Haas School of Business Newsroom - News from the Haas School

In Memoriam: Prof. John Quigley – Leading Scholar of Housing Markets, Energy Efficient Buildings, Homelessness, and Racial Discrimination

Ronna Kelly — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:08:35 +0000

John M. Quigley, a leading scholar of housing markets, local public finance, energy efficient buildings, homelessness, and racial discrimination in housing, passed away at a Berkeley, Calif. hospital on Saturday (May 12). He was 70.

Quigley was a faculty member of the Haas School’s Real Estate Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the UC Berkeley Department of Economics. The I. Donald Terner Distinguished Professor of Affordable Housing and Urban Policy, he was a campus leader, an inspirational mentor, and a leading figure in urban economics and housing policy. Since 1999 Quigley served as director of the Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy, which is administered by Goldman School of Public Policy and associated with the Haas School's Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics.

During his career Quigley produced 14 books and more than 150 scholarly articles. Quigley excelled at finding clever ways to use empirical data about housing and urban areas to answer important public policy questions such as the macro-economic impact of rising housing prices on consumption behavior, the impact of segregation on African Americans’ opportunities to accumulate wealth through investment in housing, the effect of governmental and voluntary energy standards on energy efficiency and the value of buildings, and the relationship between housing markets and homelessness. He combined boundless energy with an infectious laugh, which he often followed with a sharp intellectual insight. When Quigley saw an issue that was important he immersed himself in research to figure it out.

In the 1970s, Quigley showed, with John F. Kain, that racial segregation not only ghettoized black families, it also reduced their chances of developing savings through home ownership. In later work, Quigley went on to show how segregation reduced job opportunities for minority youth. Kain and Quigley also pioneered the quantitative measurement of housing quality. Their work made it possible to study housing markets where the basic commodity, “housing,” is a bundle of structural and neighborhood characteristics that cannot be completely captured by one number such as the square footage of a home. In their 1975 book, Housing Markets and Racial Discrimination they demonstrated that statistical tools could be used effectively to value housing attributes and to control for differences in them across space and over time. Using these techniques, they showed that in many cities blacks paid substantially more than whites for comparable housing.

In the 1980s, Quigley began to study how government building regulations and voluntary energy standards affected energy efficiency in residential and commercial real estate. In recent work he showed that buildings complying with voluntary Energy Star or LEED standards receive higher rents and higher selling prices—partially because of their energy savings but also because of intangible effects of the label itself due to beliefs about improved worker productivity and improved corporate image from “green” buildings.

In the 1990s, Quigley turned to the study of homelessness. Most scholars focused on the personal characteristics, the mental and physical disabilities and substance abuse problems, of the chronically homeless, but with co-authors Steve Raphael and Gene Smolensky, Quigley showed how housing markets, especially those with limited supplies of low quality and inexpensive rental housing, were part of the problem. In these markets, even the lowest priced housing was often too expensive for those in extreme poverty, and small reductions in its supply due to higher government housing standards or demolition greatly elevated the risk of homelessness.

Quigley also made fundamental contributions to the study of housing markets. A highly influential and prescient 2001 article with Karl Case and Robert Shiller anticipated the 2001-2006 economic expansion by showing that increases in housing wealth, just like increases in stock market wealth, increased consumer spending and fueled macro-economic growth. In recent years when many questions arose about the efficacy of mortgage markets, Quigley wrote about how better government policy and mortgage products could protect homeowners.

Quigley also investigated the impact of regulations on housing prices, the economics of refuse collection, how university decentralization stimulated regional economies, the impact of rent control, public support for congestion pricing, the economics of rebuilding cities after disasters, and many other topics.

One other theme ran through Quigley’s life and research: his knowledge and love of Sweden. His first publication appeared in the Swedish Journal of Economics in 1966. He would go on to write many articles on all aspects of the Swedish economy. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 2006, and he received an honorary degree from Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology in 2007.

