Author: Laura Counts

Haas Welcomes Inaugural MBA for Executives Class

| by Laura Counts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Celebrate Haas Courtyard Opening May 2

| by Laura Counts

The newly transformed Haas courtyard has come alive, providing a more inviting space for alumni during reunion weekend Saturday and for new full-time MBA admits Friday at Days at Haas II.

Faculty, staff, and students are invited to celebrate the grand opening of the courtyard from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, May 2. The celebration will include fun carnival games, refreshments, and a raffle every 15 minutes.

The renovation included replacing large planters with new pavers and furniture to create a larger, more inviting space for students, faculty, staff, and visitors to mingle, socialize, and share ideas. The redesign also provides more flexible space for student clubs, career fairs, alumni events, social occasions, and everyday connections.

The new, improved courtyard is part of the school’s strategic plan to "Transform the Haas Campus." Providing spaces for people to come together and share ideas is a key ingredient to the school’s mission of developing innovative leaders.

Read More About the Courtyard Project

Center for Executive Education Welcomes New CEO

| by Laura Counts

Derek Dean joins the Center for Executive Education (CEE) as its new CEO today (April 29), bringing more than two decades of experience in consulting at The Exetor Group and McKinsey & Co.

Dean most recently worked at Exetor, where he designed and delivered development programs and coached executives and teams in the technology, advertising, professional services, and basic materials industries. Before that, he worked at McKinsey from 1990 to 2010, leading the firm's global semiconductor practice for 10 years and then managing the firm's San Francisco office.

"Derek's unique experience in strategy consulting at McKinsey and leadership development at Exetor will be a tremendous asset for CEE’s ambitious growth plan," says Dean Rich Lyons. "We are fortunate to have a leader of such outstanding caliber taking the helm at CEE at this critical time."

Dean's arrival comes after CEE's April 1 restructuring into self-supporting, affiliated nonprofit of the Haas School in order to grow faster and help meet the school's financial goals. Under the new structure, the unit’s profits will continue to flow to the Haas School, with a portion also going to UC Berkeley. CEE has become a significant source of revenue that supports academic areas and operations of the Haas School. 

"The creation of a new entity opens up an opportunity to revolutionize the way education is delivered to corporate executives," Derek Dean says. "The new model also enables CEE to rapidly expand our custom programs and integrate content into those programs across not just Haas but other schools on campus to create unique interdisciplinary offerings."

"What I love about CEE is this notion of a consulting model working with clients to figure out what they need for their people to be more effective and to help them solve their problems by providing provocative ideas, tools, and maybe the environment outside of their office to really think creatively," he adds.

At McKinsey, Dean worked intensively with clients on specific projects or problems, helping them find solutions or drive change programs. His work at Exetor, meanwhile, focused much more on helping individual leaders overcome barriers in culture, mindset, or leadership that were preventing them from achieving their full potential.

"At CEE, I see a great opportunity to blend those two models from McKinsey and Exetor with the incredibly distinctive knowledge embodied in the faculty at Haas and the entire university," Dean says. He can't talk specifically about past clients, but says, "I'm attracted to problems that seem impossible. The most exciting clients I have had have been CEOs or other leaders who have said 'I want to change the world, I want to change the model, I want to reinvent this industry or this market, and I'm asking for help.'"

Dean earned an MBA from Stanford and a BA in American studies at Carleton College in Minnesota. He lives in San Francisco and has a 2-year-old son and another child on the way, due in September. He is a member of the San Francisco Symphony board of governors and vice chairman of the San Francisco SPCA board of directors. 

 

Leading Social Entrepreneur in India to Speak at Schwab Series Event, April 30

| by Laura Counts

Anshu Gupta, who has made providing clothing and other resources to the poor in India his life's calling with the creation of his nonprofit GOONJ, will speak at the Haas School from noon to 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 30, in the Wells Fargo Room.

The event is part of the Schwab Charitable Philanthropy Speaker Series and is co-sponsored by the school's Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership. Net Impact, Global Social Venture Competition, and Schwab Charitable.

Listed in Forbes as one of the India’s most powerful entrepreneurs, Gupta will address many topics, including social entrepreneurship, sustainability, nonprofit leadership, poverty alleviation, and women’s health.

A former journalist, Gupta left the corporate world in 1998 to found GOONJ, which has created social innovations to address critical gaps in the developing world. Considered one of the leading social enterprises in India, GOONJ is focused on under-resourced areas in development work, whether it's clothing or school materials for children. The organization moves resources from prospering cities to rural villages, serving as an economic bridge by sharing the surplus of wealth.

