Berkeley-Haas - News from the Haas School

Undergrad, MBA, and PhD Students Bid Haas Farewell

Eugene Kim — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

Nearly 900 business school students are graduating this month, bringing to a close their education in the classroom but not their lifelong connection to Berkeley-Haas.

PhD Commencement

Twelve PhD students were the first to toss their caps into the air at their commencement Saturday in the Wells Fargo Room.

The graduates will be moving on to faculty positions around the globe at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Germany's WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, and New York University-Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Within the States, students have landed professorships at such schools as the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, Boston University, and the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, to name a few. One student is leaving academia for a position at Menta Capital, a San Francisco quantitative hedge fund firm.; another is crossing the pond to take a post-doc research position at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

Full-time and Evening & Weekend MBA Commencement

On Friday, May 24, about 500 students in the Full-time and Evening & Weekend MBA programs will celebrate their graduation at 2 p.m. at the Greek Theatre. The number of graduates is evenly split between the two programs.

Commencement speaker Arun Sarin, MBA 78, MS 78 (Material Sci. and Eng.), former CEO of Vodafone, will share the business insights and experience that he has gained from more than two decades leading the telecom industry through a time of rapid expansion and change.

During the ceremony, outstanding MBA students will receive awards for excellence in three areas: academic achievement for the student with the highest GPA from each program; community service, given to those Beyond Yourself fellows who contributed the most volunteer hours; and service and leadership awards for full-time MBA students who are considered to have made the greatest lasting impact in improving the community and the school.

Haas also will announce the winners of the Cheit teaching awards for faculty and graduate student instructors during the MBA and undergraduate commencement ceremonies. (Please see related article about Cheit Award winners at http://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/article/faculty-and-gsis-recognized-cheit-teaching-awards.)

Undergraduate Commencement

About 375 undergraduate students will receive their diplomas in a ceremony that will begin at 9 a.m. May 23 in the Greek Theatre. Marc Singer, BS 86, will deliver the commencement address, talking about his career guiding top companies through dizzying technological advances as director of McKinsey & Co.'s Marketing and Sales Practice for the Americas.

Students being recognized at the undergraduate commencement include Departmental Citation Winner Stephen Hwang and Haas Community Fellows Winner Shuonan Chen. Rebecca Hui was selected by her classmates to be the student speaker. In addition, for the first time, four students are receiving awards linked to the school's four Defining Principles—please see a related article on the Defining Principles awards at http://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/article/haas-recognizes-four-haas-undergrads-champions-culture.

Stephen Hwang, who also majored in economics, has spent the last two years as an undergraduate researcher, working with Professor Cameron Anderson and PhD candidate Angus Hildreth. He has contributed to a number of studies in social psychology and organizational behavior and helped develop executive training programs for several major health care companies. During the summer, he plans to prepare for the CPA examinations before starting a job with PricewaterhouseCoopers in October.

Shuonan Chen, the Haas Community Fellows winner, has been focused on sharing financial knowledge with her peers during her time at Cal, driven by her family's suffering from the financial crisis and her own struggles to make ends meet as a college student. Chen helped teach the only Money Management DeCal course, which was oversubscribed by about 120 students due to space limitations. That prompted her to team up with two Haas friends to create a nonprofit focused on financial "edutainment" called Cashify, which was a winner in the UC Berkeley Big Ideas contest Friday. She hopes to continue her financial literacy efforts after graduation.

In addition to her BS in business, Rebecca Hui, the commencement speaker and also a winner in this year's Big Ideas context, double-majored in business and urban studies and is interested in investigating how cities are changing through art and cartography. She published “Life through the Perspective of a Cow” maps that show how stray cows are adapting to India’s changing socioeconomic and religious climate. She traveled to Tanzania to investigate China’s interests in Africa by mapping Chinese infrastructural investments.

Hui also co-founded an urban venture called “Apples and Wages,” addressing food insecurity in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco, with support from the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation. Upon graduation, she is excited to return to India as a Fulbright Scholar with support from the National Geographic Society, Big Ideas at Berkeley, and Google Glass.

Job Outlook

This year’s MBA graduates are taking full advantage of a strong job market in both traditional and nontraditional roles. “The MBA market continues to thrive in such industries as consulting and technology. Silicon Valley maintains its appeal to students, and it is finishing strong with great opportunities even this late in the school year,” says Lisa Feldman, executive director of the MBA Career Management Group.

Feldman says she has seen a larger number of students interested in consumer-focused technologies; real estate big and small; and small, entrepreneurial ventures. Companies that had a major presence on campus this year include McKinsey & Co., Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft, Zynga, The Boston Consulting Group, Goldman Sachs, Prophet, Kaiser, Visa, and LAN Airlines in Latin America.

