Five Stanford MBA Students Designated 2014 Siebel Scholars

A former advisor to Australia’s Prime Minister, a student leader in finance and investments who is a teaching assistant for a financial modeling course, an avid sports fan exploring the intersection of sports business and innovation, an award-winning journalist, and a decorated graduate of Britain’s Royal Military Academy who served in the British Intelligence Corps, have all been named 2014 Siebel Scholars at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

These five accomplished second-year MBA students join an elite group chosen by a faculty committee based on academic achievement and demonstrated leadership within the business school community during their first year. The honor includes a tuition grant, established in 2000 by the Siebel Foundation, to recognize the most talented students at the world’s leading graduate schools of business and computer science.

The five Stanford MBA students are: Benjamin Austin, Brian Rose, Colin Twomey, Zoe Corneli, and Tom Sayer.

Ben Austin

Ben is a passionate advocate for public sector reform to improve the effectiveness and transparency of government. At Stanford GSB he is an Arbuckle Leadership Fellow, served as a member of the Admit Weekend Planning Committee, and co-chaired the 2013 Military Appreciation Dinner. Next winter, he will also lead a global study trip to Australia. Prior to business school, he served as an advisor to the Minister for Defense and Prime Minister of Australia and also spent three years working for McKinsey & Company. Originally from Sydney, Australia, he holds a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and International Relations and a Bachelor of Science (Medicine) from the University of New South Wales.

Brian Rose

At Stanford GSB Brian is co-CIO for the student investment fund of the Finance and Investment Club, and a teaching assistant for the financial modeling course. He has pursued an interest in entrepreneurship by working as a Fellow at Atomic Labs, a San Francisco startup that builds tech-focused businesses. This summer he worked at Viking Global, a New York public equity investment firm. Prior to business school, he spent two years in private equity at Bain Capital, where he evaluated investments across a wide variety of industries and regions; before that, he was an associate consultant at Bain & Company where he advised clients in the financial services, investment management, chemicals, and publishing industries. A San Francisco native, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he concentrated in economics and was a John Harvard Scholar.

Colin Twomey

An avid sports fan, Colin has taken advantage of his time at Stanford GSB to explore the intersection of sports business and innovation. On campus, he is co-president of the Sports Management and Soccer clubs; as a first-year MBA student he served as advisor for a sports-related startup and conducted an independent study on sports technology. Before business school, he spent two years with McKinsey & Company in Los Angeles and three years at Hotwire.com in San Francisco. At Hotwire, he developed a passion for consumer insights and data analytics, managing the company’s database marketing team. While an undergraduate at Harvard University, where he earned a degree in economics, he was president of the weekly newspaper and was elected Phi Beta Kappa. He hails from Tustin in southern California.

Zoe Corneli

Zoe is co-president of the Arts, Media, and Entertainment Club at Stanford GSB, where she is also an elected member of the Student Association Academic Committee and leader of the committee’s Class Liaison program. In her first year, she served as Class Liaison and sat on the board of the nonprofit Acterra as part of the Impact Labs Board Fellows program. She spent her summer as a senior product manager intern at Amazon. For seven years prior to business school, she worked as a journalist in San Francisco, first as a public radio reporter, then as an editor at The Bay Citizen, an online news startup that produced the local pages of the New York Times. In 2009 she was named Outstanding Emerging Journalist by the northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. She is interested in the intersections of business, technology, and media. She grew up in Minneapolis and graduated magna cum laude from New York University, where she studied broadcast journalism (with honors), linguistics, and Mandarin Chinese, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Tom Sayer

Tom is pursuing joint MBA/MA Education degrees at Stanford University. He is co-president of the Education Club and captain of the graduate rugby team. In his first year at Stanford GSB he helped found Sension.co, which was selected to be a part of the Highland Capital Summer Program. Prior to business school, he worked as an intelligence officer in the British Army for six years, completing tours in Afghanistan and Libya. He also built and currently runs a mini-golf course in Cambodia. Prior to his military service, he was a product manager at a startup in London. He graduated from the University of Cambridge with first-class honors in math and psychology; he also received the Larmor Prize in 2004. Commissioned from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst with the Queen’s Medal in 2008, he earned top-of-his-class honors at the Defense School of Intelligence a year later. An avid athlete, he ran the Marathon Des Sables (6 marathons in 7 days across the Sahara) and finished among the top 15%.

During the past 13 years the Siebel Scholars Program has created a community of 870 scholars that fosters personal leadership, academic achievement, and the collaborative search for solutions to pressing societal problems. As future leaders in the fields of business and computer science, these students will have the opportunity to directly influence the technologies, policies, and economic and societal decisions that shape the future.

By Helen Chang