Alumni News| Page 3 of 20 | Haas News

Cristy Johnston Limón, EMBA 16, on transforming lives and communities through the arts

September 25, 2018| by Kim Girard

In honor of Latinx Heritage Month, we’re featuring interviews and profiles with members of the Haas community of Latin American descent. For our first interview, we caught up with Cristy Johnston-Limón.

Cristy Johnston Limon, EMBA 16, executive director of Youth Speaks (Photo by Noah Berger) — *Cristy Johnston Limón, EMBA 16, executive director of Youth Speaks (Photo by Noah Berger)*

Cristy Johnston-Limón, EMBA 16, is the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants who grew up in San Francisco’s Mission District, where she worked as a young urban neighborhood activist. A first-gen UC Berkeley student who went on to graduate from the Berkeley MBA for Executives Program, Johnston-Limón was the former executive director of Destiny Arts in Oakland. She’s now the executive director of Youth Speaks, an organization that aims to transform young peoples’ lives and communities through the arts.

Recently, she volunteered for the CARA Pro Bono Legal Project, which works with lawyers and translators to help asylum-seeking mothers at the border prepare for their “credible fear interviews,” the first step in a lengthy process to gain protection from violence and persecution in their native countries.

“The majority of the women were from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras,” Johnston-Limón said. “As a Guatemalan woman who speaks the language and understands our cultural norms, I was able to build rapport and trust quickly with the mothers, some who were struggling with the trauma of migration, and having been separated from their children while gaining entry into the U.S. I have never felt more proud of my fluency than I did when I discovered that all of the women I worked with were granted asylum, and have a fighting chance to start a new life in this country.”

We asked her a few more questions:

Tells us about your heritage.

My ancestral roots are Mayan. Both of my parents are from Guatemala and met in San Francisco in the mid 1970s. My grandparents are from Antigua, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and one of my favorite places to visit, drink coffee from my grandfather’s coffee plants, and listen to American rock music with my cousins.

What aspect of your cultural heritage do you enjoy sharing most with others?

Being bilingual and bicultural has opened so many doors, professionally and personally. I was raised to value family, friendships, and personal connections which have translated into being able to make a connection with virtually anyone from any background. Emotional intelligence is a powerful skill that builds bridges, creates opportunities for genuine connection, and more. Having developed this cultural fluency has really helped propel my career in public service as I engage with people from all walks of life, sometimes in the same conversation.

How did your heritage shape your desire to get an MBA and your career path?

Obtaining higher education is still largely limited in our Latinx community, with just under 4% of U.S. Hispanics obtaining master’s degrees [2016, U.S. Census Bureau reported 3.9%]. Being the first person in my family to graduate from college, from UC Berkeley no less, I felt a responsibility–still feel it–to push myself beyond what I think I can do and make a greater impact in my family and my community through higher education. I knew an MBA could open more doors for my social impact work, as increasingly nonprofit leaders must also have business fluency, but what I didn’t account for was that other young men and women, particularly young people of color, would be inspired by my journey.

Today, as the director of the country’s largest spoken-word organization, I am using every skill and tool I learned at Haas to advance social justice through the arts, centering youth voices and narratives to make lasting change for the better.

Student Startup Roundup: Vidi, Ping, Cryptonite

July 13, 2018|By Bill Snyder

The Startup Roundup series spotlights students and alumni who are starting a new business or enterprise.

Vidi

Co-founders:

Federico Alvarez del Blanco, MBA 18
John Kim, PhD 18 (UC Berkeley/UCSF Bioengineering)
Hector Neira. PhD 18 (UC Berkeley/UCSF Bioengineering)
Robert Kim PhD candidate (UCSD MD/PhD, Neuroscience)

Busy surgical teams inadvertently leave an instrument inside a patient an estimated 1,500 times a year in the U.S. alone, according to research. Less frightening, but still problematic, is the considerable cost to hospitals that bring instruments into the hospital that are never used, but must still be sterilized or restocked—as well as delays that happen when the required instruments fail to make it to the surgical tray.

Solving those problems is the focus of Vidi, a fledgling company launched last November by Federico Alvarez del Blanco, MBA 18, and three other University of California graduates. “Tracking surgical instruments, is slow, manual, and error-prone,” Alvarez del Blanco says.

Team VIDI — *Team Vidi, left to right: Hector Neira, Federico Alvarez del Blanco, and John J. Kim*

The team’s inspiration came while they were attending a workshop on visual recognition sponsored by information technology company NEC on the Cal campus. “We realized that the technology being used to develop self-driving cars could have wider applications in the medical field,” he says.

The heart of the Vidi system is a camera mounted in the operating room and connected to a computer. The system scans the surgical tray, recognizes the instruments on it, and keeps track of them. When the surgery is concluded, the system gives the team a readout of each item that was in the cart at the beginning of the procedure and lets them know if anything is missing.

The really difficult part of developing the system is training machines to correctly recognize hundreds of instruments, Alvarez del Blanco says. It’s similar to the technology self-driving cars need to recognize objects and react accordingly. That’s why Vidi team members have advanced degrees in fields such as bioengineering, neuroscience, and image recognition.

Although Vidi, which means “to see” in Latin, is very young, it has already gained a good deal of recognition. The team was awarded a Haas Dean’s Seed Fund grant last year; earned a second-place win at the University of California Big Ideas Competition in 2018; and won awards from NEC and the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program.

Alvarez Del Blanco says his time in the MBA program helped him build the connections he needed to launch Vidi. “Haas has an interdisciplinary approach that gave me access to ideas and people across the entire University of California system,” del Blanco says.

Ping

Co-founders:

Kourosh Zamanizadeh, BS 09, MBA 18
Ryan Alshak, BS 09 (Political Science)
Matt Bordas
Janesh Gupta
Eric Zaarour

If you’ve ever had dealings with a law firm, you’ve probably gotten a detailed bill with line items for everything from reviewing files to drafting documents to answering emails. While it may seem cut-and-dried, billing clients is actually a burdensome, error-prone task that costs law firms potentially billions in wasted time and lost revenue, says Kourosh Zamanizadeh, MBA 18, co-founder and COO of Ping.

A Berkeley Haas-nurtured startup, Ping uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud computing to automate legal billing. The software tracks, stores, and analyzes the time attorneys spend on a case, and then creates client-ready bills. It’s early days, but Ping has already attracted significant funding from top-tier venture capital firms (a public announcement is pending), along with a $5,000 grant from the Dean’s Seed Fund. It was named “Legal Tech Startup of the Year” in 2017 by the American Bar Association.

Ping has landed its first large client, Mishcon de Reya, a London-based law firm employing more than 800 people, says Zamanizadeh. Ping has already run a successful pilot and the firm has committed to expanding it company-wide within the year. Zamanizadeh also expects to start trials with a number of other global law firms later this year—a business expansion that will require a larger technology team.

The Ping team, left to right: *Matt Bordas, Eric Zaarour, Ryan Alshak, Janesh Gupta, and Kourosh Zamanizadeh*

Zamanizadeh and co-founder Ryan Alshak met while undergraduates and fraternity brothers at Cal a decade ago. “We always dreamed of starting a company together and decide to take the leap in 2016,” he says. “We both left our careers and just went for it.” The startup team has a deep lineup of relevant talent: Alshak is a former lawyer; Matt Bordas and Janesh Gupta are software engineers; Eric Zaarour is a designer; and Zamanizadeh has experience in business development and investment management.

