Yashonandan Kakrania
Emory University, Goizueta Business School
“Sometimes I wonder if buying out a Costa café would be cheaper than how much I’ve spent there.”
Fun fact about yourself: I am a certified scuba diver!
Hometown: Kolkata, India
High School: La Martiniere for Boys
Major: BBA (Information Systems & Operations Management, Organization & Management, Marketing) and Master of Accounting
Minor: N/A
Favorite Business Course: ACT 420/520: Accounting Analytics
Extracurricular Activities, Community Work and Leadership Roles During College:
Extracurriculars:
Goizueta Case Competition Team, Co-Captain
Goizueta Consulting Group, Co-President, VP of External Affairs
Goizueta AI Association, Founder and President
Emory Impact Investing Group, Chief Research Officer
GCG Consulting Academy, Co-Founder
Goizueta Career Management Center, Coach
Research Assistant – Professor Peter Roberts, Professor Rajiv Garg, Goizueta AI Lab, Professor Richard Berlin, Dean Andrea Hershatter, Professor Gonzalo Maturana
Teaching Assistant – ACT 200: Language of Business, ACT 420/520: Accounting Analytics, MKT 442: Marketing Consulting Practicum, BUS 390: AWS and Cloud Computing with AI, ISOM 599R: Data Management and Analytics
BBA Ambassador
SPARK Mentorship Group, Mentor
Resident Advisor
Dean’s Advisory Group
Honors and Awards:
3rd Place at Champions Trophy Case Competition
1st Place at Carolina Case Challenge
2nd Place at WashU Values and Data Challenge
Capital One Case Competition, Semi-Finalist
John Robson Fellow
Business and Society Institute Fellow
Where have you interned during your college career?
Ernst & Young, GenAI Data Scientist Intern (Kolkata, India)
Ernst & Young, Technology Risk Intern (Atlanta, GA)
Where will you be working after graduation? After graduation, I will be returning to Ernst & Young in the Atlanta office. I am also building my startup which I’m planning to launch in the coming months.
Who is your favorite business professor? I first met Professor Allison Kays as a freshman when I was still unsure about pursuing business and enrolled in her introductory accounting class to explore the field. I found that her teaching style really engaged me because she would often use our accounting analyses to a bigger depth to answer organizational level challenges. This was my first exposure to how we can use numbers to uncover a story that’s otherwise hard to find/prove.
After deciding to join Goizueta, I took her Accounting Analytics course, which deepened my interest in data strategy and analytical thinking. Beyond the classroom, she has been a consistent mentor who encouraged me to carve out my own path and lean into my strengths. Many of the analytical skills I rely on today trace back to what I learned in her classes.
What is the biggest lesson you gained from studying business? The biggest lesson I gained from studying business is learning how to turn data into actionable insight.
It’s easy to jump straight to creative recommendations when solving a problem, but Goizueta’s curriculum emphasized diagnosing the problem first by digging deeper into the data. That shift in the thought process has fundamentally changed how I approach challenges. This habit of using data to uncover what’s really happening has made me a more thoughtful problem-solver and a better decision-maker.
Looking back over your experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently in business school and why? I came into Emory as a film and media student, but switched to business a year later. Looking back, I wish I had explored the intersection of these two industries, such as the business side of film and entertainment more deeply, learning about studios, production, and the streaming industry alongside my business coursework. It’s easy to gravitate toward traditional pathways such as consulting and finance in business schools, and I did the same. I recently started revisiting my interest in the entertainment industry and realizing how naturally it connects with what I’ve learned. I’m excited about the path I’m on, but I would have liked to spend more time exploring non-traditional intersections of business and creativity earlier on.
What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What is one insight you gained from using AI? Goizueta Business School has integrated AI across curricular, research, and extracurricular experiences. Academically, we recently introduced an interdisciplinary area depth that allows students to apply AI to business problems like financial modeling and customer segmentation, and many courses now actively incorporate AI tools into assignments and projects.
We also have an innovation-focused Center of AI where students work with professors to develop and test new applications of this technology. For example, I’ve been working with Rajiv Garg to develop an AI-powered teaching assistant platform that supports content explanation, practice quizzes, autograding, and more. Our goal is to deploy this tool across multiple classes to enhance how students learn and practice material.
On an extracurricular level, we recently launched our first AI in Business student club which focuses on offering AI literacy workshops to students covering topics like prompt engineering and vibe coding. This semester we are launching an open access accelerator for students interested in AI-driven entrepreneurship.
Which academic, extracurricular or personal achievement are you most proud of? I am most proud of our case competition team placing third at the Champions Trophy in New Zealand, widely regarded as the world’s premier case competition. What made this achievement meaningful was how new our team was. We had only been building the program for about two-and-a-half years, yet we qualified as the only U.S. team in the competition due to the foundation laid by prior student leaders.
When we arrived, it was clear that many teams had years of experience on the international circuit and had competed in previous editions. This was our first time. The format was also unfamiliar as we had to produce a full paper presentation in five hours without internet access. Despite our inexperience and unfamiliarity, we adapted to this competition over the course of 4 days to reach the finals and place 3rd amongst the best teams across the world.
I’m deeply grateful to our supporters including Dean Hershatter and Dr. Jeff Rosensweig who made this experience possible and turned it into one of my most memorable moments at Goizueta.
Which classmate do you most admire? I most admire my senior peer, Dani Parra del Riego Valencia, who was my co-captain on the case competition team. What stood out most about Dani was her humility and instinct to put others forward. She was always available when someone in the team needed any kind of support regardless of her workload. Watching her lead made me rethink what effective leadership looks like.
She also had a unique way of challenging my ideas. Rather than dismissing them, she would ask thoughtful questions that forced me to consider additional perspectives and refine my thinking.
Who would you most want to thank for your success? I’ve been fortunate to have many people play a meaningful role in my development over the last few years, but if I had to thank one person, it would be my mentor, Riddhiman Mukherjee, who passed away a couple of years ago.
He came into my life at a time when I felt completely lost and helped me recalibrate my direction and my sense of purpose. He taught me to orient my decision-making and effort towards impact, and to have the courage and responsibility to drive change. Ever since, I try to orient myself to taking difficult tasks to challenge myself and make meaningful impact.
I carry those lessons with me every day. In the way I lead, the projects I choose, and the communities I invest in, I try to honor what he taught me by striving to create positive impact wherever I can.
What are the top two items on your professional bucket list?
1. I want to build a startup at the intersection of my two biggest interests, technology and renewable energy, and contribute towards accelerating our push towards the net zero emissions goal.
2. As someone who enjoys a breadth of experiences, I would like to serve of the Board of Directors/Advisors of different for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. This would also enable me to amplify my impact towards causes I care deeply about.
What made Yash such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?
“Yash is exceptional. He is one of those students who is always thinking about what more he can build, improve, or try next. He has worked with me as a TA since 2024, and from the start, his curiosity and work ethic stood out. He genuinely enjoys solving problems that make life easier for other students. Over time, that led him to use his passion for technology to create innovative teaching tools: first, a chatbot to help answer student questions, then an autograder to speed up feedback, and eventually a “study buddy” prep tool for quizzes and exams.
What I enjoy most about working with Yash is how excited he gets when we talk about new ideas and my office hours with him almost always turn into brainstorming sessions about how AI can support learning in more thoughtful ways. He takes his responsibilities seriously and never cuts corners; whether it’s grading, helping students, or pushing a project forward, he shows up – even when he’s traveling halfway across the world. Yash is driven to use AI for the good of his community and society. As the transformative power of technology accelerates, I think he is exactly the type of future leader we will need in business.”
Rajiv Garg
Associate Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management
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