GOONJ's work has been recognized by many prestigious awards, including the Innovation for India award, CNN-IBN Real Hero’s Award, India NGO of the Year Award, and the Development Market Place Award from the World Bank. Most recently, Gupta was named “Social Entrepreneur of the Year” by the Schwab Foundation.

Gupta was suggested as a Schwab Series speaker by full-time MBA student Swapnil Dixit, MBA 14, who before coming to Haas created an annual train journey in India called Jagiriti Yatra that takes hundreds of youth between ages 20 and 25 around the country to meet entrepreneurs and awaken their spirit of entrepreneurship.

For more information about Gupta's talk and to register for the event, visit haas-anshugupta.eventbrite.com. For more information about Gupta, visit schwabfound.org/content/anshu-gupta.

Tee Time: Haas Undergrad Makes Masters

| by Laura Counts

During the second week of April, with the semester in full swing, Michael Weaver, BS 14, set aside his studies as an undergraduate business major and set out across the country for a different kind of course.

At an outdoor classroom called Augusta National Golf Club, Weaver competed in the Masters, golf’s prestigious springtime rite.

“It’s a memory that will stay with me for the rest of my life,” Weaver says.

A red-shirt junior, Weaver gained admission to the 2013 Masters with a runner-up finish at the 2012 U.S. Amateur Championship, becoming the first current member of the Cal golf team to qualify for the storied event. (Bears Robert Hamilton and Ben An also played in the Masters, in 2002 and 2009, respectively, but were not members of the Cal team at the time.)

Weaver arrived in Augusta, Ga., the Sunday before the tournament to learn his way around wildly contoured course and spent his first two nights in the Crow’s Nest, the famed accommodations above the clubhouse where Masters amateurs traditionally stay.

“The rooms aren’t fancy at all,” Weaver says. “They’re really not much nicer than a college dorm.”

But they offered easy access to a hallowed layout that Weaver had revered since he was a kid. Born and raised in Fresno, Calif., Weaver picked up golf when he was 10, introduced to the game by his parents but taught the swing by a local pro named Cindy Vining, the only formal instructor he has ever had.

As his game matured, Weaver discovered that the golf course and the classroom were a lot alike. “You get out of it what you put into it,” Weaver says. “The harder you work, the more payoffs you see.”

Drawn to economics and investing, Weaver opted for a business major at Cal with thoughts of a possible future in financial services. But the PGA Tour has long been his prime target; after graduation, he plans to turn pro.

Weaver knows he faces a steep learning curve, and Augusta offered him a valuable crash course. Despite first-tee jitters, Weaver parred the first hole of Thursday’s opening round and soon eased into the rhythm of the competition. Friday’s second round fell on Weaver’s 22nd birthday, and the Cal Bear celebrated the occasion with birdies on two of his final four holes. Though he missed the cut with rounds of 78 and 74, he looks back on the week as a real-world education, a golf competition that doubled as career-day.

“I probably could have shaved a few shots here and there,” Weaver says. “But I didn’t feel like I didn’t belong there, and that’s the most important take-away for me: I know that if I work hard and stick with it, I can compete with the best players in the world.”

Haas Honored as Founding Member of Beta Gamma Sigma

| by Laura Counts

The Haas School was recently recognized as a founding member of the International Honor Society Beta Gamma Sigma at its 100th year anniversary in February.

The mission of Beta Gamma Sigma is to encourage and honor academic achievement in the study of business, to foster personal and professional excellence, to advance the values of the society, and to serve its lifelong members. To become members of the society, undergraduates must rank in the upper 10 percent of their class and graduate students must rank in the upper 20 percent of their class.

Beta Gamma Sigma was founded as a commerce honor society in 1906 at the University of Wisconsin. At around the same time, students at the University of California felt the need for such an organization and formed The Economics Club. A meeting to organize one national scholarship honor society in business and commerce was held in February 1913, which is recognized as the founding date of what is now the International Honor Society Beta Gamma Sigma.

Today the society has established more than 500 chapters across six continents at universities and colleges accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. 

Profs. Carney and Morse Win Schwabacher Fellowships

| by Laura Counts

Profs. Carney and Morse Win Schwabacher Fellowships

Assistant Professors Dana Carney (left) and Adair Morse (right) have been awarded Schwabacher Fellowships by the Haas Executive Committee, a panel that includes the dean and senior faculty.

The fellowship is the highest honor that Haas bestows upon assistant professors. It consists of a small unrestricted cash award, a research grant, and a modest instructional point credit.

Carney, a member of the Haas Management and Organizations Group, joined Berkeley-Haas from Columbia in 2010. She has produced a significant body of research focused on nonverbal behavior, power, and cognitive bias—all areas of great interest in the field of organizational behavior. She has won numerous awards, including the highly prestigious NSF CAREER Award in Social Psychology, and has obtained multiple grants from national funding agencies.