This is the second startup for the five-member team, who made an earlier, unsuccessful attempt to build a company around an app for exchanging contacts. The team hit upon the idea of focusing on legal technology and they were accepted by Skydeck, the accelerator run by Berkeley Haas, the College of Engineering, and UC Berkeley, where they had a home base to develop their idea further.

“The startup ecosystem at Berkeley has very much matured since Ryan and I first met as undergrads. It’s truly world-class,” says Zamanizadeh, who credits Skydeck Executive Director Caroline Winnett and Ikhlaq Sidhu, chief scientist and founding director of the Sutarja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, for their extra support. “The environment has been very empowering and the help we’ve received couldn’t be any more genuine.”

Cryptonite

Co-founders:

Dustin Seely, EWMBA 18
Michael Brenndoerfer, M.Eng 18

Efficiently buying and selling bitcoins and hundreds of other cryptocurrencies is not a problem most people have. But as these hypermodern currencies become more of an investment and less of a curiosity, investors will need a simple way to manage their crypto-portfolios.

That’s the market Dustin Seely EWMBA 18, co-founder of Cryptonite, is going after. “We’re going to give investors a way to invest in the entire cryptocurrency market in one place, and do it in U.S. dollars,” he says.

Seely and co-founder Michael Brenndoerfer met in a Berkeley Haas entrepreneurship class, and then took the new, multidisciplinary “Blockchain and the Future of Technology, Business and the Law” course last spring, where they learned more about the technology underlying cryptocurrencies. Their young company was awarded a Dean’s Seed Fund grant and is expected to go live in the fall.

The cryptocurrency market is volatile and expanding, with a market cap of about $250 billion in mid-July (down from a peak of more than $800 billion in January). Although bitcoin is the most valuable and most widely known, there are now more than 1,600 cryptocurrencies sold on almost 12,000 scattered exchanges, according to CoinMarketCap. What’s more, many of those exchanges do not accept dollars, so doing business with them requires buyers to slog through complicated, multi-step trading procedures. Buying a cryptocurrency called Zilliqa, for example, means buying a bitcoin in dollars, and then using the Bitcoin to purchase the Zilliqa, Seely explains.

Cryptonite will serve as a middleman between investors and other exchanges. Account holders will be able to buy cryptos in dollars without dealing directly with other exchanges, and manage their portfolio on a mobile device, Seely says.

At the moment, cryptocurrencies are only lightly regulated, but Cryptonite is preparing for the future. “Securities regulations are coming to the space and we welcome it,” Seely says. “Regulation will give further legitimacy to the market and we can use it as a competitive advantage when we become fully compliant.”

Chancellor Christ Honors Dean Lyons with Berkeley Citation

May 1, 2018| by Haas News

*Dean Rich Lyons accepts the Berkeley Citation award from Chancellor Carol Christ.*

Dean Rich Lyons was awarded the Berkeley Citation, among the highest honors the campus bestows on its community, in a surprise announcement at the Alumni Reunion Conference on Saturday.

Chancellor Carol Christ, who had just opened the conference with a joint keynote with Lyons about culture and leadership styles, paused the program to bestow the award. “It is my distinct privilege to present to Rich a Berkeley Citation for his distinguished achievements and notable service to the university,” said Christ, who was herself honored with the Citation in 2002.

“A set of core values and a sense of purpose”

The dean was visibly moved by the honor, as 600+ alumni gave a standing ovation.

Christ read from the Citation: “Rich Lyons believed business schools had both the responsibility and opportunity to instill a set of core values and a sense of purpose. The first step to realizing their mission was to create a new kind of business school culture.”

Haas colleagues nominated the dean with letters that paid homage to his authentic style as “a servant, leader, and a role model.” The letters cited his caring support for his direct team, active engagement with students, and his rock-star musical talents.

When Lyons became dean, it marked the beginning of one of the most transformative periods in Haas’ 120-year history—including an 18-month soul-searching exercise to determine the true values of the school. The exercise culminated in the codification of four Defining Leadership Principles, which rolled out in February 2010: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself.

Over the years, students and alumni have rallied around the principles as guiding leadership values.

About 1,400 alumni flocked to Haas last weekend for the largest-ever annual conference and reunion for MBA classes ending in the numbers 3 and 9, as well as the Class of 2017. The weekend featured career education “booster shots” from faculty on topics including fintech, design thinking, and equity and inclusion, as well as “HaasX” talks by alumni and plenty of social events.

Lyons also didn’t disappoint in the rock-star department, treating the audience to an acoustic guitar and vocal version of a favorite song: Green Day’s “Time of Your Life.”

Campus dignitaries dedicate Chou Hall, newest addition to campus

March 7, 2018| by Caron Creighton

*UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ at the Chou Hall dedication. All photos: Noah Berger*

The Cal Band marched. Dignitaries spoke. A beloved donor inspired a standing ovation.

It was all in honor of Chou Hall, the newest campus addition, which was dedicated last Friday in a standing-room-only ceremony.

“A lot of people have truly gone beyond themselves to make Chou Hall possible, and the culture of giving back has never been stronger,” said Haas Dean Rich Lyons, who was joined by UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ and University of California President Janet Napolitano in Chou Hall’s Spieker Forum.

Chou Hall, which opened last August and was 10 years in the making, was funded entirely by $63 million raised from alumni and friends. The building, which is used solely as student classroom space, opens at a critical time. Over the past 20 years, enrollment at Berkeley Haas has nearly doubled.

“We knew that the building would allow us to not just draw more students and grow, but to grow strategically,” Lyons said. “But I don’t think we could have imagined launching (the new undergraduate) M.E.T. program.. and launching all these new wonderful programs, and that’s part of what we’re all doing here together.”

A call to give

Perhaps the event’s most heartfelt words came from Kevin Chou, BS 02, who with his wife, Dr. Connie Chen, gave a gift of up to $25 million. The building is named to honor the couple.

Left to right: Building donor Kevin Chou, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ, Dean Rich Lyons, University of California President Janet Napolitano, building donor Ned Spieker, project manager Walter Hallanan.

Chou spoke of a love for Cal that’s deepened since he first stepped on campus as an undergrad. He reflected on how sharing a panel with entrepreneurship Prof. Toby Stuart in April 2015 at The Battery club in San Francisco kindled his philanthropic plan.

“It was that night that I learned about the need for the community to rally to make this project possible,” Chou said. “Toby’s love for teaching, research, and bringing students together with the technology community through Silicon Valley Immersion Week was a great reminder of love and inspired me to find out more about this project and how I could get involved.”

Chou, who introduced his wife and baby daughter, then gave a nod to “the love that Dean Lyons exudes through his leadership,”

“Dean Lyons, it is your leadership that this community of alumni love and believe in,” he said. “This space we are now in is a testament to your incredible work that has spanned over a decade.”

*UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ (second from right) and University of California President Janet Napolitano (right) celebrate Chou Hall.*

Spieker Forum is named for building donor Ned Spieker, BS 66, who helped lead the funding effort by establishing a nonprofit entity to manage design and construction of the building. Lyons said Spieker’s efforts were “a fundamental part of what made this project go.”

Lyons also lauded building project manager Walter Hallanan, BS 72, as “the person who had to sweat every detail.”

“Walter and Ned made this work, while saving on time and cost,” Lyons said.

It takes a village

Napolitano said that Chou Hall embodies the Berkeley Haas Defining Leadership Principles: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always and Beyond Yourself. She added that the building is “an unprecedented testament to the generosity of the Berkeley Haas alumni.”

Chancellor Christ said that Haas students are “at the center of this building.” She noted its natural beauty—the light pouring in from the windows, the sustainable materials used in construction, and the slick classroom technology that makes Chou Hall a state-of-the-art hub for student learning.

