Rain didn’t dampen the spirits of the Berkeley Haas undergraduate Class of 2019 Sunday morning, as close to 400 students were urged to make an impact on the world and “elevate and empower” others.
The threat of bad weather moved the typical commencement ceremony from the Greek Theatre to Chou Hall’s Spieker Forum, where Dean Ann Harrison welcomed the crowd indoors, thanking parents, families, and friends for supporting the grads.
“Today we celebrate your achievement,” said Harrison, herself a Berkeley undergraduate alumna in economics and history. “You have persevered through four years of a rigorous undergraduate curriculum. You have mastered new knowledge and skills, and you have adopted a larger view of the world. You have met new people, volunteered for great causes, and made many friends. You should be proud of yourselves. I know we are.”
Dean Ann Harrison (right) told the grads “You have met new people, volunteered for great causes, and made many friends. You should be proud of yourselves. I know we are.” Photo: Josh Edelson
“Living life consciously”
Commencement speaker Steve Etter, BS 83, MBA 89, a Haas finance faculty member who co-founded Greyrock Capital Group, pointed out the diversity and accomplishments of the 2019 class: three quarters of the grads started at Cal as freshman, while a quarter came from the community college system. Many hail from around the globe, including Asia, Europe, and Latin America; and many, like Etter, are the first generation in their families to attend college. A third of the class completed simultaneous degrees across 34 majors.
Etter, who has taught at Cal for the past 24 years—even while going through cancer treatment—shared four themes “for students to live their life by” when they leave Berkeley Haas: choosing to have a good day instead of a bad day, every day; focusing on how you treat others on a daily basis—not just friends and family, but everyone from the airport security checker to the Starbuck’s barista; thinking about ethics and “living your life consciously within your views”; and finally, focusing on your contributions to society.
Stephen Etter, who has taught at Cal for the past 24 years, shared four themes “for students to live their life by” when they leave Haas. Photo: Josh Edelson.
“This has nothing to do with how your work day contributes to the world economy,” he said. “This focus is on the donation of your time, knowledge and dollars outside of the workforce.”
Hip hop music’s link to business
In his speech “Business is Boomin’,'” a nod to a DJ Khaled lyric, student speaker Sreyas Sai Samantula noted that the business world and the hip hop world share a lot in common. “At its core, hip hop music is a catalyst, paving the way for progress and change,” he said. “It’s about uplifting yourself and your community and, in its purest form, it’s about utilizing personal success as a means of elevating others. Business should be the same.”
Watch student speaker Sreyas Sai Samantula’s commencement speech: Business is Boomin’.
Holding a diploma is a privilege that many others around the world will never have, he told the grads. “Many of my brothers and sisters in my birthplace of South India who go hungry for food every day will never have this privilege,” he said. “Many of our brothers and sisters right next door in Oakland and L.A. who suffer from violence, discrimination, inequity every single day of their lives will never have this privilege….. but that can change.”
Like song writers, business people, through the companies and products they create, share a distinct and rare opportunity to inspire millions of people, he said. “On our professional journeys, we have the ability to elevate and empower others,” he said. “As Haas grads we need to understand that we do have the power to be socially responsible, to support diversity, and to invest in our communities no matter what we’re doing, what industry we’re in.”
Photo: Josh Edelson
And the award winners are….
Culture of Haas Awards:
Ana Mancia for Question the Status Quo
Patrick Ong for Confidence Without Attitude
Mark Ansell for Students Always
Jaskirat Gaelan for Beyond Youself
The Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching: Janet Brady, distinguished teaching fellow
The Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) Award for Excellence in Teaching: Cori Land, MBA 19
The Departmental Citation for the most outstanding academic achievement: Tyler Barbee, who has been inspired throughout his life by the determination of his older, autistic brother, Connor. “In his time at Berkeley and at Haas, he has sought to develop a similar work ethic and perseverance as his brother in all that he does,” Harrison said.
Haas culture award winners: Mark Ansell for Students Always; Patrick Ong for Confidence Without Attitude; Ana Mancia for Question the Status Quo; and Jaskirat Gaelan for Beyond Youself. Photo: Josh Edelson
Raymond Miles, a former Berkeley Haas dean and professor emeritus whose leadership has had a deep and lasting impact on the Haas campus and community, passed away on May 13 in Albany, California. He was 86.
Former Dean and Prof. Emeritus Raymond Miles
Miles is credited with growing the school’s thriving alumni network, securing a campus that invites community, and hiring prestigious faculty members who have included two Nobel Laureates. As a scholar, he was a trailblazer in strategic management, defining human resource management styles commonly taught today.
“Ray Miles was an outstanding scholar and a visionary leader. He helped build the fields of organizational strategy and innovation at Berkeley Haas and around the world,” said Former Dean Laura Tyson, distinguished professor of the graduate school. “He represented all of the stakeholders at Haas—the students, the faculty, the alumni, and the business community, and he began the planning and fundraising process that enabled the move of the Haas School to its new complex. He dedicated his professional life to our community and we will miss him.”
Crash course in management
Born in Cleburne, Texas in 1932, Miles got a crash course in business management when he was just 22. Attending the University of North Texas (UNT), he paid for his BA in journalism by working nights for the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad. There, he said, he learned hard lessons about how managers should best supervise their employees—and how they shouldn’t. Those musings led to a lifetime of inquiry into strategic management, making Miles an early pioneer in thinking about how companies could align their strategies with the goals they were trying to accomplish.
After marrying Lucile Marie Dustin in 1952, and training and serving as an Air Force pilot, he earned an MBA at UNT and then a PhD at Stanford on a scholarship. Eventually, he landed in Berkeley, where he embarked upon a 50-year career in research that helped to crystalize the concept of strategic management. He put his leadership teachings into practice as dean in the 1980s.
The emergence of human resources
When Miles first arrived at Berkeley as a new professor in the Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations group in the fall of 1963, the concept of strategic management was in its infancy. His 1965 Harvard Business Review article, “Human Relations or Human Resources?” led managers to think differently about how to utilize people in their organizations.
“Ray was one of the early contributors to the idea of human resources as a strategic function,” said James Lincoln, the Haas Mitsubishi Chair in International Business and Finance Emeritus, who worked with Miles at Berkeley’s Institute of Industrial Relations. “Instead of thinking about employees as personnel, he put forth the notion that human assets are as important as the financial and physical assets of a company and need to be managed in a strategic way. Of course everyone thinks that now, but back then, it was new.”
In the next decade, Miles studied how organizations could improve, eventually developing his breakthrough 1978 book, Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process, written with his former student Charles Snow, PhD 72. They argued there were three distinct types of successful companies, each with its own management style: prospectors, defenders, and analyzers (and one unsuccessful type, reactors). Once a company figured out which class it belonged to, it could design its management structure and processes accordingly. Furthermore, the authors wrote, companies could change over time in response to their environments.
The book has become a classic in the management strategy field and is still regularly cited.
In later research, Miles continued to explore new concepts in the field of management strategy, creating the notion of “fit” that would help companies determine the best company strategy and how to create their structure and process accordingly. “That underlying idea of having the right strategy and structure for the market environment is still front and center of what every business school teaches in MBA courses on strategy and organizational design,” said Glenn Carroll, a former Haas professor who now teaches at Stanford.
Building campus and community
Raymond Miles, second from right, shows off progress on the new campus to Haas alum Steve Herrick, BS 60, and other supporters who were active in the building campaign.
Miles proved the validity of his management strategies as dean of Haas between 1983 and 1990. His tenure started at a time of crisis for higher education, with both federal and state funding slashed. At the same time, the business school was bursting at the seams, cramped into Barrows Hall with several other departments. Berkeley’s chancellor, however, was reluctant to include a new building for the school in its capital campaign.
To manage the crisis, Miles expanded the school’s advisory board with dozens of business people who urged the school to raise money for a new building by itself. Miles commissioned former Berkeley architecture chair Charles Moore to design a new building on the site of the old campus hospital that could create community and serve as a bridge to the rest of the university. Moore’s elegant model, with interconnected buildings around a central courtyard and arches connecting it to campus, helped sway the administration. With the help of former dean Earl “Budd” Cheit, Miles secured what was then the largest gift in UC Berkeley’s history to build it.
At the same time, Miles helped grow the Cal Business Alumni Association (now known as the Berkeley Haas Alumni Network) into an active, thriving community and hired the school’s first full-time development director to increase outreach to alumni and bring the vision of a new building to fruition. By the time Miles stepped down in 1990, plans were well underway for the building, which broke ground in 1992 and opened in 1995.
Miles with daughter-in-law Amy Miles at the 2012 Haas Gala
During his time as dean, Miles also boosted the school’s academic potential and prestige by helping to expand the faculty. He doubled the number of endowed chairs to 24—then about a fifth of the Berkeley campus total—recruiting such luminaries as Nobel Laureate Oliver Williamson.
Miles also advanced the field of business education by supporting new programs to build on the school’s unique interdisciplinary heritage and blending of research and application, which he described as “theory-based professional practice”. The Program in Organizational Strategy focused several disciplines’ research on strategic decisions facing organizational managers. The Program in Entrepreneurship and Innovation focused on the process of developing a business plan and the broader issues of how technological and economic innovation is stimulated or stunted. And the Program in International Competitiveness focused on the need for new strategies in a rapidly changing global economy.
Miles also believed that the business school should not be an island, isolated from the community around it. In 1989, he started the Boost@BerkeleyHaas program—formerly known as the East Bay Outreach Program and then Young Entrepreneurs at Haas (YEAH)—to bring local high school students from families who traditionally hadn’t gone to college to Haas to learn about business and entrepreneurship and get comfortable on campus. The program just celebrated its 30th anniversary. It serves about 140 young people annually, and the overwhelming majority go on to college.
A “powerful people-developer”
Miles with Ann Hsu, MBA 98, the 2012 Raymond E. Miles Alumni Service Award winner, at the Haas Gala
Former Dean Rich Lyons, the William & Janet Cronk Chair in Innovative Leadership, credits Miles with having a huge influence on him and other Haas leaders.
“Ray was an important mentor to me, and a powerful people-developer more generally. You always had the sense that he had your best interest—and the school’s best interest—at heart. It’s hard to get more ‘beyond yourself’ than Ray,” Lyons said, referencing one of the school’s four Defining Leadership Principles.
Prof. Candi Yano, associate dean for academic affairs and chair of the faculty, noted that until quite recently, Miles continued to come into the office nearly every day and was continuing to publish research articles on organizational strategy and innovation. “He leaves a remarkable legacy,” she said.
In honor of the significant impact Miles has had on Berkeley Haas, the Cal Business Association created the Raymond E. Miles Alumni Service Award in 1990. This award is presented each year to an alumnus who exemplifies superior volunteer leadership.