The job market is also looking bright for undergraduates. "This year we have witnessed a steady improvement in the job market for Haas graduates—probably the best market for college graduates in the past three years," says Tom Devlin, director of UC Berkeley’s undergraduate Career Center. "Most notably, an increasing number of employers continue to strengthen and enlarge their internship programs as a major recruiting tool to attract graduates."

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Undergrads Recognized as Champions of Culture

Eugene Kim — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

As the Haas undergraduate class of 2013 reflects at commencement on their UC Berkeley experiences—and their futures—they will also take the time to appreciate each other.

This year marks the first time that four students will be recognized with a Champion of Culture Award, one for each Berkeley-Haas Defining Principle. The awards were the brainchild of Tyler Wishnoff, BS 13, who, in his leadership role as Haas Business School Association President, connected his fellow students to Haas values through a series of blog posts, a cohort system revival, and other initiatives.

Four winners were selected from more than 30 nominations: Brandon Pham for Question the Status Quo, Lanny O’Connell for Confidence Without Attitude, Hedy Chen for Students Always, and Michael Bloch for Beyond Yourself.

As a Berkeley freshman, Brandon Pham boldly ran for and won a Senate seat in the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC), running on a platform that championed the local business community. Pham interned in the Berkeley Mayor’s Office and with the White House, where he worked on such projects as Race to the Top and the American Jobs Act of 2011, producing research that has been cited in the New York Times and contributing to large-scale federal programs.

“It is his desire to effect change on the large-scale that highlights Brandon’s nature of Questioning the Status Quo,” said a classmate in the nomination.

Lanny O’Connell, recognized for having Confidence Without Attitude, played a critical role in a project that required a business model and proof of forecasted success, a classmate recalled in the nomination. When the team’s model collapsed one week before final presentations (due to legal issues), O’Connell, having startup experience, persuaded the group to incorporate that failure into their presentation, fostering a learning opportunity for the team.

Said his classmate, “His expertise coupled with his humility make him the ideal champion of culture.”

Hedy Chen, a Student Always, was the first ASUC sophomore executive chief of staff in Berkeley history. While at Haas, she has juggled a double major with political science, devoted time to researching the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides, and served as a delegate for the Forum for American-Chinese Exchange at Stanford. She also served as the only undergrad on a team in the Berkeley MBA Social Sector Solutions experiential learning course working with a nonprofit organization.. She also worked with KPMG on a corporate social responsibility program.

“She has a passion for learning that is unrivaled,” said a classmate. “She seeks out new opportunities to challenge herself in every area of her life.”

Michael Bloch, recognized for going Beyond Himself, was hailed for service to the UC Berkeley community that has ranged from organizing a coalition of student groups to raise money for Haitian earthquake reconstruction to serving as an ASUC senator and president of his fraternity, Sigma Nu. This semester, Bloch was also recognized for a nonprofit consulting group he launched in Lecturer Daniel Mulhern's leadership class. Consult Your Community provides pro bono consulting services to low-income, small business owners in college communities.

“His rationale was synergistic,” said Mulhern. “Students win by gaining great experience, businesses gain quality affordable help, Cal wins in its relationship to the community.”

Other students being recognized at the Undergraduate commencement include Departmental Citation Winner Stephen Hwang and Haas Community Fellows Winner Shuonan Chen. Rebecca Hui was selected by her classmates to be the student speaker. (For more on these students, please read our story on Undergraduate Commencement at http://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/article/hundreds-bid-haas-farewell-undergrad-mba-and-phd-commencements.)

Defining Principle Award Winners Brandon Pham, Michael Bloch, Hedy Chen, and Lanny O’Connell

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Haas Welcomes Inaugural MBA for Executives Class

Eugene Kim — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

Dinner at the top of Memorial Stadium with a Nobel Laureate surrounded by jaw-dropping views of San Francisco Bay. A talk on design thinking and innovation by alumnus and IDEO General Manager Tom Kelley, MBA 83. And three intense days of coursework on economics, statistics, and accounting.

Those are just some of the highlights from orientation and the first block of classes for the new Berkeley MBA for Executives Program, which begins Wednesday, May 15.

The 19-month program will include blocks in Washington, D.C., led by Professor and former Clinton adviser Laura Tyson and in Shanghai led by Marketing Professor Teck Ho, director of the Haas School's Asia Business Center. A third off-site block will focus on entrepreneurship and Silicon Valley, led by Professor Toby Stuart, faculty director of the school's Lester Center for Entrepreneurship.