Carney's published research—four papers in 2011-2012 alone—has already had a substantial impact on the field and has received media attention from such outlets as the New York Times, Businessweek, Entrepreneur magazine, and the Today Show.

Carney most recently taught the undergraduate Introduction to Organizational Behavior course last fall. She also taught Creating Effective Organizations in the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program.

Morse, a visiting professor in the Haas Finance Group, has focused her research on household finance, entrepreneurship, corruption and governance, asset management, and development. She most recently won the Brattle Prize in January for outstanding papers in the field of corporate finance published in the Journal of Finance. The state of Texas implemented disclosure rules outlined by Morse and her co-author in their winning paper, which showed that disclosing more information on the accumulation of fees over time from using payday loans impacts borrowing decisions.

A working paper titled "Activist Investors and Performance in Private Equity Funds" won the Commonfund Best Paper Relevant to Endowment and Foundation Asset Management at the European Finance Association meetings. Her papers also have been cited in the financial press, including the Wall Street Journal and The Economist. Morse is teaching the MBA course Global Entrepreneurial Finance this semester.

More on Dana Carney

More on Adair Morse

New Berkeley Social Entrepreneurship Club Wins Two Honors

| by Laura Counts

The fledgling Berkeley chapter of Enactus, a national network of university students who use entrepreneurship to solve social problems, was the only chapter to win the network's regional championships and Rookie of the Year award on April 8.

The Berkeley Enactus chapter won the two honors at the Orange County Enactus Regional Competition. The chapter was one of 12 chapters from the region who will go on to compete in a national competition in Kansas City May 22 to May 23.

The Berkeley team consisted of Renee Yao, BS 14; Komal Ahmad, BA 13 (International Health and Development); and freshmen Alicia Li, Rick Ling and Cassie Zhou.

The regional competition required chapters to provide a presentation on their projects. The Berkeley chapter presented three projects underway:

  •  Evive Station: A kiosk that cleans reusable bottles and fills them with clean, filtered water in less than a minute. The chapter is working to bring a kiosk to Berkeley’s campus.
  • SquashDrive: An after-school enrichment program that promotes academic, athletic, and personal growth through squash, health, and fitness instruction; tutoring; and community service.
  • Feeding Forward: An online platform that streamlines connections between those with extra food and those in need of food.

"I’m really impressed with the whole team for pulling something together that literally started with four people and walking away with a couple of awards," says Haas Lecturer Todd Fitch, one of the chapter's advisers, who attended the competition. "It's pretty amazing in a year."

In addition to Fitch, Haas Lecturer Ben Mangan is also serving as an Enactus chapter adviser.

Yao was among four students who created the chapter in spring 2012, launching a process to choose members, attract sponsors (Clorox is the primary one), and develop projects. The other founders are economics students Akshay Dugar, BA 14; Andrew Liu, BA 15; and Sagar Vora, BA 14.  

"We wanted to do something meaningful for the community and help the people around us," says Yao, explaining the impetus for forming the chapter. "We feel like we should let other people share the privileges and resources that we enjoy on campus and at Haas." That includes learning from some of the brightest academics in the world and recruited by world-changing companies in the Bay Area, she explains.

"Enactus utilizes these resources and opportunities to benefit the community around us, from engaging "at-risk" youths to leveraging technology to feed the homeless," Yao adds.

During its first semester, the founding team received 60 applications and went through three rounds of interviews to choose the 35 final members of the chapter from all over campus, including students majoring in English, chemical engineering, and global poverty.

"All the members are really dedicated. They joined us because they also wanted to make an impact," Yao says.

Visit Berkeley Enactus Website

Berkeley Enactus Winners: Cassie Zhou, Rick Ling, Renee Yao, Alicia Li. (Team member Komal Admad not pictured).

Sustainability Leaders to Visit Haas in April

| by Laura Counts

William McDonough, best-selling co-author of the seminal sustainability book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, and executives from such companies as Levi Strauss, Autodesk, and Fair Trade USA are among the several sustainability leaders who will speak at events hosted by the Center for Responsible Business this month.

McDonough Presentation and Book Release

The first event will feature McDonough speaking on his new book, The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability–Designing for Abundance, and signing books from 12:45 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. April 18 in Room 105, Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley School of Law.  Please bring your own lunch if you wish.

In the book, McDonough and co-author Michael Braungart, a German chemist, outline how to redesign our activity to improve the planet, rather than just protecting the planet from human impact. Using design as a tool for positive impact, they suggest industry can do better than "do no harm" and instead actively make improvements. Their new book draws on lessons gained from 10 years of putting the ecological manifesto outlined in Cradle to Cradle (2002) into practice with businesses, governments, and ordinary people.

