2026 Best & Brightest MBA: Jasmine King
“MD/MBA candidate and manufacturing CEO with a passion for advancing health equity in underserved communities.”
Hometown: Buffalo, NY
Fun fact about yourself: I grew up racing sailboats on Lake Ontario and still love being on the water.
Undergraduate School and Degree: BA in Chemistry and MA in Bioethics & Medical Humanities from Case Western Reserve University (2021); MD from The Ohio State University College of Medicine (anticipated 2027)
Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Pivot Precision
Where will you be working after graduation? CEO of Pivot Precision while finishing my medical education
Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: Goizueta Admissions Ambassador, Healthcare Fellow, IMPACT Coaching Fellow, Teaching Assistant
Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school?
Leadership is often tested not when we know the answer, but when we do not. This adage proves especially true when reflecting on my time coaching a BBA team through a client consulting project in a subject area outside my expertise. Rather than relying on technical familiarity, I had to lean into structure, strategic questioning, and the discipline of clear thinking. Instead of positioning myself as the authority in the room, I have focused on creating conditions for the team to navigate uncertainty with confidence. This has entailed helping frame problems thoughtfully, challenging assumptions, and translating analysis into actionable recommendations for the client. Watching their confidence develop alongside the rigor of their work has been deeply rewarding. This experience has reshaped my understanding of leadership. It is less about subject-matter mastery and more about cultivating clarity, accountability, and momentum when the path forward is not immediately obvious.
What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career?
The opportunity to create something enduring represents a far more meaningful and even rarer pursuit than growing something established. Alongside a few dedicated and deeply inspiring classmates, I helped bring the Street Medicine team at my medical school from a shared vision to life. What started as a collective conviction that care should extend beyond hospital walls evolved into a structured, sustainable organization serving individuals experiencing homelessness. As a team with minimal funding and institutional support, we built formal leadership pathways, developed community partnerships, and created systems that ensured continuity beyond any single graduating class. Over time, the team grew into one of the largest and most active student organizations on campus with measurable patient engagement. More than its growth, I am most proud that the Street Medicine team is designed to endure, equipping future physicians to approach care with humility, advocacy, and a sustained commitment to those too often overlooked.
Why did you choose Goizueta Business School?
Healthcare is one of the most complex and consequential industries in the world and leading within it demands proficiency in both medicine and management. I chose Goizueta’s One-Year Full-Time MBA because its accelerated structure and deep integration within a leading healthcare ecosystem provide a uniquely practical and rigorous training ground. As an MD/MBA student, I was deliberate in selecting a program that would deliver concentrated business education without significantly delaying my clinical career.
The one-year format demanded focus and intensity, mirroring the pace of both clinical training and executive decision-making. Furthermore, studying finance, operations, and strategy in an environment where healthcare is central allowed me to contextualize every lesson through the lens of patient impact and organizational sustainability. Ultimately, Goizueta offered a rigorous program that would strengthen my ability to lead both within health systems and in the private sector, applying disciplined strategy and principled leadership across two complex arenas.
What was your favorite course as an MBA?
Leadership with Professor Rod McCowan asked us to examine not just how to lead, but who we intend to be as leaders. Rather than focusing solely on frameworks or metrics, the course centered on character, responsibility, and ethical decision-making. Our classroom became a space for candid reflection on authority, accountability, and the lasting impact of our choices.
With my background in bioethics, I found these discussions especially meaningful. I have long been drawn to examining the moral dimensions of decision-making in medicine, and this course expanded that lens into corporate and institutional contexts. It reinforced that leadership is not defined only by results, but by the principles that guide those results. Professor McCowan created an environment where disagreement was constructive and introspection was expected. By the end of the course, I was not only thinking differently about strategy and influence, but more intentionally about the values I will carry into both the hospital and the boardroom.
What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school?
Amid the intensity of an accelerated MBA program, Keeping Everyone at Goizueta Social (KEGS) represents a welcomed pause in the week. Coming from a deeply academic background where schedules are packed and networking often feels like a task, I appreciated that KEGS creates protected time to simply connect with classmates. Centered on conversation and community rather than competition, this weekly tradition reflects the collegial spirit of Goizueta, a school that values relationships just as much as results. Moreover, KEGS serves as a critical reminder of the importance of investing in genuine, lasting connections that shape both careers and character.
Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why?
Reflecting on my MBA experience, listening to my classmates and their experiences represented the greatest source of learning. The natural diversity within our cohort – spanning clinical medicine, consulting, finance, operations, and entrepreneurship – created an extraordinary opportunity to deepen one another’s understanding of healthcare from multiple vantage points.
While initiatives through the Healthcare Fellows program provided valuable touchpoints, I believe we could have cultivated more intentional forums for shared learning. Organizing structured case discussions, peer-led workshops, or small-group dialogues pairing clinicians with business-focused classmates could have further illuminated the operational realities behind clinical decisions and the financial frameworks shaping health systems. As someone moving between medicine and business, I saw firsthand how powerful these exchanges could be. Creating more deliberate mechanisms to harness that collective expertise would have enriched the educational experience and better mirrored the interdisciplinary collaboration required in modern healthcare leadership.
