Quantcast
Channel: Berkeley-Haas - Alumni & Friends News
Viewing all 115 articles
Browse latest View live

Haas, Cal Communities Collect Aid for Philippines

$
0
0

Shortly after Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines, Minnie Fong, MBA 13, reached out to classmates via the school’s Facebook page to encourage them to donate to disaster-relief efforts. Fong has several family members living in Tacloban, the country’s hardest-hit city. Her cousin’s brother-in-law serves as vice mayor of the town.

So many alumni responded with offers of help, some wanting to give her a donation directly, that she set up a PayPal fund for contributions. “I didn’t expect people to give money to me,” she says. Instead, she organized the small fund to meet Tacloban's most pressing needs.

Fong has dedicated much of the past few weeks to fundraising and boosting awareness for disaster relief. In addition to doing two TV interviews with local CBS affiliate KPIX and participating in the station’s telethon on Friday, November 15, Fong has done three radio interviews.

“People have been giving so generously of themselves,” she says of the grassroots effort that has swelled within her alumni network. Fong estimates that as of Thursday, November 14, classmates have donated more than $1,600, nearly 71,000 pesos, through PayPal. Funds will buy food, water, and medicine that will be distributed through the vice mayor's office. Visit the Donation Drive for Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda Victims in Tacloban Facebook page to learn how the money is being spent and where the goods are being distributed. The group is also sourcing solar lamps and rebuilding kits.

On campus, three Haas student organizations—Partnership for Pre-Professional Pilipin@s, the Haas Business School Association, and Berkeley Women in Business—are collaborating with the UC Berkeley Filipino-American community to support the University's #Act4thePhilippines effort.

This fundraising campaign seeks to raise $10,000 in monetary donations to help fund  the immediate relief efforts of National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON) to support national grassroots and rehabilitation organizations on duty in the affected areas. Stanford University and San Francisco State University are key partners to this project as well, in addition to growing involvement from the City of Berkeley and the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce.

As part of Cal's #Act4thePhilippines, Pilipino student organizations are selling hand-painted ribbons and accepting donations at Sproul Plaza until November 26. They are also hosting a moment of silence for victims on November 20 from 11:00 to 11:15 a.m. at Upper Sproul and a Candlelit Night of Solidarity on November 21 from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. also on Upper Sproul. They ask the campus community to wear white shirts during the candlelit event; donations will be accepted on site.

Learn more on the Haas undergraduate students' blog.

If you are not on campus, but would like to donate, visit https://www.youcaring.com/Act4thePhilippines.

Minnie Fong, MBA 13, does a live interview with the local CBS affiliate to raise awareness for Philippines disaster relief. Fong plans to see family in Manila over Christmas and hopes to visit Tacloban or another city to volunteer.

Gaming Company Led by Haas Alum Signs on for Stadium Naming Rights

$
0
0

UC Berkeley and Kabam, a mobile gaming company co-founded by Haas undergraduate alumnus Kevin Chou, BS 02, announced a long-term partnership that includes the naming rights to the field at California Memorial Stadium.

The partnership also includes a scholarship program, an internship program, speaking engagements, and other partnerships on campus around innovation and technology.

Starting in 2014, the field will be known as “Kabam Field at California Memorial Stadium.” The agreement between Cal and Kabam does not change the name of the stadium; it will forever be recognized as California Memorial Stadium. The 15-year contract is valued at almost $18 million.

“We jumped at the opportunity to partner with Cal on naming the field at California Memorial Stadium and creating significant educational and innovation programs that benefit students, veterans and the community at large,” says Chou, CEO of Kabam. “We love the opportunity to create a unique athletic and academic partnership that honors Kabam’s roots to Cal and ties to the continuous improvement of UC Berkeley.”

As part of the partnership, Kabam will establish a scholarship program to benefit Cal students who have demonstrated academic excellence and are interested in disruptive technology. Additionally, Cal Athletics will donate $25,000 to the University Library annually to help maintain its status as the No. 1 public research library in North America.

“First and foremost, I would like to thank Kabam for entering into this new and exciting partnership with Cal,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said. “I especially want to recognize the members of Kabam's leadership team who earned their degrees from Berkeley—and like so many of our alumni have demonstrated a true commitment to giving back to our campus.”

Kabam was recently named the fastest growing Internet media company in the Bay Area for the second consecutive year, and 17th fastest growing company overall in the U.S. in Deloitte’s 2013 Technology Fast 500. Over time Kabam will create an interactive gaming zone for fans at the stadium along with the scholarship program, internship program, and other partnerships on campus around innovation and technology. Additionally, upon invitation from Cal faculty, Kabam executives will also participate as guest lecturers in graduate and undergraduate Cal classes.

Three of Kabam’s four co-founders and nearly 10 percent of the company’s employees headquartered in San Francisco are Cal alumni. Kabam co-founder Mike Li, BS 01 (EECS), wrote the business plan that became the genesis for Kabam when he was a student in a Cal engineering class on entrepreneurship. Li, now general manager of Kabam’s 140-employee studio in Beijing, met Chou through mutual Cal acquaintances when Chou was a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Li and Chou, together with Kabam Chief of Staff Holly Liu, who earned a master’s in information management and systems from Cal in 2003), co-founded the company in 2006.

