Priya Mehra radiates hope. She is confident that sustainable business practices can help power the under-served and 
address human-created challenges, including climate change. Her dedication to social and environmental issues has brought her to IMD to find the right tools to make lasting change.
Priya Mehra is the recipient of an IMD MBA Merit Scholarship.
Key achievements
Priya has sought to create systematic change in each of the positions she has held. She joined IMD from Morgan Stanley where she was COO (VP level) of the Institute for Sustainable Investing. There she advanced the bank’s adoption and scale-up of sustainable investing tools- investing to achieve positive environmental or social impact along with market-rate returns. Before making the move to Wall Street, Priya worked as Policy Advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, including traveling with him to bring awareness and raise $60 billion in commitments for women’s and children’s health through a ground-breaking partnership model.
Priya completed her Master’s in Public Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School (Sommer Scholar). Between obtaining a BA from State University of New York, Albany, in her home state, and starting Hopkins, Priya joined AmeriCorps where she directed a health outreach organization in an impoverished Pittsburgh neighbourhood and started up a Federally Qualified Health Center. She also helped draft health legislation for U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy and evaluated anti-sex trafficking programs in India, her father’s homeland.
Coming to IMD
When Priya decided to hone her leadership skills to drive change, she was convinced by IMD’s unique philosophy among top business schools as she feels that it puts students before revenue or rankings: “The IMD program director thinks first and foremost about providing MBA students with the best-in-class education and the moral compass to make a real difference upon graduation.”
She is impressed by IMD’s holistic approach to leadership training: “There is no better program in the world for leadership development.” Everything, she notes, is inter-connected.
“IMD has done an incredible job of helping us see how important it is to take the broad view. One day we came to accounting class prepared for a case study on a company about to commoditize its product only to have our marketing prof walk in mid-way through to challenge our conclusions. By afternoon it was clear that this was no longer just an accounting or marketing class but also a lesson in strategic planning and communications.”
Priya advises future candidates to be themselves, “only then will you be able to genuinely assess if IMD is the right fit for you and vice versa.”
Next steps
Priya’s ambition is to develop business solutions for human-created challenges, including climate change. She wants to help people think outside the box and see the relevance of considering social and environmental factors. Inspired and inspirational, Priya is acquiring the business credentials to defend and drive the sustainability measures that she considers essential for our ecosystems. Including economical.
