The Grossman School of Business at the University of Vermont proudly celebrated the graduation of the Sustainable Innovation MBA (SI-MBA) Class of 2026 in a ceremony held at the Grand Maple Ballroom in the university’s Dudley H. Davis Center. The event marked the culmination of a rigorous one-year program designed to prepare students for leadership in sustainable and socially responsible businesses.
The graduates completed the SI-MBA curriculum, which integrates lectures from global thought leaders, extensive experiential learning opportunities, and real-world problem solving. The program concluded with the capstone Practicum Project from May through July, where students applied their knowledge to address complex challenges in sustainability and innovation with real businesses and organizations.
The ceremony was opened with a speech from Dean Vikas Anand, who was recently appointed to the leadership position in the Grossman School of Business. “It's exactly one month since I joined the school and I have been asked what excites me about coming here,” mused Dean Anand. “At that point I mention that there is virtually no school in the country whose values match mine as well as this school’s does. SI-MBA is in many ways a tangible manifestation of those values, and I'm honored that my first official ceremony as a dean is the inauguration of the SI-MBA program.”
The SI-MBA program has received significant recognition, including being named the top AACSB Accredited Green MBA and the #1 Better World MBA by The Princeton Review and Corporate Knights respectively, underscoring its global impact and academic excellence.
The ceremony also honored outstanding contributions from students and faculty. Nikki Nikolova received the Malcolm Severance Graduate Excellence Award. Faculty accolades included Felipe Massa as Faculty Member of the Year and Anjanette DeCarlo as Adjunct Faculty Member of the Year, a recognition that DeCarlo also received last year. Hailey Garrison, Nikki Nikolova, Jörgen Sweeney, Kiana Sweger, and Molly Trycieckyj were inducted into the Beta Gamma Sigma international business honor society, reflecting their outstanding academic achievement and commitment to ethical business leadership.
Speakers at the event included Dean Anand, Dean Christopher Berger of the Graduate College at UVM, class speaker Ellen Tierney, and guest speaker Ben Tacka, the Commercial Development Lead for Phaidra Prism, a company that is leveraging AI to optimize infrastructure systems.
Dean Berger acknowledged that the political climate has changed significantly since this cohort started, but he encouraged students to hold fast to the values that led them to a sustainability-focused MBA program. “I want to encourage you not to mistake a shift in intention for a shift in importance. The underlying challenges remain. Organizations still need to become more resilient. Communities still need sustainable solutions. Businesses need to manage resources efficiently while creating long-term value,” observed Berger. “The environmental, economic, and social challenges that motivated many of you to enter this program have not gone away. If anything, they are becoming more consequential.”
The SI-MBA program takes pride in the high-touch support that students receive, involving direct, 1:1 advising from program faculty and staff to drive student success. The program also begins with a rigorous module focusing on the business skills that help non-traditional MBA students thrive in the classroom. Class speaker, Ellen Tierney, at one point focused on the sense of belonging she found in the program, despite her background in visual arts. “[I] quietly wondered if sustainability was a room that I had somehow wandered into by mistake. I looked around the room with people in backgrounds in science, engineering, policy, and environmental studies, and I wasn't sure where someone like me would fit. And that's when I found SI-MBA- this program, and for the first time, I realized that maybe belonging isn't about arriving with the right background. Maybe it's about finding a community that helps you discover why your background mattered all along.” said Tierney.
Ben Tacka, a SI-MBA graduate of the first cohort – the Class of 2015, reflected on his own time in the program while also predicting that sustainability is on the rise – not in decline. “I believe we'll look back a decade from now to see this acceleration point of capitalism's journey away from an extractive system of growth for the sake of growth, to a system that more closely reflects our finite but yet abundant and regenerative ecosystem on this planet we call home,” prophesied Tacka. “My hope for the next decade and beyond is not rooted in my imagination. It's actually represented in the data.” Tacka then cited multiple statistics that supported the upward trends of sustainability. “This program is a pressure cooker. A one-year full-time MBA, nine months of classwork, 30 plus hours in the classroom, plus the 30 plus hours of group work and everything else it takes to get here today and then the practicum in the summer,” reminisced Tacka. “It is a pressure cooker. Thank you [Grossman School faculty and staff] for your support for these students and helping them achieve what they've achieved today.”
This year’s ceremony marked the graduation of the 12th SI-MBA cohort. The Grossman School of Business extends its gratitude to the SI-MBA community and to the many donors and partners who supported the program, including Mr. Steven Grossman, Robin Tauck, Greg Hunt, Dennis Meany, Robert M. Phillips, the Bain family, Curtis Packaging, and Seventh Generation. Special thanks are also extended to Ben Tacka and the UVM Davis Center for their contributions to this memorable event.
The incoming SI-MBA Class of 2027 will begin their academic journey in late-August. Prospective students and those interested in learning more about the program are encouraged to visit the Sustainable Innovation MBA academic program page. The deadline to apply to the SI-MBA program remains open through Monday, August 10.
See the replay of the SI-MBA Inauguration Ceremony (YouTube)View, download, and share photos (Photoshelter)