“It takes a village to build a building,” she said. “There are many, many partners who have joined together in making Chou Hall a reality.”

Sharifa Dunn, MBA 18 and the class president, expressed gratitude for the building and all that it’s done to enhance the learning experience at Haas for all students.

“I’ve had the unique experience of not having and having the building, so I know what it’s like to not have something as beautiful as this,” she said. “Up here…the view that this offers. This is why I moved to California!”

*The Cal Band closes the Chou Hall dedication ceremony.*

Chou Hall is the first academic building in the US designed to be both WELL and LEED Platinum certified, meaning it promotes the health and well-being of its occupants and is highly energy efficient and sustainably built. The building is also on track to become the first Zero-Waste building on campus by summer.

A plaque honoring Kevin Chou and Connie Chen hangs inside the building, inscribed with the following words: “We hope in this building students from all walks of life, experiences, and disciplines will come together to build a brighter future.”

After Chou read the words, the audience stood in applause. Then the Cal Band made a surprise appearance to close the ceremony, marching on stage in straw hats with cymbals and drums and singing the Cal fight song.

From Google Earth to Pokémon Go, John Hanke changed the way we see the world

December 14, 2017| by Laura Counts

Remembering former Intel CEO Paul Otellini, MBA 74, industry leader with lifelong Haas ties

October 11, 2017| by Andrew Faught

Former Intel CEO Paul S. Otellini, MBA 74, an innovator who left his mark on the computing industry and inspired a global workforce, maintained a lifelong connection with the school he said laid the foundation for his success.

Otellini died Oct. 2 at his home in Sonoma County. He was 66.

The first non-engineer to lead Santa Clara-based Intel, Otellini guided the company to new heights. During his eight-year tenure as CEO of the semiconductor chip and microprocessor maker, Intel generated more revenue than it did during the company’s previous 45 years.

In 2006, Otellini was named Haas Business Leader of the Year for “innovative new strategies … his ability to lead and inspire a global workforce, and for his unwavering commitment to conducting business with integrity.”

“Paul occupies a very special place in the Haas pantheon. More broadly, he was a great citizen,” says Dean Rich Lyons. “He was also super honest, which is part of why he ascended so far and so fast in the corporate world. We’ve lost an important part of our community.”

Laying the foundation for success

In a 2007 interview with CalBusiness magazine, he credited his Haas experience for laying the foundation for his success. “You learn a very thorough, analytical methodology at Haas,” Otellini said at the time. “That has worked extremely well for me in the high-tech industry.”

Otellini led Intel from 2005 until his retirement in 2013. Current Intel CEO Brian Krzanich called Otellini “the relentless voice of the customer in a sea of engineers.”

Otellini never strayed far from Haas, serving on the Haas School Board from 2002-2003. He and his wife, Sandy, were among the earliest benefactors to donate to the Chou Hall capital fund. The couple made a gift of $1 million to the new building. The $60 million facility, used completely for student learning and interaction, opened in August.

“That very early investment was a vote of confidence, and a lot of other people came into the project because he was in,” Lyons says.

For a guy with a non-technical background to be chosen to lead Intel may have struck some as quizzical. But Lyons says it made perfect sense.

“Paul brought a complementary skillset to a company that, at that time, needed it,” he says. “He had an ability to arbitrage business and technology, to understand two somewhat distinct fields and really pull them together.”

“Obsessed with making things better”

Lyons says Otellini’s work embodied Haas’ four Defining Leadership Principles—Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself—which were established more than three decades after Otellini left Berkeley.

Otellini and Lyons spoke of the Defining Leadership Principles during their periodic lunch meetings over the past decade. Otellini remarked that the principles existed in his own Haas education more than 30 years earlier, even if they weren’t explicitly stated.

“Paul was obsessed with making things better,” Lyons says. “’Question the status quo’ is something where people are saying, ‘Look, there’s got to be a better way here.’ Paul had that in spades. He was confident, but he was grounded, and that’s why people appreciated him so much.”

Otellini was born in San Francisco on Oct. 12, 1950, and remained a fan of the city all his life, according to Intel’s website. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of San Francisco in 1972 before earning an MBA at Haas in 1974.

Generating record revenue as Intel’s CEO

At Intel, he served in many roles, including chief of staff to former CEO Andy Grove, who co-founded Intel and died in 2016.

From 1990 to 2002, he served as executive vice president and general manager of the Intel Architecture Group, responsible for the company’s microprocessor and chipset businesses and strategies for desktop, mobile, and enterprise computing—and as executive vice president and general manager of the sales and marketing group before becoming chief operating officer, a role he held from 2002 to 2005. As CEO, he grew the company’s sales from $34 billion in 2005 to $53 billion in 2012.

Since retiring in 2013, Otellini dedicated time to mentoring young people and was involved with several philanthropic and charitable organizations, including the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco General Hospital Foundation.

Otellini is survived by his wife, Sandy; his mother, Evelyn; his son Patrick (Marissa), and daughter, Alexis; grandchildren Nico and Mia, all of San Francisco; and brother Rev. Msgr. Steven Otellini, Menlo Park.

In lieu of flowers, the family kindly suggests donations to the UCSF Foundation, with a note “Dyslexia Center in memory of Paul Otellini,” P.O. Box 45339, San Francisco, CA 94145-0339, or donations to the website makeagift.ucsf.edu, designating “Dyslexia Center” in the “other” gift category.

Scott Galloway, MBA 92, donates $4.4M for fellowships for students from immigrant families

September 22, 2017| by Kim Girard

Professor of Marketing and entrepreneur Scott Galloway has made a $4.4 million gift to UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business to fund fellowships for undergraduate and graduate business students.

His gift—the second-largest ever from an MBA alum—will create the Galloway Fellows Fund, aimed at assisting generations of high-achieving business students at Berkeley-Haas who come from immigrant families.

Galloway, MBA 92, said, “As the son of a single immigrant mother, the big hand of government lifted me up. I want to ensure the hand remains extended for the next generation of aspiring business leaders who come from immigrant families.”

“I was a remarkably unremarkable kid,” he said. “Cal made what probably seemed, at the time, like an irrational bet on me. It changed my life.”

The gift was made possible through the sale of one of Galloway’s companies. In 2009, Galloway founded L2, Inc., to benchmark brands’ digital competence. Earlier this year, after L2 was sold to technology research firm Gartner, Galloway fulfilled his Founder’s Pledge, a nonbinding commitment by UC Berkeley entrepreneurs to give back to Berkeley when they attain success. To date, some 265 founders have signed.

“I felt blessed.”

The first four students to receive $50,000 Galloway Fellowships, all first-year MBA students, are Josue Chavarin, Kira Mikityanskaya, Kevin Phan, and Jorge Tellez.

Chavarin, the son of immigrant farm workers who grew up in Salinas, Ca., said he felt blessed when he learned about the new fellowship and decided to apply.

“I never would have thought that a fellowship (created) to empower and acknowledge children of immigrants would be available to me—especially in the political climate we’re in,” said Chavarin, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 2011 with a degree in political science with minors in Spanish literature and education. “Mr. Galloway is a real leader in taking this stance and standing up for immigrants.”

A life-changing gift

Berkeley-Haas Dean Rich Lyons said that Galloway’s gift will be life changing for many students. “Scott’s gift is an outstanding display of generosity that comes at a particularly difficult time for so many immigrant families,” Lyons said. “Scott understands personally what a public university education can do to change the course of students’ lives—and inspire them, in turn, to pay it forward to others.”

