Gary Thill

Haas alumni fill gaps in healthcare for all generations by reimagining well-being in the age of AI.
Growing up with obsessive-compulsive disorder, Brad Brenner, BS 18, didn’t have many treatment options. Instead, he self-medicated with “screen time” in the form of video games.
“Pokémon, Tamagotchi, Club Penguin—any of those fun games, I played them,” Brenner says. “I was struggling with OCD, and when it came to doing things that would drive positive outcomes in my future, I put those aside.”
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Innovation is core to how entrepreneurs solve problems. And today, those problems are bigger and more pressing than ever. Climate change is demanding that the global economy rethink fossil fuels that have powered industry for generations. The pandemic has left a still-fragile supply chain, coupled with a smaller, more assertive workforce in its wake. Meanwhile a new technology, generative artificial intelligence, threatens to upend everything all over again.
Thankfully, Haas entrepreneurs are...

“I’ve worked in venture capital. I’ve worked in marketing. I’ve worked in technology. And there are very few Latinos,” says Ortiz, who’s now a marketing consultant at his startup, Bright Growth, which serves venture-backed B2B companies. “I can’t tell you how many times in the last two decades where [I think], ‘I’m the only Latino in this space.’ It’s bothered me for a long time.”
Ortiz got a chance to do something about it last year when he spoke on a panel about career pivots as part of an ...

Is your job still a good fit?
No matter how long you’ve been in your career, knowing the answer to that question can be tricky. But a surprising clarity happens if you look back at the last six months and ask yourself:
Am I still growing in my job?
Have I learned anything new about working with other people?
Have I learned anything new about the work I do?
If you struggled with those questions, it may be time to take a hard look at why.
“A lot of times, people don’t really own their careers,”...

The drive to be first in science can turn discovery into fierce competition. Just ask Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, whose competing 17th-century claims of discovering calculus kicked off a feud that delayed collaboration between British and continental mathematicians for decades. Or Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, who both laid out theories of evolution by natural selection.
For today’s scientists, the race for recognition still shapes research agendas and careers. But while c...

Berkeley Haas Professor Ann Harrison and her friend Michele de Nevers hiked through the French Alps in the summer of 2023 to view the Mer de Glace glacier. They were left speechless by the large expanse of darker rock in the wake of the glacier—a visible marker of rising temperatures.
“Last year was the hottest year in recorded history,” says Harrison, the former dean of Berkeley Haas and a renowned economist. “Given that 25% of graduate students are in the discipline of business, we have a h...

Happy 15th anniversary to the Defining Leadership Principles: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself. These pillars of Haas culture are now ingrained in everything that is Haas—they’re even carved into the school’s faculty building and embedded in courtyard pavers. Here’s how Haas culture has evolved.
Haas’ Defining Principles (the word “Leadership” is not yet in the name) are articulated and amplified by wallet-sized “culture cards” distrib...

Digital loans are often seen as a blessing and a curse in developing countries: They provide credit to those who lack access to banking but can also burden borrowers with annual interest rates as high as 200%. And there’s been little evidence that digital loans improve people’s lives—until now.
New research by Associate Professor Omri Even-Tov and three colleagues found that randomly approved digital loan borrowers in Kenya saw bigger mobile money balances, higher income, better employment pr...

Timothy Daniel, MBA 24, spent a year at Berkeley Haas exploring ideas for a legal research startup, but wasn’t getting any traction.
Then he had an epiphany: Why not try to solve a problem he already understood, which was the complexity of legal compliance in the energy industry. “I started digging deeper, and I realized that this was an even bigger problem than I thought,” said Daniel, who was senior legal counsel and head of compliance for an energy group before coming to Haas.
That deep di...

When the U.S. government flexes its $5 trillion annual purchasing power to encourage environmental progress, companies listen—and act. A new study from the UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business shows that firms have reduced toxic emissions, developed greener products, and taken concrete steps to address climate change in their pursuit of government contracts.
The study, led by Haas professor Omri Even-Tov, analyzed ten years of data on about 2,700 companies headquartered across more than 350 ...

When plotting their career trajectories, young professionals are often encouraged to follow their passion. And in the entrepreneurial world, passion is often seen as a key ingredient for success. But figures such as Elon Musk, known for his passion as well as arrogance, show that this drive is not without its perils—including what researchers call “performance overconfidence.”
So how can the passionate drive in the workplace be harnessed without backfiring? The answer may lie in understanding...

Served as managing editor and contributing writer for Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy alumni magazine

When OpenAI released ChatGPT, Ghazaleh Sadooghi, EWMBA 25, wanted to use it but feared being labeled a cheater.
A senior software engineer at LinkedIn, she knew there had to be a better way to incorporate AI ethically into academia. So she and her husband, Mo Zadeh, MIMS 16 (information systems), began developing the startup Rumi Technologies, aiming to empower students to use AI responsibly within guidelines set by their instructors.
In this interview, Sadooghi explains how Rumi enables resp...

When plotting their career trajectories, young professionals are often encouraged to follow their passion. And in the entrepreneurial world, passion is often seen as a key ingredient for success. But figures such as Elon Musk, known for his passion as well as arrogance, show that this drive is not without its perils—including what researchers call “performance overconfidence.”
So how can the passionate drive in the workplace be harnessed without backfiring? The answer may lie in understanding...

For years, cities have used rent control to address the persistent problem of housing instability among underserved populations, such as African Americans.
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the nation’s mounting housing affordability crisis, rent control has again become a lever that policymakers are looking to pull. Per United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) standards, 40% of renters nationwide are in the “cost burdened” category, meaning they spend more ...