Miles is survived by his daughter Laura (Jim), sons Grant (Patti) and Ken (Amy), brother Don (Jodi), and seven grandchildren: Justin, Michael, Nathaniel, Anthony, Sarah, Courtney and Brooke. He was predeceased by his wife Lucile in 2014.
A memorial service will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley on Saturday, June 15, 2019 at 2:00 p.m.
While she was working at Microsoft several years ago, Christina Chavez, MBA 19, logged into an anonymous online job compensation board called Blind and was shocked to see the tech gender pay gap in plain sight.
“People were posting their data, and we started saying ‘whoah’ there’s some major differences in how our colleagues are getting paid,” said Chavez, who will start working at Google after graduation.
With these numbers top of mind, pay equity and transparency was a top goal for Chavez when she arrived at Berkeley Haas. She put that priority into action last fall when she and classmate Jack Anderson—a fellow member of the student-led Haas Gender Equity Initiative—set up a new spreadsheet where classmates can share all the details of their compensation packages. (The spreadsheet is managed by Jordan Sale, MBA 19, and founder of startup 81cents, which provides salary support for women during job negotiations.)
Using salary data and research provided by Berkeley Haas Prof. Laura Kray, the students created a Haas Wage Gap Infographic, which shows that women who graduated from Haas last year earned 96% of what their male peers earned. But the more concerning finding was that for alumni with greater than 10 years experience, the salary gap between men and women widened.
“We earned 96 cents to the dollar in the last MBA class and people were like ‘yeah we’re approaching equity,’ but this gap grows over time,” Chavez said.
Christina Chavez
Moving toward transparency
The Haas students launched this project to expand what’s offered through CMG Bears —the Haas Career Management Group’s tool that allows MBA students to anonymously enter and look up salary data based on company and job role. The database offers a wealth of information, but doesn’t track salaries by gender.
Abby Scott, assistant dean of MBA Career Management and Corporate Partnerships, who worked with the students to provide historical data for the project, said the long-term salary gap is a concern. She added that Haas is working to add gender identification to CMG Bears to provide as much context to the salary data as possible.
“I don’t think that we know the real cause of the long-term pay gap, but we are advising students to make sure they’re negotiating salary and thinking beyond compensation—and we speak frequently to women about both the importance of negotiation and taking on leadership roles,” she said.
By many estimates, American women working full time earn about 80% to 85% of what men earn (a statistic that varies by race/ethnicity and how it’s measured). Kellie McElhaney, founding director of the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership (EGAL) at Haas, said transparency is a critical weapon in the fight to close the pay gap. “Knowledge is power,” she said, noting that a growing group of companies such as Salesforce, Gap, and Google have been moving in the right direction, toward public reporting of compensation.
In recent research, Prof. Kray and Margaret Lee, a postdoctoral research fellow sponsored by the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership (EGAL), looked at the Berkeley Haas alumni surveys of full-time professionals who graduated between 1994 and 2014. The researchers found that while men’s base salaries were on average about 8 percent higher than women’s, it’s in the bonuses, share values, and options—which tend to not be tracked as publicly as salaries—where the men’s salaries outpaced women’s. Overall compensation for Haas women MBAs averaged about $290,000, or about 66 percent of men’s $439,000 average. Kray and Lee also linked part of the pay gap to the fact that men manage larger teams than equally qualified women.
Tricky negotiations
It’s the company shares and stock options that are trickier in negotiations and not often tracked, Anderson said, adding that for some reason, male MBAs appear to fare better in those areas after graduating from Haas.
Jack Anderson
“That’s the thing that jumped out to me: how much of the offer goes beyond base compensation [salary and signing bonus],” he said. “So many companies are offering other compensation, RSUs (restricted stock units), and stock options. It drove us to think about how important it is for people to understand this and to get some basis for comparison. We need to work on how we display that information for people.”
But that might not be enough. In their research, Kray and Lee found that the problem goes far deeper than negotiation skills, pointing toward a bias about leadership that leads men to be put in charge of larger teams than equally-qualified women, and get paid more because of it.
McElhaney agreed that better negotiating skills will only go so far—if it comes down to the basic fact that managers just want to pay men more and that women are facing entrenched bias.
“You can change processes but the long-term problem is people’s individual biases,” she said. “If they believe things like men do a better job at leading big teams, or that women bosses are unlikable, this is unconscious and conscious bias at work.”
To access the new spreadsheet, students must agree to share their own salary data anonymously, including their preferred gender, job title and function, years of post-college work experience, geographic location of the job offer, and compensation details, including base salary, bonus, and any equity package offered. All students are asked whether they negotiated their compensation— and if so, to include the initial and final offers. So far, 58 students in the 2019 MBA class who have received job offers have added data to the sheet—split about evenly between men and women.
Patrick Awuah, MBA 99, founder of Ashesi University in Ghana, will be the speaker at the 2019 Full-time MBA and Evening & Weekend MBA commencement, while Steve Etter, BS 83, MBA 89, a founding partner of Greyrock Capital Group and a long-time Haas finance lecturer, will speak at undergraduate commencement.
The 2019 MBA commencement will take place on Friday, May 24, at 2 p.m. at the Greek Theatre.
The undergraduate commencement will take place on Sunday, May 19, at 9 a.m. at the Greek Theatre.
Patrick Awuah, MBA 99
Patrick Awuah
Born and raised in Ghana, Awuah came to Berkeley Haas after attending Swarthmore College and working at Microsoft. His son’s birth inspired him to want to give back to his home country by establishing a new university that would offer a liberal arts education.
In past interviews, he has emphasized the need to teach through critical thinking rather than through rote memorization, which was the general practice in Ghana. His dream was to develop ethical and entrepreneurial leaders who would go on to revitalize Ghana and the African continent.
At Haas, Awuah turned his idea into a project through the International Business Development (IBD) Program. For several years Berkeley MBA students helped build the business plan for Ashesi University, and Haas faculty served as advisers. Classmate Nina Marini helped launch Ashesi in 2002 in a rented facility with 30 inaugural students. Today, Ashesi has a new 100-acre campus outside Accra with an enrollment of more than 1,000 students who hail from 15 African nations. The school has more than 1,200 alumni.
“Patrick is an inspiring business leader who truly represents our Defining Leadership Principles,” said Laura Tyson, former Haas dean and faculty director of the Institute for Business and Social Impact. “We are very proud of all that he has accomplished and honored to welcome him back for commencement.”
Awuah, who was profiled in BerkeleyHaas magazine, has earned many accolades, including:
Etter has spent the last 30 years of his career working in private equity. As one of the founding partners at Greyrock Capital Group, he helped raise and invest almost $1 billion over four funds.
Previously, he held positions at Bank of America, GE Capital, Citibank and PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he obtained his CPA. Most recently he has transitioned into the world of social impact investing.
For the last 24 years—48 consecutive semesters—Etter has been a professional faculty member in finance at Berkeley Haas. He has twice earned the school’s prestigious Cheit Award for Teaching Excellence from his undergraduate students.
Alumnus Kevin Chou, BS 02, cites him as an inspiration for his gift toward the funding of Chou Hall.
“The personal commitment and coaching Steve provides his students is extraordinary,” said Erika Walker, assistant dean of the undergraduate program. “Steve’s classes have inspired scores of students to go beyond themselves.”
Etter’s role at Haas goes beyond teaching. He coaches Haas external case competition teams, helps with professional job searches, and works with many student athletes who go on to professional sporting careers (including Jarod Goff, Jaylen Brown, Missy Franklin, Ryan Murphy, and Marshawn Lynch).
Riley Brown, BS 19, and a Cal varsity crew coxswain, said Etter helped her think more seriously and deeply about what set her apart as a student when she was applying to Haas. “He gives me incredible advice,” she said. “Every time he opens his mouth I have to listen because I know there will be a nugget of gold.”
The Full-time Berkeley MBA and the Berkeley MBA for Executives rose to their highest ranks ever in the latest U.S. News & World Report ranking published today.
U.S. News ranked the Full-time Berkeley MBA #6 for the first time—tied with Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Columbia Business School; the Berkeley MBA program had ranked #7 for the prior 11 years.
The full-time MBA rankings are based on data provided by participating U.S. schools and on polls of business school deans and directors of accredited MBA programs, as well as surveys of corporate recruiters and company contacts. The score is calculated from placement success and starting salary (35%), student selectivity (25%), peer poll (25%), and the average of the last three years of recruiter polls (15%).
The Berkeley MBA for Executives rose to #7, up from #9 last year, in the EMBA ranking. The EMBA ranking is based entirely on the peer assessment by business school deans and directors of accredited MBA programs.
The Evening & Weekend MBA ranked #2 with an index of 99 (out of 100) points, after being ranked #1 for the past six years. The part-time MBA ranking is based on a peer assessment score by deans and MBA directors (weighted 50%), various student quality measures, and percent of MBA students who are part-time (12.5%).
In the specialty rankings, Haas placed as follows:
The Full-time Berkeley MBA Program again ranks #7 among US schools and #10 in the world, according to the Financial Times Global MBA ranking published today.
Haas faculty research ranked #9 in the world and #7 among US schools.
The ranking is based on data provided by participating schools and input from alumni who graduated in 2015, which accounts for 55% of the ranking.
Strong alumni salaries are a factor in the Haas School’s showing. Haas alumni recorded the 4th highest weighted salaries in the world and 8th highest salaries today. (Weighted salaries refers to the average alumni salary three years after graduation, US$ PPP equivalent, with adjustment for variations between sectors). These two salary components account for 40% of the ranking.
Haas, tied with Michigan Ross, scored the highest in aims achieved with 91% alumni reporting that their MBA achieved their aims.
In the top special categories, determined by the alumni survey, Haas ranks as follows:
#2 in corporate social responsibility
Chou Hall is officially the country’s greenest academic building, having earned TRUE Zero Waste certification at the highest possible level along with a LEED Platinum certification for its energy efficient design and operation.
The TRUE Platinum Zero Waste certification came after more than a year of dedicated waste sorting, composting, and other efforts to divert over 90 percent of Chou’s landfill waste. The official notice came from Green Business Certification Inc. (GBSI) on Dec. 20, following an on-site audit by the U.S. Green Building Council.
“The whole team is beyond excited to lead the way with the country’s greenest academic building,” said Danner Doud-Martin, the staff lead of the Haas Zero Waste Initiative and associate director of the International Business Development (IBD) Program at Haas. “It’s been such a journey—more than two years of trying to get all of our stakeholders on board with behavioral changes. It’s been a significant challenge, but we are so proud of all that we’ve accomplished.”
