Wharton gets $10 million donation

Wharton just received a major donation that will have lasting effects.

A few weeks ago, 1979 Wharton MBA graduate Anne McNulty gave $10 million to the Wharton Leadership Program, which has since been renamed the Anne and John McNulty Leadership Program.

The program serves four audiences: undergraduates, MBA students, Wharton executive MBA students and students in the executive education program, management professor Anne Greenhalgh said. Greenhalgh’s greatest hope for the program is that the money will be used to spark new initiatives.

Although the breakdown of where the money will be distributed and any specific changes to the program have yet to be decided, it seems that undergraduates and WEMBA students will be in for the biggest treat. The majority of the resources in the Leadership Program currently go towards MBA students, Greenhalgh said, and the gift will likely allocate more resources toward undergraduates and WEMBA students.

The gift’s arrival also coincides with a thorough re-evaluation of Wharton’s entire curriculum, Greenhalgh said.

All Wharton leadership development programs operate under the assumption that leadership consists of a set of skills that can be learned and developed scientifically. The current goal of the leadership program is to pair the cognitive aspect of leadership development, supported by scientific research, with meaningful mentoring relationships between students and professionals to create “stretch experiences,” said Jeff Klein, the executive director of the McNulty Leadership Program.

Greenhalgh hopes that skills honed in Management 100, which embody the real-life leadership challenges that Wharton hopes to emphasize, will be applied to new classes and workshops in the future with the McNulty gift.

Another initiative that may grow with the McNulty gift are the Wharton Leadership Ventures. The Wharton Leadership Ventures place teams of undergraduates and teams of MBA students in exotic places like Antarctica and task them with completing a challenging “mission” that is designed to build character and collaboration skills. The ventures aren’t offered on as large a level to the undergraduates as they are to the MBA students, and McNulty is open to expanding undergraduate opportunities.

Anne McNulty, whose late husband John also received his MBA from Wharton and whose three children went to Penn, hopes that the program will impart awareness of one’s weaknesses and strengths, the ability to communicate a vision and to persuade others, emotional intelligence and effective listening skills, all of which she views as essential to being an effective leader.

Guide, for example, is a small undergraduate-organized initiative that pairs undergraduates with MBA students to create mentoring relationships. With the donation, this program may grow to match the scale of a similar program offered to MBA and WEMBA students.

The McNulty Leadership Program will also continue to maintain the partnerships that it has formed with organizations and schools outside of Wharton. One such program is a West Point Leadership Exchange that places a group of Wharton students at West Point and a group of West Point students at Wharton for one day to experience the different leadership development methods.

Doing more informal outreach is also on the horizon. McNulty said she would like to see more lectures and symposia relating to leadership development become open to the wider Penn community.

More consistent collaboration between Wharton and other schools has taken shape in the Lipman Family Prize Fellows. The Lipman Prize is collaborating with the McNulty Leadership Program to award money to an organization doing outstanding social impact work. The fellows help to choose the organization and are made up of undergraduate and graduate students from all of Penn’s schools. The prize is a complement to the McNulty Prize, which awards an individual who has done outstanding social impact work.

In the spirit of constantly refining the teaching of leadership development, the McNulty gift may also go towards the Center for Leadership and Change Management, an organization that provides grants to professors researching leadership and management strategy.

Greenhalgh highlighted the importance of leadership across all the new initiatives that the donation will enhance.

“Leadership is a relevant skill regardless of context,” she said.

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