Students also will meet Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA alumni throughout their program, starting at an intimate dinner Friday night at the top of Memorial Stadium. The dinner will be hosted by Dean Rich Lyons and feature special guest Haas Professor Emeritus Oliver Williamson, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics. Haas launched its MBA for Executives Program last year after reaching a mutual decision with Columbia to end their joint Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program.

The school's Berkeley Innovative Leader Development (BILD) curriculum, introduced in the Full-time Berkeley MBA Program in 2010, is the cornerstone of the new Berkeley MBA for Executives Program. As part of BILD, Senior Lecturer Sara Beckman is teaming up with an instructor from the Stanford Design School to teach a course on applied innovation.

Though primarily from the Bay Area, the inaugural class of 70 students includes executives from Southern California and as far away as Virginia, New York, and Seoul, Korea. Among the students: two high-level military officers, an early Google employee, and a veterinarian. Students have as much as 22 years of work experience. As an immersion program, all students stay in Berkeley's Hotel Shattuck during their three-day blocks on campus.

Greg Durkin, VP of research at Warner Bros. Pictures for nearly seven years in Los Angeles, is looking forward to learning and hatching ideas with a whole new group of people in his class.

"Rather than go to a local school where I would be in a pool of people that were too similar to myself, I'd rather be in a classroom with people who think differently than I do and see the world differently," he says, explaining one reason for coming to Haas.

He also was attracted to the school's connections to Silicon Valley. "There's been a lot of change in the entertainment industry in the last few years," he notes. "There's a lot of change yet to come, and technology is a big part of that. Silicon Valley is a big part of that."

Nupur Thakur, director of product management for the global services business at Juniper Networks, will be among Durkin's Silicon Valley classmates. She is pursuing her MBA in order to transition into a strategy position and was particularly attracted to Haas because of its strong culture, including the four Defining Principles, and its focus on leadership and innovation.

"I came to the New Admits Reception and it was very easy for me to reach out, and people from Haas—including alumni—were reaching out to me," she says. "There was a warmth and sense of belonging that I didn't feel at other schools."

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Faculty and GSIs Recognized with Cheit Teaching Awards

Eugene Kim — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

Five professors and three graduate student instructors are being recognized at the Undergraduate, PhD, and MBA commencements this month for their excellence in teaching.

A panel of students selected the Cheit Award recipients from student nominations. The award is named after Dean Emeritus Earl F. Cheit, who made teaching excellence one of his top priorities.

The faculty winners this year are:

Assistant Professor Noam Yuchtman, PhD Program
Lecturer Alan Ross, Undergraduate Program
Adjunct Assistant Professor Kellie McElhaney, Full-time MBA Program
Assistant Professor Yaniv Konchitchki, Evening MBA Program
Assistant Professor Pnina Feldman, Weekend MBA Program

Professor Suneel Udpa was honored with a Cheit Award at the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program commencement in February. Professor Richard Stanton and graduate student instructor Aya Bellicha, MFE 09, received Cheit Awards at the Master of Financial Engineering Program commencement in March.

The winners of the Cheit Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor awards also to be recognized at commencements this year are:

Economics doctoral student Glenda Oskar, PhD 13, Undergraduate Program
Tarek Ghani, PhD 15, Full-time MBA Program
Dennis Ducro, MBA 13, Evening & Weekend MBA Program

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PhD, MBA, Undergrad Students Excel in Competitions

Eugene Kim — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

Students in the Berkeley-Haas PhD, MBA, and Undergraduate programs recently won or placed in several competitions, showing strength in accounting, finance, and marketing.

PhD Wins Accounting Paper Award

Haas PhD student James Ryans (eft) was selected as the winner of the Best Doctoral Student Paper Award at the American Accounting Association’s 2013 Western Regional Meetings April 25 to April 27 in San Francisco.

Ryans co-authored the paper "Investors' demand for sell-sided research: SEC filings, media coverage, and market factors" with Haas Assistant Accounting Professor Alastair Lawrence and fellow Haas doctoral student Estelle Sun.

The paper bested research presented from other universities including USC, UCLA, the University of Colorado, and University of Arizona.

Ryans and his co-authors studied traffic on a popular website that aggregates stock analysts’ reports, looking at patterns of investor demand for analyst information.

They found that demand is highest in the weeks of earnings announcements. After that, demand for analyst research was highest with the filing of Form 10-K annual reports and 8-Ks, which inform investors of an important event, such as a CEO’s departure, layoffs, or bankruptcy.

