Kristin Forbes has spent a good portion of her career shaping US economic policy. She has held high-profile jobs in the US Treasury department and at the World Bank and, at the age of 33, was the youngest person to serve on the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

But, says Professor Forbes, who teaches at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the most rewarding moments of her professional life so far have come from her students. "Business school forces you to think about how your work applies to the real world," she says. "What's most gratifying is seeing a student a few years out who tells you how a particular lesson in your class helped him make a real-world business decision."