Quigley’s wide-ranging and prolific scholarship was matched by his generous teaching and mentoring. He served as a committee member for over one hundred PhD dissertations during his career, chairing twenty-six since 1990. His was noted for his devotion to his students, his exceptionally high standards and expectations, his wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, his availability, his quick turn-around of manuscripts and papers, his generosity and humor, and his ability to get graduate students to perform at levels beyond what they thought possible by treating them as peers and partners. His students have positions in universities, research institutes, and governmental agencies around the world.

Quigley was also a leader in service to the university and his profession. He was editor in chief of Regional Science and Urban Economics from 1986 to 2003, and he served on over two dozen editorial boards for scholarly journals during his career. He advised over twenty research and governmental agencies including the World Bank, General Accounting Office, Urban Institute, Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and institutions in Indonesia, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, and China. Quigley was chair of the Department of Economics from 1992 to 1995, chair of the Berkeley Division of the Senate of the University of California from 1996 to 1997, and interim dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy in 2008. He was elected a fellow of the Homer Hoyt Institute in 1992 and the Regional Science Association in 2004. He was president of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association from 1996 to 1998, president of the Western Regional Science Association from 1998 to 2000, and president of the North American Regional Science Council from 2009 to 2010.

Quigley was born in New York, New York, in 1942. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy with distinction in 1964, and he worked as an econometrician at the Pentagon from 1964 to 1968, leaving the Air Force with the rank of captain and an Air Force Commendation Medal in 1968. He earned his doctorate from Harvard University in 1971 and taught at Yale University from 1972 until he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley in 1979.

He is survived by his wife of 36 years, Mary Curran; and four children, Sam of San Francisco, Jane-Claire of New York, and Johanna and Benjamin of Stockholm, Sweden.

A memorial service for Quigley will be held June 9 in the afternoon at the UC Berkeley Alumni House. More details will be provided as they become available.

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Haas Climbs to #5 Worldwide for Latin Americans

Ronna Kelly — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:23:07 +0000

Berkeley-Haas jumped to #5 in an AméricaEconomía ranking of the best full-time MBA programs in the world for Latin Americans and #3 among U.S. schools, trailing only Harvard and Stanford.

AméricaEconomía is an Argentina-based magazine with readership across South America. This year the magazine revised its survey methodology, collecting more data from schools. Last year, AméricaEconomía ranked Haas #24 worldwide and #14 among U.S. schools.

The ranking is based on academic/faculty quality (25%); admissions selectivity (25%); the strength of the school's network in Latin America (20%); the school’s prestige, based on a readers' survey (20%); and program cost vs. benefits (10%).

See the AméricaEconomía Ranking
(An English version will be available in November.)

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Haas in the Rankings

Haas to Launch Three Digital Classroom Pilots

Eugene Kim — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Tapping into new cutting-edge technologies, the Haas School is launching three digital courses on a pilot basis starting this summer to optimize the teaching opportunities offered by this game-changing medium.

"Digital education is revolutionizing how we teach, including our traditional courses. It already affords us new and deeper ways to customize how students absorb material and how they link it to their own interests," says Dean Rich Lyons. "This is the future. We need to shape it─and be a leader."

Lyons also has been asked to serve on a new executive group that is steering UC Berkeley's participation in online learning.

The first online course, to be rolled out at Haas in June, is Data and Decisions, a prerequisite for the school's Evening & Weekend MBA Program.

In the undergraduate program, Lecturer Tiffany Rassmusen will begin teaching Professional Judgment in Accounting online starting in July. And finally, Associate Professor Cameron Anderson will begin teaching his popular MBA elective Power and Politics course online to both full-time and evening and weekend students in Fall B. He will also offer the course in the classroom to full-time students during Fall A.

"We specifically selected quantitative and qualitative courses and faculty with different teaching styles," says Jay Stowsky, Haas senior assistant dean for instruction. "Haas also is using three different vendors to implement the pilots to better learn about the effectiveness of different approaches to development of online education courses."