“A mark of leadership”
The Chou Hall Zero Waste Initiative is a joint effort led by a multidisciplinary team of graduate and undergraduate students working closely with Cal Zero Waste, Haas faculty and staff, facilities management, and building vendors to ensure that building operations are designed for successful waste diversion.
“Zero waste is a culture change for organizations and we’re thrilled to see that Berkeley Haas students, faculty, and staff have wholeheartedly committed to it,” said Stephanie Barger, director of TRUE at the U.S. Green Business Council. “TRUE certification is a mark of leadership and ongoing commitment to advancing a zero-waste economy.” About 25 percent of the more than 100 TRUE-certified facilities have achieved TRUE Platinum, Barger said. Chou Hall is the only academic building to achieve the honor.
Staff lead Danner Doud-Martin (right) with Michelle La of Cal Zero Waste at a recent Chou Hall zero waste audit.
During their December visit, the final step toward certification, the Green Building Council interviewed stakeholders involved with the project—including Courtney Chandler, Haas chief strategy and operating officer, former Haas COO Jo Mackness, and Haas Management Lecturer Frank Schultz, among others.
Separately, GBCI also announced this month that Chou received LEED Platinum certification for its architectural design, construction, and functioning of the building, earning 85 points—well above the 80 points required for the Platinum rating. Points are allotted in areas such as water efficiency, energy use, construction materials used, indoor environmental quality, and design innovation. Haas is also pursuing a third designation, WELL certification, given to buildings that promote user health and well-being.
“Going for all three certifications at the highest level is incredibly ambitious,” Chandler said. “With WELL certification we hope to achieve a trifecta. We are so proud of the work that everyone has done to make Chou Hall the greenest academic building in the country, and we hope that our work will inspire and guide all of the UC campuses and other institutions across the country.”
“A wonderful confirmation”
TRUE Zero Waste certification levels include Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. To achieve TRUE Platinum, the Chou team earned 69 out of the 70 credits that they applied for, providing a narrative and evidence for each credit. Credits included everything from composting food scraps to tracking the purchase of environmentally preferred products to providing employees with access to zero-waste training to reducing the use of hazardous waste chemicals.
Student team lead Jessica Heiges sorting trash during the recent Zero Waste audit.
Jessica Heiges, the Chou Hall Zero Waste Initiative student lead and a candidate for the Master’s of Development Practice program at the College of Natural Resources, called the certification “a wonderful confirmation that the enormous amount of hours that the community devoted toward the effort was finally validated.”
“This was a very difficult initiative because we are the first ones to go through it,” she said. “There were no best practices, no industry trends that we could fall back on or implement with our eyes closed. We had to address every single credit and the underlying motivation behind each credit, and had to go through it in a much more meticulous manner because it was all brand new.”
With the certification earned, Doud-Martin said the committee will now draft a “best practices” manual as a guide for other UC campus buildings that want to follow in Haas’ footsteps. Heiges said she’s excited to meet with other groups on campus to share what they’ve learned.
A shift toward reusing and reducing
The zero waste certification process began as soon as Connie & Kevin Chou Hall opened to students in August 2017.
“We initiated the TRUE Zero Waste certification for Chou Hall as our beacon to demonstrate that zero waste is definitely achievable for the entire campus,” said Lin King, manager of Cal Zero Waste, which manages waste for all of campus and is aligned with the University of California’s commitment to move toward zero waste by 2020.
In August 2018, Haas participated in its third week-long TRUE Zero Waste audit. Waste audits—a messy, hands-on endeavor that requires separating compostable items like soiled paper towels and paper cups from recyclable cans and bottles. The audits are a required component to better understand the waste flow and provide a benchmark for improvement.
The team used audit data to make more zero-waste adjustments and recommendations, including working with Café Think and the Evening & Weekend MBA program to change student snack offerings to bulk items; implementing a program to donate Café Think’s coffee grounds to UC Berkeley’s Gill Tract Farm for garden compost, and replacing the bathrooms’ one-roll toilet paper dispensers with two-roll dispensers to conserve toilet paper. (Custodial staff are less likely to toss an almost-spent roll if there’s a second one in the dispenser, Doud-Martin said.)
Doud-Martin said the next phase will be to encourage a shift from recycling and composting toward reusing or reducing single-use items such as “to go” containers and coffee cups. One recent example is a pilot with Café Think, which allowed customers to put down a $1 deposit for a mason jar of overnight oats and yogurt that can be refilled at the cafe. “Our goals are mighty,” she said. “But this shift would align us with more of a true zero-waste model.”
The job market is bright for the 2018 full-time MBA class. Photo: Noah Berger
Salaries and sign-on bonuses remained strong for the Class of 2018, with a bump in the number of students landing jobs three months post-graduation.
About 93.4 percent of job seekers accepted offers within three months of graduation, with about 83 percent receiving job offers by graduation.
“This is just about as strong of a job market for MBAs that I’ve ever seen,” said Abby Scott, assistant dean of Career Management & Corporate Relations. “Salaries are up, thanks to stock options and bonuses. We’re really pleased with the employment success of this year’s class.”
Pay is solid this year for the class of 242 graduates, with average salaries of $127,571, up from $125,572 last year. Those salaries were topped off by an average sign-on bonus of $29,212. About seventy percent of the class received signing bonuses, and about 41 percent received stock options or grants.
Tech, consulting top sectors
Technology was again the most popular sector for new Berkeley MBAs, pulling in 32 percent of the graduates. Amazon, Google, and Adobe were among the top tech employers.
Gabriela Belo Soares, MBA 18, said she took a full-time job at Google in business operations and strategy for a number of reasons.
“I always admired the company’s trajectory and how it changed the way we use the internet, and I strongly identified with the company’s values and mission,” she said. “Tech companies are currently under massive scrutiny from users and the media and have a big pressure to keep up the high pace of growth and innovation. This environment is exciting and requires making smart decisions responsibly and quickly. That was what I was looking for.”
Meantime, 24 percent—or 44 students—took jobs in consulting, with McKinsey & Co., Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Bain & Co., Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and IDEO representing the top hiring firms in consulting.
Carina Serreze, MBA/MPH 17, who graduated in December, took a job as an associate with McKinsey—her first choice of the three offers she received.
“When it came down to it, I was choosing between a full-time offer at Genentech or a startup or McKinsey,” she said. What drove her decision was the opportunity to work across different healthcare verticals at McKinsey, where she also has more geographic flexibility (she now lives in Seattle and travels often to San Francisco).
“Consulting was an opportunity to go really broad,” she said.
New companies make list
Nearly 14 percent of grads took positions in finance, including fintech, up from 11.8 percent last year. Meantime, 14 graduates started companies, while 25 others went to startups in various industries.
New companies on the school’s top hiring list include EY Parthenon, IDEO, Kraft Heinz, and Tesla.
Maxwell Kushner-Lenhoff, MBA 18, said the work he did at Haas taught him many of the skills he needed to be successful in his current role as a global supply manager in battery materials at Tesla.
“I came back to Haas to get into cleantech and I discussed the work I did in the Cleantech to Market course during my interview process,” said Kushner-Lenhoff, who previously worked at the Dow Chemical Company. He is one of seven members of the Class of 2018 who went to work at Tesla.
Beverly Alexander and Brian Steel are celebrating the 10th year of the C2M program, which brings students together from across Berkeley to work with cleantech startups. Photo: Jim Block
Jenny Bailey, MBA 19, sat in a circle with her Cleantech to Market team in Spieker Forum on Tuesday, talking about cyanobacteria. More specifically, how to sell them for use in skincare.
“I’m not sure we should call them skincare solutions,” Bailey said, as teammates weighed in on how to define a skincare product line for startup HelioBioSys, which has developed cost-effective ways to harvest and process the bacteria, commonly found in oceans.
The students are among six teams — comprising 20 MBA students and 11 graduate students from engineering, biology, law, and other Berkeley schools — who will present their findings and recommendations to more than 200 alumni, faculty, students, and industry professionals at the 10th annual Cleantech to Market (C2M) Symposium in Chou Hall on Friday. In addition to two awards decided by the audience, judges will also award a $5,000 C2M Cleantech Award, sponsored by Wells Fargo.
Team HelioBioSys prepares for the Cleantech to Market Symposium. Photo: Jim Block
The C2M program, launched a decade ago, pairs students with scientists to help push promising technologies to market. With CO2 levels the highest in human history, the need to develop viable clean tech startups has never been more critical, says director Bev Alexander. Alexander runs the program with co-director Brian Steel and C2M faculty member Bill Shelander, a trio affectionately known as “B3” for their first names.
“Cleantech to Market grew out of an environmental urgency and it’s only grown more urgent,” Alexander says. “We’re giving students so much freedom to innovate here at a time when California has put a stake in the ground as an antidote to shifting federal government priorities.”
Indeed, California is leading the way on renewables and sustainable energy initiatives, and Berkeley is an epicenter — with C2M an influential part of the ecosystem. Over the past decade, the program has paired more than 300 researchers and startup founders with student teams. C2M pays off for these clean tech companies, which have collectively raised more than $142 million and employ about 300 people, Alexander says.
More women leading teams
This year’s new crop of teams will add to that success, by pitching ways for startups to commercialize a variety of new technologies.
There’s Dauntless.io, which works on adaptive machine learning for multiple applications; Opcondys, which is focused on power switching using light instead of electricity; Mosaic Materials, which is building metal-organic frameworks for gas separation; Lucent Optics, which developed light-redirecting film for efficient natural lighting; and Treau, which makes lightweight heat exchangers to decarbonize heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). Notably, half of the six student team leads this year are women, a program record. “I’m really encouraged and inspired by this,” says Bailey, who is a team lead.
Jahon Amir, MPP 19, a researcher at the Berkeley Lab, practices the presentation with his team, Opcondys. Photo: Jim Block
Steel and Alexander have nurtured C2M from a small, student-led pilot connecting scientists at Lawrence Berkeley Lab with graduate students on campus, to a marquis program that’s forged tight alliances with state agencies like the California Energy Commission and federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Energy, top universities, and a network of incubators. “We’ve gone from a local pilot to a national pipeline,” Alexander says. “We used to go ask people at Lawrence Berkeley Lab if we could work on their technologies, and now we have people from all over the country applying for just six to eight slots in our program. Our alumni are among the ‘who’s who’ of this industry.” To date, more than 400 graduate students — paired with scientists and researchers throughout the 15-week program— have completed the C2M course.
Getting the technology out of the lab
Among the first was Brooks Kincaid, MBA 11, who co-founded battery technology storage startup Imprint Energy with UC Berkeley PhD student Christine Ho. It was one of the first startups to come out of C2M. “This was her technology, her baby,” Kincaid recalls. “She was pretty engaged and spent a lot of time with our team but had no concept of how to commercialize it.”
