You can’t say Ty Keough didn’t get the most out of business school. Come graduation, he’ll collect both a BS and MS in Finance from USC’s Marshall School. And he’ll notch a perfect 4.0 GPA for good measure.
That’s just the beginning of Keough’s story.
He was so respected that Marshall named him an assistant to Dr. Kyle Mayer, the Vice Dean of MBA Programs, where he was instrumental in shaping the school’s AI programming. Climbing the ranks of the Trojan Consulting Group, he advised clients like Chipotle, Omni Hotels, and the World Health Organization. An entrepreneur, Keough co-founded his JAA Media venture in his dorm, ultimately building a platform that attracted 22 million viewers and generated 1.5 billion monthly views before it was sold. He even co-authored a book on private equity dealmaking terminology as a student – while also serving as a research assistant to Dr. Florenta Teodoridis, the school’s Chair in Entrepreneurship.
However, his biggest contribution may be his teaching. As a freshman, Keough was already tutoring executive MBA students. As a teaching assistant across seven courses, his performance was so respected that he notched a perfect 5.0 score from 26 students on the Rate My Professors website.
BEST GIG: GETTING TO “NERD OUT” AS A TA
Ty Keough, USC (Marshall)
“I spent my undergraduate years TAing and tutoring about 1,000 students across MBA and undergrad courses—game theory, corporate strategy, M&A, quantitative finance,” Keough tells Poets&Quants. “Watching an Executive MBA student finally click with DCF modeling, or seeing an undergrad’s face light up when insurance pricing suddenly made sense—that meant more to me than anything on my resume. I got to learn from incredible professors and then help other students have the same breakthrough moments I’d had. Plus, getting paid to nerd out about academia with people who actually cared? That’s a pretty good gig.”
Speaking of gigs, Keough also completed four internships, including one that sent him to Australia for a summer. Come July, he’ll be joining Actionist Consulting, where he’ll bring his AI development and investment management prowess to bear. That said, Keough didn’t grind his entire time in business school. He competed on the university’s Surf Club, while being captain of his three-time intramural champion soccer team. Looking ahead, he hopes to someday teach his own class and sit on a board before he turns 35. In the meantime, he urges future business students to show up, ask questions, and be helpful.
“Trust is the real currency,” Keough continues. “You can build the sharpest valuation model, craft the perfect pitch deck, or design an innovative product, but if people don’t trust you to execute, none of it matters. I learned this teaching since I was a freshman, pitching to billionaire CEOs, and building AI tools that people actually had to rely on. Competence gets you in the room. Integrity and follow-through keep you there.”
A 19-YEAR-OLD PRODIGY
Keough is among the 100 seniors honored in the 2026 Best & Brightest Business Majors from Poets&Quants for Undergrads. Now in its 11th year, the Best & Brightest honors business majors who made the biggest impact on their programs and personified the best of their cohorts. To compile the list, P&Q reached out to the Top 50 business schools from its 2025 undergraduate ranking to participate, along with other leading institutions. Overall, 68 American and international business schools are represented, ranging from IE Business School to the Wharton School. Like previous years, schools picked their nominees using their own criteria, though P&Q encouraged them to strongly consider areas like academic excellence and extracurricular leadership. As a whole, women again outnumbered men in the Best & Brightest, this time by a 52-to-48 margin. Like the previous year, there are 13 students who hail from outside the United States. Among employers, McKinsey & Company is slated to hire 5 members of the Best & Brightest Class of 2026, with Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and KPMG adding 3 each.
Grace Zaucha, Notre Dame (Mendoza)
Grace Zaucha hasn’t decided where she’ll be working yet. Make no mistake: she’ll enjoy plenty of options. A Fort Worth native who speaks four languages, Zaucha could literally be described as “Amazing Grace.” And that’s not just because she earned her Accounting degree from Notre Dame’s Mendoza College in just three years…at the age of 19, no less. During that time, she has served as the treasurer and chair of several clubs, mentored high school students, and taken a semester abroad in Scotland – where she renewed her passion for playing piano. The “complete package” is how James R. Otteson, Mendoza’s faculty director for the Business Honors Program, describes Zaucha: “disciplined and principled, capable and industrious, yet humble and grateful.”