The founders changed the business model to a games company and renamed it Kabam in late 2010. Since then, Kabam has grown to more to more than 650 employees with more than $325 million in annual revenue in less than four years.

With a value of nearly $1.2 million per year over the lifetime of the agreement, the Cal-Kabam partnership is the largest field naming rights deal in collegiate sports.

FAQ about the Cal-Kabam Partnership

Kevin Chou, BS 02

Undergraduates Apply Innovation Lessons in India

$
0
0

Twenty-five Haas undergrads traveled to India during winter break for a once-in-a-lifetime applied-learning experience as part of a new travel study course called Open Innovation in Emerging Economies.

The course was developed and taught by Solomon Darwin, associate director of Haas’ Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, who led the trip. Based in Bangalore, a major tech hub, students in the three-unit course visited multinational companies such as IBM, SAP, Philips, Xerox, and General Electric as well as local companies such as Apollo Hospitals and Selco Foundation. Apollo is one of the largest hospital groups in Asia, while Selco lights up rural villages with solar energy and enables retailers to conduct business at night.

Students also worked with 20 Indian business students and local business consultants in a rural village near Bangalore and developed six business models for six companies to address a wide range of economic challenges. Their projects included everything from helping rice and coconut farmers with pricing and marketing to eliminate the middle man to designing a new transportation system to enable Indian employees and companies make better use of two-hour bus commutes.

"I am very proud of the students, who worked passionately and tirelessly from 7 a.m. to midnight during the entire trip producing excellent results," says Darwin. "The collaboration helped students to identify and understand the constraints and barriers to resources, deployment of talent, information, and education in rural India."

Indeed, the focus of the course was jugaad innovation, which draws from the Hindi-Urdu term that means frugal in English. Jugaad innovation refers to innovation within a resource-constrained environment, explains Arushi Saxena, BS 15, who went on the trip.

Saxena was part of a group of students whose business model won first place in a competition among six teams. Her team focused on the local fishing industry, whom they believed was marginalized and ignored but had a lot to contribute to the community. "Fishermen don't really have access to market prices, so they don't know how much to sell their fish for," Saxena explains.

The team created a middleman system that would promote transparency and help the fishermen sell their fish to a high-end retailer, she says, noting the students visited a high-end Whole Foods-like grocery store in Bangalore that could buy from the local fishermen.

Saxena, whose parents are from India and who has visited northeast India several times, applied for the course in order to see rural parts of India and the very different southern part of the country, which she had never visited.

"This was a way to learn about my home country what I wouldn't have learned otherwise," says Saxena, who learned even more than she expected.

"The biggest highlight for me was realizing that we have a lot to learn from developing countries and not just the other way around," Saxena says. "They operate with lower budgets and their customer segments usually have lower budgets and more constraints, so their innovation is done in a way that can be applied everywhere. But the innovation that is done in America and other developed countries cannot always be applied to India."

Now back in Berkeley, Saxena and the rest of the class will spend the spring semester working on business model challenges presented by the six companies visited during the trip. Saxena will be on a team helping SAP improve the innovation process for its R&D lab in India, which the students visited.

The course, more than three years in the making by Darwin and Undergraduate Program Executive Director Erika Walker, was funded in part by the Haas' Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation. In addition, companies sponsored meals for the students, and Apollo Hospitals funded part of their accommodations, entertainment, and tour to the Mysore palace. SAP provided a free bus for their daily transportation. Several Haas alumni in prominent positions also contributed their time and efforts toward the success of the new program.  

To hear directly from the students about the course in India read their blog at courses.garwoodcenter.com/ugba193i/daily-blog/

.

India
Haas students greet local children in India.

Evening & Weekend Students Co-Innovate with Top Firms

$
0
0

Second-year students in the Evening & Weekend Berkeley MBA Program worked this weekend with innovation leaders from seven top companies to create co-innovation partnerships that position their firms on the cusp of what’s next in their industries.

As part of the program’s annual Mid-Program Academic Review (MPAR) course, 42 teams of six students each worked on projects for the innovation labs or centers of Citi, Ford, Kaiser Permanente, Nike, Panasonic, SAP, and Verizon.  Rather than simply focusing on a single company, each team was challenged to find opportunities for two partners to innovate together.

For example, the team selected by students as the audience favorite focused on assisting the elderly in maintaining independent living by combining SAP's real-time data analytics with Panasonic’s advanced display technologies.  Other teams looked at everything from how connected automobiles might be more intelligent and user friendly to new platforms for improving athletic performance.

"It was so much fun," says Aquila Hussain, MBA 15, whose team was selected by its client for having the best idea and best storytelling. Hussain admits being a little skeptical students could come up with ideas that clients would like in such a short amount of time, but she came out of the process amazed at the effectiveness of problem finding, problem solving strategies.

"It always seems like if you're lucky, you come across a great idea," she says. But "while luck might have a small part to play, it was really eye opening to see that to come up with a great product idea, you need several great insights."