Kincaid, who had an engineering background, worked closely with Ho, and the pair gained some traction by the program’s end, along with a grant that enabled Ho to continue the work in her PhD lab. As president and CEO of Imprint, Kincaid focused on getting a license agreement in place, hiring the team, and getting seed money from Dow Chemical, a longtime C2M sponsor.
By the time Kincaid left Imprint Energy to pursue a finance career in 2014, the Alameda, Ca.-based company had raised about $9 million. “The technology made it out of the lab and survived,” he said. “But we’re also a good example of the time and energy and patience required to develop a cleantech innovation.”
Team Mosaic meets with C2M faculty member Bill Shelander (left). Photo: Jim Block
C2M was originally conceived as an extracurricular project by Lawrence Berkeley Lab and students in the Berkeley Energy Resources Collaborative, or BERC, a multidisciplinary student organization. Prof. Catherine Wolfram brought the pilot into the Energy Institute at Haas, hiring Alexander and Cyrus Wadia, now vice president of sustainable business & innovation at Nike, as the first faculty co-directors.
Students who led the way
Students who helped launch the program have gone on to their own cleantech industry success. They include Naveen Sikka, MBA 09, CEO of biofuel startup TerViva, which was named to the list of top 25 AgTech startups by Forbes for the past two years; Adam Lorimer, MBA 10, who co-founded Alphabet Energy in 2009; and Christy Martell, MBA 10, is now a sales lead at energy storage company Stem. Martell says she appreciated working on a diverse C2M team with students majoring in English and public health. As a C2M coach, she’s among more than 1,000 cleantech industry pros who have served as class speakers, mentors, subject matter experts, and interviewees over the past decade.
Mosaic’s team lead Eric Kang, MBA 20Photo: Jim Block
“It’s so much more structured now, and so much more impactful for the students from a career perspective,” Martell says. “Bev and Brian and the team make sure the students get good exposure to the labs and the different technologies. And the level of research that goes into market plans — asking an open-ended question like, ‘Is this technology viable, and if so, in what market?’ and distilling that into a discrete plan — is so helpful for the students.”
The C2M annual cycle begins in January, when Steel, Alexander, and Shelander meet with leaders from the Department of Energy, Berkeley-based fellowship program Cyclotron Road, the Cleantech Open (which trains early-stage entrepreneurs), and the California Energy Commission to winnow down a list of possible startups. “It really helps to have knowledgeable partners referring pre-vetted technologies,” Steel says. One example is Howard Yuh, a UC Berkeley graduate who is founder and CEO of GreenBlu, a solar desalination startup. Alexander met Yuh through the Cleantech Open, inviting his startup to work with a C2M team in 2017.
Student teams are chosen in April and May, and projects kick off in August, culminating with a year-end symposium presentation and a 100-page report assessing the technology and recommending paths to market.
The course paid off for Maxwell Kushner-Lenhoff, MBA 18, whose team won two of the awards at last year’s symposium. But Kushner-Lenhoff, who is now a global supply manager of battery materials at Tesla, says there were bumps along the way in completing a project for the wastewater treatment technology startup MICROrganic Technologies. By the middle of the course, his team ranked itself poorly for effectiveness, and had to figure out how to turn the project around.
Kushner-Lenhoff says C2M is the reason he chose Haas. “No other program rivals C2M on meaningful engagement with cleantech startups,” he says. “These companies are banging on the door to have C2M teams work with them.”
Incoming Haas Dean Ann E. Harrison has deep Berkeley roots.
Renowned Wharton Economist and Berkeley Alumna Ann E. Harrison, BA 82 (economics and history), will begin her tenure as new Haas dean on Jan. 1, 2019.
Harrison is the William H. Wurster Professor of Multinational Management and Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Before joining the Wharton School in 2012, Harrison served as director of development policy at the World Bank.
Harrison has deep Berkeley roots. She’s been both student and teacher here, serving as a professor in Agricultural Resource Economics from 2001 to 2011. She joins an esteemed group of female economists who have made their impact on Haas, including Interim and former Dean Laura Tyson and Prof. Emeritus Janet Yellen, the former head of the Federal Reserve and now a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institute.
In recent weeks, Harrison has been meeting with Haas faculty and staff, developing her priorities and vision for the school. She recently sat with Berkeley Haas News for an interview.
Haas: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
Ann Harrison: I was born in France, and I came to the U.S. when I was 2 years old, grew up in the Bay Area in California, and went to UC Berkeley as an undergraduate. I am married to another economist who I met in graduate school. He’s originally from the Philippines, so we were married in Manila. We have two daughters: Alice goes to UC Santa Barbara, and Emily is a graduate student in art history.
In my free time, I love to hike all over California—in Point Reyes, at Inspiration Point in the Berkeley hills behind the university, and in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Could you share a few career highlights? What award or research project are you most proud of?
One of my most precious moments was when I received a phone call from Berkeley asking me if I would be interested in a tenured professorship. I just remember how thrilled I was when I received that phone call. More recently, one of my happiest moments was when I received the Sun Yefang Prize, which is awarded by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for the best research in economics on China.
Tell us a little more about your experience at the World Bank and what you did there.
I started at the World Bank right after my PhD, and have spent time going back and forth between the World Bank and different academic positions I’ve held over the years. In my most recent role there, I served as director of development policy. The World Bank’s mission is to try to free the world from poverty. I have also worked with other organizations such as the United Nations on similar goals.
What do you think are some of the Haas School’s greatest strengths?
The school has a number of really important strengths. It’s defined by its unique culture and the four Defining Leadership Principles, which are helping to create students who care about becoming great business leaders, who go beyond themselves, who are confident without having an attitude, and who question the status quo. Berkeley is a phenomenal institution, and its location brings with it a tremendous entrepreneurial culture.
What do you see as some of its challenges?
As a public institution, we have a much more limited budget than many private universities, and that continues to be a challenge for the students, the staff, and the faculty. But we are so enriched by the generosity of all of our donors, including those alumni who made enormous contributions to create our new building, Chou Hall. Berkeley has a very loyal set of donors and alumni, and I really look forward to working with them in the years to come.
What will your key priorities be as you begin your deanship?
I am very honored to have been asked to serve as dean of Berkeley Haas. This is a dream come true for me. It is also my good fortune to succeed outstanding deans—such as Rich Lyons and Laura Tyson—who have done an amazing job in strengthening our school and placing it at the forefront of business education. I plan to build on their successes to make this great school even better.
As I begin my deanship, I have three priorities: One is to grow the faculty in certain key areas, which include entrepreneurship, data analytics, and green business. I also want to further integrate Haas into the Berkeley community by increasing the number of cross-school programs that we have. My third priority is increasing the diversity of the student body and the faculty. As you know, we have put together a new action plan, which will allow us to increase the diversity of our full-time MBA program. But the role of diversity and the importance of inclusion is something that permeates all our degree programs, and that is very important to all us.
Why did you decide to move to a dean’s role versus teaching and research?
All my life, I have enjoyed research and learning and writing, but I’ve also really enjoyed making a difference. Working at the World Bank was an important opportunity for me to be in the real world and to see governments change—such as lending the Indian government a billion dollars to help them clean up its rivers. As a dean, one is able to combine the joy of research and teaching with actually making change, so that’s an incredibly exciting opportunity for me.
Berkeley Haas rose to #6 in Bloomberg Businessweek‘s Best B-Schools ranking of U.S.-based full-time MBA programs, the highest spot ever for the school in this ranking.
Businessweek‘s 30th annual ranking is based on surveys from almost 27,000 MBA students, alumni, and recruiters, along with data on compensation and job placement. Haas performed strongly this year in several categories, ranking #4 in entrepreneurship, #10 in starting salaries, and #10 in networking. Last year, the publication ranked Haas #11 overall.
Businessweek has significantly adjusted its ranking methodology over the past few years and made additional changes this year, noting the changes mean this year’s results are not directly comparable to prior years. Since 2015, the ranking has taken into account job placement and compensation, using data provided by the business schools and by alumni who are six-to-eight years post-graduation. That’s in addition to its customary poll of MBA employers and of the most recent graduating full-time MBA class (2018).
The publication asked employers, alumni, and recent grads to weight the importance of each of the ranking’s four categories/indexes. Based on the results, Businessweek weighted the four categories as follows to calculate schools’ overall ranking:
This year’s Businessweek Best B-Schools of U.S.-based full-time MBA programs is based on surveys of 10,400 students, 15,000 alumni, and 1,170 corporate recruiters, along with compensation and job-placement data from each school. A full global ranking will be published on December 11.
Arrow Capital’s student-run team: (left to right) Investment partners Ben Adler, JD 20, Levi Walsh, BA 19 (computer science and mathematics), Kaitlyn Uythoven, BS 19, Niles Chang, BS 20, Amy Guo, M.E.T. 22, and managing partner Matthew Bond, MBA 19.
A new student-led venture fund, Arrow Capital, launched last month to help shepherd more early-stage investments in startups related to UC Berkeley.
Arrow has an influential parent fund in Bow Capital. In 2015, the University of California partnered with Vivek Ranadivé to create Bow, a venture capital fund that would invest in research and technology developed by UC students and faculty. (UC’s Office of the Chief Investment Officer is an anchor investor with a $250 million commitment.) Ranadivé, the founder of TIBCO and the current owner of the Sacramento Kings, was asked to lead the fund.
Matthew Bond, MBA 19, returned to his startup roots after working in banking in London for seven years.
Bond connected with Bow Capital during his first year at Haas, when he served as a Berkeley Haas Venture Fellow. Asked by Bow to come up with new ideas for investing in UC Berkeley startups, Bond proposed a fund that would concentrate on smaller, pre-seed-round deals, providing additional deal flow to Bow—which typically makes seed and Series A deals across the UC-affiliated system and beyond.
Bow approved the idea and Arrow Capital was born. It’s managed by Bond and five UC Berkeley students who serve as investment partners. The partners will typically invest $15,000—but potentially more—in each deal. They plan to make six to ten deals per year and, if they succeed, expand Arrow’s footprint to other UC campuses.
A flywheel of growth
Once Arrow invests in a startup, the student investment partners will work with the founders to help grow their businesses and raise subsequent funding. “Our work does not stop once the paperwork is signed. In fact, it has barely begun,” Bond said. “We hope that the startups we back will go on to raise a larger round led by Bow.” By investing Berkeley’s own endowment dollars back into UC Berkeley startups, “we create a virtuous flywheel of growth,” Bond said.
Applications for startups are already pouring in, and Arrow began reviewing them this week. The only requirement to apply is that the company must be connected to someone who currently has or previously had a UC Berkeley affiliation. Aside from funding, Arrow is offering startup teams connections to UC Berkeley alumni, other startups, and campus accelerators, helping the teams find talent, and providing operational and strategic guidance.