Galloway is currently a professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business and Chairman of L2. He co-founded Prophet Brand Strategy with classmate Ian Chaplin, MBA 92, and helped pioneer the rise of e-commerce when he co-founded Red Envelope, an online specialty gift retailer, in 1997.

“This is a tip of the hat to the generosity and vision of California taxpayers and the UC Regents, respectively,” Galloway said. “I also hope this sends a signal to current and future immigrants that most Americans remember where we came from, and welcome them to the land of opportunity.” Professor Galloway has also announced gifts to UCLA and NYU.

Two alumni-led companies are leading the transformation of school food

September 13, 2017| by Kim Girard

When the Today Show aired a back-to-school segment on how school food is being disrupted by healthier options, producers turned to two companies founded by Berkeley-Haas alumni.

NBC Today correspondent Jenna Bush Hager featured Revolution Foods and Back to the Roots exclusively in the Sept. 4 segment, calling Revolution Foods founders Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey, both MBA 06, “the moms who are going gourmet.”

Richmond and Toby met in a marketing class at Haas, launching their company as an antidote to pre-frozen, unhealthy school meals. Today, the company ferries two million fresh lunches per week to 2,000 schools in three dozen cities.

Back to the Roots co-founders with a few of their products. — Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez, BS 09, started Back to the Roots.

Back to the Roots, founded by Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez, both BS 09, started with an idea for urban mushroom farming that morphed into Back to the Roots. Today, the company has expanded to sell mushroom farm kits, aqua farms, and home herb gardens at retailers from Costco to Whole Foods. Last March, the company was awarded a contract to provide breakfast to all of New York City’s public schools. New York, the world’s largest public education system, is one of six cities now providing the company’s cereals: organic, low-sugar, whole wheat cocoa clusters and cinnamon clusters, and purple corn flakes. “The most fun piece of this is seeing the (kids’) spark of curiosity about food,” Arora said.

“We approach cereal from a completely different perspective,” Velez said.

Revolution Foods founders talk about healthy school lunches. — Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey, both MBA 06, started Revolution Foods.

In the segment, Bush Hager took a tour of a Rev Foods kitchen with Richmond, who explained that the company sources whole grains, fresh veggies, and lean proteins; cooks the meals in the company’s local kitchens; and sends them out to schools across the region in refrigerated trucks.

“What we know is that healthy meals—we now have the data to prove it—drive not only health outcomes but also student outcomes in the classroom,” she said. Providing kids of all income levels healthy food “sends a message of respect. It sends a message of empowerment.”

Healthier meals aren’t necessarily more expensive, Richmond added, noting the company “serves all meals within the federal reimbursement rate.”

Arora said the company’s packaged cereals cost only about 10 cents more per serving than commercial cereals that are “a quarter to a half” sugar.

“If it can work in NYC, we see no reason why our cereals, offerings by Rev Foods, and other healthier foods shouldn’t be in every other district across the country,” Arora said, in a separate interview.

Knowledge Management Pioneer Ikujiro Nonaka to Receive Berkeley-Haas’ Lifetime Achievement Award

July 17, 2017| by 920633

Dr. Ikujiro Nonaka, one of the world’s top academic management scholars, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, on November 3, 2017, during the school’s annual gala. Dr. Nonaka has been a pioneer in creating the field of knowledge management and studying the impact of knowledge creation on product development and innovation.

Berkeley-Haas Dean Rich Lyons applauded Nonaka’s lasting impact on the business world. “Nonaka has transformed how people drive innovation together,” said Lyons. “Applying a humanistic lens and practical wisdom to his research, he has developed new frameworks for how organizations can transcend simply managing data to using the knowledge within their organizations to create better outcomes. We are proud to call him an alumnus and even more honored to celebrate him with this much-deserved award.”

“No one has done more to shape knowledge management than Ikujiro Nonaka, and he is one of Berkeley’s most esteemed alumni in Asia,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ.

“He has remained a loyal and passionate supporter of the University and the free exchange of ideas by hosting faculty and students in Japan as well as by arranging access to data and research contacts. He is a national treasure in Japan, but the impact of his insight and wisdom has been deeply felt at Berkeley and beyond.”

Nonaka, 82, a professor emeritus at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy at Hitotsubashi University, worked for many years at Fuji Electric in Japan, where he created the company’s first management development program. He came to Berkeley in 1967, earning an MBA in 1968 and a PhD in business administration in 1972. At Berkeley, he also studied sociology, which heavily influenced his theories on business throughout his career.

“Dr. Jiro Nonaka has contributed enormously to the theory and practice of innovation management and has deepened our understanding of knowledge creation in large organizations,” said David Teece, the Thomas W. Tusher Professor in Global Business and faculty director of the Tusher Center for The Management of Intellectual Capital at Berkeley-Haas. “Dr. Nonaka is well known to leading executives in Asia, Europe, and North America. He has helped businesses learn and transform, just as he himself has learned and transformed over his long and successful career. The global recognition he has received is quite remarkable and is a wonderful tribute to his graduate education at Berkeley-Haas.”

Along with his longtime collaborator, Harvard Business School Professor Hirotaka Takeuchi, MBA 71, Ph.D. 77, whom he met at Berkeley-Haas, Nonaka argued that knowledge creation within companies is a source of competitive advantage. The two introduced the concept in an influential article, “The Knowledge-Creating Company,” published in Harvard Business Review in 1991. Their subsequent book, The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation (Oxford University Press, 1995), won the Association of American Publishers’ Best Book of the Year Award in business and management and has proved important in advancing the field of management.

In 2009, the Economist’s “Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus” credited Nonaka as one of three such “gurus” who “connected Japanese industry and management with that of the rest of the world.” In 2011, Nonaka and Takeuchi’s article, “The Wise Leader,” published in Harvard Business Review, argued that the best executives strive for the common good. In 2013, Nonaka won the Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame.

In Japan, Nonaka has earned a Purple Medal of Honor from the government for his contribution to academia and delivered an Imperial New Year’s Lecture by invite of the Emperor of Japan, the first-ever Japanese professor in the field of business administration and management to be asked to do so.

Nonaka is perhaps best known for his creation of the Socialization-Externalization-Combination-Internalization (SECI) model to explain how firms can best generate knowledge and understanding and bring new products to market. The model rejects the linear model of idea creation in favor of Nonaka’s SECI spiral, which describes a ceaseless flow of cyclical interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge among groups and individuals. The model can facilitate the development of innovative products.

Another of Nonaka’s contributions to the field of management was the recognition of the key role middle managers can play in knowledge creation within a company. During downsizing in the 1990s, when many U.S. firms were laying off middle managers to save costs, Nonaka argued they could be a vital bridge in translating the vision of upper management into execution by frontline staff.

In 1997, Nonaka became the Haas School’s first Xerox Distinguished Professor in Knowledge, the first professorship in the nation dedicated to the study of knowledge and its impact on business. He has remained a passionate champion of Berkeley, which he has called “the Athens of the Pacific” and has continued to support the school with visits, academic exchanges, and participation in co-hosting conferences.

The school’s highest honor, the Berkeley-Haas Lifetime Achievement Award is reserved for exceptional leaders who have made a significant impact through their professional accomplishments and who embody the Defining Principles of Berkeley-Haas: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself. The award has only been given four times before, to financier and philanthropist Warren Hellman; Blum Capital Partners Chairman Richard Blum; World Bank President Tom Clausen; and Levi Strauss CEO Peter Haas. Nonaka is the first academic professor to receive the award.

Berkeley-Haas’ Institute for Business Innovation and the Tusher Center for the Management of Intellectual Capital will follow up the November celebration by hosting a Festschrift in Nonaka’s name on campus in 2018.