The Evening & Weekend Berkeley MBA Program holds MPAR every year as a combination course and retreat to give students the opportunity to apply what they learned during the first half of the program, including their Problem Finding, Problem Solving course, storytelling, collaborative teamwork skills, and competitive strategy. This year (2014) is the first time MPAR included a project-based challenge and focused on co-innovation.  

“We specifically chose to work with innovation labs/centers, since this innovation model  has recently emerged as a preferred method for many global companies to participate in the Bay Area’s vibrant technology and innovation ecosystem,  ,” says Haas Lecturer and senior staff member  Dave Rochlin,  who developed and co-taught the MPAR course with Senior Lecturer Sara Beckman. “This course is the first step of what I hope will be a series of initiatives that put Berkeley in a key leadership role as this trend continues."

Indeed, clients found the focus on co-innovation very rewarding.

"It was not only very valuable but a lot of fun to have teams of students really focused on strategic partnerships, because that's work that doesn't always get done within the walls of Citi," says Alex Kinnebrew, director of innovation at Citi Ventures in Palo Alto. "Strategic partnerships are important to us. In fact, as time goes by, we are looking more externally than we are internally for sources for innovation."

One idea that she found especially intriguing involved a financial and fitness partnership related to financial literacy and healthy living among children. The idea involved creating a virtual allowance for children with a simple interface that allows parents to reward active, healthy behavior.

"It's really exciting for the partners and the students to realize that this process does in fact produce very meaningful results," says Kinnebrew.

Deborah Cahn and Ted Bennett

The two-day course, held at the Silverado Resort in Napa, wrapped up by tapping into Berkeley-Haas' deep connections to the wine industry with a reception and dinner honoring  alumni Ted Bennett, BS 60, and his wife, Deborah Cahn, MA 72 (English), owners of Navarro Vineyards, for their contributions to the California wine industry, their local Anderson Valley community, and Berkeley-Haas. Michelle McClellan, Haas assistant dean of development and alumni relations, was on hand to present Bennett and Cahn with the inaugural Berkeley-Haas Vintners Award.

Watch a video about Bennett and Cahn at youtu.be/6vTPOBEfRRY to learn more about their work and contributions.

Evening & Weekend Students

Studying and Launching Simultaneously: Student Startup Roundup

$
0
0

This is part of an occasional series spotlighting students who are juggling their studies with starting a new business or nonprofit venture. In this installment we feature a recent MBA alumnus whose events-related startup is about to be offered to Salesforce.com customers, a health-care tech startup founded by an evening MBA student, and a nonprofit music venture launched by a Haas undergraduate.

PlushCareYour Health Concierge
Ryan McQuaid, MBA 13

Evening MBA student Ryan McQuaid, MBA 15, headed to the doctor’s office a year ago seeking advice about a sore back.

It would have been easier and just as effective, he says, to call the doctor to discuss his problem.

The hassle of McQuaid’s interactions with the health system over the years has led him to his most recent health-care startup, PlushCare. With PlushCare’s planned services, patients will pay a low monthly fee of about $10 to replace in-person office visits with same-day consultations with doctors via email, video, or phone. PlushCare will cover about 70 percent of physician office visits and for the other 30 percent refer patients to a specialist or advise seeing  a physician in person. 

McQuaid and his two co-founders, two doctors who trained at Stanford, plan to launch an Indiegogo campaign Jan. 28 to onboard a limited number of beta users in California to begin using the service.

“What we decided was to create a more user-centered experience,” says McQuaid, who resigned recently as head of strategy and business development for AT&T’s mHealth platform.

Plushcare’s mission is to promote health globally, so the company has partnered with Shot@Life, a United Nations Foundation effort to vaccinate children worldwide. PlushCare will give a lifetime of immunity to a child in exchange for every patient sign-up, McQuaid says.

25Pumping up the Volume for Charity
Mike Teez, BS 14

Even before coming to Haas as a transfer student, electronic music producer and DJ Mike Teez, BS 14, had identified with the Defining Principle Beyond Yourself.

For the last four years, Teez has been organizing musical charity events in the electronic dance music industry, giving back all proceeds to such causes as an underprivileged school in Costa Rica, shoes for the homeless in Berkeley, and purchasing rainforest land in Brazil to avoid deforestation.

Now he's launched a nonprofit called 2the5th Entertainment to continue building out his philanthropic event model and create his own record label to give artists an opportunity to showcase their talents while giving back to society.

In a recent Indiegogo campaign that raised $2,010 from 40 funders, Teez explains the name: "The name is based on the musical significance of every multiple of 2: 2x2x2x2x2 number of beats is essentially the foundation of most electronic music, and 2the5th can be the foundation for the future!"

Teez has been been building up a roster of artists from around the world, including Norway, South Korea, and the United States, and is looking to begin releasing their material in the late winter or early spring. His Indiegogo campaign focused on raising funds to cover such costs as marketing and videos for his first three releases as well as seed money for more events.

Learn even more about Teez and 2th5th on the Haas Undergraduate Students Blog: haas.org/1eiVUs5.

IntellieventsEvent Intelligence
Mark Elbradramany, MBA 13

Mark Elbradramany, MBA 13, wasn’t looking for a job when Oracle executives approached him at the UC Berkeley Startup Competition last year. “They found me and said, “We really love what you’re doing, we need companies like yours,'" says Elbradramany, whose startup, Intellievents, was a competition semifinalist.