Funds from a $1 million matching gift from Steve and Susan Chamberlin, MBA 87, former members of the Haas faculty, are being used to cover the costs of the pilots. The gift also will help pilot initiatives at other UC Berkeley professional schools, including the College of Engineering, Graduate School of Education, School of Information, and School of Public Health.

The faculty members have spent months rethinking their courses for the new format. "We're building in both synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences that take advantage of the online medium," explains Adam Berman, Haas' executive director of emerging initiatives, who is leading Haas’ online activities as well as a consortium of UC Berkeley professional schools to explore online education.

"One of the biggest advantages is this: when I go in and teach a class, I’m teaching the same thing to all 30, 60, or 100 students and I don’t fully know whether my students understand the material. Online there’s not only a way to understand whether students are progressing but also which concepts are challenging for students to learn. This will allow faculty to tailor instruction to each student. That’s a huge difference," adds Berman.

For example, students will complete an assessment before taking their online class so that the instructor knows more about them. Then, if the instructor knows a student is interested in health care, he or she can tailor the content to include more examples in that field.

The technology also enables instructors to build new features into their courses. Anderson, for instance, notes that for years he has wanted to create an exercise to accompany a lesson on the importance of resources to power–resources ranging from a team to a position in an organization to expertise. Haas' outside partner, with surprisingly minimal feedback required from Anderson, created an online game called "King of the Hill" that involves gold mining to illustrate the points from Anderson's class.

"It's pretty darn clever," Anderson says. "Through trading gold, students experience and learn the ins and outs of political corruption."

Although the content in Anderson's online course will be the same as in the in-person version, he believes the digital course may prove even more effective for a few reasons.

Anderson's online class, which was oversubscribed several times over, will involve one day a week of synchronous learning for as long as an hour and a half (compared to approximately three hours in the classroom version). During that time, all students will log onto their computers for a variety of learning activities through an online portal.

Anderson believes that format will work better at creating a level playing field for students who may be less likely to speak up in class. "This is a much safer environment that pushes them to contribute a lot more," Anderson says. "I think there is going to be a ton more participation."

He also believes students will learn more from each other than in the in-class version because they will be required to have more group discussions on their own. And he expects students will learn more because they will be going at their own pace. "I've heard from my students that my class is like drinking from a fire hose," Anderson acknowledges. "This online approach allows for self-paced learning that I think will benefit students in their busy, time-constrained lives."

Why did Anderson want to be one of the first faculty members to dip his feet into the world of online education? "When I was in college I was taking a comparative religions course that I wasn't doing well in, and I realized it was because I was distracted in class," he recalls.

By luck, the professor offered an audio recording of the class. After listening to that, Anderson found his performance "went through the roof" because he could stop the tape when he didn't understand something and then replay or pause to think about a point the professor made.

Plus, he adds, "I like the idea of using new innovative technology to convey content in ways that will engage and teach students even more."

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Major News

Haas Heads to Barcelona for Symposium on Leadership and Innovation

Eugene Kim — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Leaders in finance, technology, and innovation will headline the Haas School's Barcelona Symposium on Saturday, June 2.

Titled "Lead & Innovate: Delivering Results on a Global Stage," the symposium will include talks by alumni Rodrigo Rato, MBA 74, former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Greg Greeley, MBA 98, vice president, Amazon EU. Rato, also former president of Bankia and Spain's minister of the economy, will talk on "The Influence of Berkeley on My Career."

From Haas, Henry Chesbrough, PhD 97, faculty director of the school's Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, will speak on open business models. Whitney Hischier, MBA 01, assistant dean of the school's Center for Executive Education, and Kristi Raube, executive director of the Berkeley-Haas Graduate Program in Health Management, will talk on "Succeeding in Emerging Markets."