Remembering Real Estate Leader & Philanthropist Gerson P. Bakar, BS 48

June 8, 2017| by Laura Counts

Media Exec Sangeeta Desai, BS 98, to Speak at Undergrad Commencement

April 8, 2017| by Kim Girard

Sangeeta Desai, Chief Operating Officer of Freemantle Media (Fiona Hanson/AP Images)

Sangeeta Desai, BS 98, a top executive at FremantleMedia—producer of the long-running hit vocal show “American Idol”—has been chosen as the 2017 undergraduate commencement speaker.

Commencement will be held May 15 at the Greek Theatre.

Desai, a London native, is group COO/CEO for emerging markets at FremantleMedia, a creative powerhouse that produces over 10,000 hours of programming every year. In her role, she is responsible for the group’s global operations, expanding its growth in Latin America, Central & Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

FremantleMedia, a division of RTL Group, Europe’s biggest entertainment company, produces and distributes “America’s Got Talent,” “Idols,” “X-Factor,” and “Family Feud.”

Sangeeta spent her childhood in Dubai, Sri Lanka, and Oman before she arrived at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate. In an interview last fall, she told BerkeleyHaas magazine that “coming from a small place like Oman, which was very sheltered, to a place like Berkeley was mind-blowing.”

After graduating in 1998, Sangeeta earned an MBA at Wharton in 2004 and began a career as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in New York before moving to London with Goldman Sachs. There, she was introduced to the media and entertainment business.

Read more about Desai’s journey from investment banking to private equity to entertainment in BerkeleyHaas magazine.

Novartis CEO Joseph Jimenez to Speak at MBA Commencement

April 6, 2017| by Kim Girard

Joseph Jimenez, CEO of global healthcare giant Novartis, will give the commencement address at the combined Full-time and Evening & Weekend MBA graduation.

Commencement will take place on Friday, May 19, at the Greek Theatre.

After earning his MBA from Berkeley-Haas in 1984, Jimenez rose through the ranks of corporate marketing and consumer goods to become president and CEO of H.J. Heinz’s North American and European businesses.

In 2007, he joined Novartis as head of the consumer health division, then head of pharmaceuticals, before being named CEO in 2010.

As CEO, Jimenez has streamlined Switzerland-based Novartis to focus on pharmaceuticals and has invested billions in cancer research, building an international reputation as the man who wants to eradicate cancer. In 2014, Jimenez was featured on the cover of Forbes with the headline: “Will this man cure cancer?”

Berkeley-Haas named Jimenez Business Leader of the Year in 2015. The award recognizes members of the Berkeley-Haas community who have achieved prominence in their fields.

“Though not a scientist, Joe was an inspired choice to run a pharmaceutical giant,” Dean Rich Lyons said, commenting on the award. “It’s his analytical skill at balancing short- and long-term goals, his quiet drive, and his outstanding ability to nurture the right talent that have allowed him to Question the Status Quo and re-envision the industry. He has the confidence and expertise to lead Novartis to deliver where society needs it most, and is an example for us all of our Defining Principles.

Read more about Jimenez in BerkeleyHaas Magazine.

Haas Alumnus Kevin Chou & Wife Make Major Gift to Support New Building

March 8, 2017| by Kim Girard

UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business announced today a gift of up to $25 million from alumnus Kevin Chou, founding CEO of mobile gaming firm Kabam, and his wife, Dr. Connie Chen.

It is the largest personal gift to UC Berkeley by an alumnus under the age of 40. In recognition of the gift, the school will name its new state-of-the-art academic building Connie & Kevin Chou Hall. The building will open later this year.

Chou, 36, received his bachelor’s degree from Berkeley-Haas in 2002. After graduation, he co-founded San Francisco-based mobile game company Kabam along with two fellow Berkeley alumni. Late last year, he sold the majority of Kabam’s assets to South Korea’s Netmarble Games Corp. in an $800 million deal, Wall Street Journal.

Chou says it is important to him to give back to the school early in his career to inspire current and future Haas students to become entrepreneurs.

“Beyond Yourself is a principle that really resonates with me today,” says Chou, referring to one of the four Haas Defining Principles. “I’m excited to be able to do this at this point in my career because I get to spend time with students and with Haas professors and other administrators, collaborating and helping them think about the new student space and the program.”

The couple says their gift is also a testament to their support for UC Berkeley’s role in providing world-class public education to students of all backgrounds.

“We believe that diversity is so important in terms of shaping future leaders. We’re excited about bringing together students of all backgrounds—not just business students—to formulate ideas that will improve the world,” says Chen, 29, a practicing physician and co-founder of Vida Health, a venture-backed startup providing health coaching and programming.

The Chou and Chen gift will be transformative for Berkeley-Haas, Dean Rich Lyons says. “What makes this gift so special is that these are two people in their 30s—an extraordinary time in life to be making a commitment to an institution that Kevin says has had so much of an impact on his life. Their donation is going to have a catalytic effect on generations of donors to come.”

The couple pledged $15 million, with two potential step-ups of $5 million or $10 million at the end of 5 years.

The new $60 million building, funded entirely by private donations from alumni and friends, comes at a critical time. Over the past 20 years, enrollment at Berkeley-Haas has nearly doubled to more than 2,200 undergraduate and graduate students in six degree programs.

Connie & Kevin Chou Hall will increase the school’s space by a third. The 80,000-square-foot space will be devoted entirely to student learning and interaction, featuring cutting-edge technology in classrooms and study spaces. It will not contain any offices for faculty or staff.

Chou said Berkeley made a deep impression on him when he arrived from his hometown of Moorpark, Calif., a Ventura County city of 35,000. “The diversity and academic challenges at Berkeley instilled in me the tenacity that has sustained me through the highs and lows of my entrepreneurial career,” he says.

Chou co-founded Kabam in 2006 with fellow Berkeley alumni Mike Li, a 2001 electrical engineering and computer science graduate, and Holly Liu, who earned a master’s in information management & systems in 2003.

The three founders have been strong supporters of their alma mater. In 2013, Kabam signed an $18 million contract with UC Berkeley which included the naming rights to Kabam Field at California Memorial Stadium.

Chou is one of 176 Berkeley entrepreneurs who have signed the Berkeley Founders’ Pledge, a personal, non-binding pledge to give a portion of the value of their venture to support the university’s schools and programs, if and when they have a liquidity event.

Student Startup Roundup: IDbyDNA, Lendsnap, SapphirePine

February 6, 2017| by Karen Sorensen

This article is part of an occasional series spotlighting students and recent alumni who are working with Berkeley-Haas to start a new business or social enterprise.

SapphirePine
Co-founders:
Adam Pugh, FTMBA 18
Sandra Lupien & Sam Schabacker, both MPP 18
Carlin Starrs, MS Forestry 17, BS Forestry 11

Sam Schabacker, a graduate student at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, was on a backpacking trip in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains when he noticed the thousands of dead trees that have been killed by bark beetles.

Schabacker knew the damaged wood, which has a unique blue- and green-streaked grain, could be made into beautiful furniture. He also knew a market for it already existed in Colorado, where he once lived and made the furniture for himself. Bingo: the idea for a startup was born.

Together with full-time MBA Student Adam Pugh and MPP candidate Sandra Lupien, with the advice of MS Forestry candidate, Carlin Starrs, they founded SapphirePine (formerly called Sierra BlueFlame Woodworks.)

“The combination of drought and beetle-kill has resulted in a mass die-off of pine trees in California’s mountains,” says Pugh. “Our company is dedicated to addressing wildfire, safety, and climate emissions hazards by giving new life to some of the 100 million dead trees as handcrafted furniture and other wood products.”