Elbradramany had developed a mobile application to improve the experience people have when attending large events such as football games and concerts. His startup idea emerged at an Oakland A’s baseball game during Haas orientation week, when he was trying to find pizza and friends he was meeting.

Frustrated by the ballpark experience, he began work on a new mobile app fans could use to deliver pizza to their seats, help them connect with each other at the stadium, and earn loyalty points. He built out his idea at Skydeck, UC Berkeley's accelerator that helps launch campus startups.

Intrigued by developing Intellievents post-graduation, Elbradramany accepted a job as an Oracle consultant last June, which allowed him to simultaneously work on his company. He's shifted Intellievents' focus from a mobile application to an enterprise platform that collects data about fans—everything from where they like to sit at a game to what they usually pay for tickets to who accompanies them to events. Organizations like the NBA or NFL could use that data to help draw more people to an event, encourage fans to spend money while there, and make sure they have the best possible time.

He has signed a contract to provide his platform to Salesforce.com customers as an option, which he expects to be available in about a month.

Elbradramany credits his success to entrepreneurship classes with David Charron and Kurt Beyer, who walked him through every step of building a company, including ideation, team formation, customer discovery, development, and launch.

“At many other business schools, students only get the chance to read great case studies. At Berkeley-Haas, we get to meet the CEOs, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists these cases are written about," he adds. "When they discuss their challenges and solutions, successes and failures in classroom discussions and seminars we get to learn the case from a unique viewpoint.”

Intel Teams up with Lester Center for Make it Wearable Challenge Curriculum

$
0
0

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich wowed attendees last month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with his announcement of the Make It Wearable Challenge, a global, year-long initiative.

The challenge will call upon the smartest and most creative minds around the world to create startups to push the limits of wearable devices and ubiquitous computing on top of Intel’s Edison and Galileo platforms in areas such as meaningful usages, aesthetics, battery life, security, and privacy. Intel will be awarding more than $1.3 million to winners and connect contenders with industry luminaries to help them scale their visions of the future.

Building on a longtime relationship with the Haas School’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, Intel also announced a new partnership to run an online and on-site training and mentoring program for the top 10 finalist teams in the Make It Wearable Challenge. Lester Center Executive Director André Marquis will lead Berkeley-Haas instructors in guiding wearable device startup teams through a multi-month intensive online accelerator that will start in August and culminate in November with the 10 finalists spending a week at UC Berkeley.

The curriculum will build on Haas' work leading a multimillion innovation program for the National Science Foundation (NSF). Haas Lecturer and serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, the architect of the NSF Innovation Corps curriculum, will be among the faculty offering training sessions as part of the Make It Wearable initiative with Intel.

“This educational and entrepreneurial initiative brings together so much of what is great here at Berkeley-Haas: lean startups, open innovation, and design thinking just to start," says Marquis. "We are excited to partner again with Intel to inspire and train the next generation of entrepreneurs and help them push the limits of what is possible.”

The Lester Center has been hosting the Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley every fall since 2005 in collaboration with the Intel Foundation. The challenge brings together the best business, science, and engineering students to network, learn from leading entrepreneurship educators, and compete for $100,000 in prizes by pitching their businesses to prominent Silicon Valley investors.

Intel will manage the selection process for its Make It Wearable Challenge, while Haas will host and build the curriculum for the accelerator program.

Registration begins today (Feb. 24) for the Make It Wearable Challenge’s Visionary Track, which features five rounds with start dates and judging staggered throughout the year and $5,000 prizes. Registration will open in summer 2014 for a Development Track, which will feature three rounds to select the 10 finalists who will participate in the accelerator curriculum created by the Lester Center.

For more information and to sign up for updates, visit the Intel Make It Wearable Challenge website at makeit.intel.com.

Intel

Two Berkeley-Haas Food Startups Win Innovation Awards

$
0
0

Two Haas School startups were recognized in the San Francisco Business Times’ East Bay Innovation Awards. Back to the Roots won the food category award, while Revolution Foods was a finalist. (Their profiles are published in the February 14-21 issue.)

Back to the Roots founders Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez, both BS 09, won the innovation award for offering “fun, inspirating products that connect families to their food,” the Business Times wrote. The company’s two products are a mushroom growing kit and Aquafarm, a self-cleaning fish tank that also grows an herb garden.

Both products focus on environmental sustainability: the mushrooms grow in used coffee grounds while the Aquafarm is based on an ancient method of farming developed by the Aztecs that saves water by combining aquaculture (fish cultivation) with hydroponics (plant cultivation without the use of soil). More at backtotheroots.com.

"With the incredible history of game-changing food companies located in the East Bay, it was a big honor to be recognized with the Food Innovation award for this region,” says Arora. “We credit a lot of Back to the Roots' innovative spirit to the values engrained in us by Berkeley-Haas—that sense of optimism, curiosity, and always questioning the status quo!”

Revolution Foods, co-founded by Kristin Groos Richmond and Kirsten Saenz Tobey, both MBA 06, was a finalist “for providing high quality, healthy meals for families of all income levels.”

