Rotman School MBA Graduates Named as “MBAs to Watch” by Poets&Quants

Toron­to, ON – Two grad­u­ates of the Full Time MBA pro­gram at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment have been named to the Poets&Quants “MBAs to Watch” list, which high­lights 100 suc­cess­ful MBA grad­u­ates from around the world.

Aqeela Nan­ji, MBA’17, and Phil Gaza­leh, MGA/17, were the only two stu­dents from a Cana­di­an busi­ness school named to the list, which orig­i­nat­ed from nom­i­na­tions sub­mit­ted by over 60 MBA pro­grams for Poets&Quants Best & Bright­est” MBAs fea­ture from ear­li­er this year.

Nan­ji was the Pres­i­dent of The Let­ters, the School’s LGBTQ and allies club, where she cre­at­ed a pro­gram specif­i­cal­ly for clos­et­ed stu­dents who are most­ly from oth­er coun­tries and also orga­nized an inau­gur­al stu­dent pan­el on diver­si­ty and inclu­sion ini­tia­tives for 350 first-year MBA stu­dents. She was the recip­i­ent of both a Forte Foun­da­tion fel­low­ship and a Reach­ing Out MBA fel­low­ship.

“I have been extra­or­di­nar­i­ly impressed with Aqeela’s accom­plish­ments while at the Rot­man School. They extend her already excel­lent his­to­ry of com­mu­ni­ty activism and engage­ment. What is remark­able about Aqeela is her sen­si­tiv­i­ty to impor­tant inter­sec­tions in our com­mu­ni­ty between gen­der, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, race and class,” says Prof. Sarah Kaplan, who is also direc­tor of the School’s Insti­tute for Gen­der + the Econ­o­my.

While at the Rot­man School, Gaza­leh was a founder of the first MGA/MBA Stu­dent Asso­ci­a­tion and was the recip­i­ent of a Reach­ing Out MBA fel­low­ship. He also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Rot­man OnBoard pro­gram where he sup­port­ed the work of a board of a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion and con­tin­ued to par­tic­i­pate with Start Proud (for­mal­ly Out on Bay Street) which facil­i­tates the pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment of LGBTQ and allies stu­dents as they tran­si­tion from school to career.

“An image of a direc­tion­al sign to the restrooms from one of our con­fer­ences appears in my inbox. With it a list of sim­ple sug­ges­tions on how to cre­ate “all gen­dered” bath­rooms at Rot­man appears in the text. Since the day Phil arrived at Rot­man he’s always been a “roll up my sleeves and help build the solu­tion” type of stu­dent leader. When ref­er­enc­ing the type of cul­ture and stu­dent com­mu­ni­ty we want at Rot­man, I often refer to exam­ples that direct­ly involve Phil,” says Neel Joshi, Direc­tor, Stu­dent Life & Inter­na­tion­al Expe­ri­ence.

Pro­files of Nan­ji and Gazeleh are online at Poets&Quants as well as the sto­ry for the entire list.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness and soci­etal chal­lenges.  For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.