The company was recently selected to receive a Dean’s Seed Fund grant, which provides $5,000 and office space to early stage Berkeley-Haas startups. SapphirePine is also currently competing in this year’s Global Social Venture Competition, and recently advanced to the second-round regional semifinals.

Pugh says he’s already applying his business school course experiences to the startup.

An entrepreneurship course with Lecturer Kurt Beyer last semester taught him the value of getting frequent customer input for their product and business at many stages, he said.

The Global Social Venture Competition has also been helpful in forming the team’s ideas, and for pairing them with Steve Payne, a partner at Architect Partners, who serves as a mentor, he said.

IDbyDNA
Co-founders:
Guochun Liao, EMBA 14, MS 01 Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence, PhD 01 Genetics/Bioinformatics, President and CEO
Martin Reese, PhD 00, Computational Biology, Chairman

Let’s say you’re sick and you go to your doctor, who makes an educated guess about what’s wrong, ordering a test that may or may not provide accurate or timely answers.

Guochun Liao, EMBA 14, believes there is a better way.

Liao, the co-founder of IDbyDNA, is using big data analytics based on Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) to dramatically improve the speed and accuracy of pathogen detection for infectious diseases.

The core of IDbyDNA’s technology, called Taxonomer, improves universal microorganism detection through a “metagenomic analysis“ platform. Simply put, the company is using search algorithms to compare short DNA sequences from patient samples to millions of reference sequences. The software quickly identifies all known viruses, bacteria, or fungi in the sample.

Just a few years ago, that type of detection required large amounts of input and hours or days of time. Taxonomer, however, can complete the process over the web in minutes.

“It’s like Google for the DNA space,” Liao says. “We can detect many different pathogens at the same time—it’s a much more comprehensive approach.” The technology promises to not only improve individual patient diagnostics, but could also lead to faster public health responses during infectious disease outbreaks.

The company attracted $9 million in Series A financing last fall, led by ARTIS Ventures, with additional support from ARUP Laboratories and other private investors. It hopes to launch a sequencing-based test for infectious diseases this year.

Liao co-founded IDbyDNA in 2014 while enrolled in the Berkeley MBA for Executives Program. He met his co-founder, Martin Reese, while conducting pioneering human genome research at UC Berkeley in the late 1990s. They joined with two colleagues from the University of Utah to form the company.

Liao says he drew on his Berkeley-Haas experience in several ways. Lecturer Maura O’Neill’s New Venture Finance course and Silicon Valley Immersion Week with Professor Toby Stuart were key influences. “During our week in Silicon Valley, I saw different companies at different stages and gained a much better understanding of how startups work,” Liao says.

Fellow Haas students also helped him with the company launch: More than ten percent of Liao’s classmates participated in the company’s seed round.

Improved patient diagnostics may be just the beginning for IDbyDNA. Other potential Taxonomer applications Liao envisions include the analysis of microbes in the soil to help improve crop resistance to disease; fast, accurate responses to food contamination outbreaks; and new and expanding fields involving the human gut microbiome.

Lendsnap
Co-founders:
Orion Parrott, EMBA 14, CEO
Mike Romano, EWMBA 12, BA 03, mass communications, vice president of business development

By the time he was in high school, Orion Parrott was mowing lawns to invest in mobile homes.

But both Parrott, EMBA 14, and his dad, a long-time real estate investor who guided him, were frustrated by the complexity of mortgages: the mountain of bank statements, tax returns, W-2s and pay stubs required to get one.

Years later, it’s no surprise to find Parrott working to solve the mortgage problem through his online startup, Lendsnap.

Lendsnap, which launched in July and has more than $500,000 in funding, streamlines document collection and updating for lenders, boosting the productivity of loan officers by up to 50 percent and shortening the time required to approve a loan, Parrott says.

“Loan officers spend a third of their time chasing borrowers to turn in documents,” he says. “We link to people’s financial accounts and get the original documents from banks, brokerages, and places like H&R Block and Turbotax with the permission of borrower. All the data you would have been sending anyway.”

Parrott said participation in the EMBA program’s Silicon Valley Immersion Week, led by Prof. Toby Stuart, gave him inspiration for his startup. “Seeing what people go through and accomplish to get a business off the ground was fantastic exposure and really thrilling,” he said.

Lendsnap, which now has nearly 100 loan officer users, recently received funding and support from the Y Combinator accelerator.

Parrott said that Y Combinator helped him to build a strong network of investors and got him focused. “They have a relentless program focused on weekly progress,’ he said. “As a startup, your six-month plan doesn’t matter if you’re not going to be around in six months.”

Berkeley-Haas Top 12 for 2016

December 22, 2016| by Laura Counts

With the new year just around the corner, we’re celebrating the highlights of 2016—from the launch of an exciting new undergraduate program, to the alumni-backed Pokémon Go craze, to undergrad Ryan Murphy’s astounding triple Olympic gold medal wins.

Top of the Class: All Haas programs made the Top 10 in all the major rankings. The Evening & Weekend MBA Program was ranked #1 among part-time programs for the fourth straight year by U.S. News, which also ranked the Undergraduate Program #2; the Master of Financial Engineering ranked #1 in two major rankings.

Topping Off: The final I-beam was raised atop our new North Academic Building in June. The six-story building is 100% funded with private donations from alumni and friends of the school, and features state-of-the-art classrooms, spaces for students to meet and work in small groups, a new café, and a top-floor event space with sweeping views of the Bay. It’s expected to open in early 2017.

Alumni Go! One of the year’s top crazes originated with John Hanke, MBA 96, CEO of Niantic Labs. Hanke was the driving force behind Pokémon Go, the hottest game to hit smartphones—ever. It was one of those moments, The New York Times declared, “when a new technology—in this case, augmented reality or A.R., which fuses digital technology with the physical world—breaks through from a niche toy for early adopters to something much bigger.” (Berkeley-Haas also published a case study that delved into Hanke’s decision to sping Niantic Labs off from Google.)

Double Degree: In August, Berkeley-Haas launched a pioneering new degree program, the Management, Entrepreneurship, & Technology (M.E.T.) Program. The highly competitive program, which allows undergraduates to earn concurrent degrees at Berkeley-Haas and Berkeley Engineering, received thousands of applications for 30 slots. About 50 students are expected to be accepted for the fall.

Ryan Murphy after winning the gold medal in the 200-meter backstroke. Credit: USA Today/UC Berkeley

Olympic Gold x 3: Inspiring backstroker Ryan Murphy, BS 17, returned from the Rio Olympics with three gold medals. Murphy, BS 17, won both the 200m and 100m backstroke. He also swam to victory in the 400m relay medley with Olympic legend Michael Phelps, Cal alum Nathan Adrian, and Cody Miller.

Clockwise, from top left: Williamson, the ladder faculty, Morse, Jaffee, Levine, Malmendier

Fabulous Faculty: This year we mourned the passing of a much-beloved professor, real estate and finance expert Dwight Jaffee. We celebrated a Global Economy Prize for Nobel Laureate Prof. Emeritus Oliver Williamson; the American Accounting Association’s Seminal Contribution to Accounting award for Prof. Richard Sloan; and the 2016 Moskowitz Prize for Assoc. Prof. Adair Morse. Profs. David Teece & Ross Levine achieved an extraordinary 100K citations on Google Scholar, and Prof Ulrike Malmendier was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Berkeley-Haas also welcomed three new professors: Asst. Prof. Drew Jacoby-Senghor , Asst. Prof. Hoai-Luu Nguyen and Asst. Prof. Abhishek Nagaraj.