Their business was started with the idea of bringing healthy meals to local school children. Since then they have expanded nationwide, serving a million meals a week in nearly 1,000 schools. Revolution Foods now also produces healthy meals in grocery stores. More on Revolution Foods at revolutionfoods.com.

Richmond and Tobey received the Haas School’s 2013 Leading Through Innovation Award in November. View a story about them and their award in BerkeleyHaas magazine at haas.berkeley.edu/groups/pubs/berkeleyhaas/current/revolution-foods-expanding-the-menu.html.

The East Bay Innovation Awards are sponsored by the East Bay Economic Development Alliance.

ABC’s “Shark Tank” Seeks Haas Students and Alumni, Feb. 26

$
0
0

Tempted to take a dive into the Shark Tank? Do you have a lucrative business or product that needs financial backing? Have you ever wondered how to become a show contestant and get funding for your startup?

Berkeley-Haas students and alumni are invited to meet with the producers from the popular ABC show, Shark Tank, where entrepreneurs pitch the investor “sharks” in hopes of trading a percentage of their business for investment funding. Not everyone walks away with funding, but it’s the contestants’ job to show the sharks why investing in their company is a smart, profitable move. The producers are coming to Haas Wednesday, Feb. 26, to help entrepreneurs with the application process and answer questions about the upcoming season.

The Shark Tank producers are looking for entrepreneurs with a great product or business idea who need an investment to move forward. Here are the details:

 

Wednesday, February 26
9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Cheit Building - C337
Drop in; no appointment necessary.
Current Berkeley-Haas students and alumni only, please.

For more information about the show, visit abc.com/sharktank.

sharktank

Former Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello to Speak at Haas, March 19

$
0
0

After graduating from Haas in 1981, John Riccitiello worked in management for a variety of consumer-goods companies before landing at Electronic Arts, where he served as COO and CEO over a period of 13 years. His high-profile leadership at the video-game company will be the focus of a conversation with Dean Rich Lyons on Wednesday, March 19, at 12:30 p.m. in the Wells Fargo Room.

The event is co-hosted by the Dean’s Speaker Series and the Haas Digital Media and Entertainment Club (DMEC). Members of the club will submit questions for Riccitiello in advance, and ten will be selected to be delivered by Lyons.

The discussion will also address Riccitiello’s transition from consumer products to technology, says DMEC member Sebastien Tron, MBA 15, who helped organize the talk after meeting Riccitiello at a conference.

“I think it is important to bring him to Haas because he is a Haas alum with a leadership position at a major tech and entertainment firm,” says Tron. “He is an inspiration to all of us students. Besides, many of us are career switchers who want to get into tech companies, where leadership is very often given to engineers.”

Before moving to EA, Riccitiello served stints at Clorox, PepsiCo, Häagen-Dazs, Wilson Sporting Goods, and Sara Lee. In 1997 he became president and COO of Electronic Arts.

He left the company seven years later to co-found private equity firm Elevation Partners, but was rehired in 2007 as CEO. During his time as CEO, he led Electronic Arts through a shift to digital gaming. He stepped down in March 2013 amid the boom in mobile gaming and financial challenges.

Riccitiello also sits on the Haas Board and delivered the 2011 undergraduate commencement speech.

For more information and to register for the event, visit http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/haas/about/deansspeakers.html.

John Riccitiello

Travel Industry Leader Ralph Bahna, MBA 65, Passes Away

$
0
0

Haas alumnus Ralph Bahna, MBA 65, founder of the Club Quarters business hotel chain and longtime chairman of Priceline.com, passed away Monday, Feb. 24. He was 71.

Born in Grand Rapids, Mich., Bahna attended the University of Michigan, where he was a Big Ten wrestling champion for the Wolverines. After earning his MBA at Berkeley’s business school, Bahna went on to drive countless innovations in the travel industry.

Bahna was credited with helping to turn Trans World Airlines (TWA) around by inventing business class while still in his 20s. He then led a turnaround as CEO at Cunard Line in the 1980s and in 1993 founded Club Quarters, private, city-center hotels, which he led until his death. Bahna also was a founding investor in Priceline.com, the “name your own price” travel booking engine, which he had served as board chairman since 2004.

In August 2012, Bahna shared his “secret sauce” for leading change in a rare talk with Berkeley MBA students, building on his work with Dean Rich Lyons on the school’s innovative leader curriculum. Bahna spoke on the difference between "thinkers" and "transactors" and described how to become a "thinker" to solve problems and transform organizations.

"If a person can add another half hour or an hour in a week [to thinking], their power increases immensely," said Bahna, who had spoken only one other time publicly in the last 20 years.

His recipe for success included the ability to boil down a challenge or course of action very concisely, sales skills to convince others to implement a solution, and determination and tenacity. He noted, for instance, how his efforts to successfully create the predecessor to business class travel at TWA in the late 1970s required him to rewrite a proposal more than 20 times.

Bahna, a member of the Haas School Board, was a generous supporter of Berkeley-Haas as well as the University of Michigan wrestling program. He served on the boards of the King and Low Heywood Thomas Schools and was active in the Young Presidents’ Organization. He supported Columbia New York Presbyterian's atrial fibrillation research and served on its heart steering committee. He also was involved in developing the Center for Integrative Medicine & Wellness at Stamford Hospital in Stamford, Conn., where he lived.

