Author: Laura Counts

“Cultural Dexterity” on Display at International Business Development Conference

| by Laura Counts

MBA Students from more than two dozen teams that traveled to 18 countries showcased their International Business Development consulting projects Friday—giving a window into a program that Dean Rich Lyons calls a cornerstone of the Haas "learning by doing" curriculum.

"This is about cultural dexterity," Dean Lyons told the crowd of students gathered at International House. "We're trying to help you develop skills to lead and manage people no matter what their background. It's about developing confidence without attitude."

IBD works with clients around the world—from multinationals to homegrown nonprofits—who hire teams of MBA students for consulting projects. Full-time and Evening & Weekend MBA students prepare for months, under faculty guidance, and then travel to their project sites for on-the-ground work.

Arman Zand, MBA 2009, who was honored at the conference as 2014 Alumnus of the Year, said the Haas team he hired for a Silicon Valley Bank project in Shanghai "exceeded our expectations."

"Our CEO said he'd be happy to 'hire Haas' again—and he's from Oklahoma," Zand said, in a pre-recorded video address from China.

Students often cite IBD as one of the highlights of their MBA experience. Each team is required to blog about their project, and often it's the insights into international business culture that they find most memorable.

David Lashley, Joe Regenbogen, Kory Vargas Caro, and Andrew Lee, all MBA 15, went to Kazakstan to help the International Academy of Business develop an entrepreneurship program.

"We had no concept of what Kazakhstan would be like, and we found it to be an incredibly warm and welcoming culture," Regenbogen said Friday.

"Every day was a curveball," Lashley said, adding that several times the group was asked to talk to a "few" business students, only to find themselves being escorted to the front of an auditorium with several hundred students waiting to hear what they had to say. They were also featured in a 15-minute segment on Kazakh TV.

Teams were honored Friday for best presentation, best photos, and best blog posts.

Best presentation: Team Bombay Teen Challenge, for their work with a nonprofit that helps young women saved from Mumbai's red light district.

Best blog post spring (FTMBA): Team Africa Chemist and Beauty Care, Kenya

Best blog post summer (EWMBA): Team Bombay Teen Challenge

Best blog photo: Team YY's shot of nap time at Chinese internet company YY.com.

Best team photo: Team Beauty for Ashes, Nepal

Best landscape photo: Team Clault, Singapore

Berkeley-Haas Introduces New Executive Program in India

| by Laura Counts

Berkeley-Haas will launch a new executive education program in November designed for senior executives working in India.

Offered in partnership with India-based Northwest Executive Education (NEE), the Berkeley Executive Program in Management will apply core Haas and Silicon Valley principles of innovation and leadership to the world’s second-most populous country, 10th-biggest economy, and future home of the largest and youngest workforce ever known.

In its first year, the program aims to enroll approximately 50 director- and vice president-level executives, primarily from India, but also from neighboring countries in South and Southeast Asia, who are looking to improve their performance, advance within their organizations, and launch new initiatives.

“In most parts of the world, including India, it’s no longer a feasible strategy just to look at low-cost manufacturing,” says Jorge Choy, director of client development for the UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education (CEE) and manager of the new partnership with NEE. “Developing countries are looking at how to develop their economies or their companies through innovation. The lessons that can be gleaned from Silicon Valley are increasingly applicable to and desired by people in other industries.”

The one-year program includes four weeklong modules taught by Haas professors, focusing on leadership, innovation, strategy, and product management and communications.

Participants will also complete multiple workshops and a capstone project. One module will be held in India, one online, and two in Berkeley, accompanied by visits to innovative local corporations, start-ups, venture capital firms, and incubators.

India is expected to surpass China as the world’s most populous nation in 2030, when its median age will be only 31. In a few years, India’s huge middle class will equal the entire population of the United States.

"CEE is excited to launch this program in India," says Jeff Rosenthal, chief executive officer of the UC Berkeley CEE. "Given the country's growth and importance in the global business community, we are happy to be playing a part in developing great leaders there."

India has already proven its ability to create world-class companies, Choy says, and Berkeley’s front-row seat to Silicon Valley represents a valuable opportunity for business leaders looking to the future.

