MBA-e Food Drive Brings in More than a Ton of Food

The students, faculty, and staff of Yale SOM’s MBA for Executives: Leadership in Healthcare program donated more than 2,300 lbs. of food to the Connecticut Food Bank in a recent food drive.

The size of the donation would be notable under any circumstances, but is especially so given the logistical challenge the classes had to overcome: getting their donations to campus. Students in the MBA for Executives program attend classes on the Yale SOM campus on alternating weekends while holding full-time jobs, and some travel from as far away as California.

The Classes of 2011 and 2012 competed against each other and against the program’s faculty and staff to see who could donate the most food. The Class of 2011, which had won the previous year’s competition, once again hit on a stratagem to come out on top: the class pooled its money, ordered the food via Peapod, the online grocery shopping and delivery service, and had it delivered to the SOM campus.

The food drive was started three years ago by the program’s executive director, Ellen Skinner ’87. ““Helping to feed the hungry is important to me because I do not believe anyone in this country should have to go hungry," she says. It seems the students agree with me.”

On Monday morning, January 31, the MBA-e staff and food bank personnel loaded the donations into a Connecticut Food Bank van for delivery to the organization's warehouse in East Haven where they tipped the scale at 2,369 pounds. The Connecticut Food Bank supplies more than 650 soup kitchens, shelters, food pantries, and daycare programs in Connecticut.