Bahna is survived by his wife, Dorothy Ballard Bahna; two daughters and a son; and eight grandchildren.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 4, in St. Cecilia's Church, 1184 Newfield Avenue, Stamford, Conn. Interment will be private. The family will receive friends from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday March 3, at the Hoyt Funeral Home, 199 Main St, New Canaan, Conn. For online condolences and directions, visit hoytfuneralhome.com.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Bahna Fund for Electrophysiology/ New York- Presbyterian Fund, Inc. c/o Adele Conner, Office of Development, New York Presbyterian Hospital, 654 West 170th St., NY, NY 10032.

Read an interview with Bahna in the Fall 2012 issue of BerkeleyHaas magazine.

Ralph Bahna

Latin American Business Conference to Explore Innovation in Many Contexts, April 4

$
0
0

With the theme “Scaling up Innovation,” the fifth annual Latin American Business Conference on April 4 at the Bancroft Hotel will focus on themes of interest to a community broader than just students and alumni focused on business in Latin America.

This full-day conference is organized by the Latin American and Hispanic Business Association (LAHBA), and will feature speakers and panelists from a variety of backgrounds talking about innovation at all levels, from the idea stage to startup to corporate innovation.

“This conference will be relevant to not only Latin America or Hispanic people, but the whole community interested in innovation,” says conference organizer and former LAHBA president Pablo Cuaron, MBA 14. “We want people to walk away with insights on what it takes to be innovative, whatever they want to do and wherever they want to go.”

The opening keynote will be Allen Taylor, VP of global network at Endeavor, which is an initiative that connects U.S.-based venture capitalists with entrepreneurs across Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. Cuaron notes that Taylor will be able to talk on not only entrepreneurship in Latin America but also Latin America within a global context.

Pablo Peñaloza, CEO at GE Capital Mexico and Latin America; John Magee, CMO at GE Software; and Alejandro Alvarez, senior director in Global Brand Engagement at Banana Republic, MBA 05, will also give keynote talks.

In addition to the keynote addresses, there will be two panels: one on scaling up innovation in Silicon Valley and another on why tech companies should care about Latin America.

The conference runs from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., coffee and a networking event at the end. For more information and registration, visit lahbaconference.net.

LAHBA Logo

Support Haas Initiatives on New Crowdfunding Sites

$
0
0

Berkeley-Haas launched two crowdfunding platforms to enable the Haas community to support campus initiatives and each other’s private ventures.

The crowdfunding platforms aim to help attract engagement and financial support for research and innovation, community activity, and entrepreneurial ventures that typically fall between the campus’s normal funding methods and models.

“These campaigns showcase the good work underway in the Haas community,” says Laurent de Janvry, Haas’ director of marketing and development – annual, reunion, and leadership programs. “And crowdfunding increases the visibility of that good work and expands the funding pool.”

Berkeley-Haas’ official crowdfunding platform, crowdfund.haas.berkeley.edu, hosts campaigns directly supporting school initiatives, such as the following live campaigns:

  • Center for Responsible Business: Raising $100,000 for the first student-managed Socially Responsible Investment Fund at a top business school, aimed at developing future generations of responsible investors and leaders.

  • Young Entrepreneurs at Haas (YEAH): Raising $20,000 for deserving Bay Area high school teens to have the opportunity to visit colleges in Southern California. 

  • Haas Rugby Club: Raising $2,500 for new team uniforms and equipment.

Berkeley-Haas’ external crowdfunding platform, indiegogo.com/partners/berkeley-haas, hosts private ventures launched by Haas students, faculty and alumni, including this most recent campaign:

  • PlushCare: Raising $25,000 for a startup that offers medical diagnoses and treatment with qualified MDs via email, phone, or video chat. (They extended their campaign!)

Top B-School Students Come to Haas to Take on K-12 Education Challenges

$
0
0

Ten rival teams from some of the nation’s top business schools came to Berkeley at the end of February to compete in the Haas School’s annual Education Leadership Case Competition, helping develop strategies for a charter school system that recently expanded outside California to Memphis, Tenn.

This year the case focused on Aspire Public Schools, one of the nation’s highest performing school systems, which predominantly serves low-income students at 37 open-enrollment K-12 public charter schools in and California and Tennessee, where Aspire began operating two schools in 2013. Due to unpredictable budgets based on the state pupil funding rates, Aspire Public Schools sought guidance on how its management team could face future change—including new Common Core Standards, investments in technology and training, and new policies around teacher effectiveness—while continuing to provide the means for maximized student achievement.

Teams composed of students from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Graduate School of Education School took first and second, while Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management in third. Other teams came from Berkeley-Haas, Columbia, Chicago Booth, Virginia Darden, and USC Marshall. Judges included two executives from Aspire.

“Aspire judges mentioned they left the competition with frameworks and solutions they are excited to start using,” says Erica Butow, MBA 14, co-president of the Education Club, which organized the competition.