To learn more about the program, visit http://executive.berkeley.edu/programs/berkeley-executive-program-management-india.

Disruptive Energy Discussion Kicks off Peterson Series, Sept. 30

| by Laura Counts

The Peterson Series, the Center for Responsible Business’ flagship speaker series, kicks off Sept. 30 at Haas with a session on The Role of Social Responsibility in Disruptive Innovation.

The event, which is co-hosted by the Center for Responsible Business and the Energy Institute at Haas, will be held from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in the Wells Fargo Room. Box lunches will be provided. Please register here.

Speakers include Brian Farhi, MBA 10, who is in business development at Nest, which makes learning thermostats and alarms, and Raj Vaswami, BS 87 (engineering), CTO at smart grid company Silver Spring Network. Aron Cramer, president and CEO of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), will moderate the discussion. They will explore energy technology companies’ role in shaping our energy future, specifically:

  • How did the energy innovations come to be? Did partnerships or collaborations support the product’s development and growth?
  • What opportunities and challenges did the company encounter from different stakeholders in their ecosystem along the way?
  • What role does social responsibility play in energy scaling?  How does the product’s capacity as a climate change solution factor into business development decisions?  

This fall, the Peterson Series’ theme of “Transparency and Values in the Tech Industry” focuses on the strategies and tactics that company leaders take as they navigate critical issues concerning technology and society. The Peterson Series was created in 1997 through a generous gift from Rudolph Peterson (1904-2003), a 1925 UC Berkeley graduate and former CEO and President of Bank of America.

Additional Peterson Series Fall Events include :

Oct. 9: Responsible Action in Supply Chains: Conflict Minerals in Electronics

Nov. 17: Human Rights in Tech: Diversity, Data Privacy, and Freedom of Speech

 

 

Raj Vaswami (L), Brian Farhi

Patty Morrison Wins Fisher-Hopper Prize for CIO Leadership

| by Laura Counts

Patty Morrison, the chief information officer of Cardinal Health, has received the Haas School’s third annual Fisher-Hopper Prize for Lifetime Achievement in CIO Leadership.

Morrison accepted the award at a ceremony held after a banquet Sept. 18 at the Claremont Hotel. Haas Dean Rich Lyons welcomed the group.

“I’m incredibly honored and humbled,” Morrison said. “The previous winners are people I know and admire, so it’s wonderful to be recognized among my peers in this way.”

“Patty’s energy and intellect have had major, positive, enduring impacts both for the companies that have employed her and, even more importantly, for their entire  industries,” said James M. Spitze, executive director of the Fisher CIO Leadership Program at UC-Berkeley, which co-hosted the program with Gartner.

The award followed the annual half-day Landmark CIO Community Event at UC Berkeley, attended by almost 100 public and private sector IT executives, VCs, CEOs, and members of the Renaissance CIOs, a group of the world's most visionary chief information officers who are annually invited to this gathering

Past Renaissance CIOs who have participated in the event include Dawn Lepore (formerly) of Charles Schwab, Pete Solvik (formerly) of Cisco Systems, Bill Kelvie (formerly) of Fannie Mae, Charlie Feld (formerly) of Frito-Lay, Jack Hancock (formerly) of Chemical Bank, Wells Fargo and Pacific Bell, and DuWayne Peterson (formerly) of Merrill Lynch.

Morrison’s 30-year career includes IT leadership roles at Motorola, Office Depot and Pepsi Co., spanning industries including high technology, consumer products, retail and healthcare. “In each industry I’ve been able to successfully set a strategic direction, while not shying away from needed change,” Morrison said.

At Cardinal Health in Dublin, Ohio, she’s built a dedicated software design center called Fuse, and has worked to expand Cardinal’s self-service and other consumer applications. For more than 19 years, Morrison has also mentored other rising IT managers, 20 of them who are now CIOs.

Chris Hjelm, CIO of the Kroger Co. and the 2013 Fisher-Hopper prize winner, introduced Morrison at the award event, calling her “passionate about innovation and how technology can be used to transform healthcare into a safer and more cost-effective industry.”