As Spain grapples with 24 percent unemployment, alumnus Carles Vergara-Alert, PhD 08, MS 06, MFE 04, an assistant professor at IESE Business School at the University of Navarra, will discuss "Times of Change for Housing and Banking in Spain." The event also will feature Alfons Sauquet, dean of ESADE Business School in Barcelona.

Dean Rich Lyons will open the conference with an update from Berkeley-Haas. He also will meet with alumni at a breakfast on Sunday, June 3.

For more information and to register, visit haas.berkeley.edu/alumni/barcelona.

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Three Teams with Haas Alumni, Students Win at UC Berkeley Startup Competition

Eugene Kim — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Bplan winners Calcula: David Gal; Buzz Bonneau, MBA 11; Dan Azagury; and Kate Garrett.

Haas alumnus Buzz Bonneau, MBA 11, and his team, Calcula Technologies, won the $20,000 grand prize at the UC Berkeley Startup Competition April 26 for their innovative kidney stone treatment. All told, Berkeley-Haas students and alumni were on three winning teams at the 14th annual competition hosted by the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship.

In addition to taking home the grand prize, Calcula also won the $5,000 first-place prize in the Life Sciences track. Calcula's innovative treatment allows smaller kidney stones to be treated in a doctor’s office.

“We are really excited to have the money to complete an in-vivo study of our device next month,” says Bonneau. “We truly believe Calcula's technology will help 1.5 million kidney stone patients avoid six weeks of the worst pain of their lives."

Other Haas wins included Back to the Roots, founded by Haas undergraduate alumni Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez, both BS 09. The team won the $5,000 first-place prize in the Products and Services Track and the $5,000 People’s Choice Award for their grow-at-home gourmet mushroom kits.

Haas undergraduate Nanxi Liu, BS 12, and her Nanoly venture took home the $1,000 Elevator Pitch prize. Nanoly, which also includes UC Berkeley PhD students Chawita Netirojjanakul (Chemistry) and Peter Matheu (Applied Science and Tech.), recently won $70,000 in the Duke Startup Challenge for its technology that enables cheap, effective, and safe delivery of vaccines worldwide without refrigeration.

“We are very excited by all the work the student organizers and Lester Center staff have done to drive the transition this year from the historic UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition to the new UC Berkeley Startup Competition," says Lester Center Executive Director André Marquis, referring to a change this year in the competition's name and format.

"The name change is the manifestation of the many changes the team has made to drive more learning and refinement between the startups, customers, and domain experts throughout the competition," he adds. "It reflects the way we teach entrepreneurship here at Berkeley-Haas and how we work to create the most impactful, scalable startups from across our great colleges, laboratories, and partner companies."

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Undergrad Team to Represent Cal at Mobile Health Competition in South Africa

Eugene Kim — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:00:00 +0000

A team of four Berkeley undergraduates was one of only twelve competitors worldwide accepted to participate in this year’s GSM Association Mobile Health University Challenge in Cape Town, South Africa, on May 28.

Berkeley’s team designed a digital checklist called LifeCheck that helps health-care providers avoid potentially deadly mistakes. The team developed a prototype of its application in Cal’s Mobile Applications and Entrepreneurship class, which is open to all majors.

Two members of the Berkeley team, including Haas undergrad Hung Dang, BS 12, will travel to Cape Town to present the idea and meet industry representatives. The winning team will receive a $5,000 award.

Other U.S. schools accepted include USF, UCSF, and MIT. They will compete against teams from Indonesia, Jordan, Brazil, Lebanon, Canada, Senegal, and the UK. The competition is part of the Mobile Health Summit, an industry conference addressing the role of mobile technology in human health.

For more information, see bmic.org/gsmamobilehealthchallenge.

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Five Haas Teams Serve Up Proposals for elBulli Competition

Eugene Kim — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Five Berkeley MBA teams have submitted proposals for a new course of action for elBulli restaurant as part of world-renowned Spanish Chef Ferran Adrià's international Ideas for Transformation competition.

