Two MBA graduates make Poets & Quants Best and Brightest list for 2025

Johns Hopkins Carey Business School MBA graduates Elham “Hasti” Jamshidi and Deanna Portero are among the Best and Brightest MBA graduates for 2025, according to Poets & Quants. The influential online digest’s annual list recognizes 100 full-time MBA graduates from elite business schools around the world. Jamshidi and Portero were both recognized for their leadership in the business of health, and this is the first time two Carey Business School students received the honor in the same year.

Before pursuing her MBA at Carey, Jamshidi was the founder and CEO of Riske Man, a digital health startup in her native Iran. Riske Man focused on creating AI models for managing COVID-19, both in public and hospital settings, and was Iran’s first approved digital health company.

“I chose Carey Business School because of the focus on health care technology, which was exactly something that I was looking for. Coming from a clinical background, I wanted a program that could help me bridge between medicine and business,” says Jamshidi. “And Hopkins doesn't just teach health care as another industry, I think it's in the school's DNA. And being right next to one of the best hospitals in the world means you are constantly exposed to real health care challenges that need business solutions.”

During her studies, Jamshidi was active in the Hopkins Business of Health Initiative Graduate Academy and Hexcite, the university’s digital health accelerator. She also interned at Johns Hopkins Hospital. After graduation, Jamshidi will be joining pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca as a commercial leadership associate.

Deanna Portero, a former management analyst at the National Institutes of Health, says she chose Carey Business School for the opportunity to pursue innovation in health care and the health care sector. Portero completed the MBA/Master of Public Health dual degree program offered by Carey Business School and the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“Health care is an inherently interdisciplinary hybrid between private, public, and third-sector operators, and it's a field unlike any other. If I went to business school anywhere else and got a generic business school education that focused on Nike versus Adidas and Netflix versus Blockbuster, I wouldn't be able to learn the stories and dynamics that are truly at the heart of the health care field,” said Portero. “I chose Carey because the business of health is unlike any other, and I wanted to become a master of the business of health.”

After graduation, Portero will become vice president of Partnerships and Innovation at Orphan Therapeutics Accelerator, a nonprofit biotech company focused on developing clinical therapies for ultra-rare diseases. In the U.S., so-called orphan diseases are those conditions that affect fewer than 200,000 people. According to Portero, the Orphan Therapeutics Accelerator focuses on the thousands of rare genetic diseases for which a therapy could be sustainably marketed but has failed to attract sufficient interest from traditional investors.

“About a month into my time at Hopkins, I connected with experienced collaborators in my field who wanted to work together to launch the Orphan Therapeutics Accelerator,” Portero explains. “I’m proud to have identified a gap in helping people with orphan diseases and I’m proud of the perseverance it has required to bring this challenging and ambitious mission into reality.”

Jamshidi and Portero will receive their degrees at the Carey Business School commencement ceremony on May 20. Jamshidi will be giving an address on behalf of the Class of 2025.