He noted her commitment to making a difference – by developing talent, working with fellow CIOs in central Ohio on Columbus Collaboratory, an advanced technology company driving solutions in big data, analytics, and cyber security, and participating in curriculum and faculty development for analytics at Miami University.

The Fisher-Hopper prize was founded in memory of Haas alumnus Don Fisher, BS 51, co-founder of Gap Inc. and supporter of the CIO Leadership Program at Haas, and Max Hopper, the visionary CIO behind American Airlines’ SABRE Systems.

Sameer Srivastava Named Schwabacher Fellow

| by Laura Counts

Assistant Professor Sameer B. Srivastava has been awarded a Schwabacher Fellowship by the Haas Executive Committee, a panel that includes Dean Rich Lyons and senior faculty.

The fellowship is the highest honor Haas bestows on assistant professors and is intended to recognize up-and-coming faculty stars. It includes a small, unrestricted cash award, a research grant, and a modest instructional point credit.

“It is gratifying and humbling to be recognized by my colleagues,” Srivastava says. “Haas has created a supportive environment, where new faculty can thrive in both teaching and research.”

Srivastava teaches Power and Politics in Organizations, an MBA elective held in the spring, and also teaches in two Haas executive programs: the Women’s Executive Leadership Program and Strategy in Competitive Markets.

His research focuses on the formation, dynamics, and consequences of social networks within organizations. For example, he recently co-authored a paper, forthcoming in American Sociological Review, on network interaction, voting behavior, and polarization within the United States Senate.

Srivastava’s MBA course is geared toward helping students understand how to diagnose and navigate political dynamics in their organizations so they may achieve the greater good, while supporting their own career goals.

He has achieved a “Club 6” rating for teaching excellence for each of his years at Haas. In 2012, he received a Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation Research Award.

Srivastava holds a bachelor’s in economics, an MBA, a master’s in sociology, and a doctorate in organizational behavior/sociology, all from Harvard University.

While at Harvard, he taught classes on economics and statistics. Earlier in his career, he was a partner at Monitor Group, a global management consulting firm.

Undergrads “Lean In” with Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg

| by Laura Counts

More than 50 Berkeley-Haas undergraduate students headed to Silicon Valley Sept. 18 to be part of an exclusive live audience with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

LeanIn.org hosted the live webcast with Sandberg. The session covered how Berkeley-Haas students could bring Lean In to the campus, why Lean In Circles work, and how students can get started on campus. Sandberg also shared career advice and explained why today’s students have the potential as a generation to reach true equality.

LeanIn.org, a non-profit organization, launched in 2013, with the release of Sandberg’s New York Times and Amazon bestseller Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.

Lean In is focused on encouraging women to pursue their ambitions. Sandberg wrote the book after she received an overwhelming response to a 2010 TEDTalk on the ways women are held back—and the way we hold ourselves back.

“This is a perfect opportunity for our students to get a front-row seat with a tech industry icon, ask questions, and learn about the many opportunities that women of this generation have to "lean in" and become leaders,”  says Erika Walker, executive director of the undergraduate program.

The event included a Q&A session with Sandberg and the LeanIn.Org team. Watch the webcast here: http://leanin.org/livestream.

Sheryl Sandberg

Incoming Students Greeted by Inspiring Speakers, Interactive Games, and Moneyball Lessons

| by Laura Counts

Students in the Class of 2016 got a full immersion in Haas culture through hands-on learning, bonding through interactive games and community service, and leadership lessons from high-profile speakers during three August program orientations.

Among the surprise visitors: MLB execs Billy Beane and Sandy Alderson of Moneyball fame, tech visionary and former chief evangelist for Apple Guy Kawasaki, and crowdfunding pioneer Danae Ringelmann, MBA 08 and co-founder of Indiegogo.

The Evening & Weekend MBA Program was the first to hold its orientation in early August, followed by the Full-Time MBA Program last week. Undergraduates got their turn this week before starting classes today.

