In this episode of Sloanies Talking with Sloanies, host Christopher Reichert, MOT ’04, interviews Dr. Sreenivas Koka, EMBA ’13, about how his multicultural upbringing and MIT Sloan experience transformed his approach to dentistry and leadership, emphasizing empathy and value-based care.

Starting his academic journey at 19 at the University of Michigan’s School of Dentistry, Koka earned multiple degrees, held roles like Chair of Dental Specialties at the Mayo Clinic and Dean at the University of Mississippi’s School of Dentistry, and founded the Koka Dental Clinic.

After being let go from his deanship, he co-founded Executive Leadership Enterprises to focus on developing first- and second-time supervisors, while continuing to serve underserved communities, such as providing dental care to Mississippi prison inmates.

Koka defines success as living a purpose-driven life, a perspective shaped by Sloan’s courses on strategy and innovation, which expanded his mindset beyond technical expertise to create meaningful societal impact.

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In this episode of Sloanies Talking with Sloanies, host Christopher Reichert, MOT ’04, interviews Yurui (Rui) Tong, MBAn ’21, a graduate of the MIT Sloan Master of Business Analytics program. Tong, reflects on her educational and professional journey through a personal lens of self-discovery and curiosity. Though passionate about logic and reasoning, she shares her early struggles with math, eventually realizing that her strengths lie in storytelling and narrative-based problem-solving. This realization shaped her approach to data science and analytics, emphasizing clarity and meaning in complex concepts. At MIT, a key lesson came from Professor Dimitris Bertsimas, SM ’87, PhD ’88, who advised her to confront difficult problems head-on—a mindset that continues to guide her career. Tong’s path includes diverse roles, from WHO to Deloitte to Remitly, where she now serves as a senior product manager working on fraud detection powered by AI.

Rui explains that while AI is not new to data science professionals, its current wave of popularity stems from its broadened interaction with the public. At Remitly, she sees AI as a layered system—data, models, and decision-making—where the quality of data is as crucial as the model itself. She highlights the challenge of aligning business goals with probabilistic AI outputs, particularly in fraud detection, where trade-offs between customer experience and risk management are constant. Her podcast, Floating Questions (Spotify and Apple), reflects her wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, covering topics from energy policy to personal identity. Rui’s time at Sloan fostered a deep appreciation for principled innovation and collaborative learning—values she continues to carry forward.

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In this episode, Snejina Zacharia, SF ’13, a 2013 MIT Sloan Fellow from Bulgaria, transformed a personal insurance frustration into a $500 million business by founding Insurify, the "Kayak of insurance." After a minor car accident during her time at MIT caused her premiums to spike, she discovered the absence of a comprehensive insurance comparison platform and spent over a year convincing risk-averse carriers to join her marketplace. Despite facing significant challenges as a first-time female immigrant founder in a highly regulated industry, Zacharia built Insurify from a three-person team to nearly 200 employees through relentless persistence, strategic fundraising, and operational focus. Her journey exemplifies the MIT entrepreneurial spirit, emphasizing the importance of building the right founding team, maintaining financial discipline, and never giving up despite countless rejections—ultimately creating the largest online insurance comparison platform in the United States.

Support the show

Thanks for listening! Find more episodes on the Sloanies Talking with Sloanies website.

Learn more about MIT Sloan Alumni on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Threads.

To support this show, or if you have an idea for a topic or a guest you think we should feature, drop us a note at sloanalumni@mit.edu

© MIT SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT