Executive MBA fuels health care impact for Anikar Chhabra

While helping to build ASU's medical system for its athletes, Anikar Chhabra (Executive MBA '25) realized that developing his skills beyond healthcare could be greatly beneficial. With his connection to the school, coming to W. P. Carey for the Executive MBA program was the natural next step.

Healthcare and medicine have played big roles in Anikar Chhabra's (Executive MBA '25) life. His father worked as a pediatrician until the age of 84, and his older brother is an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Virginia.

After playing basketball during his time at Harvard and dealing with injuries that often plague athletes, Chhabra decided to pursue a career in orthopedics and sports medicine. His success in this field has led him to his current position as the head of the Sports Medicine Division at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix.

It also brought him to Arizona State University, where he's been serving as the medical director and head team orthopedic surgeon for Sun Devil Athletics, overseeing care for over 700 student-athletes. While helping to build ASU's medical system for its athletes, Chhabra realized that developing his skills beyond healthcare could be greatly beneficial.

"I feel like I was at a point in my career in medicine where I felt good about what I do, caring for patients," says Chhabra. "For me to grow, I needed help in understanding leadership and strategy, how to help other large systems interact, and learning the financial side of healthcare."

With his connection to ASU, coming to the W. P. Carey School of Business for the Executive MBA program was the natural next step.

Why W. P. Carey?

The Executive MBA at W. P. Carey was a convenient fit for Chhabra, who was already spending multiple days each week on the ASU campus, and had all of the benefits he was looking for — a strong academic reputation, an optional concentration in the business of healthcare, and connections to leaders in a multitude of industries across Arizona.

Having classmates from diverse backgrounds was an important point to him. "I know how to think like a doctor and like a healthcare provider," Chhabra says. "I was very myopic. I see the injury, I diagnose it. I fix it, I get you back to your activities. I needed to think outside of that box, and I thought the different viewpoints from the different types of people in the cohort would really help with that to become a more complete leader."

One group that Chhabra worked with within his cohort included a real estate lawyer, a marketing executive, an engineer, and a tax specialist. This was a particularly insightful and transformative experience, as it highlighted how different people can approach the same issue in different ways.

"Everybody had a different skill set, a different strength, and a different way of looking at a problem," he says. "Just having our weekly group meetings, where we met three or four hours a week to go over assignments, it was probably the most fascinating and surprising thing I saw, how many different ways you can get to the right answer."

Why an MBA?

"I knew the MBA was going to help me, not only in my current job, but help me in any future things I wanted to do in terms of healthcare systems and influencing healthcare on a broader scale," Chhabra says about his choice to pursue an Executive MBA.

From the beginning, he was able to take lessons and skills from EMBA coursework and immediately use them in his work at Mayo Clinic and Sun Devil Athletics. Classes in statistics, marketing, and artificial intelligence gave him opportunities to directly apply ongoing projects to workplace issues.

Beyond the technical skills he's gained, Chhabra also credits the W. P. Carey EMBA with improving his decision-making and leadership, especially when dealing with multiple stakeholders with different points of view. "It's taught me how to take a step back to listen and have a clear mind to make a decision about something that's going to affect a lot of people," he says.

He adds, "Everybody's not always going to be happy with your decisions, but you have to be transparent, honest, and you have to govern with conviction and have your values."

What's next?

Chhabra's work at Sun Devil Athletics — overseeing the care of ASU's student-athletes along with a team from the Mayo Clinic — has changed recently due to new rules surrounding name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals, which mean student-athletes can earn money.

This means an injury on the field can now have business consequences, which is yet another way the Executive MBA has been a boost for him. "I'd say I've gotten a lot out of the MBA," Chhabra says. "I'm using it every day."

The program also expanded his vision for what's possible in the future. He's now thinking more broadly about the impact he can make on the healthcare industry on a global scale.

"It's made me realize that I now have the tools and the skill set that I can truly influence healthcare in a bigger role," says Chhabra. "Whether I want to do hospital administration, whether I want to do political advocacy for patients, I am prepared to tackle these challenges in the future."

He adds, "The exact path I have isn't fully defined yet, but I think the MBA has given me the confidence and the tools to have a bigger influence than I'm already doing."