Some highlights:

Full-time Berkeley MBA Program

"I came into Haas thinking I wanted to do one thing, but this week blew my mind and made me see all the possibilities out there," said Anthony Patterson, MBA 16, as Week Zero wrapped up on Aug. 29.

Second-year students and program staff put together a whirlwind week for the Class of 2016—the most diverse class in Haas history, with a record-breaking 43 percent women and 43 percent international students. 

After an introduction to the fundamentals of the core Innovative Leader Curriculum from Professor Terry Taylor, Dean Rich Lyons offered some inspiration and advice, describing the shared cultural values and support that distinguishes the school. He also urged the 241 incoming students to look beyond Haas to the tremendous resources of the university.

"Think about what your passions are, and how they might connect to the rest of campus," he said.

Danae RingelmannIndiegogo co-founder Ringelmann gave a personal account of watching her parents' struggles as small business owners. She described how Haas helped her shape the beginnings of an idea—that finance was rigged, and there must be a way to fix it—into a disruptive startup that has given fundraising power to people worldwide.

"You have the chance to spend the rest of your waking life doing something that matters to you," she said. “Stop looking, start noticing. What matters to you is already inside of you.”

Kawasaki, a natural entertainer, delighted students with a witty 10-point lesson based on his new book "Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions."

"The easy stuff is finance, operations, statistics. The hard part is leadership. If you want to be a good leader, you have to enchant people," he said.

Students also got lessons in design thinking from Tom Kelley, MBA 83, general manager of the international design firm IDEO; they heard from Gap CFO Sabrina Simmons, BS 85, at the closing reception.

In keeping with Haas hands-on culture, every lesson was followed with action.

After learning what makes good teams tick, students headed out to the Cohort Olympics, which combines serious silliness with serious competition, all in the name of bonding. They also spent a morning fixing up a children's playground and gardens at the Alameda Point Collective, a housing organization that serves homeless and at-risk families. And they heard about teaming for happiness from the director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center.

Undergraduate Program

New Haas undergradsDean Rich Lyons and Erika Walker, executive director of the undergraduate program at Haas, welcomed 340 business school undergraduates to orientation Aug. 26.

Of the new class, 82 students are transferring into the program from local colleges and 258 are continuing UC Berkeley students. They were selected from a total of 2,253 applicants, making this one of the most selective programs on campus.

This year’s orientation was redesigned based on student feedback to be more of a welcome than a comprehensive informational event, Walker said. “The purpose of the event is to welcome the students to the community, to have fun, and jump start their lifelong connection with Berkeley-Haas,” Walker said.

The event covered what the class should expect in the undergraduate program, providing information about the many resources available to them as business majors and advice on how to maximize their experience while here. Games such as speed dating-style meetings and charades helped students get to know their cohort members.

Lucky SandhuSpeaker Lucky Sandhu, BS 96, EMBA 15, a real estate entrepreneur and broker at Reliance Financial, urged students to plant roots at Haas and take advantage of everything the program has to offer. A native of India, Sandhu credited the program with providing the wings he needed for his career to take off. He said he also made friends for life.

"Your journey through Haas will be one of roots and wings," he said. "You represent families, communities, classmates, friends, cultures and values that brought you here. Those are your roots. Always keep them close to your heart."

Orientation activities included a Career Conference, introducing the newly minted business majors to their career development journey with the help of the UC Berkeley Career Center and Haas student career counselors David Woodward and Chris Gavin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Haas Welcomes New Evening & Weekend Class

| by Laura Counts
 
Haas Dean Rich Lyons welcomed 250 students in the school’s Evening & Weekend MBA Program during orientation, urging them to embrace the school’s defining principles as they further their careers.
 
The event, held entirely on campus for the first time on August 1-3, enabled Evening & Weekend MBA students to meet their cohorts, get advice from current students, and hear from professors and program directors.
 
All orientation sessions integrated the four defining principles of Haas: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself. 
 
“We have high expectations for this class to use its time at Haas to gain a deep understanding of how our defining principles weave through our curriculum and the entire school,” said Courtney Chandler, director of the Evening & Weekend MBA Program at Haas. 
 