In many ways, Zaucha represents the American Dream. Her mother immigrated from Mexico in 2000 with two suitcases and $700. Soon enough, she was earning her MBA while carrying Grace, passing the CPA on her first try soon after. Not surprisingly, Zaucha credits her mother for her success.
“She has been at every piano competition and recital, every soccer match, and every awards ceremony. She has been my biggest cheerleader, even when I was unsure of myself. Yet, she has also been my voice of reason, keeping me grounded and humble in the moments I am like Icarus flying too close to the sun. This is her achievement as much as it is mine.”
MAKING A COMMERCIAL…THAT APPEARED DURING THE OLYMPICS
Service is a theme common among this year’s Best & Brightest Business Majors. Take Jonna Crocker, a senior at Cornell University’s Dyson School. Over the past decade, she has raised over $850,000 for children with rare diseases through her Fighting H.A.R.D. Foundation. By the same token, Samantha Asprelli founded Give n’ Glow as a sophomore at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School. Its purpose, she says, is to “restore confidence and dignity among women in need through beauty brand, influencer, and donor partnerships.” In other words, Give n’ Glow packages and distributes excess beauty products to women suffering from disruptions like homelessness, violence, and recovery.
Once operated out of an apartment, Asprelli has moved her venture into a warehouse, which has now dispensed over $2-million in product to more than 40,000 women. Thus far, Asprelli has built partnerships with companies like e.l.f. Cosmetics and Glossier. In December, the firm was honored at Boston’s 31 Nights of Light event, bathing the Prudential Center in Give n’ Glow’s trademark pink. However, the firm’s coming out moment came when it was profiled by a major news organization.
Matthew Merril, Cornell University (Nolan)
“When CNN’s 5 Good Things Podcast featured this initiative, I was so proud of how we shaped our story, showing how all aspects of a community can come together to give back with beauty,” Asprelli explains. “I’m proud of the scale we achieved while keeping dignity for the women we serve at the center of everything we did.”
Matthew Merril has been no stranger to the spotlight in business school. His brand platform, Matthew in the Kitchen, has attracted 2.7-million followers. That light grew hotter before his junior year, when Merril was tossed into the proverbial deep end as an intern with the Viral Nation Talent Agency. Here, he worked on marketing campaigns for firms ranging from Meta to Walmart to Disney. Even more, it was his “Dormz” campaign with Amazon that enabled him to make a bigger name for himself.
“Amazon was searching for a student content creator to feature in one of its biggest campaigns of the year, highlighting students’ reliance on Amazon for back-to-school shopping,” writes Merril, a Hotel Administration major at Cornell University’s Nolan School. “They profiled my life on campus for weeks and built a storyboard that captured my engagements, from a cappella president to design director to hosting pop-up dinners. The crew built a set in Los Angeles mirroring my actual dorm room, wrote a script portraying my life as a content creator and student, and we shot the commercial over a weekend. Being able to represent my school and passion on this scale was humbling. Versions of the commercial aired during the 2024 Paris Olympics, on Hulu, cable television, across all social media platforms, and even in cabs in New York City.”
WHAT MAKES A BEST & BRIGHTEST
Before enrolling at Texas Christian University’s Neeley School, Katie Hoang also made headlines by winning Miss Teen International in 2021. The honor, she says, provided a platform for her to advocate for at-risk women and children. It also gave her a sense of purpose and confidence that led her to run for student body president, operate a student investment fund, launch a photography company, and study abroad. Even more, business school taught her to be bold – a lesson she is channeling into her pursuit of a commercial pilot’s license.
“Flying has been an escape of mine throughout college,” she tells P&Q. “Aviation demands precision, preparation, and calm decision-making – qualities that have made me a more confident and competent business professional. For me, becoming a pilot represents the possibilities that unlock when you combine perspective and discipline.”
