San Francisco, CA, and Philadelphia, PA, April 13, 2016— The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has announced undergraduate alumna, Jacqueline Reses (W’92), Capital Lead of Square, will be the featured speaker at the School’s 2016 MBA for Executives San Francisco graduation ceremony. The ceremony will take place May 7, 2016, at the Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, CA. Ms. Reses oversees Square’s business financing product, Square Capital. Square Capital provides lending to small businesses and merchants. In addition, Ms. Reses oversees human resources and recruiting for Square.
“Our West Coast students can look to Jackie Reses’ career as a template for success in today’s globally connected innovation economy,” said Geoff Garrett, Dean of the Wharton School. “Throughout her life — as an entrepreneur with a patent pending, as a key figure managing Yahoo’s massive investment relationship with Alibaba, or as someone dedicated to giving back to her community — Jackie has exceled in multiple dimensions. We are delighted to have her speak to our graduates at Wharton | San Francisco.”
Prior to Square, Ms. Reses was the Chief Development Officer for Yahoo. In this role, she focused on developing revenue and product partnerships, strategic acquisitions and significant corporate transactions, as well as the operational and people transformation of Yahoo. Ms. Reses has also been involved in the development of Aabaco Holdings, the wholly owned subsidiary of Yahoo Inc., which is expected to be listed as an independent, publically traded closed-end management company.
Ms. Reses was also on the Board of Directors of Alibaba Group, China’s largest online and mobile commerce company. There, she co-chaired the audit committee of the Board of Directors and also managed strategic M&A and financial services transactions for both Alibaba and ANT Financial.
Prior to joining Yahoo in 2012, Ms. Reses led the U.S. media group at Apax Partners, one of the largest global private equity firms with over $40bn in assets. While at Apax, she made some of the firm’s largest and most complex investments in TMT, including Intelsat, Cengage Learning, and NEP Broadcasting. She also managed significant LP and credit relationships on behalf of Apax. Ms. Reses served as CEO of iBuilding Inc., a real estate software business spun out of Tishman Speyer, which was sold to Realeum Software in 2001. Ms. Reses also spent seven years at Goldman Sachs in mergers and acquisitions and the principal investment area.
Ms. Reses was named one of Crain’s New York Business’ “Most Influential Women,” and was one of Dealmaker magazine’s “Dealmakers of the Year.” She has a patent pending for “Systems and Methods for Equitably Determining Employee Compensation.”
Previous graduation speakers at Wharton | San Francisco have included Carol Bartz, Arthur Bilger (W’75), Jon Huntsman Jr. (C’87, HON’10), Ken Moelis (W’80, WG’81), Paul S. Otellini, David Pottruck (C’70, WG’72), and Josh Kopelman (W’93). Wharton established a campus in San Francisco due to the strong belief that business executives would be well served by the option to pursue a robust, full-curriculum Wharton MBA without the need to cross the United States. The School has graduated approximately 1,000 students from its Wharton MBA Program for Executives in San Francisco.
Information about the Wharton School’s graduation ceremony is available at http://graduation.wharton.upenn.edu. Information about the University of Pennsylvania’s 260th commencement ceremony is available at http://www.upenn.edu/commencement/.
About Wharton | San Francisco and the Wharton School
Wharton MBA Program for Executives in San Francisco was one of the first programs launched at Wharton | San Francisco, the School’s campus in San Francisco. It offers the same MBA degree, rigorous curriculum, top Wharton faculty, and high level of students as the traditional MBA program on Wharton’s main campus in Philadelphia. A residential program, students attend classes on alternate weekends and during two week-long sessions in the summer. Because Wharton students live and work together during focused on-site sessions, students have an opportunity to forge close connections with classmates as well as to foster teamwork skills. In addition, the integration of work and study provides a living laboratory for applying knowledge.
Founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education. With a broad global community and one of the most published business school faculties, Wharton creates economic and social value around the world. The School has 5,000 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students; more than 9,000 participants in executive education programs annually and a powerful alumni network of 94,000 graduates.