Haas Lecturer Clark Kellogg asked students to design business cards they will carry in 2027, a decade after they graduate, and create so-called “impact cards” that define what they intend to make happen in the world by then. 
 
"These cards invite students to take a credible leap into their own future,” said Kellogg, who teaches Problem Solving, Problem Finding, the flagship course of the school's innovative leadership curriculum. “These are frameworks we want our students to have for their whole lives.”
 
Incoming students hail from 29 different countries, including China, India, Russia, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. They speak 44 different languages and currently work within 195 companies across 33 industries. One diverse student team working on a bridge-building exercise at orientation included a mechanical engineer, a scientist, a product manager, a financial services executive, and a market researcher.
 
Many in the class, with an average age of 31, will be balancing school with their day jobs at companies including Apple, Visa, Genentech, Google, and Chevron. About 28 percent of the class are women.
 
For the majority of students, working on teams is an integral part of their work life, a fact reflected in Berkeley's innovative leadership curriculum.
 
 “We’re providing a platform, starting at orientation and progressing through the three-year curriculum, in which students have the opportunity to work on multiple teams, with different types of tasks, and in different contexts,” says Brandi Pearce, Director of Team Performance and Research at Haas.
 
Social highlights of orientation included a “Best of Berkeley” reception Friday evening, where students noshed on local food from Top Dog, CREAM, and The Cheese Board. At “Stay Golden, California” Saturday, the class sipped wine offered by Haas-affiliated wineries.
 
Stephen Preston, a senior manager of developer technical services at Autodesk, said he applied to the program to gain new career skills to prepare him to move from a technical role at work to making business decisions.
 
“I didn’t have the vocabulary and tools that I needed,” he said. “I chose Haas because I have already experienced the benefit of studying with a cohort of extremely bright and motivated people at the University of Oxford. My visits to Haas convinced me that the caliber of students was on the same level.”

Moneyball Celeb Execs Billy Beane and Sandy Alderson Coach New Full-Time MBAs

| by Laura Counts

As 240 incoming Full-Time Berkeley MBA students warmed up this week with a case about Major League Baseball management, little did they know that A’s Moneyball legends Billy Beane and Sandy Alderson were on deck with real-life lessons.

A’s General Manager Beane and NY Mets General Manager Alderson—who originally hired Beane—made the surprise visit Tuesday during orientation week for the Full-Time MBA Class of 2016.

Beane and Alderson’s careers exemplify how to question the status quo: their game-changing use of advanced data transformed baseball talent management into a science.

“(General) managers thought for a long time that we couldn't bring some of the principals used in real estate or the financial business to baseball,” Alderson said. “Moneyball caused a revolution among owners…Compare what the clubs do now to what hedge funds do with software and algorithms.”

Moneyball is a book by Michael Lewis adapted into a 2011 movie starring Brad Pitt as former MLB outfielder Beane. It tells the story of how Beane—building on his mentor Alderson's data-driven approach—used scientific analysis rather than traditional baseball wisdom to assemble a team of undervalued players. The A's, operating on a shoestring budget, broke an American League record in 2001 by winning 20 consecutive games. 

Beane told students that MLB management has evolved from an insider’s club of former players to a meritocracy. Technology and advanced data collection are further expanding opportunities.

"Everyone in this room has the opportunity to run a major league sports team," he said.

His philosophy: when someone tells him “You can’t do that here,” he sees it as a signal of an opportunity.  

Beane was unapologetic about their approach, which now has many imitators.

“We are data-driven and pretty ruthless in our implementation,” he said. “We really want to remove our emotions from the decision making.”

The key to staying ahead is flexibility, Beane said. “The market is constantly fluid. We have to find what it’s overvaluing and what it’s undervaluing. We are trying to take advantage of the gaps in the marketplace that the other teams are presenting us.”

Their remarks echoed the way Dean Rich Lyons described the innovative leadership Haas cultivates through its Defining Principles—specifically, Question the Status Quo, Students Always, and Confidence Without Attitude.

Lyons said innovation leaders ask such questions as: “Isn’t there a better way to do this? What’s the white space around this business?”