Haas was the only West Coast business school selected to participate in the global competition, which launched last year and required submissions on April 30. Adrià asked MBA students to develop strategies and models to guide the 2014 launch of elBullifoundation, the successor to his recently closed restaurant, which he hopes to establish as a "pioneering center for gastronomic creativity and innovation."

Thirty-two teams submitted proposals. Three finalists, to be announced May 25, will be flown with their faculty adviser to Rosas, Spain, for the final awards ceremony on June 27. Lecturer Greg La Blanc advised the Haas teams.

"What I really loved about the competition was it was an open canvas," says Ken Su, MBA/MPH 13, who admits being a "Bay Area food snob." He adds: "Adrià said, 'I want a center for creativity,' and when people asked for more specifics, he said, 'That's it.'"

That lack of concrete guidance made the competition more difficult, Su acknowledges, but also more fun.

Haas Tenedores

Su's team, called the Haas Tenedores (forks), also consisted of Gabriel Gomez-Rojo and Aashi Vel, both MBA 13. Their proposal envisioned creating a "global ideation nexus" whose central program they called the TedBulli Innovation Camp─a twist on the TED Conferences. But unlike the typically one-day TED conferences, elBulli would host a month- or week-long camp focused on a particular theme, such as poverty in India, in which leaders from different disciplines and with different skill sets develop solutions.

Indeed, all of the Haas teams proposed creating a multidisciplinary forum, each with a different twist.

Los Osos de Oro

The Haas "Los Osos de Oro" (Golden Bears) team—Arun Abichandani, MBA 13, Brett Conner, MBA 12, and Aaron French, MBA 12—proposed creating a "traveling idearium" consisting of dynamic, focused workshops that bring concepts developed by foundation residents in Spain to all corners of the world. Spending a month in one location, the traveling idearium also would offer an evening interactive culinary experience–think Cirque de Soleil for food.

The concept stems from Adrià's proposal for an idearium—a pod-like, circular room—for his future foundation to give people the space and technology to brainstorm and refine ideas.

elBulli Ecosystem

Another team—consisting of Alia al Kasimi, Togay Ozen, and Onur Toprak, all MBA 13—proposed developing an incubator ecosystem that connects researchers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists, with elBulli serving as the nucleus. The goal would be to define and solve problems related to food in novel and creative ways, and then guide teams to successfully implement those ideas.

A group of big thinkers such as Al Gore and Alice Waters would identify problems the foundation should focus on, and then researchers with projects related to the problem and fellows without specific projects would be brought to the center to work on the issue, for periods of three to six months. At the conclusion of that period, the foundation would hold a conference for leaders in the field and venture capitalists to discuss the problem and choose projects to fund. The foundation would then get a stake in the ventures.

AlGeRa Team

The AlGeRa team─a name drawn from the first two letters of team members Alex Pederson, Genevieve Wang, and Ramon Alvarez, all MBA 12─proposes turning to the public for ideas for future research and creation at the foundation through an online forum. Those ideas would be selected by Adrià and five creative directors, renowned chefs who would each lead a creative team.

The students also focused on further developing The Bullipedia, an online repository of gastronomic creations and history created by Adrià, by expanding it to include new creations from the foundation and entries from the general public. The team proposed tapping partner Telefónica's expertise by creating an interactive exhibit at the foundation to feature the most interesting creations from elBulli restaurant and all over the world.

La Dolce Vita

The Haas team La Dolce Vita—Nandita Batra and Alicia Chan, both MBA 13, and Kristian Lau, MBA/MPH 13—presented their proposal as a viewbook for prospective participants in the foundation's activities. One valuable resource they proposed the foundation would give to successful chefs is time.

"Between his small crew of seven and 16-hour days, Chef Sawyer often wishes he had more time to stop and brainstorm about new dishes and new creations," the team wrote of a fictional chef. That chef, they said, went on to spend three weeks at the foundation learning about creativity while designing serving vessels with a ceramicist and thinking about color with a visual artist.