Called a "Hero for the Planet" by Time magazine, McDonough advises commercial and governmental leaders worldwide through McDonough Advisors and is active with William McDonough + Partners, his architecture practice, as well as McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, the Cradle to Cradle consulting firm. He also co-founded the nonprofit Make It Right with actor Brad Pitt to bring affordable, Cradle to Cradle-inspired homes to post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.

To register for this event, visit theupcycle.eventbrite.com

ARCS Forum

The second event is a one-day forum co-sponsored by the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS) on April 29 that will link corporate responsibility in practice with the latest academic research on models for driving sustainability.

The ARCS Forum will kick off with sustainability veteran Mark Lee, executive director of SustainAbility, providing an overview of emerging sustainability trends based on the annual GlobeScan/Sustainability Survey. The survey takes the pulse of the most influential sustainability thought leaders from more than 60 countries.

Other sessions will include discussions about new ways of interacting with customers to change consumer-use behavior, strategies for end-of-life recovery, natural capital markets such as mitigation credits, and driving sustainability from within organizations. Participants will include faculty from Harvard, MIT Sloan, and Dartmouth’s Tuck School as well as executives from a wide range of companies, including Levi Strauss, SAP, and Clif Bar.

The day will culminate with a conversation between Neil Hawkins, vice president of global sustainability at the Dow Chemical Company, and Glenn Prickett, chief external affairs officer of the Nature Conservancy, on their collaborative experiment to incorporate the value of nature into business decisions.

The forum will be followed by ARCS' annual research conference April 30 and May 1. The conference, to be held at Haas for the first time, is designed to bring together scholars interested in corporate sustainability strategy and management.

To register, visit arcs2013.eventbrite.com.

Author William McDonough

MBA Students Launch Two Speakers Series

| by Laura Counts

Recognizing the broad expertise and connections among their peers, full-time and evening-and-weekend MBA students have launched two new speaker series this semester.

The 40 Minutes Speaker Series created by the EWMBA Association kicked of March 19 with the first of many lectures to be offered during evening and Saturday breaks. The Students Teaching Students Speaker Series, launched by two full-time students, began March 21.

EWMBA 40 Minutes Speaker Series

Phil Jaber, founder of Philz Coffee, spoke at the first installment of the 40 Minutes Speaker Series. With his unique personality and focus on great customer service and personalized coffee, Jaber was the subject of a Harvard case study and numerous national media articles.

"The series was created in part because many evening-and-weekend students are unable to attend the Dean's Speaker Series due to professional commitments," explains Manu Parbhakar, MBA 15, who was instrumental in starting the series and signing up Jaber as its first speaker.

The EWMBAA Executive Board, which is taking the lead in organizing the series, plans to focus on bringing in alumni or friends of Haas who have been exemplary career advancers, career switchers, or entrepreneurs. It will target speakers who have special connections with the Evening & Weekend Program to demonstrate how the program has helped shape successful careers, says Katie McMahan, MBA 14, co-VP of the EWMBAA Alumni Relations Committee.

The EWMBAA is working with the Haas Alumni Relations Office to identify future speakers for the series. The next speaker is slated to speak during a Saturday class session.

Full-time MBA Students Teaching Students Speaker Series

The Students Teaching Students Speaker Series took off with a lecture titled "I Sang in Space!" by Soyeon Yi, MBA 14, South Korean's first astronaut, who launched into the sky on April 8, 2008. Future topics will include "Zara's Unique Culture;" "The Problem with Charter Schools;" "Fukushima—Nuclear Disaster and the Future of Japan;" and "Working through a Big-Ass Crisis in a Permanently Troubled Company," which will focus on a mining company in Mexico and Spain.

"We got to thinking that the biggest advantage we have at Haas is other students' experiences. We thought that we are not really leveraging this advantage," says Yaron Leyvand, MBA 14, explaining the genesis of the speaker series.

The series also offers speakers an opportunity to get feedback and improve their speaking skills in a friendly environment, adds Adi Rubinovich, MBA 14, who teamed up with Leyvand to organize the series.

"I think it may be an opportunity to learn and have fun at the same time," she adds.

Faculty also expressed interest in attending, Leyvand noted. About 15 students registered for the speaker series, and there is space for 10 more students and faculty members to show up without registering. For more details, email Leyvand at [email protected].

Young Entrepreneurs at Haas Opens Summer Academy to Students in Asia, Preps to Pick Volt Raffle Winner

| by Laura Counts

The Center for Young Entrepreneurs at Haas (YEAH) youth mentoring program is expanding its summer business academy to high school students in Taiwan.

YEAH's UC Berkeley Business Academy (B-BAY) is adding 20 seats this summer for students in Taiwan. Students are required to apply and interview to attend the program, called the International Berkeley Business Academy for Youth, or iB-BAY.