The paper’s conclusions benefit both academics and analysts, who don’t always have access to valuable feedback about what investors find most useful, Ryans says.

“While (this paper) highlights the specific SEC filings and market factors that drive the demand for analyst reports," adds Haas Accounting Professor Patricia Dechow, "it reinforces the important role that analysts play in assisting investors with the interpretation of financial disclosures and market uncertainty."

MBA Students Place in Institutional Investor Competition

This year two Haas students placed in Institutional Investor's new All-America Student Analyst Competition, based on returns in simulated stock portfolios.

Chao Zhang (pictured right in adjacent photo), MBA 13, took first place in the health care sector with a 28 percent return, and Andrew Krowne (pictured left), MBA 14, placed second in the tech, media, and telecom sector with a 30 percent return.

Zhang cited two fall courses as crucial to analyzing health care stocks: Financial Information Analysis and Health Care in the 21st Century.

Krowne, meanwhile, said he honed in on undervalued stocks with stronger-than-perceived underlying businesses. "The competition was great practice in selecting investment ideas with real-time performance measures," Krowne says.

Both students are pursuing investment careers, with Zhang starting full time at a hedge fund after graduation this month and Krowne heading to an internship at a hedge fund this summer.

Overall, four Berkeley-Haas students placed in the top 100 in this national competition: Zhang and Krowne, plus Kim Mason, MBA 15, and Josh Polsinelli, MBA 14

For the sector rankings, visit http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/stub.aspx?StubID=22084 and scroll down to health care and technology, media, and telecom.

Undergrads Take Second in Advertising Competition with DIY Angle

imagiCal Presenters Nobuko Masuno, Vincent Tzeng, Sofia Dewar, Alexander Moskowitz, Jackie Hwang

Two Haas undergraduates were part of a team that took second place in the regional finals of the National Student Advertising Competition hosted by the American Advertising Federation in San Jose April 19.

The team who presented the final campaign consisted of Alexander Moskowitz, BS 15; Vincent Tzeng, BS/BA 15 (Bus./Econ.); Sofia Dewar, BA 15 (Cogn. Sci.); Jackie Hwang, BA 14 (Music); and Nobuko Masuno, BA 14 (Psych).

The Berkeley student chapter of the American Advertising Federation, called imagiCal, was the only team whose university does not offer a specific course for students to take to prepare for the competition, although alumni and faculty at Berkeley served as advisers.

The competition begins in the fall and involves the whole 30-student chapter, which runs as an ad agency working on everything from strategy to creative to media buys to executing the campaign, explains Krutika Dave, BS/BA 13 (Bus./Media Studies), one of three students who worked as "executives" charged with ensuring the departments were on track and on time.

This year's competition challenged students to create an advertising campaign to sell Glidden Paint in Walmart stores. University of Nevada Reno came in first.

ImagiCal came up with the tagline "It's That Easy," addressing the misperception that do-it-yourself (DIY) projects involving painting can be tough and time consuming—an insight the team gained from surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one discussions.

To understand the customer's perspective, students went to Walmart on the weekend and did their own DIY project: sanding, painting, and then varnishing Dave's bookshelf a bright salmon pink.

"We went outside on my patio, and it took such a short amount of time," she says. "It really was that easy."

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Berkeley Board Fellows Award $30,000 to Three Nonprofits

Eugene Kim — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

Berkeley Board Fellow Nonprofit Winners

Berkeley MBA and other graduate students awarded $30,000 to three nonprofit boards of directors at the first annual Berkeley Board Fellow Excellence Awards on May 2.

The organizations were nominated by the UC Berkeley graduate students serving on their boards as part of a social impact leadership program.

The three nonprofits—selected by a committee of students, staff, and funders—who received $10,000 each were:

Jewish Family and Children Services of the East Bay, winner of the Dynamic Board Award. The organization helps promote and strengthen the social and emotional well-being of diverse individuals and families throughout the East Bay. The nominating fellows were Aaron Perez and Jessica Felts, both MBA 13.
Lotus Bloom Child & Family Resource Center, winner of the Impact Project Award. The center is a multicultural organization in Oakland that provides innovative programs and child care for inner-city children, youth, and families. Alexandra Clarke, MPP 13, and Tim Morrison, MBA 15, nominated the center.

Clinic by the Bay, winner of the Outstanding Mentor Award. The clinic is part of the national network of Volunteers in Medicine clinics, engaging retired and practicing doctors, nurses, and other volunteers to provide compassionate, high-quality health care free of charge to underserved residents in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its nominating fellows were Alana Tucker, MBA 14, and Molley Bode, MBA/MPH 14.

