Enquire to study in the UK 
Mary Jo Snavely always knew she wanted to pursue a socially impactful career, but she wasn’t sure how to connect her passion for sustainability with the business skills required for today’s job market. “One of the best things about working in sustainability is that there’s so much innovation going on, and you can mobilise huge differences through small changes,” says Snavely. She finally found the right fit when she connected with American University’s Kogod School of Business, whose mission is to build a more sustainable world through business.
Sustainability is part of Kogod’s identity — and every programme has sustainability as its foundational tenet. Established in 1955, Kogod takes pride in preparing every student for the jobs of tomorrow. Following the likes of Harvard University and Duke University, it won the Page Grand Prize, which recognises excellence in sustainable business education, in 2023.
One of the major ways businesses are approaching sustainability is through the usage of AI tools and techniques. With this in mind, and to best prepare students for a rapidly changing business landscape, Kogod is infusing AI throughout all its coursework. Whether you are in a class like Sustainability and Technology or Negotiations, you’ll learn how to tackle industry-specific challenges using AI tools.
Two Kogod programmes stand out for their exemplary fusion of the latest technology, private-sector expertise and training, and hands-on learning:
American University’s Kogod School of Business brings sustainability into its business education. Source: Kogod School of Business
MS in Sustainability Management (MSSM)
The STEM-designated MS in Sustainability Management programme is one of the few of its kind in a business school. The programme is housed at the first carbon-neutral university in the US — American University — and the programme’s interdisciplinary nature allowed Snavely to take non-business courses from other AU schools, including the top-ranked Schools of International Service and Public Affairs, the College of Arts & Sciences, and the Washington College of Law. She joined consulting practicums to make the university’s transportation fleet more sustainable and to support the Washington, DC-based US State Department in developing practical composting guides for their international posts.
“These pushed me to think about the needs and challenges of other organisations and to think with a practical mindset,” she says.
The MSSM includes an international capstone programme, professional graduate certificates, and a speaker series that features Fortune 500 “Gamechangers in Sustainability.” The series has hosted CEOs and business founders, such as the CEOs of Marriott International and EY, in addition to Honest Tea co-founder Seth Goldman.
Most recently, the Kogod School of Business hosted the CEO of Xylem, a global water technology company. “Xylem is actually a company that is at the perfect intersection of everything we’re trying to do at Kogod because they’re one of the most innovative, dynamic companies at the nexus of sustainability, AI, and analytics,” said Kogod dean David Marchick.
During this event, Kogod students learned how Xylem is increasingly supplementing its work with AI. Previously, the company’s acoustical analysis to pinpoint leaks within a water system took six weeks. Today, AI helps complete the task in one week, freeing employees’ time for other tasks. “We’re using AI to remove bottlenecks and get the data to our customers more quickly,” Xylem CEO Matthew Pine shared.
MSSM alumna Bhagyashree More loved taking part in these diverse experiences and elective courses. “The way the curriculum is designed is by far the best,” she says. “There is a great list of electives for students to choose from and curate the programme as per their desired career path.”
Most of the programmes at Kogod School of Business are STEM-designated. Source: Kogod School of Business
Master of Business Administration (MBA)
What’s striking about Kogod’s STEM MBA is that its graduates are prepared for a job market where business and tech are intertwined in every aspect. Merging management skills and technical expertise, the programme readies students to thrive in the global economy. It helps that Kogod is in Washington, DC, a place with unparalleled networking, internship, and job opportunities in all areas of business. “Having professors that used to do, say, central intelligence for the CIA — and that’s their data background — I love that aspect,” said graduate Kensey Johnson.
During her MBA, Johnson earned a graduate analytics certificate and took Professor J. Alberto Espinosa’s predictive analytics course. She remembers how Professor Espinosa queried students about their professional backgrounds and aspirations during the first week of class. “I feel like he took that input and tailored the models we were building to fit the fields we wanted to enter,” Johnson says. “I think that made it more translational to my real-world experience.”
Today, the MBA graduate handles audience strategy for Amazon’s Prime Video and Amazon Music platforms as one of the first employees hired on a new team that sits underneath the corporation’s marketing division. “I’m able to forecast the size of an audience by building my own predictive models that I learned in the Predictive Analysis course,” she says. “Not many marketing folks can build their own data model, so I can be that liaison between marketing and data science.”
For startup cofounder Lacey Kaelani, it was the MBA’s hands-on lessons in entrepreneurship and innovation that set her up for success. The Veloric Center for Entrepreneurship (formerly AUCI) Incubator assists graduate students, undergraduate students, and recent alums in building successful, sustainable entrepreneurial ventures. Using all she learned about pitching investors and designing marketing plans, Kaelani grew her site Casting Depot to some 800,000 subscribers. The site transformed the casting process by assisting cast members end-to-end, from application to payment, Kaelani said.
Her latest venture is Metaintro. It aims to shorten the timeline for candidates and employers for jobs related to Web3 — the decentralised, new-era worldwide web platform relying on technology like blockchain to securely store and transfer data across computer networks. “Imagine an engineer can get hired at JP Morgan in two weeks,” Kaelani explained. “This saves a lot of time and costs for both sides.”
Follow American University’s Kogod School of Business on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and YouTube.