Students from Taiwan will live in dorms and attend classes at Haas with U.S. students enrolled in the UC Berkeley Business Academy, a program now in its fifth year. The program will run from July 1 to July 12.

Haas Professor Teck Ho is serving as the faculty adviser of the new program for international students.

“I am very excited about iB-Bay and the opportunity to extend the world-renowned resources of Berkeley-Haas to bright and motivated youth from around the world, and I am particularly pleased with the enthusiastic response from our alumni in Taiwan who are actively getting involved in this program,” says Ho, also director of the Haas School's Asia Business Center.

"We are beginning our first international program with Taiwan, then we will be expanding to other regions in Asia, Latin America, and beyond."

Proceeds from YEAH's summer programs help YEAH offer its programs for low-income middle and high school students during the school year at no charge.

YEAH, a self-supporting program, has been mentoring and teaching business skills to economically disadvantaged youth for 23 years. One-hundred percent of students who complete YEAH's four-year program has graduated from high school and gone on to college, and they are usually the first in their families to do so.

In addition to receiving funding from the summer academy, YEAH recently launched a raffle for a Chevy Volt to raise money. Saturday, April 27, is the last day to buy tickets for the raffle at voltraffle.com. The winner will be announced at 2 p.m. May 4 at the conclusion of the YEAH Showcase in Andersen Auditorium at Haas.

More information about Young Entrepreneurs at Haas

More information about the summer UC Berkeley Business Academy

Volt Raffle for YEAH Website

Haas Undergrads’ “Foo” Plan Takes First in Google-Accenture Competition

| by Laura Counts

An undergraduate team that included two Haas students took first place at the Google-Accenture Domains Case Competition April 1 with a creative approach to marketing "foo."

Winning team members were (pictured left to right): Adnan Rajkotwala, BS 13; Tristan Tao, BA 14 (Computer Science and Statistics); Sandy Diao, BS 13; and exchange student Lara Grosso, BA 13.

The competition called for teams to choose from 12 domain names provided by Google and then use analytical skills, strategic thinking, and creative problem-solving to craft a plan to market their chosen domains to the public.

The winning Berkeley team chose .foo as its domain, which is easy to pronounce and has an Asian meaning, giving it an international appeal, Rajkotwala says. Fu means “good fortune” in Chinese. Other teams from Stanford and UCLA pitched .meme and .soy.

“It was definitely an awesome experience,” Rajkotwala says. He noted that competition judge Vint Cerf, Google’s chief Internet evangelist and often called the "father of the Internet," joined the finals remotely from Virginia. “He had a lot of questions and insight as to how (our case) might play out,” Rajkotwala says.

The team also wanted to appeal to Google’s developers. “Our core idea was building a social network around the domain,” Rajkotwala said. “The main challenge we kept coming back to is: what convinces people to move over to .foo from a .com (domain)?”

Eight MBA and eight undergraduate teams were chosen to advance before the finalists were whittled down to three teams on each side in the finals.  UCLA won the competition among MBA students.

Winning team members received Nexus 7 tablets and the possibility of their team’s ideas being featured in Google’s future marketing plan. 

Google-Accenture Winners

Tee Off May 13 at Haaski Golf Open

| by Laura Counts

Mark French, MBA 98, will be the first to tell you he’s no good at golf.

“I’m a complete hack as a golfer,” says French with a laugh. “I don’t think I’ve had a round under a hundred in a couple years.”

Still, rain or shine, French has been an active member of the Haaski Steering Committee since the tournament's inception in 2002. And he plans to tee off this year on May 13 to help celebrate the tournament's 11th anniversary.

The annual event will begin with a hearty breakfast at the Claremont Country Club followed by a shamble-style golf tournament, complete with prizes for the closest to the pin, longest and straightest drives, and an opportunity to walk away with a brand new Mercedes Benz at the hole-in-one competition donated by Mercedes Benz of Oakland.

French knows he wasn’t recruited for his putting and swinging skills. Organizers credit him for being a consistent and generous donor to the Haas community. “I’m there to support the school and connect with people,” says French, a partner at Robin Lane Capital, a private equity investment firm.

In addition to French, the field of players will include Haas students and faculty, Cal VIPs, coaches and athletes, and Bay Area business leaders. A luncheon will follow the tournament at 2 p.m.

Individual fees are $250, foursomes are $1,000, and there are foursome sponsorship opportunities at the Par $2,500 and Birdie $5,000 levels, which come with program recognition and hole signage as well as recognition in the Haas Annual Report. The event raises more than $50,000 for the Haas School annually.