That’s the thing that distinguishes the Best & Brightest. Forget the perfect GPAs and Beta Gamma Sigma honors. Their achievements are the end result of intangibles as much as intelligence. They are the ones who show up every day, the ones you can count on to deliver. And they don’t wait for others to act, either. Instead, they step forward, asking the thoughtful questions and shouldering the heavy responsibilities. While they may be the biggest strivers and achievers in their classes, the Best & Brightest don’t just focus on their own success. Rather, they commit those extra moments to patiently explain what’s seemingly too complex to understand and celebrate those small victories that matter so much. In the process, everyone becomes better for knowing them.
Kensington Zwerner, Rice University (Virani)
And you didn’t just find the Best & Brightest huddled up in the business school. They served as Special Olympics volunteers, campus tour guides, and RAs. They organized campus ministry retreats, played trombone in the marching band, and led student clubs and councils. Beyond business, they majored or minored in fields as different as Public Policy, Theology, and Philosophy. Along the way, they were paid the highest compliments from faculty and peers alike.
At Emory University’s Goizueta School, Professor Rajiv Garg frames Yashonandan Kakrania as “one of those students who is always thinking about what more he can build, improve, or try next.” Over a two-decade career, Rice University’s Brian Rountree has taught over 3,000 students. He ranks Kensington Zwerner among the top 1%, adding that the Evercore hire is “among a very small handful who could credibly be described as truly exceptional.” As a TA at the Wharton School, Francesco Salamone earned the highest plaudits from first-years that he taught.
“Student feedback repeatedly describes him as empathic and genuinely present—someone who notices the quiet student, makes time for the uncertain student, and helps peers feel seen and capable,” writes Dr. Anne M. Greenhalgh, who helms Wharton’s McNulty Leadership Program. “Simply as illustration, one student wrote: “WE LOVE FRANCESCO!! His passion is evident. He brings everything he has to our one-on-ones, gives great advice, and goes out of his way to help us succeed.”
GETTING FEATURED IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Salamone himself spent the past summer as a Zen monk in a 600-year-old Buddhist temple in a Japanese fishing village. And he racked up the awards as a student, including the 2024 Best Opinion Columnist for the Daily Pennsylvanian. At Hult International Business School, Sofia Iguaran was named the Outstanding Undergraduate Leader Award in 2024-2025. That came after the JPMorgan Chase hire earned the school’s Emerging Leader Award and Best Resident Assistant Award the year before. Of course, the Best & Brightest garnered awards from outside campus too. Look no further than Anna Parry, a senior at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School, who received the Congressional Gold Medal from U.S. Senators James Lankford and Markwayne Mullin, who was recently confirmed as the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security.
“Over three years, I dedicated more than 400 hours to teaching free English classes to Spanish speakers, 200 hours to teaching myself Spanish, and 200 hours to physical fitness training,” she tells P&Q. “The volunteer initiatives I helped establish are still running today…Having the award presented by my senators made the impact real and reminded me that consistent effort over time can genuinely change a community.”
Compare that to Valeria Serenil, who’ll be graduating from the University of Houston’s Bauer College in May. An entrepreneur whose general contracting firm generates nearly $800,000 annually, Serenil became the youngest recipient of the Houston Business Journal’s Women Who Mean Business Award. At the same time, Mary Esposito was featured in the Wall Street Journal article, “How Five Gen Z-ers Are Playing This Year’s Volatile Market.”
“I am most proud of being featured in The Wall Street Journal for my investing portfolio and financial education work through my platform, Money with Mary. I started the social media account to make financial concepts more accessible to people my age. Watching it reach a wider audience and recognition beyond Instagram validates that my work is actually helping others make more informed decisions with their money.”
Next Page: Fun Facts and Future Plans
Pages 3-4: 100 in-depth profiles of the 2026 Best & Brightest Business Majors
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