Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business has been recognized as a leader in expanding opportunities for women in business.

The Broad College of Business is participating with a select group of other major business schools in a White House initiative to expand opportunities for women in business.

“Our continual goal in the Broad College is to prepare our students to make business happen in diverse and worldwide settings – to solve the future’s most difficult business challenges,” said Sanjay Gupta, the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Dean. “We are honored to discuss these efforts with the White House and proud to continue to lead initiatives to improve opportunities for women in all of our programs.”

This work of improving opportunity has been going on for a long time.

Research by Poets & Quants using historical data from Financial Times rankings indicates that the Broad College has had the greatest increase in the proportion of female faculty of all top business schools over the past 16 years—and currently has “the highest percentage of faculty women among Top 25 American MBA programs” at 33 percent.

The same research placed Broad among the top five U.S. business schools for the highest proportion of women on the school’s board, at 26 percent.

In the past few years, the college has adopted a variety practices to encourage women’s achievement, including hosting the annual Women in Business Conference, funding women students to attend national conferences, partnering with the Broad Women MBA Association on incoming student events, and hosting professional development programs supporting women in executive leadership.

Indeed, the college’s Full-Time MBA Class of 2017 is more than 40 percent women as a result of a proactive effort to recruit and retain a diverse class.

But beyond this, there is the work of small groups of individuals in the Broad community with the vision to raise women up. For example:

  • The Full-Time MBA students who visited teenage girls in residential treatment to encourage them to aim high and overcome their obstacles.
  • The staff and students working with Suzy Merchant, MSU women’s basketball coach, to produce the empowHER leadership retreat for middle school girls.
  • A staff member who co-chairs a local mentoring program for women business owners seeking to grow their businesses to the next level.

This is the environment that prepares Broad alumnae to make business happen. No wonder that they are leading the North American auto industry, pursuing their startup dreams, and everything in between.