Sports, Media, and Startup Stars Teach Fall Courses

The former CEO of the Padres baseball team, a Bay Area news anchor, and a founding executive of Yahoo! are among the instructors who are teaching Haas students in both new and previously offered courses this semester.

Undergrad Courses

Why Media Matters to the Bottom Line, taught by NBC Bay Area news anchor Diane Dwyer (pictured), is one of several new undergraduate courses this semester. In the course, Dwyer is examining how media coverage can make or break a company’s stock price and image. Students learn to leverage media to enhance a brand — and apply that knowledge by pitching media strategies to a CEO.

For the first time, Sandy Alderson, former San Diego Padres CEO and Oakland A’s general manager, is teaching the undergraduate Sports Marketing class this semester. Alderson has teamed up with Mike Rielly, who spent 20 years working at sports media firm IMG , to examine sports marketing practices in the global marketplace. The class will feature guest speakers every week from the PGA, NCAA, and pro franchises.

In the new Urban and Real Estate Economics seminar, Professor Robert Helsley demystifies real estate market cycles, development patterns, and the mortgage meltdown.

In another new course, Green Business, Clean Technology, and Renewable Energy, longtime lecturer Arturo Perez-Reyes examines green business opportunities, impediments, emerging winners, and likely losers. Guests include Joel Makower, author of Strategies for the Green Economy, and Hal LaFlash, PG&E’s director of renewable energy.

Full-Time MBA Program Courses

Randy Haykin, Yahoo!’s founding VP of sales and marketing, is teaching the Full-Time Berkeley MBA Program's new Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship class with Renn Zaphiropoulos, who sold a startup to Xerox and ran Xerox Parc. With readings ranging from Peter Drucker to Twyla Tharp and guest lectures by the founder of Electronic Arts and chief talent officer of Netflix, the class explores what makes companies innovative and how creative people lead. The course is designed for both engineering and business graduate students.

Evening & Weekend MBA Courses

Two prominent visiting professors are teaching Evening and Weekend MBA classes. Felix Vardy, a senior economist at the World Bank Group and formerly at the International Monetary Fund, is teaching one section of Economics for Business Decision Making. Vardy has co-authored several articles with Haas Professor John Morgan.

UC Berkeley Economics Professor Shachar Kariv is teaching the other section of Economics for Business Decision Making. Kariv is executive director of the Xlab, a unique interdisciplinary lab at Haas for conducting experiments in sociology, marketing, psychology, and finance.

Purdue University Professor Raghavendra Rau is visiting Haas this year and teaching Corporate Financial Management. His research analyzes how market participants acquire and use information. As a researcher at Barclay’s Investors over the past year, Rau witnessed the quant fund collapse firsthand, getting a close look at how a firm conducts corporate restructuring, layoffs, and mergers.

Looking ahead to the winter break, the EWMBA program is tentatively offering a new Seminar in International Business in Dubai. SIB courses introduce students to the culture, history, and business climate of a particular country.

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