As Arrow’s managing partner, Bond—who started his first company at age 16 and studied math at Oxford University as an undergraduate—fashioned a rigorous, competitive two-step interview process for the student applicants. About 100 people expressed interest in the five slots, and eight students competed in the final round. They were asked to review two startup pitches and defend the startup they chose to fund.
Choosing the team
Last month, five UC Berkeley students—including three from Haas—joined the partnership as investment partners. They include Amy Guo, a freshman in the Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology (M.E.T.) program; Kaitlyn Uythoven, BS 19; Niles Chang, BS 20, along with Levi Walsh, a third-year Computer Science major, and Berkeley Law student Ben Adler.
Bond specifically chose students from varied backgrounds with different investment interests and work experience. Chang, for example, loves both the media and the food and beverage spaces, and will be joining J.P. Morgan’s investment banking division next summer. Each student partner will focus on a few industry sectors.
Niles Chang will invest in food-related and media startups.
“I’m fascinated by how technology has drastically changed the way we receive information, and it’s exciting to see the rise of original content and the strides in digital media,” Chang said. “I’m also a huge foodie and love the constant innovation in the food space, everything from plant-based meat to on-demand services.”
Former Cal beach volleyball player Kaitlyn Uythoven will work closely with UC Berkeley’s Skydeck and is interested in blockchain technology.
A former Cal beach volleyball player, Uythoven said she knew when she arrived at UC Berkeley that she loved business and working on teams, which drew her to apply to Haas after she finished her varsity volleyball career. Taking Lecturer Kurt Beyers’ entrepreneurship class last spring solidified her interest in startups and her desire to work for Arrow. “I found out that I really love entrepreneurship,” said Uythoven, who is interested in sectors ranging from blockchain to high fashion.
Amy Guo, a freshman in the Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology (M.E.T.) program, started a creative writing nonprofit in high school.
Guo, who is pursuing a dual degree in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) and business, said she’s hoping to expand upon her interests in education (she founded Writer’s Ink, a student-run nonprofit centered around creative writing, in high school), entertainment, AR/VR, and e-commerce while working with Arrow.
“I thought that this was just the most incredible opportunity,” said Guo, who grew up in Irvine, Ca. “We, as students, get the chance to put significant capital into the companies our peers are starting. There’s a lot of responsibility in that.”
Building a pipeline
The partners spent the first few weeks after the launch getting to know each other and developing Arrow’s funding application for startup applicants, expanding the website, and meeting with other startup groups on campus including Skydeck, The House, Citris, and Free Ventures.
There’s been a ton of interest in the fund so far, Bond said. “Our primary mission is to build a pipeline for startups at Berkeley and we’ll be leveraging our talented community of students, faculty, and alumni to help these startups succeed.”
After spending the past seven years working in hedge funds, private equity, and investment banking, Bond said he’s happy to return to the startup world.
“I came to the West Coast to pivot back toward entrepreneurship,” he said. “I had previously founded a few companies at school and university, and really enjoyed the journey, and so I wanted to get back into that world. Silicon Valley was the best place to pursue that ambition.”
Berkeley Haas leaders last week delivered a sweeping action plan that provides concrete ways to bolster enrollment of underrepresented minorities at Haas and to develop a more inclusive environment schoolwide.
Last month, Chandler and Stowsky formed a leadership team charged by Interim Dean Laura Tyson with creating an action plan within 30 days focused on three areas: rebuilding trust with underrepresented minority students and alumni, and allies; making Haas a community that African American and all underrepresented minority students want to join; and increasing outreach to and yield of underrepresented minority students at Haas.
“100 percent committed”
The resulting plan is a direct response to a disappointing decline in the number of African American students enrolled in the Full-time Berkeley MBA Program for the last two years—a dip that occurred despite this being the largest class size in the school’s history. (In 2018, six African American students enrolled in a class of 291 students. In 2017, 10 African American students enrolled in a class of 282. In 2016, a peak of 19 African American students enrolled in a class of 252.)
The urgency of this action plan stems from Haas’s efforts to begin turning around this admissions trend in the hopes of making improvements in next year’s enrollment. However, the school seeks to improve diversity and inclusion across all programs, faculty, and staff.
“We’re so proud of the work everyone has done to complete this plan, which we believe is a critical step toward long-term change in building a more diverse community at Haas,” said Chandler, who with her leadership team met every morning for 30 days to listen to students, alumni, faculty, and staff before drafting recommendations by the Oct. 5 deadline. “It’s critical for our community to know that we are doing everything we can to address our diversity issues and that we are 100 percent committed to this effort.”
Chandler said the leadership team failed to react quickly or urgently enough to address the decline in African American student enrollment, instead looking at the problem through “an academic lens,” and viewing the sudden decline as a two-year statistical anomaly.
The concern is not only about providing fair access to a top MBA education, it is also about teaching students how to lead diverse teams and be comfortable with sometimes uncomfortable conversations about race, Stowsky said. “This is difficult to do when the student body and faculty are not diverse,” he said.
In a position to lead as a business school
Élida Bautista, director of inclusion & diversity at Haas, emphasized the school’s commitment to shifting its mindset toward understanding the impact of being underrepresented and prioritizing the actions in the plan that address this.
“With this set of actions, Haas is positioned to lead as a business school that values meaningful contributions to diversity,” said Bautista, who also worked on the action plan.
Interim Dean Tyson said the Haas School’s leaders will work quickly to implement the school-wide strategy in the short- and long-term. Incoming Dean Ann Harrison, who begins her term in January, is also committed to a successful outcome.
Recommendations in the plan include:
Hiring a Director of Diversity Admissions, who will focus on expanding opportunity for all historically underrepresented communities.
Increasing scholarship funding to URM students, and adopt a “first-offer-best-offer” approach to financial aid.
Hiring a Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, who will report directly to the Dean and focus on executing the plan.
Changing MBA admissions criteria to consider an applicant’s skillset and experience in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Establishing a Diversity Admissions Council, which will include staff, faculty, students, and alumni. Hire up to two second-year FTMBA students to serve on the FTMBA Admissions Committee.
Evolving staff hiring policies and practices by adding explicit language in job postings to address diversity needs.
The plan acknowledges that many students and alumni have worked to make change at Haas around diversity, equity, and inclusion. That group includes the student-led Race Inclusion Initiative (RII), which launched in 2016 and delivered a detailed list of action items related to diversity & inclusion at Haas to former Dean Rich Lyons last spring; the Haas Alumni Diversity Council (HADC), which consists of alumni and diversity leaders from the three MBA programs; and student leaders from the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, the Black Business Student Association (BBSA), and the Latinx Business Club.
Monica Stevens, MBA 96, who founded the Alumni Diversity Council in 2012, called the decline in the school’s diversity numbers upsetting and unacceptable, but said the plan is a “more defined way to move forward.”
“We need to build the infrastructure for future success, but we also have a patient in the ER who needs immediate attention, and it’s important to act quickly,” said Stevens, who called for “true accountability” from the leadership team and “measurable outcomes.”
Living up to our Defining Leadership Principles
The plan outlines next steps, specifies deadlines, defines staff owners of each area, and details the financial impact of each action item. Tools are also under development to measure the success of each outlined goal.
Several Berkeley Haas MBA students, who provided input to the Haas team and are leaders with the Race Inclusion Initiative, agreed the plan is a solid step in the right direction.
“Honestly, I am happy with this plan and am eager for meaningful steps to now be taken,” said Matt Hines, MBA 19. “It is largely consistent with the recommendations we made six months ago.”
Victoria Williams-Ononye, MBA 19, said she’s pleased that top diversity positions were added in admissions and in the Dean’s office and that Haas is committing financial resources to support its action items. “The hope would be that once the recommendations are in the budget and the people are hired that the school will continue to progress for years to come. At the end of the day, this is a plan. We need substantive action to occur before full confidence in the administration is built.”
In November, the Haas Staff Town Hall meeting will be devoted to a school-wide discussion of the action plan.
“Creating this plan is just the beginning,” Chandler said. “We still have a lot of work ahead of us and we encourage everyone to commit to this journey. We need to live up to our own Defining Leadership Principles to make Haas an even better, more diverse business school.”
Robert Paylor practices walking with a forearm walker during his physical therapy session with Tom Billups, associate head coach of the UC Berkeley rugby team, at the Simpson Center for Student-Athlete High Performance. (UC Berkeley photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
This semester, Robert Paylor, a junior at UCBerkeley’s Haas School of Business, is up by 5:30 a.m., hits the gym, then attends an accounting class and a political lecture, works out again for two hours, bolts down Chex Mix and an energy drink, and heads to another class.
Most Cal student-athletes have a similar routine. But for Paylor, a former varsity Cal rugby player recovering from partial paralysis, just getting out of bed and dressed in the morning is a feat, never mind the daily grind of navigating the hilly campus in a wheelchair and an intense rehabilitation schedule.
That Paylor is even alive and starting to walk with assistance after a devastating accident 16 months ago is a miracle. Fans cheered him on Saturday at Memorial Stadium when he was introduced and walked during the first quarter of the football game.
At the Cal-Oregon football game on Saturday, Sept. 29, Paylor’s progress was celebrated on the field, and fans from both teams stood and cheered. (UC Berkeley photo by Kelley Cox)
“The guy is a bloody inspiration,” says Jack Clark, head rugby coach at Berkeley and former head coach of the U.S. national rugby team. “He has a lot of faith, and support from his family, but this is a kid who wakes up and answers the bell every day. It’s a form of perseverance that you don’t understand until you see it. You have to see it to understand the depths of it.”
On May 6, 2017, Paylor, a freshman at the time, was injured at the Varsity Cup championship match between Cal and Arkansas State. That moment, caught on video — an opponent wrapped his arm around Paylor’s neck and didn’t let go as a formation of players called a maul collapsed — still raises questions. Paylor’s parents condemned the sport’s governing body, USA Rugby, for not disciplining the opponent; Clark called the hit preventable and “illegal” under the laws of the game.
In the aftermath, doctors told Paylor he’d suffered a spinal cord injury and likely would never walk again. Paylor then caught pneumonia, which lingered a month. He couldn’t eat or sit up for more than 10 minutes without passing out, and the muscles on his 6-foot 5-inch, 235-pound frame quickly atrophied.
“I was broken physically and mentally when I first got hurt,” says Paylor. “I couldn’t feel anything from my neck down. My prognosis was terrible. They said, ‘You’ll be happy if you can ever pick up a piece of pizza again and bring it to your face.’ ”
Paylor never accepted that; he believed that, with hard work and faith, he would walk one day without assistance. That belief in himself, that grit that coaches say defines Paylor, is why he’s at the cavernous Simpson Center for Student-Athlete High Performance, where he works out three times a week with Tom Billups, the associate head coach of Cal Rugby.