In its eighth year, the competition is the country’s oldest MBA case challenge that brings business minds to education management. Past competitions have tackled problems faced by schools in such cities as San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Pittsburg.

“The Education Leadership Case Competition brings talented student leaders together to develop innovative solutions for today’s education challenges,” says Fanzi Mao, MBA 14, one of the Education Club’s vice presidents. “In doing so, we hope to positively impact America’s public education system and develop stronger leaders for future education reform.”

 

 

Four Haas Alums Make 40 Under 40 List

$
0
0

The San Francisco Business Times has released its third annual 40 under 40 award winners, a group of CEOs, entrepreneurs, and top executives making a difference in the local business community. In all, nine Cal alumni made the list, four of those Haas alumni. They will be honored at an event on March 18 at AT&T Park.

Haas alums who made the list:

Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez, both BS 09
Co-founders
Back to the Roots, which sells mushroom-growing kits and Aquafarm, a self-cleaning fish tank that also grows an herb garden
Read more Haas news about Back to the Roots

Danae Ringelmann, MBA 08
Co-founder and chief customer officer
Indiegogo, the world’s largest global crowdfunding platform
Read news articles and a magazine profile about Ringelmann and watch a video about how her Berkeley MBA experience helped her build Indiegogo.

Shivani Sopory, BS 05
Audit senior manager, emerging technology practice
KPMG LLP, a professional services firm that provides audit, tax, and advisory services

Cal alumni on the list:

Jason and Matthew Goldman, both BA 10 (Interdisciplinary Studies)
Co-founder and principal
G2 Insurance, an insurance brokerage for high-net-worth individuals, nonprofits, real estate, and technology firms

Daniel Lurie, MPP 05 (Public Policy)
CEO and founder
Tipping Point Community, which screens nonprofits to find, fund, and partner with the most effective poverty-fighting organizations in the Bay Area to support people in need

Kristen Law Sagafi, JD 02
Partner
Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, which represent plaintiffs in individual, group, whistleblower, and class-action lawsuits in state and federal courts nationwide

Ije-Enu N. Udeze, BA 95 (Economics)
Chief of Staff
Kaiser Permanente health care provider

See the 40 Under 40 article in the San Francisco Business Times

TubeMogul, Latest Tech Company to Shoot for IPO, Traces Beginnings to Berkeley-Haas

$
0
0

The story of TubeMogul—the latest tech company to file for an initial public offering—starts at Berkeley-Haas. 

The trio of Haas alumni who founded the online video ad company—Brett Wilson, John Hughes, and Mark Rotblat, all MBA 07—met in an MBA class on entrepreneurship run by the school’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship. They went on to spend a year working in the Haas School's startup incubator, raised money from classmates, and competed in the Lester Center's Business Plan Competition twice, first making it to the semifinals and then tying for first place.

"There would be no TubeMogul without Haas, and in particular, the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship,” Wilson, the CEO, told CalBusiness, the Haas School’s magazine, in 2011.

"The Lester Center was just an awesome launch pad to help us create TubeMogul," Wilson added in another Haas article about the company. "Absolutely couldn't have done it without Haas."

“There is so much entrepreneurial energy at Berkeley-Haas, it’s contagious,” adds Lester Center director André Marquis, a Berkeley MBA alum and founder of a number of tech startups himself. “The TubeMogul team was impressive from the start in their focus and ability to pivot their business based on customer feedback. That is what we teach our students and that is why TubeMogul won our UC Berkeley startup competition in 2007. It’s gratifying to see their hard work over the years lead to such a big success.”

TubeMogul, a media-buying platform for online video advertising, has enjoyed explosive growth since its founding at Haas. Fast-forward to fall 2013: The company’s rapid revenue growth placed it at #239 on the Inc. 500 America's Fastest Growing Private Companies list. The company made the San Francisco Business Times’ “Fast 100” list of the Bay Area’s fastest private companies in 2011 and 2012 (#7 each year) and its revenue has grown 517.7 percent from 2010 to 2012. In 2013, CEO Wilson says, TubeMogul was on track to more than double business as well. 

Staying true to its Berkeley-Haas roots, TubeMogul’s cast of employees includes more than 50 Berkeley alumni worldwide out of a total staff of more than 225 employees as of October 2013. Other Haas alumni include Keith Eadie, MBA 08, chief marketing officer since February 2014 and previously VP and director of marketing, and Daniel Schotland, BS 87, VP of operations since 2013. The company, headquartered in Emeryville, also has offices in London, Singapore, Sydney, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit.

After launching a new ad platform in 2011, TubeMogul went on to generate more than 800 million views spanning more than 200 campaigns for such firms as Unilever, Microsoft, and Sony Pictures. In October 2011, the company closed $10 million in Series B funding.

What's the secret to such growth? Knowing when to pivot is one reason for the company’s success, Wilson says. The company switched from focusing on video distribution and analytics to building software to power video ad-buying based on feedback from its first clients, ad agencies.

Being discerning with new hires also helps TubeMogul stay ahead. "We tend to shun perfect pedigrees in favor of people who embody several key traits: do what you say, go fast (making mistakes is OK), and do a lot with a little," says Wilson. "And it works. Ad agencies voted that we have the best customer service in the industry, and our engineering team is constantly building tools to simplify brand advertising and make it more effective."