What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it?
Culture is often shaped in moments of great tension, when leaders are forced to choose between competing priorities under intense scrutiny. While I understood this principle intellectually, reading the HBR case on Cynthia Carroll and her decision to shut down a major Anglo-American mining operation made it tangible. Following multiple worker fatalities, Carroll halted production to address systemic safety failures despite immense financial pressure and internal resistance, proving that leadership credibility is established through action not rhetoric.
By prioritizing worker safety over short-term output, she demonstrated that values are only meaningful when they carry real cost. Her decision did more than pause operations. It reset expectations and signaled that safety was a non-negotiable standard. The case reinforced for me that ethical leadership is most visible when it requires sacrifice. In industries like healthcare and manufacturing, where human lives and livelihoods are directly affected by executive decisions, culture is ultimately defined by what leaders are willing to protect when performance and principle collide.
What did you love most about your business school’s town?
Raised in Buffalo and primarily educated in Ohio, moving to Atlanta represented my first real introduction to the South. I like to say I traded lake-effect snow for sweet tea and discovered that “winter” can mean 50 degrees. Beyond a mere climate shift, Atlanta offered a vibrant cultural and culinary landscape. The city blends Southern tradition with global influence in a way that feels bold, creative, and constantly evolving. One night could mean perfectly executed Southern comfort food and the next, authentic international cuisine representing the city’s remarkable diversity. Food in Atlanta is not just dining; it is storytelling, entrepreneurship, and community building all at once.
What business leader do you admire most?
As an MD/MBA student, I am particularly inspired by leaders who steward mission-driven institutions with both strategic rigor and moral clarity. As such, I have long admired Barbara Snyder for her principled and strategic leadership during her tenure as President of Case Western Reserve University. Leading a major research institution requires navigating financial stewardship, academic integrity, healthcare system partnerships, and community accountability. During her presidency, she strengthened the university’s financial position, elevated its national standing, and deepened its integration with affiliated health systems. What resonates with me most is her steady, values-driven approach to institutional leadership. Universities, much like health systems, sit at the intersection of public trust and operational complexity. Snyder demonstrated that disciplined management and ethical responsibility are not competing priorities but mutually reinforcing ones.
What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI?
One of the most meaningful ways my business school integrated AI into the curriculum was by embedding it directly into coursework rather than treating it as a standalone topic. Across classes, professors structured discussions, live cases, and hands-on assignments around how AI could inform decision-making from market analysis to operations strategy. Instead of asking whether AI would shape business, we were asked how to deploy it responsibly and effectively. Gaining a more nuanced understanding of AI was one of the most valuable outcomes of this approach. I came to see it not as a replacement for expertise but as a powerful tool that requires disciplined prompting, critical evaluation, and ethical awareness. While AI accelerated research and scenario modeling, it also exposed the importance of human oversight in identifying bias, validating assumptions, and contextualizing outputs. The experience reinforced that technological fluency must be paired with sound judgment, a lesson I will carry into both healthcare and manufacturing leadership.
Which MBA classmate do you most admire?
Kenna Temesgen returned to business school with a clear sense of purpose, choosing to deepen her knowledge in entrepreneurship while simultaneously balancing the responsibilities of family life as a mother. Watching her manage the demands of an accelerated program while raising her daughter has been both humbling and inspiring. She carries that responsibility with remarkable composure and intentionality. In the classroom, Kenna is thoughtful and measured, never contributing for the sake of airtime but always elevating the discussion when she speaks. She approaches group work with the same authenticity, fully engaged and deeply respectful of her teammates’ perspectives. Essentially, Kenna embodies a form of leadership grounded not in volume or visibility, but in steadiness, clarity, and quiet conviction. Her example has reshaped how I think about balance and intentionality in high-performance environments. Learn more about Kenna in Voice of Goizueta’s CEI Fellow Spotlight.
What are the top two items on your professional bucket list?
Lead the development of a financially sustainable surgical care model for underserved patients: As an MD/MBA pursuing surgery, one of my foremost goals is to design and implement a surgical care pathway within an academic health system that expands access for patients experiencing homelessness, substance use disorder, or significant social vulnerability. Surgical care often exposes the sharpest edges of inequity, from delayed presentations to postoperative complications driven by unmet social needs. I hope to work at the intersection of perioperative care redesign, reimbursement strategy, and community partnership to build models that integrate preoperative optimization, care coordination, and postoperative follow-up for high-risk populations.
Contribute to the revitalization of the trades and economic development in Buffalo through the family manufacturing business: As a third-generation leader of a family manufacturing company, I aspire to use the business as a platform for rebuilding pathways into the skilled trades in my hometown of Buffalo. Industrial cities like Buffalo have deep talent and history, yet many young people lack structured access to apprenticeships, technical training, and long-term career mobility in manufacturing. Beyond growing the company, I want to contribute to a broader economic revival that restores pride in the trades as both viable and vital professions.
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