Nicole Bigley
Every summer, Hank Rupp opens Rancho Guejito to welcome Chapman’s incoming Executive MBA class and faculty. It’s become the program’s unofficial kickoff, a tradition nine years running. He’s missed it only once, in 2021, while recovering in the hospital from elective surgery. Even then, he made the arrangements to ensure the event went forward successfully. What he tells each new class comes straight from his own ledger: the same program that once pushed him to think past risk is the reason his business now runs on more than one revenue stream.
From Prosecutor to Business Owner
Hank didn’t set out to run a business this size. He spent six years as a district attorney, prosecuting government corruption and police misconduct cases, before a connection made during off-hours political fundraising led to an unexpected offer. He left the DA’s office, built a private law practice, and took on Rancho Guejito as a client. When the property’s owner died in 2004, the owner’s daughter asked Hank to take over full time. He’s run it ever since.
How an Executive MBA Changed His Approach to Risk
In 2007, Hank enrolled at Chapman. Over the next decade, he earned two advanced law degrees from Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law: an LL.M. in tax law and taxation in 2012 and an LL.M. in business law in 2015. He completed his Chapman Executive MBA in 2017, a degree he says that changed how he runs the business.
Law had trained him to spot risk and shut it down. “Lawyers love to say no to things,” he said. “‘You can’t do this, it’s too big a risk. You can’t do that, it’s too big a risk.'” The Executive MBA program asked a different question: not whether something was risky, but how to make it work anyway. That shift, he says, is what pushed him to look past a single line of business. Rancho Guejito now includes a vineyard and wine club, a beef operation, and a venue for weddings and private events, building on the property’s longstanding ranching operations.
Why He Hosts Chapman’s EMBA Class Every Year
Hank doesn’t frame the annual visit as a favor to Chapman. He sees it as passing along what the program gave him, in person, to a new class of students standing on the same ground where he put its lessons to use.
He knows from experience that students beginning the Executive MBA program may question whether they made the right choice. His goal is to reassure them that they did—and that they will be glad they chose Chapman.
He’s candid that the program pushed him outside his comfort zone at first. He hadn’t touched algebra since high school, so he leaned on tutors to close the gap, and turned that effort into a habit that carried him through the rest of the program. It’s the same advice he’d give anyone starting the program now: “When you run into an obstacle, keep trying to go around it, and keep trying to be successful at it.”