The team's proposal includes developing an "Inside Look Initiative" in which the foundation visits restaurants and homes to see how people interact with food and each other; a "Play Pen" to watch children discover the world through play' and a "Dim the Lights: elBulli by Night" annual fundraising dinner.

Pumpkin oil caramel created at elBulli

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Undergrads Make National Finals in Student Advertising Competition

Eugene Kim — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Innovation is important, but not at the expense of the tried and true. That was the key to success for imagiCal at the National Student Advertising Competition regionals in Reno on April 21. imagiCal, the UC Berkeley chapter of the American Advertising Federation, took first place to become one of 16 schools across the country advancing to the national finals in Austin, Texas, from June 3 to 4.

This year’s challenge was to design a $100 million ad campaign for Nissan targeted at multicultural millennials between the ages of 18 and 29. The company asked teams to highlight innovation in its product line. Most competitors focused on branding Nissan as an innovative car company, but according to imagiCal President Anna Zhi, BS 12, Berkeley’s team zeroed in on a few specific advances and matched them with concrete retail and sales strategies.

“I think that’s one of the things that helped us win this year,” Zhi says. “A lot of our PR features are designed to get people to look inside the cars.”

This year’s imagiCal team includes more than 30 students. The chapter is sponsored by both Haas and the ASUC and has been competing in the National Student Advertising

Competition since 1980. It has won seven times at the regional level and placed both third and fourth in the national finals. The team is currently fundraising to cover costs for the upcoming trip to Austin. To contribute, contact jennifer.mi@calaaf.com. For more information, see CalAAF.com.

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Haas Gear Store Reopens with New Products

Eugene Kim — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:00:00 +0000

The Haas Gear store is reopening today, May 7, with a new design and new products, which also are available online at haasgear.com.

A longtime Haas vendor, Aviva Design, is taking over operations of the store at Haas in room S545A from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. A grand opening event is being planned for early fall.

The store features new design and apparel options with many more new products on the way.　

Yonka and Chris Hristov, the owners of Aviva Design, have worked with Haas Gear for the past 14 years, providing the majority of our merchandise and apparel designs. In addition to Berkeley Haas, they have worked for such clients as Google, the Novato Fire Department, and the TESORO group. They can be reached at haasgear@haas.berkeley.edu, or at 642-7168.

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Haas Community Invited to Fed Conference on Asia

Eugene Kim — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:00:00 +0000

The Haas community has been invited to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's conference on “Challenges in Global Finance: The Role of Asia” on June 11 and 12.

The event will feature prominent policy-makers, bankers, regulators, and analysts discussing the current and future economic climate through an Asian perspective.

Participants will include Daniel Tarullo, governor, Federal Reserve System; Masaaki Shirakawa, governor, Bank of Japan; Zhu Min, deputy managing director, International Monetary Fund; and Alicia Garcia-Herrero, Chief Economist, BBVA Hong Kong.

For more information, visit frbsf.org/banking/asiasource/events/2012/0611/agenda.html.

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Nondorf Makes "Who's Who" List of Influential Women in Bay Area Business

Debra GOLDENTYER — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:33:32 +0000

Maria Nondorf, executive director of Haas' Center for Financial Reporting and Management (CFRM), was named among the "2012 Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business" in the April 27 issue of the San Francisco Business Times.

Nondorf was selected by the magazine's editors and an advisory board of select leaders and profiled in the magazine's April 27 issue. The women on the list, which also includes three Haas alumnae, will be honored at an awards dinner June 7 in San Francisco. Nondorf also was recognized at the Haas School's annual Accounting Recognition Dinner on Wednesday, April 25.

"Maria has done a tremendous job ensuring that Berkeley-Haas remains at the forefront of the accounting industry," says Dean Rich Lyons. "We are very grateful for her dedication to students and to our school."

Nondorf was nominated for the San Francisco Business Times honor by the California Society of CPAs, which noted that Nondorf "plays a key role in the future of the accounting profession in California" through her role at CFRM.

