From Executive Education to an Executive MBA: Two Women, One Darden Journey

For Leandra Jenkins and Meghan Saunders, the path to the University of Virginia Darden School of Business did not begin with a fully formed plan. It started with a feeling.

Meghan had carried that feeling for years: the sense that her education was not complete. She had already earned a master’s degree from UVA’s School of Education and Human Development. However, as her career continued to evolve, she sensed that another chapter lay ahead.

“I had felt for a long time that my educational journey wasn’t necessarily finished,” Meghan said. After a year of significant organizational change in her role, that feeling sharpened into something more specific: a desire to be more intentional about her leadership development.

Leandra’s spark was both professional and personal. In her work, she was taking on increasing responsibility for leading business transformation amid rapid changes in technology, staffing, artificial intelligence and product strategy. She wanted new frameworks and new perspectives. But she also wanted to model lifelong learning for the people closest to her.

“I wanted to make a commitment to continue to evolve as a leader,” Leandra said. “Not only providing that example to my team and my company, but frankly, also my children.”

Finding Clarity in Women in Leadership

Both women found their way first to Darden Executive Education & Lifelong Learning’s Women in Leadership (WIL) program. Meghan arrived after encouragement from her longtime friend Allison Sellman, who works in Darden Executive Education. Leandra came looking for a space where experienced women leaders could speak candidly across industries, roles and organizational cultures.

What they found was more than a professional development program. It was a pause, a reset and, for both, a doorway.

The case method and decision-making frameworks were immediately useful for Leandra, offering tools she could apply to personnel, financial and product challenges. But the deeper takeaway was personal. “WIL provided clarity of where I want to focus, especially in my leadership identity: my personal brand, my communication style and how I wanted my strengths to show up in my work.”

Meghan found similar meaning in the program’s reflective work, especially the “Reflected Best Self Exercise” led by Professor Laura Morgan Roberts. The assignment invited participants to gather feedback from peers, friends and colleagues, then consider how their strengths could become even more central to their leadership.

“Often when we’re reflecting on leadership, there can be a focus on what you can do better,” Meghan said. But WIL also emphasized, “taking what you know are your strengths and then building those up.”

That strengths-based approach is something she has already brought back to her own team.

A Place Where They Could Belong

The program also gave both women a sense of belonging at Darden.

“Participating in the WIL program definitely helped me see there’s a place for people from so many different professional backgrounds to come together and talk about all these things that we’re excited about,” Meghan said.

Leandra felt that sense of belonging immediately. “The environment itself invites you to learn, it invites you to think, it encourages space for reflection and connection.”

That space mattered. In the speed of senior-level work, it can be hard to carve out time to learn something entirely new. But Leandra sees that as essential to growth.

“A lot of my world today is faster, smarter, better,” she said. “But if I’m not taking the time to learn new ways to do things, I can’t really evolve or transform the way we do things.”

“We Can Do This”

Somewhere in the middle of that WIL experience, another idea began to take shape: What if they kept going?

Leandra remembers Meghan sitting behind her in class, bringing what she describes as a “quiet confidence” to the room. The two connected through workshops, conversations and shared experiences as working mothers. During one conversation, Leandra mentioned that earning an MBA had long been a personal goal. However, the timing had never been right.

Meghan remembers the moment clearly. They were walking to dinner when Leandra shared that she was seriously considering Darden’s Executive MBA and encouraged Meghan to join her.

“She said, ‘I’m thinking about getting my EMBA. We should do it together. We can do this,’” Meghan recalled. “That was the first spark for me.”

It was not just the conversations between them that made the possibility feel real. Both women had engaged with Darden’s faculty up close during WIL, and that mattered. The program gave them a preview of the kind of learning environment they could expect: rigorous, practical, reflective and deeply relevant to the leadership questions they were already facing.

By the end of WIL, the idea had moved from possibility to plan. They had found not only a program that challenged them, but a place, a faculty and a learning community that made them want to continue. With support from their families and organizations, they’re joining the EMBA Class of 2028, starting this fall.

A Partner on the Path

For Meghan, that means continuing to learn alongside experienced professionals from different industries and stepping outside the “higher ed bubble” that has shaped much of her career. She’s approaching the program with openness, curiosity and a willingness to see where it leads.

Leandra sees the EMBA as a training ground for broader strategic leadership, especially in a business world being reshaped by AI, automation and changing expectations of work.

“I’m looking to find a way to kind of future-proof myself as a leader,” she said. “Someone who is out there understanding emerging trends, who can actually translate them into strategy and apply them.”

And they won’t be doing it alone.

“It’s meaningful to take this next step alongside someone who had that experience in WIL with me. I have a buddy that I’m texting about every little thing that’s coming up as we prepare for the program,” Meghan said.

“I’m excited to have a friend in this journey,” Leandra said. “We’re both working moms, so we have to motivate each other. We also need to hold each other accountable.”

Their industries are different — Meghan in higher ed administration, Leandra in experiential education and product strategy — but their values align. Both are looking for growth that is practical, reflective and deeply human. Both are returning to Darden not simply to earn a credential, but to become sharper, more intentional leaders.

And both are proof that sometimes the next chapter starts with a single conversation, a trusted nudge and someone saying, “We can do this.”