The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, a national leader in promoting diversity and inclusion in business education and corporate leadership, will add a 20th university to its membership ranks effective July 1, 2018: The University of Washington’s Michael G. Foster School of Business.

The highly ranked Seattle-based university officially joins The Consortium at the start of the organization’s new fiscal year following approval on Dec. 4, 2017, by The Consortium’s board of trustees and the signing of the university’s membership agreement on May 3, 2018. The Consortium works with top-ranked MBA programs around the country to increase the ranks of underrepresented minorities in business education and corporate leadership.

“It’s been clear from the start that Foster would be a strong, enthusiastic and energetic partner in furthering our mission,” said Peter J. Aranda III, The Consortium’s executive director and CEO. “We’re eager to begin working with Dean James Jiambalvo and the rest of his team.”

Since 2005, Jiambalvo has led the Foster School of Business, which has embraced diversity and inclusion as a hallmark of its work, weaving that commitment into its academic programs, the student experience and its community relationships through formal programming, student clubs and activities, scholarships, and internships.

“We’re excited to extend our work in diversity, equity, and inclusion through membership in The Consortium,” said Jiambalvo. “Our membership provides an opportunity to live values fundamental to the Foster School and the University of Washington, namely that commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion in America’s classrooms and boardrooms make for resilient thinkers who have the power to lead and inspire the world toward better outcomes for all.”

UW is the second university to gain membership in The Consortium in the past year. Rice University officially joined on July 1, 2017, and will participate in its first Orientation Program & Career Forum—an annual conference for new MBA students and Consortium constituents—in June 2018.

During Aranda’s 14-year tenure as executive director, The Consortium negotiated the return of the University of California, Berkeley after a six year hiatus and added six new schools to its membership — Yale University; Cornell University; the University of California, Los Angeles; Georgetown University; Rice; and the University of Washington.

The Consortium works with its member schools and 85 corporate partners to increase the ranks of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in U.S. business schools and corporate leadership positions. The Consortium serves this mission by annually offering hundreds of merit-based, full-tuition fellowships to promising leaders, as well as membership in a global network of more than 9,000 diversity-minded alumni, member school representatives and corporate partners. This year, The Consortium expects to welcome more than 500 students into its program, joining an equally large class of second-year MBA students.

Those corporate partners — which include companies such as Google, General Mills, 3M, Johnson & Johnson and dozens more — gain early access to top-flight, diverse talent at The Consortium’s Orientation Program. The Consortium will begin recruiting prospective MBA students for the Foster School of Business’ first Consortium class in the fall of 2018 for admission in 2019.

Founded in 1966, the vision of The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management is to increase the representation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in management careers in the United States. We realize this vision by recruiting outstanding students who have shown a commitment to diversity and connecting them with top-tier MBA programs and corporations.

The Consortium, founded at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, now includes the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles; Carnegie Mellon University; Cornell University; Dartmouth College; Emory University; Georgetown University; Indiana University-Bloomington; the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; New York University; The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Rice University; the University of Rochester; the University of Southern California; The University of Texas at Austin; the University of Virginia; the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Yale University; and on July 1, 2018, the University of Washington.

Founded in 1917, the Michael G. Foster School of Business is committed to providing an accessible learning community of faculty, staff, students, alumni, and business leaders dedicated to the creation, dissemination, and application of management knowledge. For more information about and insights from the Foster School of Business, visit the school’s website at foster.uw.edu.

For more information, contact:

Janice Wells-White, Ed.D., Vice President, Program Administration The Consortium
636-561-5451.

Dan Turner, Associate Dean, Masters Programs, Michael G. Foster School of Business 206-543-2165.