To be eligible for the awards, the nonprofits had to be participants in the 2012 Berkeley Board Fellows program and nominated by a student serving on their boards. Founded by Berkeley MBA students in 2003, the experiential learning program places MBA and other Berkeley graduate students on nonprofit boards of directors for an academic year. This year a record 92 fellows served on 49 nonprofit boards.

Fellows attend board meetings and complete a project that leverages the fellows’ expertise to address a strategic need of the board. The goal of the program is to develop students’ governance and leadership skills, while they contribute their time and talent to select nonprofit organizations.

The generous award money came from through a Berkeley undergrad, Jonathan Lee, BS 16, of the Foundation Boys. Lee and his brother have supported nonprofits and community service since they were high school students.

“The Board Fellows program has been an incredibly rewarding experience,” Alexandra Clarke says. “The grant for Lotus Bloom will go toward building a new community kitchen, which will serve as a revenue source to help make the center a sustainable institution.” she says proudly.

“Clinic by the Bay is filling a big unmet need for primary health care for the uninsured in San Francisco,” Molly Bode says. “Alana and I were ecstatic that the clinic won the $10,000 award since it will make a huge difference for their program and really tops off the excellent experience we have had working with them this year.”

For more information and applications for nonprofit organizations to join the Board Fellows program, visit http://bit.ly/boardfellows.

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Haas and Center for Executive Education to Host CFO Summit

Eugene Kim — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

Chief financial officers from Cisco Systems, Lucasfilm, and Kaiser Permanente will be among the influential business leaders gathering May 20 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco for the 2013 CFO Executive Summit.

The agenda for the event, hosted by Haas and the UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education, is built entirely by CFOs, for CFOs. Haas Professor Laura Tyson, the S.K. and Angela Chan Professor of Global Management at Haas, is one of seven event chairs.

The agenda covers a wide variety of topics of concern to CFOs, from strategies for realigning their investments to leading their corporate culture to understanding changes within the global business environment.

Derek Dean, the new CEO of the UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education, will moderate a private breakfast roundtable talk titled "What Levers Do CFOs Pull in a Slow and Fragile Economy?" CFOs from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Cypress Semiconductor, and The Cooper Companies will participate in the discussion about effective ways to manage their corporate cash at a time when interest rates are at record lows.

Opening keynote speakers Intuit CEO Brad Smith and CFO Neil Williams will discuss "Transformational Leadership: Building an Enduring and Successful Strategy." And CFOs Mark Hawkins of Autodesk, Cheryl Eason of the California Public Employees' Retirement System and Kent Harvey of PG&E will talk on "The CFO’s Critical Role – Developing a Team of Business Leaders."

Thought leader Cy Wakeman, author of the book Reality-Based Leadership and a blogger for FastCompany.com, will deliver a lunchtime keynote on why companies still have difficulty calculating the real value that talent brings to the bottom line.

The conference is private, by invitation-only. For more details, visit www.evanta.com/cfo/summits/san-francisco.

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MBA Students Squash Competition and Raise $45,000 in Challenge for Charity

Eugene Kim — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

Berkeley MBA students scored big in squash, soccer, and tennis in the annual Challenge 4 Charity (C4C) Sports Weekend April 19 and April 20 at Stanford University.

Nine West Coast business schools competed in physical and mental challenges while raising funds for the Special Olympics.

Berkeley-Haas came in first place in squash, with a team consisting of Garnett Booth, Doug Peck, and Natalie Rudd, all MBA 14; and Ansul Rajgharia, MBA 13. In addition, the Haas men's soccer team came in second place, and women's tennis placed third.

Haas also surprised in the battle of the bands, with a strong performance Saturday night by David Haaselhoff and the Four Chord Principles, whose name is a play on the school's four Defining Principles.

The C4C event involves three parts: fundraising, volunteering, and the sports weekend. Throughout the year, MBA students within their respective chapters – including UCLA, Stanford, and Pepperdine – volunteer and launch fundraisers for their designated charities. The Sports Weekend is a fun, competitive culmination of the year’s efforts, with games and activities such as ping pong, cheerleading, trivia bowl, and flag football among 1,300 attendees.

This year, Berkeley MBA students raised $45,000 and worked numerous volunteer hours for the Alameda Point Collaborative (APC), a nonprofit dedicated to providing housing for and aiding the homeless or those at risk of homelessness. Students also held a bowling tournament and refereed at Special Olympics sports events.

Altogether the nine C4C schools have raised $6.3 million for the Special Olympics and contributed more than 16,000 hours of volunteer service since 1996.

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