Today’s episode is an extra special show. This is AST’s 200th episode! It’s fitting that we welcome back Elissa Sangster, who was the very first guest on AST almost five years ago. Today she is the first guest to come back for a third time.

This show should be valuable to you because of Elissa’s critical role as head of the Forté Foundation in increasing women’s representation in business school and business, and because of her profound insider’s knowledge of the business school and professional worlds.

Elissa earned her MBA at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School in 1994 and immediately became the Assistant Director of its MBA program. She moved on to UT Austin in 1997 where she served in different roles including the Assistant Dean and Director of McCombs’ MBA program. In 2004, she became the first director of Forté Foundation, a consortium of business schools and companies working to increase the number of women in business leadership positions. Welcome back, Elissa!

Can you review Forté’s backstory for us? [3:00]

The origins go back to 2000-1, due to a Catalyst research study on women in MBA programs, called “The Gateway to Opportunity.” That research was looking at why there weren’t more women enrolled in b-schools, and that was the motivation for creating Forté.

It started with five events back in 2002. I came on board in 2004, and we’ve continued creating programs aimed at preparing women early in the process.

We’ve understood that we need to reach out earlier in the decision-making process, too, so we’ve created programs at the college/university level that help women see what careers in business can look like.

And we do professional development programs.

There’s a lot of lack of awareness, lack of role models – a lot of young women have no one in their influence set telling them that b-school would be a great fit. So we’re taking that role.

What is the Forté Fellows program? [6:40]

It started in 2005. We asked our partner schools to give significant scholarships (averaging half of tuition) to two students each year. In 2005, we had about 35 students. For 2018, 1100 students received fellowships. There are now about 5000 alums. It’s a great group.

The benefits are beyond financial – it’s about being part of a broader community. The fellows are involved in programming on their campus, programming for undergrads, etc. It’s a community we know we can depend on.

How do you become a Forté Fellow? [9:48]

Each school makes their own selection. We’ve given them general guidelines.

We start communicating and bring them into the Forté community as soon as they receive the award.

Another significant Forté program is MBALaunch (and Virtual Launch). Can you tell us about that? [10:35]

MBALaunch creates a very active community – they tend to bond and are very supportive and engaged.

It’s a ten-month program that starts with a live kickoff event (with sessions on different topics). Then they’re grouped, and they spend the next ten months working with their peers and a coach preparing for the MBA application. They address all parts of the application (essays, interviews).

There are 570 participants this year. We want them to be competitive.

We want them to apply to schools they might not have thought about if they did the process in isola...