For more information and registration, visit events.trustevent.com/templates/index.cfm?fuseaction=templates.home&eid=1247 or contact Anna Deering at [email protected] or (510) 642-0727. The deadline to register is May 8.

Mark French, MBA 98

Picturing Haas Culture

| by Laura Counts

The walls have come to life at Haas with new posters that reflect our Defining Principles and showcase just a few of our many talented faculty, students, alumni, and staff.

You’ll find them throughout our halls as well as at our locations in downtown Berkeley. We plan to keep things fresh by periodically moving images around and rotating in new posters.

“This campaign is an expression of appreciation for, and pride in, all of you who make Haas so distinctive,” says Dean Rich Lyons.

Save the Date: Courtyard Celebration May 2

| by Laura Counts

Join Haas students, faculty, and staff from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, May 2, for a festive carnival-style celebration to mark the completion of the school's courtyard renovation.

The renovation was designed to make the courtyard much more useable and inviting by creating new, larger spaces where students, faculty, staff, and visitors can mingle, socialize, and share ideas. The renovation will provide a more flexible space for student clubs, career fairs, alumni events, social occasions, and everyday connections.

The new, improved courtyard is part of the school’s strategic plan to "Transform the Haas Campus."

Read More About the Courtyard Project

Financial Engineering Program Graduates Class of ’13, Welcomes Class of ’14

| by Laura Counts

The Berkeley Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) Program celebrated 66 graduates at their commencement March 22 and welcomed 68 students into the 13th class of the program on March 25.

Commencement speaker Robert Litzenberger, a professor emeritus at Wharton and expert on derivatives and risk, sent off the 12th graduation class of the MFE Program, the nation's first financial engineering program to be housed in a business school. Litzenberger, who was named Risk Manager of the Year by Risk Magazine in 2001 and inducted into its Risk Hall of Fame in 2003, discussed modifications to academic financial theory suggested by events in financial markets, starting with the collapse in October 1987 through current problems. Litzenberger also drew from his experience working as director of derivative research and quantitative modeling in Goldman Sachs' Fixed Income Division and Goldman's firm-wide risk manager.

A group of students were awarded the $5,000 Morgan Stanley Applied Finance Project Award: Yanping Chong, Weixian (Victor) Kong, Matthew Tochterman, Junyue (Pierre) Xu, and Hangying Yu.  Professor Nancy Wallace advised the team on their winning paper, titled for “Modeling Seasonality in Commodity Price Dynamics."

Executive Director Linda Kreitzman presented the MFE Defining Principles Awards to Haohan “Alfred” Yuan, Student Always; Raghav Kao and Yann LeVacon, Beyond Yourself; Charles Reed and Saransh Mittal, Question the Status Quo; and Yi Zhang, Confidence without Attitude.

Kaushik Goswami received the $1,000 Arthur Chengchun Qi Scholarship, which asks students to write an essay on the book that has had the most impact on them. The scholarship to cover the cost of books was created in honor of Qi, an MFE student who loved books, after he passed away suddenly last year.

Students awarded Cheit teaching awards to Professor Richard Stanton and graduate student instructor Aya Bellicha, MFE 09. Yang Guo, MFE 12, received the Special Alumnus Award: Outstanding Teaching and Service to the MFE Program.

The 68 students in the MFE class of 2014 arrived at Berkeley-Haas Monday, March 25, for orientation and began classes today, April 1.

Students in the new class come from 17 countries, including China, India, France, Mexico, Chile, and Australia. They bring experience from such organizations as Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, and Barclays Capital. More than 40 percent of the students have graduate degrees, and nearly 12 percent have PhDs.

Corporate Earnings Data Relevant for Determining Aggregate Stock Market Value

| by Laura Counts

While teaching a course on financial information analysis, Prof. Panos Patatoukas observed that capital market participants and policy makers are increasingly turning to accounting earnings data from corporate financial reports for hints regarding the prospects of the aggregate stock market. This observation indicated that, at the aggregate level, accounting earnings data could be relevant for gauging the value of the entire stock market.

Patatoukas, assistant professor, Haas Accounting Group, became so intrigued that he decided to undertake an in-depth investigation of the information that decision makers interested in stock market valuation could extract from accounting earnings data aggregated across publicly traded firms in the U.S. 

Patatoukas’ study, “Detecting News in Aggregate Accounting Earnings: Implications for Stock Market Valuation” is published in The Review of Accounting Studies (March 2013).

Patatoukas’ study develops a theoretical framework for understanding the relation between aggregate accounting earnings and stock market valuation. Patatoukas shows that this relation is complicated by the fact that stock market prices are very sensitive to even small revisions in investors’ expectations about discount rates. His study provides strong empirical evidence that this is the case.