When asked if he expects Paylor to ever walk without his walker, Billups simply nods.
Paylor at his locker in the high performance center, where he works out three times week. (UC Berkeley photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
Paylor moves laboriously through his walking workouts, powering through 50-yard laps with the help of braces and a walker. Billups, a strength and conditioning specialist, is always right behind him, with an encouraging word or, when required, a verbal push.
Paylor’s current personal record is 350 yards, but sometimes, like on a recent day after an intense and fatiguing neuro-Pilates workout, it’s more like 300.
Billups understands Paylor’s frustration with incremental improvements. Before the accident, Paylor’s role as a rugby lock was all about using his height and muscle to provide power inside the scrum. “Coaching him before the injury, I know that he’s a grinder,” Billups says. “His position was to do all of the hard stuff — tackling, pushing guys and moving people who don’t want to be moved,”
Now, Paylor applies that same effort to moving his own legs, which with every step can feel like lifting 40-pound weights.
Jack Iscaro (left) and Brian Joyce, two of Paylor’s rugby teammates, escort him to physical therapy at the Simpson Center for Student-Athlete High Performance. (UC Berkeley photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
At Berkeley Haas, Paylor is surrounded by the tight-knit Cal rugby community. Coordinating through a Google doc schedule organized by Clark, the entire team has signed up to follow their friend from class to class, with occasional challenges when his wheelchair’s fickle smart battery gives out.
“Geographically, these hills are brutal,” says Paylor, who has memorized the locations of all of the automatic doors on campus, and the areas of classrooms where it’s easiest to pull up to a desk. “Accessible seating is probably the biggest thing.”
The help from classmates extends to weekends, too. “Robert is their friend, and they want to include him in whatever they’re doing,” Clark says. “If they’re going to the Cal football game or the women’s soccer game, it’s, ‘Hey, do you want to go?’”
The team downplays efforts made on Paylor’s behalf. “It’s good to just have him back,” said Cal rugby flanker Ben Casey, an environmental economics major.
Paylor, being helped to stand by Tom Billups, associate head coach of the rugby team, has a “perseverance that you don’t understand until you see it,” says rugby head coach Jack Clark. (UC Berkeley photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
Paylor’s supportive community extends to legions of Cal alumni and rugby teams worldwide, including players from Australia, New Zealand and the UK who have sent Paylor letters of encouragement and jerseys. Close to $1 million has been raised for Paylor through his GoFundMe campaign, money to fund many rehabilitation expenses not covered by insurance.
A few hundred thousand in donations poured in within days of Paylor’s injury as word got out, says Cal Rugby player and Berkeley Haas junior Tyler Douglas, Paylor’s closest friend and former weightlifting partner.
“Everyone understands what the Cal community is,” Douglas said. “You respect the people who came before you, and those people respect and care for you.” Douglas said momentum gathered as word of Paylor’s injury spread. “Then the international rugby community came out and it kept spreading,” he said. “We’d be a tournaments and they’d mention his name.”
The response is partly a testament to who Paylor is, he said. “You’ll never meet another person like him,” he says. “He’ll shoot you a big smile and a handshake. I’m close to everyone on the team, but the connection you make with Rob is immediate.”
Paylor said the support motivates him. “It’s just huge that so many people are rooting for me,” he says. “When I’m having dark times and feeling sorry for myself, I have all of these people who believe in me. It’s infectious. It keeps me going.”
A junior at Berkeley Haas, Paylor intends to get his MBA after he graduates. (UC Berkeley photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
For Paylor, getting into Berkeley Haas as a junior was a life goal. His parents, who live in El Dorado Hills, California, both work in business, and he has decided to follow in their footsteps. And rugby, he says, has a lot in common with business. “In rugby, you graduate with a Ph.D. in teams,” he explains.
Over the summer, after he finished intense neurorehabilitation at Craig Hospital in Colorado, Paylor interned in operations at Intel Corp. Now, he’s enjoying the breadth of the subject matter in his classes — from lecturer Suneel Udpa’s accounting course to lecturer Arturo Perez-Reyes’ business communications course, where he’s learning why soft skills are important in business.
While Paylor isn’t sure what he’ll do after graduation, an MBA is part of the plan.
Business is a perfect path for Paylor, Clark says. “A lot of cognitive smarts come out of business schools — but if they want someone with grit and smarts, he’s a combination,” the coach says. “Something tells me that this guy will go on to do something really phenomenal.”
Haas juniors—all transfer students—Alec Li, Beta Jui, Nyquist Avilla, Andrada Metz, and Adriana Vanegas, won first prize at last week’s Zendesk Case Competition.
A group of five Haas junior transfer students bested 26 other undergraduate teams charged with revamping a pilot mentorship program for women in the Zendesk Case Competition last Friday.
Andrada Metz, Alec Li, Nyquist Avilla, Adriana Vanegas, and Beta Jui, took first place for their year-long program called “Azend.”
The case competition, which was open to all UC Berkeley undergrads, grew out of EGAL’s alliance with customer service software company Zendesk, which recently provided a $1 million gift to the center.
The students were charged with helping Zendesk solve problems with its existing pilot mentorship program, including an imbalance of mentors and mentees, a program that was too short, and inadequate engagement. They were also asked to design the mentorship program to operate on a global scale.
The Azend home page for mentors and mentees.
Team Azend’s secret sauce may have been a standout app they developed for the company’s mentoring program. The app, developed around a curriculum and targeted content, allowed both mentors and mentees log in to a home page, check events, connect with each other outside of mentoring sessions, watch videos, and collect data to assess progress. During each quarter, the women participating in the Azend mentoring program would focus on one area, such as “growth and development,” and follow a self-assessment, working toward a goal that included sessions on developing self-confidence through skills such as public speaking.
The project was a true team effort that required many hours of intense work during the week they had to work on the case, said Metz, who is from Romania and transferred to Haas from Diablo Valley College. “Last night Alec, Beta, and Adriana were up until 3 am polishing the slides and making sure the app was working,” she said. “This week was hard. I had interviews (for internships), exams, and working on the case. But everyone did a great job.”
Li, who developed the app using prototyping software he’d used before in class, said everyone on the team had different strengths that made their project come to life.”
Nyquist agreed. “We all brought something to the table,” she said. “I brought the idea for the app and Alec was the brainpower behind putting it together.”
Kate McMahon, a senior director of sales and one of three Zendesk employees judging the case, praised the winning team’s work, noting that it was clear how serious they were about the challenge. “What we loved was the simplicity and how you pulled the challenges into one place,” she said. “We loved the engagement piece. That was a challenge. How do we keep people engaged when they’re not in one-on-one sessions?”
The winning team hugs the Zendesk judges.
After the winner was announced, the Azend team cheered and hugged.
Vanegas, a transfer student from Irvine Valley College, said she never expected to win. “As transfer students we really didn’t think that we’d be able to live up to the other continuing students so we didn’t believe we’d be here,” she said, adding, “I think one of the best experiences was being up all night and working together and making mistakes.”
Cal soccer forward Jordyn Elliott. Photo: Cal Athletics.
When Cal Women’s Soccer forward Jordyn Elliott returned to the field this fall after recovering from a hip injury, she did it in style, scoring one of three goals that helped the team defeat Utah Valley at the season’s opening game.
Elliott believes that the same grit that brought her back strong to the field also played a part in getting her admitted this year to Berkeley Haas.
“There are skills required on athletic teams that are required to get into one of the top business schools,” said Elliott, BS 20. “I’m forever grateful for that because when you want to play in college, those skills transfer right through.” Elliott, a native of Hollywood, Fla., is one among the growing ranks of Cal athletes enrolling in the Haas Undergraduate Program.
This year, a total of 32 athletes are enrolled, up from 24 five years ago. And for the past two years, business administration was the top declared major among Cal athletes, up from the #7 slot in 2016 and #14 in 2009, according to the UC Berkeley Student-Athlete Academic Performance Summary.
Class of 2020 Haas student-athletes: L-R Andy Song, Branndon Marion, Emma DeSilva, Jordyn Elliott, Claire McDowell, Asst. Admissions Director Mary Balingit, Makayla Ward, Cubbie Kile, Kayla Fong, Kyte Crigger, Lila Adler, and Paramveer Chohan.
The undergraduate Class of 2020 alone includes lacrosse goalkeeper Makayla Ward, hurdler Paramveer Chohan, water polo goalie Claire McDowell, track and field sprinter and hurdler Branndon Marion, gymnast Kyte Crigger, water polo player Johnny Hooper, and crew coxswain Cubbie Kile. (The class also includes retired football player Russ Ude and former rugby player Robert Paylor, who is recovering from an injury that partially paralyzed him during a May 2017 national championship rugby game.) They join a senior class that includes rugby player Fawzi Kawash, crew coxswain Riley Brown, football players Patrick Laird and Henry Bazakas, and Collin Morikawa, who is ranked third among amateur golfers in the world.
So why the draw to business?
First off, the undergraduate program is highly competitive; only 13.5% of applicants get in, which makes it a logical program for naturally competitive athletes. “They’re drawn to the competition,” said Bobby Thompson, interim director of Cal student-athlete development. “There’s a low percentage of people who get into Haas, but guess what? There’s a low percentage who make it on to Division 1 teams, too.”
Collin Morikawa (photo: Cal Athletics)
Thompson works closely with Mary Balingit, the undergraduate program’s assistant admissions director, to encourage student athletes—particularly those from underrepresented minority groups (URMs)—to apply to Haas, and overcome their fears that it might be too difficult to get in.
But Sojourner Blair, director of undergraduate admissions, says athletes share many of the characteristics the school seeks in applicants. “They’re extremely dedicated and hardworking team players,” she said. “Many are spending 20 hours a week or more with their sport and balancing that job with a full course load of units.”
Athletes are also drawn to the school’s leadership culture, says Erika Walker, assistant dean of the Haas Undergraduate Program.
“I think our Defining Leadership Principles (Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself), make a difference,” she said. “They’re easy to transfer from the field to class, and that attracts student-athletes. That connection is natural for them—they think, ‘There might be a place for me there.'”
Another force at work: Steve Etter
Walker said there’s another force at work, too: Haas Lecturer Stephen Etter, who for years has worked closely with student athletes. “He’s a connection,” she said. “He has presence. The students think: ‘There’s someone who is cool, who understands my experience.’ ”
“They’re time management gurus,” said Steve Etter, who advises student athletes on how to get into Haas. Photo: Jim Block.
