Sai Yeluru is a Canfield Business Honors Program alum who was born in India and moved to San Antonio for middle school. Sai developed an early interest in business, gaining his first introduction to the field from his father, who made a career switch from IT to real estate investing and brought middle-school Sai along for the journey. In high school, Sai was also involved in tech, and he attended the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science for two years of high school. To combine his interests, he looked into universities with strong business and engineering programs. This search led him to the University of Texas at Austin, which turned out to be a great decision. Canfield Business Honors provided Sai with an intimate community of amazing peers, many of which became his closest friends. Four years of struggling with upper division classes, volunteering, and recruiting together created inseparable bonds.
At UT, Sai’s activities were mostly service-oriented. He was involved in Code Orange, where he taught local elementary students how to code. This was a defining part of his college experience as the growth of his young students gave him a strong sense of purpose and accomplishment. A student who left a lasting impression was Max, whom he met as a sharp second grader and built some incredible games and strong connection over the three years that Sai taught him.
With his interests in community service and business, Sai decided he eventually wanted to lead a tech startup that promotes social good. MIS 301H, the introductory management information systems class, was formative. He learned how large companies like Zara implement tech, and it led him to consider how to bring similar concepts to improve education, nutrition, and service. This class revealed the social value of MIS and helped Sai solidify his major in MIS, along with a certificate in computer science.
Sai left UT wanting to make a difference through tech. However, he first needed to build up core skills and chose to begin his career at McKinsey. In a similar vein to applying MIS to social change, he thought about how he could apply the skills he was building to a fulfilling initiative. This led him to a secondment at a company selling solar energy and outdoor lighting products to help kids in Sub-Saharan Africa study at night.
This experience was pivotal and gave Sai a better sense of where he wanted to focus his efforts. However, like before, he needed to continue building a foundational skillset. He applied to MBA dual degree programs and chose the University of Pennsylvania, where he became both a Wharton MBA and Lauder Institute MA (International Studies) candidate. His MBA gave him an amazing network and opened many doors to venture capital. His MA introduced him to the culture, politics, and economics of Sub-Saharan Africa, which he had not studied before. Once he graduated, he refined his goal to improve people’s lives in Sub-Saharan Africa rather than work in big tech.
McKinsey sponsored the MBA and has played a crucial role in helping Sai fine-tune and get closer to reaching his goals. He has since returned to McKinsey to develop the core skillset of managing people effectively, including how to own workstreams and lead teams to think about problems in a multifaceted way. He chose McKinsey’s Washington D.C. office this time to be exposed to social and public sector work, which he felt as closer to his north star of service.
Since social entrepreneurship is his end goal, Sai is exploring the applications of edtech and AI to support students. With advancements in AI, it is easier than ever to help students do better–and simultaneously, the need for public schools to support students is higher than ever.
Sai’s biggest piece of advice is to have a hypothesis of a north star. You should always have an idea of what job you want, where you want to live, who you want to be, etc. This north star will constantly shift–it may not be the same answer next year–but it will help ensure you make the right decisions by always being the reason behind them. Think about and update your north star regularly. This will serve as a guiding point for where you want to go to college, what industry and company you want to work for, and many other important decisions.
While your career is important, Sai emphasizes the importance of developing yourself outside of it. It is important to have interests that are completely unrelated to your career. In interviews, he lit up about basketball and hot chocolate when asked about his interests, and this is what truly differentiated him. When he looks back at his time at UT, his mind immediately went to making hot chocolate from scratch with friends–he still experiments with types of sugar, chocolate, and methods of heating milk to this day. Your personal well-being is what you will remember and what drives you–make sure to invest in it.