For students spending their very first week at Haas, the visit was a home run.

"All top business schools say they do things differently and are innovative, but Berkeley really walked the talk by having Sandy and Billy come speak," said Gavin Abreu, MBA 16, of México City. "I was expecting an executive from top tech firm, but they really threw us a curveball with Moneyball."

A’s General Manager Billy Beane and Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson

Haas Students Help San Quentin Inmates Expand Their Entrepreneurial Newspaper

| by Laura Counts

Twice a month this fall semester, five Berkeley MBA students have gone to prison. With security clearances and careful shepherding, the students, who enrolled in the experiential learning course Social Sector Solutions for Social Enterprises, have helped inmates develop a plan that will allow California’s only prison-based newspaper, the San Quentin News, to reach distribution to all of the state’s inmates.

The team just presented their proposal to the prisoner-led editorial group on Dec. 4 at the San Quentin state correctional facility in Marin County. They outlined how the goal of increasing the monthly paper’s reach to all 120,000 California inmates plus external audiences will require scaling to more than 10 times its current circulation.

Their project was one of the most unusual ones to be tackled in Social Sector Solutions for Social Enterprises, a course offered by Haas’ Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership that gives students hands-on management consulting training with social enterprises. The course, a partnership with Dalberg Global Advisors and FSG, paired students with a diverse group of social enterprises this fall semester, including Living Goods, REDF, Travel2Change, and UC Berkeley’s Office of Operational Effectiveness.

The San Quentin team made recommendations for increasing revenue through a mixture of grants and donor-subscribers from the outside, as well as for strengthening the paper’s brand identity within the system. They also provided guidance on how the group could better organize their business and printing operations and expand their capacity by eventually hiring staff.

“They’re looking at a 12-year timeframe,” says Jon Spurlock, MBA 15, a student in the Evening & Weekend Berkeley MBA Program. Spurlock led a team that included Laura Tilghman, Glen Ottinger, Virginia Zimpel, Todd Brantley, all MBA 14, and public policy graduate student Shilpa Grover.

Most of the inmates have nothing but time, convicted to long prison sentences—for for some, including the editors of San Quentin News, that means a life term—for serious crimes such as murder and armed robbery. Elsewhere in the facility, some of San Quentin’s all-male prisoners sit on the state’s only death row.

“Like many inmates, those on the newspaper team have had a lot of time to reflect on their actions, their lives, and their need for healing,” says Spurlock. “They’re a talented, intelligent group of guys who want to improve themselves and make a difference in the lives of others in the system.”

Learning about the realities of the California prison system was one of the tasks of the student team, which read extensively and viewed related films before stepping foot in San Quentin back in September. Students were initially assisted in their project by Berkeley journalism Professor Bill Drummond, an adviser to the paper, who had connected the prison’s editorial team with Nora Silver, director of the Haas School’s Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership, for help with their expansion plans. The student team was then guided through the facility by San Quentin Public Information Officer Sam Robinson, the prison administrative sponsor of San Quentin News.

“The San Quentin News project challenged students to apply their business skills in an extremely resource-constrained environment,” Silver says. “Students learned to operate in a world with very real restrictions and attain results. This newspaper gives voice to the prisoners, and the students helped ensure that voice be heard throughout the state. We at Haas are proud to offer such an education.”

Students agree that their experience has gone beyond the usual consulting training opportunity typically offered in the Social Sector Solutions for Social Enterprises course.

“Hearing the stories of these men and understanding what San Quentin News means to them helped me develop a more sophisticated idea of how to best facilitate the rehabilitation of people in prison,” said Laura Tilghman. “There was such a clear link between opportunities for education and the process of growing and self-improvement. I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to deepen my understanding in this respect.”

Read more about the project in the Daily Cal

San Quentin

Revolution Foods Founders to Receive Leading Through Innovation Award, Speak at Haas

| by Laura Counts

Revolution Foods co-founders Kristin Groos Richmond and Kirsten Saenz Tobey, both MBA 06, will be presented with the Haas School's 2013 Leading Through Innovation Award at the annual Haas Gala on Friday, Nov. 15.