Each fall, Etter, BS 83, and a founding partner at Greyrock Capital Group, hosts “getting into Haas” information sessions to a packed room of Cal athletes. While Etter never played at the varsity level as a student, he said he was inspired to do this work by his Cal mentors and coaches.
“I grew up in a single parent family; just my mom and me,” he said. “Teachers and coaches had a huge impact on my life.”
Etter believes athletes make perfect Haas students: they’re time-management gurus and natural leaders with self-discipline, who have developed great resilience and worked on diverse teams.
“They come to Haas with so many skills built in,” said Etter, who has worked with Olympians like swimmer Missy Franklin, and stars like Laird, BS 18, in independent studies focused on money management, in addition to teaching undergraduate classes in corporate finance. Student-athletes are also valuable assets to the school, Etter added.
“A person sees Patrick Laird and they’re going to be interested in business,” he said. “He’s such a leader and a role model. Jordyn Elliott lights up a room. She’s a phenomenal soccer player. We have such high-caliber people in the program.”
Elliott, who is the daughter of retired San Antonio Spurs All Star and champion Sean Elliott, said after she met Etter freshman year, she started taking prerequisite business courses and joined the Sports Business Group, formed by student athletes across campus who are interested in a career in business.
Etter advised Elliott on the Haas application, encouraging her to open up and tell her personal story. “They want to know who you are,” she said. “I went to a predominantly white high school as a black and quarter-Asian girl. He was a huge help to me in getting me to open up about my background, and mentoring me through the entire process.”
After graduation, Elliott said she’s considering a career in sports entertainment or sports management. “I definitely want to work for a pro sports team,” said Elliott, the youngest of three siblings. “I grew up in a sports-oriented family. I feel like I’ve been behind the scenes at so many sporting events. I’d love to have that as my job.”
Mentors lead the way
Having a critical mass of student-athletes at Haas has helped to build momentum—and older mentors help, too.
Coxswain Riley Brown, BS 19: (front) the boss on the boat.
Crew coxswain Riley Brown, BS 19, remembers when her teammate Hannah Christopher, BS 18, found out she had been accepted to Haas mid-way through a practice in 2016. “I always looked up to Hannah,” Brown said. “We went to the bathroom to check her phone and she screamed bloody murder when she got in.”
Last year, when it was Brown’s turn to check on acceptance day, Christopher looked over Brown’s shoulder and tackled her to the ground over the happy news. “Everyone at practice was like: What the heck is going on?” Brown said.
While Christopher and her Haas crew teammates provided inspiration and advice, Brown said Etter helped her figure out what set her apart.
Senior Riley Brown (right) and her crew team mentor Hannah Christopher, BS 18.
Spending so many hours on the crew boat, Brown felt she lacked the internships and the career background of other applicants. But by then, Brown had won two NCAA championship titles, both in her individual boat as well as contributing to the overall team championship. That success freshman year as a crew coxswain led her to believe she could do anything. On the boat, after all, she was already the boss.
“The team is going down this skinny, straight race-course blind,” she said. “We might be two seats from being in the lead of a 2,000-meter race that takes seven minutes. I’ll say ‘Here comes our move!’ and it’s something we’ve planned and I tell them how we are going to accomplish it.”
Business, as it turns out, was not Brown’s childhood dream major. As a child she decided she would be a doctor, a goal strengthened after an accident left her father visually impaired. She also had her own medical challenges due to a very rare hormone deficiency that impacted her growth and organ development. When the drug company that made her medication went out of business, she was devastated. “That was huge in my life,” said Brown, who said she celebrated when she reached 5-feet, which is the perfect coxswain height. “I wanted to know: How do we fix this? How do we get drugs to people who need them and people who can’t afford it when they’re facing diseases like diabetes? How do we get them cheaper medicine?”
At Cal, she pivoted her major of choice from pre-med to business, where she has decided to focus on improving the healthcare system. “Business is about making an impact,” she said. “I could put my leadership skills to use.” Brown is also now mentoring younger students who are looking to apply to Haas.
Dreaming of business—and pies.
Water polo player Claire McDowell: “Business is about what problems need to be solved.”
Claire McDowell, a Cal water polo player, from Miami, Fla., knew she wanted to study business by second grade, when she made her first ice cream pie.
“I made flyers advertising the pies and put them around my elementary school,” she said. “I kept doing it in middle school, and in high school I started an Instagram account for it.” The Instagram account helped expand her business, and by sophomore year she was selling a pie a week, with a graham cracker, Oreo cookie, or chocolate chip cookie crust.
McDowell was initially reluctant to charge for the pies, but her parents grew wary of the supermarket bills and told her that her hobby was getting too expensive.
Claire McDowell’s ice cream pies are Instagram standouts.
Last year, when McDowell applied to Haas, she reflected on her pie business, deciding that it was never about the money for her. “For me, business is about what problems need to be solved, how can I help others?” she said. “With the tools you get from going through Haas I’ll be able to solve problems better. I tried to get that across during my interview. Even with my pies, it wasn’t my idea to start the business. I just gave the pies to my friends and teachers. Anyone who wanted a pie got one. I wanted to make my friends and everyone around me happy.”
Today, as a Cal athlete, McDowell makes time to make an occasional celebratory pie for friends and teammates. She says her schedule is exhausting, but it’s something she’s adjusted to—because it’s always been demanding.
“Learning to work hard is something that you gain by being a Division 1 athlete,” she said. “All of us go to practice every day and, you know, it’s not always fun, but we put in 100, 110 percent all the time to get the results. Athletes have already been through hard, exhausting schedules since the beginning. We can deal with the huge workload or pressure. We’re not slackers.”
Top (L to R): David Aguilar, BS 19, David Webb, BS 20, Claudia Diaz BS 19, Asst. Admissions Director Mary Balingit, and Mia Character, BS 20. Bottom (L to R): Maria Ortega, BS 19, Frances James, BS 20, Habiiba Malingha, BS 20. All photos: Jim Block
Berkeley freshmen Priscilla Mendoza and Sophie Getahoun attended last week’s RISE kickoff meeting questioning whether they would belong in the Haas undergraduate program.
“As a freshman, I came in thinking I wanted to get into Haas, but didn’t know much about it,” Mendoza said. “As a woman, as a person of color, I didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me.”
But by the end of the monthly meeting of RISE (Reach, Inclusion, Service, Equity), an admissions outreach program created to boost the Haas undergraduate applicant pool of historically underrepresented minorities (URMs), both women had a change of heart about Haas.
They said they were inspired by the meeting’s speakers—a variety of local business and community leaders from different racial backgrounds who told stories of how they overcame failure. They also met and mingled with other students who looked like them, a mix of 30 UC students interested in applying to Haas, alongside Haas juniors and seniors.
“After today, I know that business is what I want to do,” Getahoun said. “Just being in this building is amazing. This motivates us as freshman to work hard.”
Mary Balingit and Erika Walker of the Haas Undergraduate Program at the RISE kickoff event.
There couldn’t be a more perfect outcome for Mary Balingit, assistant director of admissions and outreach for the Haas Undergraduate program, who manages RISE’s programming. The program—formerly called Freshman 2 Alumni (F2A)—was founded five years ago to reach out to URMs, or African American, Hispanic American, and Native American students.
“This outreach initiative has gained more traction in the past three years,” said Balingit, who also serves as the undergraduate lead for inclusion & diversity. “But we wanted to make it more known, as it’s important to the overall value we place on inclusion and diversity.”
Building a coalition
Before the night’s panel of speakers took the stage, Erika Walker, assistant dean of the Haas Undergraduate Program, urged the students to form small, supportive communities, advice she said she took when she first arrived in 1992 as a first-gen student at UC Berkeley.
Since Walker arrived at Haas in 2004, she’s worked to increase the percentage of students applying to Haas from underrepresented minority groups.
“Our goal was to build a coalition so we could reach out to students freshman year to educate them about the school and opportunities, so they could make a decision about whether to apply,” Walker said.
By many counts, Walker and her team are succeeding. In Fall 2004, URMs comprised 4 percent of the UC Berkeley applicant pool and 6 percent of the transfer student applicant pool. The total entering class was 4.6%.
In 2018, URMs comprised 12.4 percent of the UC Berkeley applicant pool and 20.65 percent of the transfer applicants. The class of 359 includes 52 URM students, representing 14.5 percent of the class.
Yet there’s a reason why failure was the theme of the RISE kickoff event: some students said they were fearful about applying to Haas—and fearful of failure overall.
Surrender to the squiggle
Jennifer R. Cohen, a local equity and inclusion leader who created the RISE speaker format based on her experiences as a woman of color, told the students to expect to fail, and grow from it.
“There’s growth in that process (of failure),” she said. “You are going to develop, learn, and think differently because of that adversity.” Cohen encouraged students to “surrender to the squiggle of life—that nonlinear path between where you are today and where you want to be.”
RISE panel speakers discussed failure: L to R: Michael Lee, Ashley Carrick, Malia Cohen, Oscar Olivas, and Michael Austin Sui.
The event speakers then shared their own stories of bouncing back from failure, including:
Ashley Carrick, BS 10, who works in strategic planning at Google, who recalled trying unsuccessfully to get elected to the Latino Business Student Association (LBSA) as a freshman at UC Berkeley, and going home to her dorm in tears after giving nine (unsuccessful) speeches. When she returned to the organization the next day, they offered her a job as the group’s IT operator. She remains involved with the organization today.
Oscar Olivas, BS 05, a credit analyst at Wells Capital Management, said he overcame a challenging youth and even an arrest while growing up in L.A., to land a job at Wells, where he’s worked for over a decade. He advised students to join three organizations with three missions: one that connects you to your university, one that helps with your career, and one that connects you to your culture. “If you do those things you’ll be balanced,” he said.
Malia Cohen, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (District 10), shared a story of getting cut three times at tryouts for the prestigious drill team at Lowell High School, but bouncing back to get elected student body president.
Asked by a student about how she handled “imposter syndrome”—a fear of being exposed as an unqualified fraud—Cohen said “I reject it. I don’t own that.” Cohen said she’d rather spend time “changing the environment that I am part of, getting more women elected, raising money, and opening doors.”
Haas junior David Webb
Habiiba Malingha, a Haas junior from Uganda who is part of the RISE steering committee, said she found Malia Cohen’s talk inspiring. “People underestimate you right away because of your skin color,” said Malingha, who as a child decided she wanted to become a doctor but was encouraged by her father to study business—and create hospitals for people. “If I am in a space where people aren’t taking me seriously because of how I speak and who I am, I need to address it. Some people may not want to work with you because they assume things about you. There are people that you may need to educate.”
David Webb, a junior at Haas who also studies city planning, said RISE has helped him to overcome his own imposter syndrome over the past year.
