Graduate student business groups and School of Business officials are finalizing an umbrella organization for managing funds and events this semester. 

Student leaders said the Graduate Business Association intends to bolster programming and efficiently disperse money to GWSB’s 13 graduate student organizations. Janiece Morton, the assistant program director for graduate programs at GWSB, said Vice Dean of Graduate Programs Shivraj Kanungo kickstarted the organization in fall 2022 to be more inclusive of the school’s programs by distributing funding to all graduate organizations, which previously had funding distributed to them through the Student Government Association.

Morton said the MBA Association served as the previous umbrella organization for GWSB graduate organizations and was originally formed to serve the MBA population. But, she said the school added more specialized graduate programs over time, and officials wanted an organization to include non-MBA graduate students. Morton said Kanungo saw the success of the Undergraduate Business Association in uniting undergraduate organizations and wanted a similar structure for graduate students. 

“We wanted both sides of the population to mix and mingle and get to know each other as well,” Morton said. “We realized that the umbrella student organization was a very pivotal part of the integration of all of the graduate programs at the School of Business, and we wanted to figure out how we can kind of support that transition from the top down.”

Student organizations in the GBA include the MBAA, Black MBA Association, GW Consulting Club, Graduate Finance Society, Forté Organization at GW, Graduate Marketing Club and GW MBA Business Analytics Club. The National Association of Asian MBAs, GW Net Impact, Out for Business, Prospanica, Real Estate Investment & Development Organization and Women’s MBA Association are also included in GBA.

Morton said Kanungo tasked her with developing the new parent organization when she began her role at GW in fall 2022. GWSB officials worked with the Office of Student Life and the SGA to change the umbrella organization’s policies to expand its jurisdiction over all graduate GWSB organizations instead of just organizations for MBAs, she said.

In October 2023, the SGA passed a bill to make it easier for graduate students to form governing bodies under the SGA, aiming to bolster graduate student involvement and give student organizations greater control of allocation funding. 

The bill’s sponsor, then-SGA Senate Chairperson Pro Tempore Amy Cowley, said in 2023 that she created the bill after hearing the MBAA tried to expand its representation for all GWSB graduate organizations in 2022, but it lacked the authority to change its structure.

Morton said last fall was a “transitional period” for GBA in which the organization elected new executive board members and hosted events but maintained the MBAA title on Engage. She said when GBA was formally established at the start of the fall semester, their Engage page changed titles and the organization received funds from graduate business students through the SGA fee to then distribute to its subsidiary organizations.

She said she also worked with the previous MBAA executive board to refine their organization’s constitution to establish new language that included all graduate students in GWSB.

Claire Martin, the executive vice president of the GBA, said the organization is in the final steps of allocating funds to all of its student organizations and reviewing the draft constitution before the end of February. 

She said the establishment of GBA is not a rebranding of the MBAA, despite some of its members helping start the new organization. 

“They were just nice enough to be the ones to help sort of launch it and work with the staff. It’s more that GBA is completely new, versus MBAA changing,” Martin said.

The GBA hosted its second graduate networking social Thursday, which the MBAA previously hosted once a semester, according to Engage. 

“That’s for all graduate business students to come together and learn about organizations that they can be part of but also what’s happening as a whole and also meet one another,” Martin said.

She said before GBA, graduate student organizations operated in a “vacuum” separate from one another. GBA provides organizations with a platform to share information about their respective organizations and work together, she said.

“GBA is sort of replacing that vacuum and hoping to help student organizations accomplish their goals, both networking and connection space but also academic, alumni whatever it might be,” Martin said.

GBA President Kabeelan Athirathinam, a first-year graduate student in the accelerated MBA program, said the organization’s restructuring plan for 2025 is focused on “student welfare” and creating “efficient” events for each student organization. 

Athirathinam said the graduate business student organizations only hosted five or six events in total last year, and he said he hopes to create a calendar with GBA-sponsored events to “fill the gap” between each organization’s programming.

“We’re trying to get the house cleaned first, so that we set the ground rules for each student organizations to complete, so that it’s easier for them to keep doing it every single year,” Athirathinam said. 

Athirathinam said SGA funding requests from each of the individual organizations was previously “sporadic” because event planning and coordination was unorganized. He said the finalization of the constitution and schedule of events will bring much-needed stability to the graduate business student groups.

“Each student organization was acting in its own preferred way of engagement, in terms of creating events, in terms of requesting funds. So there wasn’t one channel, the unit to organize that entire operations together,” Athirathinam said.

Athirathinam said GBA is looking to create an “alumni-centric community,” where students can attend events to meet alumni and receive guidance from them. He said he hopes to host events with UBA because it could provide both groups an opportunity to meet and learn from each other.

“I missed a lot of things when I was an undergrad student, and I can see these folks have a lot of opportunity because even in the place that I come from, you don’t get to meet graduate students so easily being an undergrad,” Athirathinam said. “But here things are different. The American ecosystem is different. School of Business, the George Washington University is different.”

Edwina Wang, the vice president of inclusion for GBA, said her role acts like a liaison between GBA and stakeholders in the business school focused on fostering an inclusive student community, like the Dean’s Diversity Council. Wang said she will run a Global Culture Day on Monday as part of GWSB’s annual Diversity and Allyship Week, which will include food, fashion displays and performances from different countries, like India and Liberia.

“We asked students and also faculty, staff, anybody who was interested to represent their culture or some part of their culture, to bring us more close,” Wang said.

Jennifer Igbonoba contributed reporting.