Before the gala, Tobey, chief impact officer of Revolution Foods, will speak to the Haas community at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14, in the Wells Fargo Room. The event is sponsored by the Dean's Speaker Series; details on how to register for Tobey's talk will be available on the Dean's Speaker Series website as the date approaches.

The annual Leading Through Innovation Award was established to celebrate Haas alumni who embody the school’s emphasis on innovative leadership and serve as exemplars to others in the Berkeley-Haas community.

Richmond and Tobey will be recognized for their bold mission to transform the way students eat. From their modest beginnings working through the night to bring healthy meals to local school children, Richmond and Tobey have led Revolution Foods through exponential growth to serve a million meals a week in nearly 1,000 schools across the country.

In September, Richmond and Tobey made Fortune's "40 Under 40" list of "young hotshots who are rocking businesses." CNN Money put Revolution Foods on its 2012 list of 100 fastest-growing inner-city companies, Inc. magazine named it the sixth fastest-growing food and beverage company, and Fast Company included it on a list of most-innovative food companies.

Revolution Foods was truly born at Haas, where Richmond and Tobey met. They learned about term sheets from a New Venture Finance class and defined their product and aligned their values with it in a New Product Development course. In 2007, the pair won the grand prize in the school’s Global Social Venture Competition. And their first funding from Bay Area Equity Fund also came through Haas connections.

Looking ahead, Revolution Foods is now moving into a new market with a high-quality packaged meal competing against Kraft Food’s Lunchables in supermarket aisles.

To attend the 12th Annual Haas Gala, RSVP by Nov. 1 at the Gala website.

Revolution Foods Co-Founders Kristin Groos Richmond and Kirsten Saenz Tobey, both MBA 06

Classified: Learning about Interpersonal Style in Cameron Anderson’s Power and Politics Class

| by Laura Counts

Imagine you and three colleagues have to choose the next CFO of your company—and each likes a different candidate. How does the group reach an agreement on the best person for the job?

To some extent, it's not so much the candidates' qualifications that matter but the interpersonal style of you and your colleagues making a case for each of them. That's the lesson that MBA students learned firsthand in an exercise last week in their Power and Politics course taught by Professor Cameron Anderson.

"There's always at least one big surprise," Anderson told students Thursday as they debriefed on the exercise, which was held two days earlier in the new Berkeley-Haas Innovation Lab.

On Tuesday, students were divided into groups of three and four each and charged with recommending a chief financial officer to the CEO of a fictional moderate-sized publicly traded tech company. Each student had to persuade the rest of the group to choose his or her candidate, and the groups had 30 minutes to reach a consensus on their top picks.

After the exercise, students rated their own and each others' performances based on five characteristics of interpersonal style: strength (assertiveness), credibility, trustworthiness, likeability, and openness to others' input. The exercise was videotaped so students could watch themselves later to better understand their scores.

The surprises often came from the gap between how students rated themselves and how they were rated by others.

"I try to be likeable and get along with people, make situations less tense, or make people laugh," says Skyler Soto, MBA 14. But "as I watched the video, the one thing that struck me is that sometimes that approach hindered me from being truly assertive."

Soto's other takeaway: being more open and honest than required can hurt credibility. "My classmates ranked me lower because I admitted what I didn't know and then they felt what I said wasn't as credible," she says. "It's important for me to keep in mind that what I think I'm sending out as a signal that I'm being honest, credible, and open can instead be interpreted as a weaker position."

But the reason Soto found the exercise so helpful, she says, was because it gave her the freedom to try new tactics in a safe environment with classmates.

"Halfway through the video I kind of flipped the switch and tried to be more assertive," she says. "I just went for it, and I wouldn't have done that in a professional setting."

Soto's candidate was ultimately picked second by her team. Ten percent of the teams, meanwhile, were unable to agree on a top candidate at all. In executive education classes, where Anderson first began teaching the exercise, 30 percent of teams typically reach an impasse, Anderson says. "They wouldn't budge."

