Healthcare Initiative | Contractor Fellows in Healthcare

The Contractor Fellowship is a selective program for MBA students interested in the business of healthcare. Fellows pursue one of two pathways: a for-credit project with a healthcare organization or faculty-supervised research on a pressing business or policy question. Depending on the pathway, the experience lasts one or two semesters.

With the healthcare sector now the largest employer in the United States and wages rising nearly twice as fast as in other sectors (Mahoney et al., 2025), The Fellowship prepares students to contribute to this growing field through applied work, faculty mentorship, and engagement with healthcare leaders.

In project teams, Fellows address strategic questions facing healthcare organizations. They scope a problem, conduct analysis, and present recommendations to their partner. Research Fellows investigate a faculty-supervised question and produce an academic paper or comparable output. Both pathways provide credit toward the Healthcare Specialization.

• Competitive selection. The Fellowship admits students with outstanding academic records and a demonstrated interest in healthcare.
• Industry exposure. Fellows engage with healthcare leaders through speaker events and, for project teams, work directly with a partner organization.
• Project or research. Fellows complete either a team project with a healthcare organization or 
  faculty-supervised research.
• Application process. Applicants submit an application for review by Healthcare Initiative leadership and interview with the program team.

Meet the 2026 Inaugural Contractor Fellows.

1. Large consumer health company. The Fellows team is evaluating whether a prescription emergency treatment could be made available over the counter, and builds the strategic, commercial, and operational case for doing so.
2. Cancer diagnostic technology company. The Fellows team is building a health economics case and reimbursement strategy for an AI-powered diagnostics platform spanning several cancer types, benchmarking it against current screening methods to quantify the reduction in systemic healthcare costs alongside patient outcomes.
3. Large academic health system. The Fellows team is supporting the system’s digital health strategy by evaluating a new digitally enabled primary care model and building the financial case for scaling an existing remote patient monitoring program.
4. Large regional health insurer. The Fellows team is developing a change management strategy and playbook to support the adoption of a new AI-enabled clinical decision-support tool. The work focuses on helping clinical and operational teams integrate AI into their workflows to streamline decision-making, reduce administrative burden, and improve the experience for healthcare providers and their patients. 

The Contractor Fellowship is open to advanced-year MBA students who demonstrate outstanding potential in the healthcare industry. Interested students must complete the application by the deadline to be considered.

The Healthcare Initiative notifies applicants of their selection as Contractor Fellows in the semester prior to the project’s start date.

Applications will open in the semester prior to the cohort starting date. For more information, please contact Professor Dickstein at mjd19@stern.nyu.edu.