Building better cities

Brenner didn’t have to look for long. She met her match—Julie Lein, MBA ’12—soon after arriving at Sloan more than a decade ago. But their first encounter wasn’t exactly auspicious. In fact, their relationship began with an expletive. Lein was sitting at a card table in a hallway in E52, glumly selling tickets to a fashion show featuring work-­appropriate clothes for women—at that time, the marquee event for Sloan’s Women in Management Club, and one that both Lein and Brenner thought was patently absurd. Lein had no interest in attending, but she wanted to support the club’s mission of boosting women in business. “She looked very miserable,” says Brenner. Lein asked if she wanted to buy a ticket, Brenner recalls, and “I think I said, ‘F*** no.’” “We both bonded over the fact that this was such a stupid idea,” says Lein. (The fashion show has since been retired, in part thanks to Lein and Brenner’s lobbying.) Today, the two run the Urban Innovation Fund, a San Francisco–based ventur ... Read full article.