Bigger Give: The Big Give online fundraiser raised twice the amount for Haas as last year, tallying almost $1.3 million from more than 600 alumni, students, faculty, staff, and friends. Berkeley-Haas undergraduates exceeded their participation goal by 250 percent. Many thanks to all our generous donors!

Top Leaders: We welcomed a dozen industry leaders to share insights with the Haas community in the Dean’s Speaker Series, including (clockwise from top left) Deborah Hopkins, Chief Innovation Officer, Citigroup (with Dean Rich Lyons); Christie Smith, Managing Principal, Deloitte University Leadership Center for Inclusion; Bob Shanks, EVP and CFO, Ford Motor Company; and Rosalind Brewer, President and CEO, Sam’s Club. The series also included an expert panel on Brexit.

Honoring Obama: President Barack Obama was honored at the World Open Innovation conference for “Outstanding Global Leadership in Open Innovation” (Obama is expected to visit the Berkeley campus early next year.)

Business Leaders of the Year: For their efforts to improve local schools, Susan, MBA 87, and Steve Chamberlin, were named Berkeley-Haas’ 2016 Business Leaders of the Year—the highest honor the school bestows.

Thought leadership: Our faculty research was covered by top media worldwide in 2016, including studies by Prof. Cameron Anderson, who found an unexpected payoff to being buff; Prof. Jennifer Chatman, who studied the downside of groupthink by analyzing Himalayan trekking accidents; and Prof. Laura Kray, who found that while women women tend to be more ethical than men when acting on their own behalf, they are more likely to lie to help others.

Dauntless Students: Our students continue to inspire us. Alvaro Silberstein, MBA 17, who was left partially paralyzed by a drunk driver at age 19, is wrapping up the year on a quest to make Patagonia’s Paine del Torre National Park more accessible. He’s trekking the park’s most iconic route in a specialized wheelchair, with a support team that includes a Berkeley MBA classmate.

We look forward to great things to come in 2017!

Two Berkeley MBA Alumnae Take Top University Leadership Roles

December 16, 2016| by Laura Counts

Beginning with the new year, two Berkeley MBA alumnae and senior Haas leaders are moving into new leadership posts.

Haas Chief Strategy & Operating Officer Jo Mackness, MBA 04, will take the top human resources role on the UC Berkeley campus, serving as Interim Assistant Vice Chancellor for Human Resources. Taking her place on an interim basis at Haas is Courtney Chandler, MBA 96 and Assistant Dean for the Evening & Weekend MBA Program.

Mackness and Chandler took a few moments to answer some questions on their new roles.

Jo Mackness, MBA 04

Why were you interested in taking on the role of Assistant Vice Chancellor for Human Resources?

I’m a product of the UC system (my undergrad degree is from UCLA, my MBA is from Berkeley-Haas), and I’m both passionate about and dedicated to supporting the institution that has given me and so many others a rich springboard for professional and personal growth. I’ve always been committed to using my career to create positive social change, and because UC Berkeley is such a powerful social mobility engine, moving into a role that more directly supports the entire university was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

What will be your top priorities in your new role?

My first priority will be to lean on the Haas Defining Principles and do a great deal of listening (Students Always) and gathering of data (Confidence Without Attitude). While I have a bias toward action, and I plan to move forward on time-sensitive/urgent issues, I’ll be setting strategic priorities only after I get a better sense for the unique assets, areas of opportunity, and any gaps that may exist within the HR organization—and in the places where HR touches other parts of the university.

You’re a full-time Berkeley MBA alumna. How did Haas prepare you for this leadership role? What are some of the skills you gained from the program that you bring to the job?

The most important thing I learned at Haas is that culture matters, and working with people who share your values is the most important thing to look for in a company or organization. Even way back when I was admitted to Berkeley-Haas, before our Defining Principles were codified, Pete Johnson and his admissions team were looking for people who exhibited confidence, without any attitude, and they welcomed my unique voice (I wrote about my electric-blue wig—a “most prized possession”—in one of my essays!). I, and many of my classmates, sought and landed a Beyond-Yourself, social-impact role upon graduation. Haas, back then and today, reinforces that while we are all different, it’s that diversity of thought, cultural context, and experience that brings a richness to our community. It’s our shared values that create a safe place for people to show up as themselves—as Berkeley Leaders—to thrive as individuals, collaborate within and across teams, and contribute their very best to our organization. This is what I learned at Haas, and it underpins how I approach leadership and the type of organizational climate I try to create.

Courtney Chandler, MBA 96

Why were you interested in taking the Interim Chief Strategy & Operating Officer/Senior Assistant Dean role?

I am deeply connected to this school and believe wholeheartedly in what we do here. So, when (Dean Rich Lyons) presented the opportunity to me, I jumped at the chance to touch areas of the school in new and different ways. I am particularly interested in being part of the decision-making process school-wide, as well as problem-solving and generating big ideas for areas that need it. Finally, I am looking forward to working closely with our campus partners as UC Berkeley goes through this transitional period.

What will be your top priorities?

I am sure my priorities will change as I get further into my role, but a top priority now is to continue the momentum around our Strategic Business Plan. Jo has done amazing work on this and my goal is to continue to execute on our strategies. We still have many great things to accomplish as a school and I am excited to help make them happen.

Beyond that, I plan to be a student first and learn as much as possible. One thing that energizes me is bringing people together, whether in groups or across organizations. Having worked at all levels of the school in staff roles and having worked closely with faculty while running the EWMBA program, and having experienced Haas as student and an alum, I hope to bring a unique perspective to the dean’s office.

What are some of the skills you gained from the Berkeley MBA program that you bring to the job?

As an MBA student at Haas, I was incredibly fortunate to have amazing professors (Rich Lyons, Andy Rose, Jenny Chatman, Ben Hermalin, Richard Stanton, and David Vogel, to name a few), and extraordinary classmates (go Class of 1996!). So, my time as a student had a profound impact on me. I think most importantly it provided me the opportunity to gain new perspectives. My classmates and I were some of the first students to inhabit what we now know as our Berkeley-Haas campus, and having this wonderful space contributed to our strong community and culture. I know our new building will do something similar for our students today. While our Defining Principles hadn’t yet been articulated when I was a student, they were still very much a part of my experience and would absolutely describe the culture we had back then. This culture prepared me to take on new challenges confidently and tackle difficult situations by learning and listening. Additionally, it helped me hone my creativity and fascination with new ideas while being able to create connections between seemingly disparate circumstances. My hope is to bring all of what I learned as a student and since graduating to my new role as Chief Strategy & Operating Officer.

Berkeley-Haas Business Leaders of the Year: Susan & Steve Chamberlin

December 8, 2016| by Kim Girard

Married more than 50 years, Susan Chamberlin, MBA 87, and her husband, Steve, are partners in an ambitious effort to improve local schools.

Though technically retired, they remain committed to doing what they’ve done throughout their careers: building. For more than four decades, as a highly successful real estate developer and architect respectively, their tools were steel, glass, and concrete.

Now they employ different building materials but have similar goals. Where once they created places for people to live and work, today they’re focused on building innovative facilities and providing them to organizations running schools that expand minds and hearts. It’s an educational experience that’s inspiring (and even fun) for hundreds of middle- and high-school students in the West Contra Costa Unified School District.

“We believe all kids should have the same chance to attain their dreams,” Susan says.

Spearheading their educational philanthropy is the Chamberlin Family Foundation, which was created in 2006 with a simple yet powerful mission: invest in the people and ideas that will vastly improve K–12 public education, particularly where inequitable opportunities impede student potential.