“I totally feel like I belong here now,” he said. “A lot of classmates I talk to the most are in RISE, and they’re so, so helpful. That’s helped me to integrate into the classes. It’s awesome here.”
Renowned Wharton economist and Berkeley alumna Ann E. Harrison has been named the next dean of the Haas School of Business.
New Haas Dean Ann Harrison
Harrison will begin her term on January 1, 2019.
Harrison, the William H. Wurster Professor of Multinational Management and Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has deep Berkeley roots. She earned her bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley with a double major in economics and history in 1982. She also served as a professor of Berkeley’s Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics from 2001 to 2011.
“Professor Harrison is an accomplished administrator as well as a world-class economist who has dedicated her career to creating forward-looking policies in development economics, international trade, and global labor markets,” said Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ, who announced the news today. “It is a great honor to welcome her back to Berkeley to become the dean of Haas, and I have no doubt that she will be a wonderful leader for the institution.”
Returning to Berkeley
Harrison said she is thrilled to return to Berkeley to join its top-ranked business school, and is looking forward to meeting Haas students and alumni, as well as working with the distinguished faculty and staff.
“This opportunity is a dream come true,” she said. “Berkeley Haas is truly exceptional because it combines intellectual rigor with a commitment to creating a better world. Former Haas dean Rich Lyons worked with the Haas community to articulate its spirit and culture through the four defining leadership principles. These principles, such as going ‘beyond yourself’ and ‘questioning the status quo,’ make Haas a true standout among its peers.”
Harrison said that she is also passionate about being a part of Berkeley itself, and is excited to continue building the relationships between Haas and the rest of campus. “Haas is part of the world’s greatest research university and is located in one of the most exciting innovation hubs anywhere,” she said.
A Global Focus
Born in France to an American father and a French mother, she came to the United States when she was very young. She credits her bilingual upbringing with sparking her later research interests in global firms and international trade.
“Ann has a remarkable track record of pioneering research on trade and development, including influential studies of globalization’s effects on jobs and inequality,” said Berkeley economics Prof. Maurice Obstfeld, who serves as chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and collaborated with Harrison at Berkeley’s Agricultural & Resource Economics department. “Her work has demonstrated the degree to which American workers’ wages have suffered from globalization—especially workers in routine jobs. I’m really looking forward to the intellectual leadership she will bring to Haas and to the entire campus.”
Before joining the Wharton School in 2012, Harrison served as Director of Development Policy at the World Bank. There, she co-managed a team of 300 researchers and staff, reformed the World Bank’s process for allocating research funds, and oversaw the institution’s most important flagship publications, including its annual World Development Report. During her tenure, she convinced the World Bank’s president to release all historical records on project loans, a milestone in increasing transparency.
“Based on Ann’s experience at the World Bank, she will be an effective and much-loved manager,” said Professor Sir Angus Deaton, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University who has known Harrison since she was a graduate student. He also is the 2015 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare. “She is an excellent economist and also an extraordinary person.”
Harrison said she’ll start out by taking the time to listen carefully to faculty, staff, students, and alumni.
“I’m incredibly lucky that Former Dean Lyons and Interim (as well as former) Dean Laura Tyson are both at Haas and can share their insights with me,” she said. “Berkeley Haas has tremendous opportunities in the areas of fundraising and revenue growth, which will be a primary focus of my deanship. In addition to garnering increased philanthropic support for our students and programs, I believe it is critical for Berkeley Haas to secure funding for new faculty positions.”
Thought Leader
In addition to her years at Berkeley and Wharton, Harrison held teaching positions at Columbia Business School, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the University of Paris. She has lectured widely, including at most major U.S. universities, and in India, China, Latin America, Europe, the Philippines, and North Africa.
Harrison is one of the most highly cited scholars globally on foreign investment and multinational firms. She is the author and editor of three books, including Globalization and Poverty and The Factory-Free Economy. In 2017, Harrison and her co-authors were awarded the prestigious Sun Yefang Prize by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The prize, given every two years, is considered one of China’s most important honors in economics.
Harrison was selected after an extensive national search. She will succeed Interim Dean Laura D’Andrea Tyson, who will remain in her post through the end of 2018. Rich Lyons, who served as dean for 11 years prior to Tyson, will return to the Haas finance faculty after a sabbatical.
Haas Interim Dean Laura Tyson. Photo: Karl Nielsen
Laura D’Andrea Tyson, renowned economist at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business, has been named the school’s interim dean as of July 1, Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ announced today.
Tyson joined the Berkeley Economics Department in 1977 and the Haas faculty in 1990. She was the dean of the Haas School from 1998 to 2001. She also served as dean of London Business School from 2002 until 2006. She has graciously agreed to serve as interim dean at Berkeley Haas while the chancellor’s office continues to work on recruiting a permanent dean. The chancellor’s office hopes to have a new dean named and in place this fall.
“We are so fortunate that somebody as able and uniquely qualified for this role as Professor Tyson is willing to step in and help the school during this leadership transition,” said Chancellor Christ. “When Laura was dean of Berkeley Haas, she initiated many important programs that laid the foundation for the school’s financial and reputational strengths today. Haas couldn’t be in better hands.”
Tyson succeeds Professor Richard K. Lyons, who has served as the Haas School dean for 11 years. Lyons will to return to his full-time faculty position at Haas next year following a well-deserved sabbatical.
“The Berkeley Haas community recognizes and appreciates the enormous contributions that Dean Lyons has made during his deanship,” said Tyson. “I am honored by the opportunity to serve our community during the transition to the new dean.”
Tyson is an influential scholar of economics and public policy and an expert on trade and competitiveness. She served as Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 to 1995 and as Director of the White House National Economic Council from 1995 to 1996. She was the first woman to serve in these two positions.
Tyson is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She serves on three corporate boards and as an advisor to or member of several advisory boards for nonprofit and for-profit organizations.
Tyson has devoted some of her policy attention to the links between women’s rights and national economic performance. At the World Economic Forum (WEF), she is the co-chair of the Global Future Council on Education, Gender and Work and is a Stewardship Board member of the System Initiative on Education, Gender and Work. She is the co-author of the WEF Annual Global Gender Gap Report, which ranks nations on economic, political, education, and health gender gaps. She is also the co-author of Leave No One Behind, a report for the United Nation’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment (2016).
Much of Tyson’s recent research focuses on the effects of automation on the future of work. She is the co-organizer of WITS (Work and Intelligent Tools and System), an interdisciplinary faculty group created to explore the impacts of digital technologies and artificial intelligence on working, earning, and learning.
Patrick Laird, BS 18, with fan Patrick Sproul, the first grader who sparked the idea for Laird’s summer reading program. Photo: Cal Athletics
Cal Bears running back Patrick Laird, BS 18, was getting ready to play a game last year, when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“This guy says he wants to introduce me to his son,” Laird remembers. Looking down, he saw the boy, first-grader Patrick Sproul—the great-great-grandson of former University of California president Robert Gordon Sproul—was wearing a jersey with Laird’s number, 28. “That’s when I suddenly realized I had a new platform. And I wanted to do something positive with it.”
With his newfound young fan base, Laird wanted to do more than just promote the game. He decided to create the Patrick Laird Summer Reading Challenge to encourage elementary kids in first through sixth grade to read.
Fighting “summer reading loss”
For two years on the football field, Laird had struggled to be noticed. Then, in the second game last season against Weber State, he was called in when the starting running back suffered a knee injury. Laird scored three touchdowns and rushed for 191 yards—the beginning of a breakout season for the Haas undergraduate student, who became only the 16th player in Cal history to rush more than 1,000 yards in a season.
Patrick Laird in action. Photo: Cal Athletics.
Laird, who graduated from Haas in May but is finishing a dual political science degree this year at Berkeley, was inspired to launch his program after reading about the phenomenon of “summer reading loss,” in which kids lose their academic skills during vacation months. “They are with their teachers all year and getting better at reading and math, and then they are not reading for two and a half months,” he says. “They show up in the fall, and sometimes teachers have to spend six weeks re-teaching material that they learned last year.” The issue particularly affects low-income children, whose parents may have fewer resources to sign kids up for educational programs over the summer.
It was natural for Laird to focus his energies on reading. Growing up as the fourth of six children in Arroyo Grande, California, his parents read to him every night before bed. “I couldn’t wait until I could read chapter books like my older siblings,” he says. Racing through the “Magic Tree House” and “Hardy Boys” series, Laird was reading social science books such as “Freakonomics” by 7th grade. Those books inspired an entrepreneurial streak, propelling him to create his own businesses in video editing and car detailing in high school, and culminating in his decision to study business at Haas.
Launching a program
In fact, Laird became so known for always having his nose in a book that his teammates who lived with him in a football house two years ago joked that if he ever scored, he’d read a book for his touchdown celebration. Laid made good on that promise this season, when after scoring his first touchdown, he mocked putting his hands together and opening them in front of his face as if reading in the end zone. “I’m not ashamed to say I like to read and I love education,” he says.
Patrick Laird signing autographs with potential recruits for his reading program. Photo: Cal Athletics
When Laird conceived of the reading challenge, he consulted Haas leadership Lecturer Dan Mulhern about how to create a website. A planned 15-minute meeting lasted over an hour, as Mulhern encouraged Laird to think bigger.
“I was afraid of what people would think putting my name on this reading challenge,” Laird says. “He said, ‘Who cares about what people think, just do what you are passionate about.’ ” Ultimately, Laird created a downloadable journal where kids commit to read a certain number of books, according to their age. If they succeed, they can turn the journal in to receive four free tickets to Cal’s home opener against North Carolina on September 1.
Sending a message to students
Haas finance Lecturer Stephen Etter helped Laird work out the logistics of the launch. To promote the program, Laird toured 20 nearby elementary schools. “The kids could have spent hours asking him questions,” says Kelsey Matthiesen, a teacher at Berkeley’s School of the Madeleine. “The kids were curious about Patrick’s favorite book, animal, and color.” Laird’s example sent a positive message to the students, says Matthiesen, who estimates that well over half of them will sign up for the challenge. “They were able to relate to Patrick and look up to him because he is successful in both the classroom and on the football field.”
One student he’s already inspired is Laleaga, a rising 5th grader at Pleasant Hill’s Valhalla Elementary School who recently started reading Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” “I’m very happy that Patrick came up with this idea,” she enthused. “It’s fun and a good activity to do over the summer.”
Laird stresses that even if kids didn’t download the journal at the beginning of summer, they can still catch up and get credit for the books they’ve already read. “A lot of kids say, I like to read anyways, and I think that’s awesome,” he says. “As long as they are reading more than they would have otherwise, the challenge will be a success.”
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