Understanding the big picture in healthcare
In this special series, we’re talking with students and alumni who participated in Kellogg’s Healthcare Deep Dive, an MBA course that gives students an up-close-and-personal look at key players, trends and movements in this fast-changing industry. Held across three intense weekends in San Francisco, Miami and Evanston, this one-of-a-kind course enrolls students from across the across the Full-Time, Evening & Weekend and Executive MBA programs to learn and network together.
Virginia Venable ’23, Executive MBA, received her undergraduate degree in theater from Northwestern and pivoted to a career in business after graduation. Her journey led her to consulting, where she noted an increasing emphasis on healthcare. During the COVID pandemic, she realized she wanted to fill some professional gaps. After taking Kellogg’s mastering sales online course and attending a healthcare webinar taught by professor Craig Garthwaite, she decided to pursue an MBA, since she was already familiar with Kellogg from her time as an undergraduate. “Kellogg is a phenomenal program,” she said. “The high-impact, low-ego approach resonates with me and my style.”
Upon learning that if she joined the Executive MBA Program and took all the Deep Dive courses, she could earn an additional certificate in healthcare leadership, Venable took the leap and started classes at the Evanston campus. “Between learning about value-based care with Oak Street Health or how Bain Capital Life Sciences is evaluating biopharma, it was phenomenal,” she said. “Having someone who’s a founder of a very successful company and have them not just as a guest speaker, but part of crafting the curriculum and identifying experts to come in and give panels was such an incredible experience.”
Moreover, the diversity of students from the different MBA tracks and from home cities around the world gave her fresh points of view professionally. She engaged with physicians, people in private equity and students in medical product design. “The perspectives they brought to bear in the conversations produced some of the best dialogue in our classes,” she said. “Any time you’re in a position where you are thinking more globally, where you’re thinking about broad perspectives within an industry like healthcare, you’re really benefited by that diversity of thought.”
The connections with classmates remain well after the weekend ends. In fact, Venable is still in an ongoing WhatsApp chat with other students she met at the Deep Dives. “One of the big takeaways with Kellogg is the power of your network. That’s so essential in how you’re a connector and what role that plays in our lives.”
Venable, who started as a client partner at the Chicago consulting agency Kin + Karta this past March, said that Kellogg prepared her for her current role building out the company’s healthcare practice. Today, she is working on its go-to-market strategy and leading in the space where the company’s digital capabilities intersect with the healthcare industry. “Had I not been able to go through the Deep Dive, I would’ve had a lot less clarity. On top of that, I have a network to tap into, not from a transactional perspective, but to better deepen my understanding around where digital shows up in healthcare.”
Healthcare can be overwhelmingly broad, but the Deep Dive program helped her make sense of the larger ecosystem, she says. “If you can have a better superstructure to understand the big components, you have a much better chance of making sense of how it all comes together.” —By Claire Zulkey
More in this series
Healthcare at Kellogg: Four MBA students share their journey through the Deep Dive immersion
Shifting into healthcare strategy