible to improve society so it can better support all members within it,” Patel says.
Born and raised in Hong Kong to Australian parents, Reading came to Booth with a lot of global life experience. She hopes to leave with a clearer path toward a career focused on sustainability and impact investing.
After studying political science in college, Reading worked in economic consulting at Analysis Group’s Chicago office. There, she collaborated with leading law firms, government agencies, and Fortune 500 companies to solve complex litigation and regulatory problems.
At Booth, Reading has enjoyed expanding her understanding of finance, but also loves taking classes in her wheelhouse, such as the Political Economy of Climate Change with Chris Wheat, adjunct associate professor of strategy.
Already, Reading has put her classroom lessons into action, including during her time as an associate for the Steven Tarrson Impact Investment Fund, one of the nation’s largest student-managed impact investment funds, housed at Booth’s Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation. She also drew on her MBA experience to become a semifinalist in the Turner MBA Impact Investing Network & Training (MIINT) competition, and a summer intern at DBL Partners, an impact venture capital firm in San Francisco
She hopes to spend her last year at Booth mentoring first-year students as a co-chair of the club Net Impact and FEAD clubs, while also continuing to explore innovation in the climate sector.
“I feel very grateful to have the opportunity to join the global community of Siebel Scholars,” Reading says. “I’m excited to meet and collaborate with other Siebel Scholars from a diverse range of professional backgrounds as I embark on my career after Booth.”
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