Chicago Booth students doing yoga in a rooftop lounge

Mindfulness Meets Management

An alumna startup takes yoga from the mat to the boardroom—and back to Booth.

After being admitted to Booth’s Full-Time MBA Program, yogi Erin Martell, ’22, wasn’t ready to stash away her mat. Instead, she doubled down on her interest in yoga. 

Martell, an engineer by training, was headed to Booth to fill in the gaps in her finance and entrepreneurship knowledge, but she also had a more specific goal: launching a yoga-centered wellness venture. 

After attending her first yoga class with a friend nearly a decade earlier, Martell had fallen in love with the mind-body connection that comes from the practice. While pursuing a career in data science, she also found time to complete 200 hours of yoga-teacher training, which allowed her to teach in a variety of studios. 

At Booth, the crux of her business idea took shape thanks in part to some of her classmates. In lectures, study groups, and interview prep sessions, Martell met fellow yoga instructors who also wanted to keep up with their downward dogs while pursuing a business degree. She found in them a community of yogis who worked professional jobs but were committed to their practice. “They would teach yoga on weekends and go to work on the weekdays,” says Martell. “Some of them didn’t even add their yoga training to their LinkedIn.” 

In her second year at Booth, Martell, along with fellow classmate Jillian Hamersma, ’23, launched Amenity Yoga as part of the Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge, Booth’s startup accelerator. Knowing how yoga can improve mental and physical health and relieve occupational stress, Martell then developed her idea further to bring yoga to workplaces eager for in-office wellness opportunities. 

“We consider well-being to be a facilitator of success rather than something to sacrifice on the way.”

— Carrie Lydon

The purpose of Amenity is twofold: it gives professionals a way to unwind by linking breath to movement in Vinyasa-style classes, and it also taps into the large community of yoga teachers whose full-time jobs in other industries give them a unique perspective from which to center students on the mat. 

As a result, the classes are taught by people who share participants’ work experiences—for instance, a management consultant who is also a yoga teacher leads Amenity Yoga’s classes for a management consulting firm. Describing how the company continues to evolve, Martell says, “I’m building these wellness communities with teachers who understand the business, including the ups and downs, of the people they’re catering to.”

Last year, Martell’s worlds came back together. Booth Wellness, the school’s well-being initiative, hired Amenity Yoga to offer twice-weekly classes to the student community.

Every Monday and Wednesday, anyone from Booth—including significant others—can join a 45-minute class in Gleacher Center. Mats and props are provided. The yoga sessions typically attract a mix of Full-Time and Part-Time MBA students, with some participants arriving in yoga clothes and leaving dressed for night classes. A view of the Chicago skyline serves as a backdrop—a significant draw of the conference rooms-turned-yoga-studios, says Martell, who continues to run Amenity while also working full time in venture capital.

True to its mission, Amenity employs Booth students as teachers. In the first year of the company’s partnership with Booth, Amenity instructors taught 54 classes at Booth and attendees totaled nearly 600, Martell says. 

Annelise Escher, a current student in the joint MBA/Master of Public Policy program, teaches some of the Booth Wellness yoga classes. Escher completed her teacher training in 2019. She makes sure her classes are accessible to newcomers and has students spend the first few minutes of class doing breathwork. The goal is to slow down. 

“We tend to have people who are in intense phases of life and type A people,” she says. “The physiological impact of sitting quietly and taking deep breaths can be important in a high-stress environment.”

Escher notes that the experience has allowed her to meet others in Booth’s various programs. “It’s nice to see people outside of the professional context prioritizing their well-being—and making unexpected connections,” she says.

Finding Balance

Booth Wellness brings together students from different programs and career paths for the unified purpose of promoting well-being. The school-run initiative serves as a go-to for students looking for ways to balance their studies with the rest of their lives, offering events that focus on more than just nutrition and exercise. 

“We consider well-being to be a facilitator of success rather than something to sacrifice on the way,” says Booth Wellness director Carrie Lydon, who has expanded the program’s offerings since launching the initiative in 2019.
 
Lydon shared some highlights with Chicago Booth Magazine: 

  • Booth Wellness hosted 150 events for students in 2024, including fitness and art events, mental-health workshops, mindfulness sessions, therapy dog visits, plant giveaways, Reiki healing, massage therapy, drop-in therapy, and a speaker series.
  • In May, 400 students attended a smoothie break event with Chicago-based restaurant Protein Bar & Kitchen to de-stress from the end of the academic year. A wellness decompression space also offered students opportunities for stress relief during on-campus recruiting.
  • Select student leaders known as Booth Wellness Fellows collaborated with the Graduate Business Council in fall and winter to create the Resilience Road Map Initiative to help students navigate setbacks, including an event featuring alumni who graduated during the 2008 financial crisis.
  • Artist Meenakshi Dash, ’08, led “This Is Not an Art Class,” a workshop designed to help students de-stress and to foster collaboration, innovation, and playfulness. (Read more about Dash in “My Culture Collection.”)  

 

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