Using a comprehensive sample of U.S. publicly traded firms from 1981 to 2009, Patatoukas shows that aggregate accounting earnings are tied to news about both expected future cash flows and discount rates. A comprehensive investigation of the link to discount rates reveals that aggregate accounting earnings are tied to news about the real riskless rate, expected inflation, and the expected equity risk premium (i.e., the expected excess return of the stock market over the nominal riskless rate).

In fact, over the sample period studied, cash flow news and discount rate news in aggregate accounting earnings move together and have opposite impacts on the value of the aggregate stock market. An increase in expected future cash flows is positive for valuation, while an increase in discount rates is negative for valuation. Importantly, however, prices capture the net impact of cash flow news and discount rate news and so the stock market appears to be insensitive to aggregate accounting earnings.

“My findings illuminate the importance of separating cash flow news from discount rate news when evaluating the information content of aggregate accounting earnings for the stock market valuation,” says Patatoukas.  “Although the stock market appears to be insensitive to aggregate accounting earnings that does not mean that accounting earnings data are not informative. In fact, aggregate accounting earnings are very relevant for determining the value of aggregate stock market!”

Patatoukas’ theory and evidence has the potential to change how capital market participants and policy makers use accounting data from corporate financial reports when making inferences at the aggregate stock market level. “Maybe it is not a pure speculation to expect that future research will uncover even more evidence on the relevance of aggregate accounting data for stock market valuation,” says Patatoukas.

See full paper by Patatoukas.

Undergrad Program to Host First Women Empowerment Day, April 19

| by Laura Counts

In her third year of lecturing in the Haas Undergraduate Program, alumna Krystal Thomas, BS 94, realized that 90 percent of the conversations in her office hours involved young women coming to her to have “the conversation.”

The conversation goes like this, she says: “I’m freaked out about what happens after I graduate. What’s it like to be a women in business? Is it really as difficult as I hear?”

Seeking to provide more support to these young women, Thomas teamed up with Undergraduate Program Director Erika Walker to hold the program’s first Women Empowerment Day on April 19, which will bring nearly a dozen successful alumnae back to the school to talk with students.

“If we are talking seriously about building women leaders, then students need the opportunity to meet successful women leaders,” says Thomas. “This is a chance for students to ask the questions that they really want answers to.”

The afternoon event will feature talks by Kellie McElhaney, faculty director of the Haas Center for Responsible Business, and Valorie Burton, a bestselling author and life coach. McElhaney’s recent research has involved studying the positive impact of women in business, and she also taught a new Women in Business course to MBA students last fall. Burton has been a guest on hundreds of radio and TV shows and a speaker who has inspired audiences at such companies as GE, Goldman Sachs, and Accenture.

The event also will feature a tea in which students will speak in small groups with one successful Haas alumna, who will rotate every 45 minutes so that students can meet several different women.

“It will be inspirational, but it will also be very practical because of the tools that Valorie will deliver to help students start thinking about themselves,” adds Thomas, who is teaching a Business Communications course this semester.

While other schools struggle to attract women to business majors, the Haas Undergraduate Program has enjoyed significant success, with women comprising 50 percent of its enrollment, notes Walker, who first conceived of an event for female students three years ago.

“I wanted to do something special to highlight that success for our female students and provide additional encouragement to them,” Walker says. “This may influence the next generation of CEOs.”

The event, to be held in the Wells Fargo room from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., will be open to 100 students. About 75 students were nominated by faculty and staff to participate. The remaining 25 spaces will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Walker will send out a general announcement later this week after the nominated students have had a chance to respond.　

Other activities on women at Haas this month include the 17th annual Women Leadership Conference on April 6, organized by MBA students, and the annual invitation-only Women in Leadership Dinner on April 10 for alumnae who give back to Haas. In February, the UC Berkeley Career Center also hosted the Northern California Network of Women Chapter’s College Networking and Panel Discussion for undergraduate and graduate students. The title of the event was “The Astute Graduate: Thinking Outside the ABC’s – Business Careers in the CPG Industry.

Paul Gertler Wins International Award for Contributions to Global Health

| by Laura Counts

Professor Paul Gertler, who has spent the past 16 years studying how financial incentives can improve health care, was recognized March 7 by the Mexican National Institutes of Health for his contributions in Mexico and around the world.

Gertler received the Juan Jose Bobadilla Medal for Global Health at the 15th International Congress of Research in Public Health in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Gertler was the first economist to win the annual award, which is typically given to medical professionals or epidemiologists.

"I think they're recognizing that improving public health is more than just improving medical care," Gertler said. "Much of the focus on improving health in low-income countries is focused on improving technology. But for that we need financial incentives in order to get the most out of medical technologies."

