In a follow-up to the recent AI news out of Berkeley Haas, we caught up with Colton Hess, MBA/MPH ’26, to take a deeper dive into his related efforts–specifically, leading one-on-one Claude Code training for fellow Haas students. He has scheduled more than 30 hour-long “activation” sessions to guide students on how to use Claude Code for their projects. Read about his efforts, motivation and more below in this Fridays from the Frontline.
Implementing Claude Code Training at Berkeley Haas
By: Colton Hess, Berkeley Haas MBA/MPH ’26
Hometown: Dallas, TX
Undergraduate institution & major: Princeton University, Public and International Affairs
Pre-MBA Work Experience: 6 years, Product Manager, Amazon (Big Tech)
What factors contributed the most to your decision to attend Berkeley Haas?
The entrepreneurial environment, honestly. The ecosystem, the proximity to San Francisco, and the culture all push in the same direction: questioning the status quo, building things, not just studying them. But the deciding factor was simpler than all that. I felt comfortable in my own skin here! I loved the vibe, the authenticity, the people. These were people I wanted to learn with, work with, and live with, and that mattered more than any feature on a pros-and-cons list.
How has AI been a part of your MBA/MPH experience?
I was part of the first cohort of Haas’s brand new AI for Business Certificate. That gave me a real foundation to learn alongside faculty and classmates engaging seriously with where this is all going and the business strategy required for responsible, thoughtful deployment.
The more lasting impact, though, has been personal. Learning to wield AI and build software with it has reshaped what I think is possible for me to build and the impact I can make. The biggest thing it’s unlocked is Activation Playbook, the practice I’m launching to help impact-focused leaders and teams use cutting-edge AI more effectively in service of their missions. AI has also let me build an AI-native sleep tech startup, Rhythmicly. It was the process of building this startup that was the forcing mechanism for me to be a very early adopter of Claude Code and learn how to use it across a huge number of my workstreams.
The bigger shift isn’t technical, though. It’s that using AI keeps making me think bigger. About what I can learn, what I can build, what kind of impact I can have, what kinds of problems are suddenly mine to take on. Two years ago I would often look at a problem and think “someone should build that.” Now I often just think “I could probably build a solution to that myself.” That changes everything about how you move through a dual MBA/MPH program. And the tools have been pretty incredible for learning the academic material, too.
Tell us about your AI activation sessions.
Motivation: After learning how to use agentic tools very early on, it felt like a “secret” I was in on that I had to share with my friends. It all started very organically, with me just sitting my friends down and showing them what these tools could help them do. Helping them get the “activation energy” up to just start playing with agentic tools like Claude Code.
A lot of people are using AI’s brain. Treating it like a chatbot, asking a question, getting an answer, closing the tab. Now people are starting to use AI’s “hands.” Agentic AI is expanding fast, and the gap between people who’ve crossed that threshold and people who haven’t is widening by the week. My classmates and faculty had access to the same tools I did. What they didn’t have was someone to hold their hand and walk them across. I quickly realized there was huge demand for this, and beyond just my fellow students.
What’s involved: An Activation Session is really just me sitting next to someone for an hour, meeting them where they are, and walking them into this new world. We pick something real they want to build or a problem they want to build a solution for, and we build a working prototype or solution around it together. By the end, something exists that didn’t exist before, and more importantly, they built it! And have seen how intuitive it is to build with AI.
Favorite part: Watching the “wow” moment when someone sees software they built pop up on the screen for the first time. Someone walks in cautious, sometimes a little defensive, and an hour later they’re leaning forward, eyes lit up, going “wait, what else could I do with this?” The fear collapses faster than people expect.
What surprised me: How little of this is about technical skills. It’s about mindset… curiosity, willingness to be brave, willingness to totally rethink the nature of how you work. People walk out of these sessions navigating the world differently. They see a tedious process and immediately think “there’s got to be a better way.” They see a problem and start imagining how to build the solution. They move with more swagger and less anxiety because they know they’re not alone with the hard stuff anymore and they can make this tech work for THEM.
Signs of success: They have more of a self-concept of being a “builder.” They text me a week later with something they built without me or I see them posting with pride about what they built on LinkedIn. Their work looks bigger, not in volume, in ambition!
Next step: Activation Playbook continues to grow as a practice. I’m now working with impact-focused leaders and organizations to help them use cutting-edge agentic tools in service of their missions, so they feel more empowered and capable in their day-to-day work and life.
Do you have any advice or insights for future MBA applicants/students?
Two things.
First: I’d highly encourage everyone to be building something while you’re here. A startup, a side project, a passion project…doesn’t matter. Just something real with your name on it. It’s becoming a bit of a cultural expectation at Haas that students will be building something throughout the program, which I love. Building something forces you to care more about your classes, because you actually want to apply the knowledge, and it keeps you at the tech frontier, because you want to make use of the latest tools, models, and capabilities to advance your idea.
Second: Once you get in, feel free to tear up whatever story you told the admissions committee about what you want to do after the MBA. The world is going to look very different in two years than it does the day you write your essays, and the version of you on the other side of this program should be allowed to evolve and want different things. Hold your plan loosely. Pay attention to what’s actually emerging in front of you and trust yourself.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
One more thing: the most valuable part of an MBA isn’t just the credential or the classes. It’s the people! The classmates who push you to be braver than you were when you arrived, who call you on the moments you’re playing small, and who let you do the same for them. That’s the part you can’t replicate anywhere else, and it’s the part that keeps paying out long after graduation.
These two years move fast. Be intentional about who you let in and what relationships you invest in. They are the real curriculum. And if you can be a catalyst for the people around you, do it! That’s the bet I’m making with Activation Playbook… that helping people feel a sense of agency to make real impact with AI is fundamentally a relational act, not a technical one.
Photos by Brittany Hosea-Small.