Students in Power & Politics Class

Students debate job candidates for a fictional tech company in an exercise on interpersonal style in Prof. Cameron Anderson's Power and Politics course.

Prof. Cameron Anderson

Janet Yellen Fact Sheet

|By Haas News

Janet YellenBerkeley Haas

Current Title: Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor Emeritus of Business Administration, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

Academic Group: Haas Economic Analysis and Policy Group

See Janet Yellen’s full faculty biography.

Positions held

  • 2021 – present, Secretary of the Treasury
  • 2018 – 2020, Distinguished Fellow in Residence – Economic Studies, The Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, Brookings Institution
  • 2014 – 2018, Chair, Federal Reserve Board of Governors
  • 2010 – 2013, Vice Chair, Federal Reserve Board of Governors
  • 2004 – 2010, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
  • 1999 – 2003, Professor of Economics, UC Berkeley Department of Economics
  • 1985 – 2006, Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
  • 1997 – 1999, Chair, President’s Council of Economic Advisors
  • 1994 – 1997, Member, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
  • 1982 – 1985, Associate Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
  • 1980 – 1982, Assistant Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
  • 1978 – 1980, Lecturer, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • 1977 – 1978, Economist, Division of International Finance, Trade and Financial Studies Section, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
  • 1971 – 1976, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Harvard University
  • 1974, Research Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Areas of research

  • Unemployment and labor markets
  • Monetary and fiscal policies
  • International trade and investment policy
  • See published research, below.

See archive of Janet Yellen’s academic research, working papers, and speeches on the IDEAS economics database.

The American Economic Association named Yellen 2012 Distinguished Fellow.

Teaching

From 1980 to 2004, Yellen taught thousands of Berkeley Haas students in the undergraduate, full-time MBA, and Evening & Weekend MBA programs. She taught the required macroeconomics course at the MBA level for 11 semesters.

Undergraduate courses:

  • Macroeconomics (required course)
  • Introduction to International Business
  • Business Fluctuations and Forecasting

MBA courses:

  • Macroeconomics (required course)
  • Introduction to International Business
  • Applied International Economics
  • Survey of International Business
  • Theory and Institutions of International Trade

Teaching Awards:

Yellen won the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching in the full-time MBA program in 1985 and in the Evening and Weekend MBA program in 1988.

For the News Media

Berkeley Haas Media Relations: Laura Counts [email protected] 510-643-9977

Dean Ann Harrison on Janet Yellen: “As a brilliant economist with great personal humility and empathy for the people behind the statistics, Janet Yellen embodies the best of Berkeley and Haas. We are proud and excited to hear the news that she will be the new president’s top economic advisor at this very difficult time for the country. She also carries on a proud tradition of Berkeley women in economic leadership roles.”

Former Dean Rich Lyons on Janet Yellen: “It is hard for me to think of a better exemplar of the Haas School’s four defining leadership principles than Janet Yellen. Confidence without attitude? To a T. Question the status quo? She is constantly seeking better ways. Beyond yourself? If you know her, you know this is her. Students always? A more honest thinker would be hard to find.”

Articles

Janet Yellen leaves the Fed after achieving “near perfection” as chair

Berkeley Haas celebrates nomination of business professor Janet Yellen to head Federal Reserve

BerkeleyHaas magazine article on Janet Yellen
Janet Yellen won the Berkeley-Haas 2012  Business Leader of the Year Award. In this feature article she talks about how she became interested in economics, her years at Berkeley-Haas and her career at the Fed.

Faculty and GSIs Recognized with Cheit Teaching Awards

| by Laura Counts

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

Berkeley Board Fellows Award $30,000 to Three Nonprofits

| by Laura Counts

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.

 

Undergrad, MBA, and PhD Students Bid Haas Farewell

| by Laura Counts

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 https://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 https://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."

Haas and Center for Executive Education to Host CFO Summit

| by Laura Counts

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.

Undergrads Recognized as Champions of Culture

| by Laura Counts

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 https://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

PhD, MBA, Undergrad Students Excel in Competitions

| by Laura Counts

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 (left) 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."

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

| by Laura Counts

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.