Gertler delivered a keynote address at the conference titled "Pay for Performance: Theory, Evidence, and Relevance," in which he explained how bonus payments to medical facilities can be used to improve health care performance and productivity throughout Mexico. He also presented evidence from research he previously conducted in Rwanda and Argentina. The payments, which are funded by governments or insurance plans, reward providers based upon a customized set of metrics.

The essence of this approach, Gertler explained, is about improving efficiency and ensuring that quality keeps pace with capability. "Rather than pouring more money into the health care system, the question is, 'Can we get providers to do a better job with what they have?'" he said.

Gertler is the Li Ka Shing Foundation Chair in Health Management, director of Haas' Institute of Business and Economics Research, and faculty director of the Graduate Program in Health Services Management.

Studying and Launching Simultaneously: Student Startup Roundup

| by Laura Counts

From a global crowdfunding platform to a $2.4 million waste-to-food mushroom business to a school lunch program in dozens of cities, Berkeley-Haas has produced a number of successful startups that have attracted the attention of such media giants as the Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Sunset magazine.

Juggling study groups with venture planning has become increasingly popular as the pace of innovation and entrepreneurship grows ever-more rapid. “The best way to create entrepreneurial leaders is to give them the experience of building startups while they are here,” said Andre Marquis, executive director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, in the latest issue of BerkeleyHaas magazine.

To highlight student entrepreneurs at Haas who are doing just that, we are launching an occasional series of articles about student ventures called "Student Startup Roundup." Here is our first installment: a look at three student entrepreneurs in the Undergrad, Full-time, and Evening & Weekend MBA programs:

Evening & Weekend MBA Program: Gaurav Agarwal, CEO and co-founder, Traverie

Gaurav Agarwal, MBA 13, and partners Jimming Chen and Tiffany Yang launched Traverie, an interactive magazine, to make travel decisions easier and even more appealing. Users connect through Facebook for inspiration and recommendations from friends. The venture recently placed second in the Student Startup Madness tournament at South by Southwest, emerging from a field of 64 startup teams.

Launched this past November, Traverie is currently focused on growing its user base and developing partnerships.  Agarwal says classes such as Problem Finding Problem Solving and New Venture Finance, along with the Lester Center’s Startup Board of Mentors Program and the UC Berkeley Startup Competition, have all greatly contributed to the team’s success. “At Haas I’ve learned how to create a business out of an idea and how to build a strong team, which is the most important asset in a knowledge company.”

Full-time MBA Program: Jane Buescher, GM and co-founder, RockIT Recruiting

A tip from an alum from her undergrad alma mater (Duke) steered Jane Buescher, MBA 13, into the recruiting business with founding partner Cody Voellinger. The two friends had longstanding plans to launch a venture together, along with combined expertise in corporate recruiting (Voellinger) and corporate finance, risk management, and operations (Buescher). After the alum suggested that the Bay Area had a big need for efficient and effective matching of talent to need, the pair founded RockIt to help Bay Area startups build and grow their engineering teams.

Launched in June 2011, the company is currently working to meet the talent needs of about 50 Bay Area startups through a mix of high-tech tools and a high-touch approach. The firm engages in activities such as trivia nights and hackathons to meet and support the developer community. The six RockIT team members also host “Careers Lunched,” an initiative in which RockIT team members take an engineer to lunch (more than 500 so far) to expand their knowledge of engineer skills sets and interests beyond what is on a resume. Noting that a lot of its startup clients boast company T-shirts or track suits, RockIT decided to complement the mix with a trademark headband.

Undergraduate Program: Jacob Park, Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder, Jellycoaster

Jacob Park, BS 14, is co-founder of a mobile application developer named Jellycoaster, whose first product, Buddy Up, has gained 200,000 users (mainly in South Korea) since its launch in June. The startup has raised $800,000 in seed funding from two South Korean VC investors: POSCO Venture Partners and SBC Ventures. The app helps users capture and record moments with friends; earn badges for activities such as coffee, movies, and working out; and identify their pals of choice through a leader board.

The idea for Buddy Up came when the founders realized that in our world today, virtually anything is searchable on the Internect except one's memories. Park's co-founders are CEO Daniel Joo and Chief Strategic Joseph Shin, currently a visiting researcher at Haas

"Coming to the Haas School of Business is probably the best decision that we’ve ever made for our company," says Park. "From numerous Lester Center of Entrepreneurship-sponsored guest speaker series and entrepreneur network events to the extensive alumni network in the tech industry, we were able to develop relationships with individuals that have been a significant help to the development of Buddy Up."

"A newly launched database of UC Berkeley alumni network called @cal allowed us to reach out to the alumni’s in the leading technology companies, including Twitter, Google, and Facebook. As we frequently visit these companies, we are able to sit down with engineers to gain valuable feedback to improve Buddy Up," Park adds.