For their efforts bettering the lives of others, Susan and Steve Chamberlin have been named Berkeley-Haas’ 2016 Business Leaders of the Year, the highest honor the school bestows.

“Best for the World Gathering” to Celebrate Responsible Business

September 1, 2016| by Kim Girard

By Krysten Crawford

Victoria Fiore, MBA 12, was drawn to Berkeley-Haas for its track record of cultivating future business leaders who make a social impact.

Today, she’s become one of those leaders.

As director of brand strategy & marketing at Emeryville, Calif.-based baby and kid’s food maker Plum Organics, Fiore works for a company that is helping to redefine what it means to be a socially responsible business in the 21st century.

Victoria Fiore, MBA 12, at Plum Organics’ Emeryville headquarters.

Plum Organics and other companies that have embedded sustainability into their DNA will be celebrating and mentoring at the first-ever “Best for the World Gathering” at Zellerbach Hall on Sept. 8 from 11 am to 4 pm. Attendence is free to students, faculty, and staff with a Cal ID at the door. An evening awards ceremony, performances, and happy hour will be held 7 pm to 11 pm. Tickets are $20 for all UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff with the promo code gobears.

The event will showcase B Corporations—a designation granted to companies that meet rigid sustainability requirements set by a nonprofit overseer called B Lab.

Organized by the Center for Responsible Business (CRB) at Berkeley-Haas and B the Change Media, the publishing arm of B Lab, the Best for the World event is expected to draw some 1,500 attendees. Featured speakers include Deval Patrick, managing director in impact investment at Bain Capital and the former governor of Massachusetts, as well as CEOs/co-founders of Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, The Honest Company, Revolution Foods, (founded by Kristen Groos Richmond and Kirsten Saenz Tobey, both MBA 06), New Belgium Brewing, and many others.

B Corp is to business what Fair Trade certification is to coffee or USDA Organic certification is to milk, and achieving the status isn’t easy. These companies must meet standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Out of about 40,000 companies which have applied, only about 1,800 have been granted certification.

“A growing number of companies are realizing that if they want to be around in 10 or 20 years sustainability has to be embedded in how they operate,” says Seren Pendleton-Knoll, program manager for the Center for Responsible Business, which was founded in 2003 to redefine business for a sustainable future. “Sustainability must be key from the C-suite on down.”

Classified: When the Guy in the Back Row Turns Out to Be the Man of the Moment

July 13, 2016| by Krysten Crawford

Photos by Jim Block

“Classified” is a series spotlighting some of the more powerful lessons faculty are teaching in Haas classrooms.

Probal Banerjee had a hunch. It was Day 3 of “The Innovative Organization,” a semiannual course for executives at Berkeley-Haas, and the participants had dived deeply into one of the most cutting-edge companies in Silicon Valley: mobile game maker Niantic, which spun out of Google last year. On that June day, the New York Times happened to have posted not one, but two, stories about Niantic and its forthcoming game, Pokémon Go.

Banerjee and other program participants had spent two intensive days studying Niantic, the internal startup’s break from Google, and its CEO, John Hanke, MBA 96. The group of about 20 execs—which included Banerjee, a business intelligence architect at Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises, and top-level managers from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, RAND Corporation, and Gilead Sciences, to a name a few—had all come to Haas to learn how to innovate.

Some had signed up for the Berkeley Center for Executive Education course—taught by Jerome Engel, who founded the school’s world-renowned Lester Center for Entrepreneurship two decades ago—looking for fresh ways to work within their companies. Others had come because they had startup dreams of their own.

Would you stay or would you go?

The question for students was whether Niantic’s spin-off from Google had been the right move for both companies, the employees behind the games, and Hanke. Students had all read a hot-off-the-press 14-page case study written by Engel—recently published as a Berkeley-Haas Case Study—and they had discussed at length the pros and cons of the move.

As he sat in the back of the Helzel Boardroom, Banerjee’s hunch was that the man seated to his left, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and an untucked button-down, was Hanke. But Hanke wasn’t on the agenda and nobody had mentioned he might be there. The prospect was both exciting and nerve wracking, he recalls.

That’s because Hanke, MBA 96, is an A-list celebrity in Silicon Valley. A serial entrepreneur, he embodies the spirit of innovation at the heart of the region’s success. Among his many successes: co-founding Keyhole, which developed the technology that became Google Earth, Maps, and StreetView. Hanke then led Keyhole through its acquisition by Google in 2004, and guided the search giant’s 2,000-employee “geo division” through iterations of its mapping products. He founded Niantic inside Google in 2010, and built a team that’s at the forefront of the convergence of technology’s most dominant trends—mobile, maps, social media, and gaming.

Hanke was dubbed “Google’s Greatest Idea Man” by Inc. magazine in 2012. All this, years before Pokémon Go exploded on the scene.

Engel pointed out that what makes Hanke so successful is not only his ability to look at the larger trends in the economy, society, and deduce what’s really happening. Hanke also has a special quality: “People who own the opportunity have repeatedly invited this guy to be their adult supervision. He’s seen as leader who can make big decisions, and they are willing to accept him as a leader,” Engel says.

The Reveal

As it turned out, Banerjee guessed right about the inconspicuous stranger. Just as the participants were voting on whether they would have struck out on their own or kept Niantic in the fold, Engel called out to the mystery man. “Which side are you on? Should Niantic stay with Google or go?”

Hanke stood up and gestured, somewhat sheepishly, “Go.”

“Oh my god,” Carole Cuffy, vice president of communications at HM.Clause, the world’s fourth largest seed company, recalls thinking when she realized that Hanke was in attendance. “This is amazing!”

Hanke, left, gets a round of applause

What followed was a remarkably candid interaction. Hanke spoke plainly about the enormous leg-up Niantic got as part of the Google behemoth, including an instant global footprint thanks to Google’s vast resources and engineering talent. He was equally upfront about the personal, structural, and operational drawbacks he and his team experienced as part of a massive organization whose main line of business isn’t gaming.

Niantic’s multiplayer games are based on a new entertainment model that relies on augmented reality or A.R., which superimposes virtual objects onto physical ones to lure players off their couches and into the real world. Niantic’s first game, Ingress, has been downloaded more than 15 million times in more than 200 countries. Niantic went solo last summer, and—in conjunction with Nintendo—released Pokémon Go last week. In its first week, the game looks to be the most downloaded app for both Android and Apple phones ever.

The decision to spin Niantic out of Google was, Hanke explained, “incredibly challenging, [although] in retrospect it’s ridiculously obvious that that was the right thing to do.”

Front-Row Seat to What’s Next

Banerjee calls Hanke’s appearance the highlight of the five-day program—which also delved into the major trends driving 21st century innovation, the different forms innovation can take, the venture capitalists’ perspective, and companies that have successfully embedded innovation into their DNA.

Roy Brown, manager of business pursuits at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, echoes that sentiment. “I’ve reviewed hundreds of business case studies and tried to put myself in the situation, but nothing brings a case to life like having the actual entrepreneur speak about the critical decisions,” he says.

For Engel, the Niantic case and Hanke’s experience as a professional entrepreneur highlight why Silicon Valley is a cluster of innovation.

“Certainly John, and dynamic entrepreneurs like him, are the heroes of our innovation culture. But his accomplishments demonstrate something even more profound than entrepreneurial excellence: What’s extraordinary about entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley is the way large companies and young companies collaborate to accelerate innovation.”

It’s “that process of open innovation that makes Silicon Valley unique. It is absolute magic,” Engel says.

Engel, right, listens as Hanke shares insights with the class