"She has passion and a sincere commitment to the accounting profession, students, and faculty to build partnerships that will lead to a stronger profession," says Loretta Doon, CEO of the California Society of CPAs.

For the past year, Nondorf has led CFRM's charge to increase the profile of the accounting profession at Berkeley through a campaign called "Accounting at Berkeley: This Way to CPA." The campaign focuses on making students aware of the varied career opportunities in accounting and ensuring that students are prepared and plan much earlier to fulfill their career goals.

In addition, CFRM is creating an Accounting Boot Camp in summer 2012 to provide additional help to students so that they can meet new CPA certification requirements. Combined, these efforts address a shortage of candidates ready and qualified to take the CPA exam.

UC Berkeley boasts the highest pass rate (60.2%) and highest first-time pass rate (67.1%) on the CPA exam in California (based on 2010 candidate performance), according to Going Concern, an accounting and finance news website.

In another demonstration of her commitment to students, Nondorf led an effort this past year to create the first annual Launch Conference for underrepresented UC Berkeley and community college students to assist them in developing competencies and skills to ensure success in college and beyond.

Nondorf was named executive director of CFRM in 2010 and joined the Haas School faculty upon completion of her PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003. She teaches intermediate and advanced financial accounting topics to Berkeley-Haas undergraduate and MBA students.

Nondorf is currently researching the effects of accounting on the structure of corporate financing activities, in particular, mergers and acquisitions. She is also studying the impact of Securities and Exchange Commission comment letters on disclosure quality and the effects of Sarbanes-Oxley regulation on smaller firms.

Prior to obtaining her PhD, Nondorf was a senior manager in the Corporate Finance Transaction Services Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York. She started her career with Deloitte and Touche in Atlanta and she is a CPA in the state of Georgia, where she received her BBA in accounting from Mercer University.

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Major News

Three Alumnae Make SF Business Times' Influential Women List

Ronna Kelly — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:54:42 +0000

Three Haas alumnae—Connie Moore, MBA 80, CEO, BRE Properties; Jennifer Cook, MBA 98, senior VP, Genentech, and Kristin Groos Richmond, MBA 06, CEO, Revolution Foods—were featured on the San Francisco Business Times' List of Influential Women published April 27.

The list also included Maria Nondorf, executive director of Haas' Center for Financial Reporting and Management. (See separate article on Nondorf.)

A special supplement to the newspaper featured a full-page article on Moore, whose photo also was featured on the cover of the supplement. In the article, Moore talks about navigating a male-dominated business world. For instance, when she interviewed for a job at BRE before graduating from college in 1977, the CEO initially didn't want to hire her because he was worried, "What's my wife going to say when I travel with (you)?"

Moore still got the job, and went on to work for other real estate investment trusts for close to two decades before returning to BRE in 2002 as chief operating officer and then taking the helm as CEO in 2005. The company, which had $400 million in assets when she first worked there, now boasts $3.3 billion in assets and $347 million in annual revenue today.

"I think my influence comes from colleagues knowing I will do what I say I'm going to do—when I'm going to do it," she says. "It's all about integrity."

Cook works as Genentech's senior vice president of U.S. sales and marketing for immunology and ophthalmology. She said her proudest professional accomplishment was being part of bringing medicines to patients over the last 25 years and seeing people she has managed grow into successful leaders. Her influence, she says, stems from her diverse set of experiences across disciplines, which gives her perspective; authenticity; and having a "relentless 'do the right thing' mentality."

Groos Richmond says her proudest professional accomplishment is founding Revolution Foods to create healthier students by offering fresh, nutritious, and affordable school lunches. "We are shaping the conversation about health, access (to real food), and high expectations for our students and their families, nationwide," says Groos Richmond, who co-founded the company with Berkeley-Haas classmate Kirsten Tobey, also MBA 06.

Connie Moore, MBA 80, CEO, BRE Properties

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