Smith’s Cipriana Patterson Among ‘Best and Brightest Executive MBAs’

Cipriana Patterson, a recent graduate of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business Executive MBA Program, is recognized among the elite of her global peers in Poets & Quants’ “Best & Brightest Executive MBAs: Class Of 2025.”

The designation, according to P&Q, recognizes new graduates chosen from 58 of “the highest-ranked EMBA programs” and “whose academic performance, extracurricular involvement, and career achievements made them the most indispensable leaders in their classes.” 

Patterson, who entered Smith’s program with undergraduate and graduate degrees in civil engineering, is the Mid-Atlantic Regional Operations Director for Toole Design—a planning and design firm with a mission to “support innovative streets and dynamic communities where people of all ages and abilities can enjoy walking, biking, and access to transit.” 

She also, as P&Q notes, wrote and directed a documentary, “When They Speak: Stories of Black Men in America.”

Patterson says she chose Smith’s EMBA program to “learn in an in-person, cohort mode,” adding, “the idea of pursuing this opportunity with peers from different industries seemed fascinating.” She further cited the Leadership and Human Capital and Executive Negotiations classes for providing perspective “about the relational opportunities at work and how to leverage various skills and methods to better navigate them.”

Patterson also credited the Purposeful Leadership Journey classes led by Rajshree Agarwal, Rudolph Lamone Chair of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and Director of the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets, for helping “me to connect to what drives and motivates me. [Agarwal] is so masterful when it comes to leading us through our own maze of thoughts and experiences to find what’s at the core.”

In advice for prospective EMBAs, Patterson says an executive MBA program “not only can teach you foundational business skills at an executive level, but can reignite your curiosity, connect or reconnect you to your purpose and expand your horizons, even as an established professional.”

Read more about Smith’s Executive MBA Program and Cipriana Patterson in her ‘Best & Brightest’ profile.