Five Stanford MBA Students Honored as Siebel Scholars

They studied religion, captained water polo teams, helped engineer leveraged buyouts, lobbied for natural resource firms and directed anti-tobacco groups before coming to the Stanford Graduate School of Business to sharpen their management skills.

Now, those five accomplished students have been named 2009 Siebel Scholars, and join an elite group chosen by a faculty committee based on academic achievement, leadership and citizenship within the Business School community during their first year at the GSB. The honor includes a tuition grant of $25,000 from the program, established in 2000 by the Siebel Scholars Foundation to recognize the most talented students at the world’s leading graduate schools of business and computer science.

The five Class of 2009 Stanford MBA students are: Emily Bailard, Howard Bornstein, Willard “Billy” Butcher, Jr., Sophie Pinkard, and Benjamin Sloop.

Bailard grew up on a small avocado farm in Carpinteria. While earning an undergraduate degree at Yale University, she captained the Yale Women’s Water Polo team and graduated Cum Laude with a political science degree. She was a research assistant at the Brookings Institution in 2002. During the summer of 2008, Bailard worked as business factors intern with Palo Alto product design firm IDEO. While there, she contributed to an energy efficiency project.

Bornstein serves on the executive committee of the Public Management Program at the Business School and is an active member in the student Private Equity Club. Outside of class he works on the Nonprofit Knowledge Network, a social venture which aims to help people make more informed donation decisions. Prior to Stanford, Bornstein worked at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation developing low interest loans for charter schools and affordable housing developments.

Butcher, who prefers the nickname “Billy,” worked for three years in the private equity business of buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., first in the company’s New York and then in Tokyo, where he helped launch KKR’s operations in Japan and Australia. While at KKR, Butcher also worked on the leveraged buyout of Masonite International, the world’s largest maker of doors. Butcher is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University, where he received an AB in politics, and describes himself as a passionate golfer since age 5.

Pinkard received a bachelor of science degree in management science and engineering from Stanford University in 2004. The Washington, D.C. native was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and received the President’s Award for Academic Excellence and the Craig Prize for Excellence in History Writing. At Stanford GSB, her interests lie in nonprofit and social enterprise management. She spent the summer as an intern at REDF, a San Francisco non-profit that helps poor and homeless people attain employment as a way out of poverty. When not working, Pinkard enjoys running, soccer, skiing, yoga, and reading. Georgia native Sloop holds a bachelor’s degree in history and religion from Harvard University, where he also rowed on the varsity crew team and played oboe in the school’s orchestra. Before coming to Stanford, he was director of business development at wholesale insurance brokerage AmWINS Group in Charlotte, N.C. He also was an associate at Parthenon Capital in San Francisco and worked as a consultant at Bain & Co.’s offices in Boston and Sydney. He was a summer business development manager at Freedom Financial Network LLC, a consumer finance firm in San Mateo, CA.

During the past eight years, the Siebel Scholars Program has created a community of more than 450 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 Michele Chandler