Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Alumni
  • Login
  • Volunteer
  • Clubs
  • Reunions
  • Bulletin
  • Class Notes
  • Help
  • Give Now
  • Stories
  • Alumni Directory
  • Careers
  • Programs & Events
  • Giving
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Alumni→
  • Stories→

Stories

Stories

31 Jan 2018
78
78 views

A Visible Example of What’s Possible


Topics:
Education-Faculty
Leadership-Leading Change
Demographics-Race-African American, Black
ShareBar

Linda Oubre (MBA 1984) is living the same dream she hopes her students can realize.

“In a world where only 18 percent of business school deans are women, and less than one percent are African American, I live the life of someone who no one expects to be the ‘one in charge’,” says the dean of the College of Business at San Francisco State University. Oubre observes that her HBS degree was the first step to a career that allowed her to “be a visible example so that more people who look like me will see what’s possible.”

After graduating from HBS, Oubre stayed on, working as assistant director in the School’s admissions office. Her corporate career began at the Los Angeles Times, where she started as a planning analyst and later became general manager of new business development. She also worked at Walt Disney Publishing before cofounding BriteSmile, a national chain of teeth whitening spas, in 1999.

At San Francisco State’s College of Business, Oubre and her husband recently endowed the Linda and Nathaniel Oubre Leadership Scholarship for first-generation students of color. She also achieved another dream earlier this year, receiving her doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania.

“Many of my students have never seen anyone like me in a leadership position,” Oubre notes. “Thirty years after HBS, I have learned to strut my stuff.”

(Published January 2018)

ShareBar
Featured Alumni

Featured Alumni

Linda Oubre
MBA 1984, Section A
follow @LindaOubre

Post a Comment

Featured Alumni

Featured Alumni

Linda Oubre
MBA 1984, Section A
follow @LindaOubre

Related Links

Related Links

    • 17 Dec 2018
    • HBS Alumni Bulletin

    Tomorrow, Transformed

    By: HBS Bulletin staff; illustration by Martín Léon Barretto
    • 14 Mar 2018

    Do the Things You Love

    Re: Rebecca Henderson
    • 02 Mar 2018
    • Wall Street Journal

    David Mullins Rose to Fed Vice Chairman, Then Joined Doomed Hedge-Fund Firm

 
 
 
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
ǁ
Campus Map
Campus Map
External Relations
Harvard Business School
Teele Hall
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
Phone: 1.617.495.6890
Email: alumni+hbs.edu
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Terms of Use
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Terms of Use
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College