Watch a video of CEO Brett Wilson, MBA 07, talking on the importance of Haas in TubeMogul's success.

 

TubeMogul co-founders Mark Rotblat, Brett Wilson (CEO), and John Hughes (president of products), all MBA 07.

Alumni Conference to Feature Mac and Cheese CEO and Olympic Bobsledder

$
0
0

Annie’s CEO John Foraker, MBA 94, and former Olympic bobsledder Darrin Steele, MBA 08, will participate in a full day of teaching by alumni, faculty, and staff at the Annual Alumni Conference April 26 at Haas.

Foraker will give the morning keynote talk, sharing his experiences in building Annie's from a $6 million macaroni and cheese business to a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In his talk, Hopping Down the Bunny Trail: Building a Mission Driven Consumer Brand, Foraker will provide examples of the values-aligned decisions he has had to make over the years as CEO and his observations about the future of consumer brands.

The conference will also feature a wide variety of lectures given by faculty and industry leaders—five to choose from in the morning and five in the afternoon. Among the topics:

  • Scalable Startups: Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Scale at Berkeley-Haas, taught by André Marquis, MBA 96, executive director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship.
  • A Fresh Approach to Networking, led by Heather Hollick, MBA 04, a leadership and team coach.
  • Personal Finance Boot Camp, led by classmates Tanya Shaw Steinhofer and Tammy Plotkin-Oren, both MBA 99, with colleague Gigi Orta.

Dean Rich Lyons, BS 82, will kick off the conference with a welcome and brief update on the school, including his perspective on how the unique culture and style of leadership at Haas empowers alumni to create positive change in organizations and markets.

Topics to be presented by Haas professors include:

  • Business and Social Impact at Haas, with Professor and former Dean Laura Tyson, director of the Institute for Business and Social Impact at Haas. Tyson will discuss the new institute, including its history, rationale, activities, and goals.
  • Aaker on Branding: 20 Principles That Drive Success, with Professor Emeritus David Aaker. Drawing from his new book with the same title as this session, Aaker will discuss what you need to know to create and manage strong brands.
  • China vs. the U.S.: Where Will This End?, with Senior Lecturer Paul Tiffany, PhD 83. Tiffany will review the remarkable rise of the Chinese economy from the Mao-inspired revolution in the mid-20th century to the present day.

Darrin Steele, MBA 08Darrin Steele (pictured right), CEO, U.S. Bobsled & Skeleton Federation, will be among the alumni giving nine HAASx Talks to cap off the afternoon. The five-minute presentations by Haas alumni are intended to inspire, engage, and provoke conversation.

Steele, whose talk is titled "Five Business Lessons from Olympians," enjoyed record wins for the U.S. bobsled and skeleton teams in the Sochi Olympics this year. His own own career highlights include taking 12th in four-man bobsled in the 1998 Olympics and 9th at the 2002 Olympics in two-man bobsled with driver Brian Shimer.


Other examples of HAASx Talks are:

  • Three Ways to Demolish Gender Bias (Good for Men, Women, Business, and a Lot of Things), Nilmini Gunaratne Rubin, MBA 99, senior advisor, U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.
  • Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch, Chris Loughlin, BCEMBA 04/05, CEO, Travelzoo.

The HAASx Talks will be moderated by Adjunct Assistant Professor Kellie McElhaney, faculty director of the Center for Responsible Business.

The day will close with a networking reception from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Organizers are planning a simple way to help people connect with others from specific industries and executive recruiters during the event.

For more details on the conference, visit haas.berkeley.edu/groups/alumni/conference/.

John Foraker
John Foraker, MBA 94, CEO of Annie's

California Management Review Launches Electronic Digest for Haas Community

$
0
0

California Management Review (CMR), the Haas School’s quarterly management research journal, has launched a new digital service for students, alumni, faculty, and staff to make the latest management research more accessible.

CMR Executive Digest condenses and summarizes the key points from articles in the latest issue of California Management Review into two to three pages. The digest will be emailed to students, faculty, and staff each quarter when a new issue of California Management Review is published.

“We received feedback from alumni and students that they don’t always have time to read an entire article or issue of California Management Review,” explains Haas Professor David Vogel, the journal’s editor-in-chief since 1982. “CMR Executive Digest is a way of making our articles more accessible to the Haas community.”

CMR Executive Digest also will include summaries of articles in the Berkeley-Haas Case Series, which recently expanded its audience through an agreement with Harvard Business Publishing.

The first edition of the CMR Executive Digest includes a summary of Haas Professor Jenny Chatman’s case article “Culture Change at Genentech.” The digest also includes summaries of articles on Japanese companies after the 2011 earthquake, supply chains, open innovation, and employee contributions to brand equity.

To access the full table of contents of the latest issue of CMR, visit CMR's website at cmr.berkeley.edu.

California Management Review

Haas Summer Youth Business Academy Expands Reach

$
0
0

Eva Luna Reiling, 13, is still months away from her freshman year in high school, but she already has dreams of attending Berkeley-Haas and becoming an entrepreneur. At the Berkeley Business Academy for Youth Program (B-BAY) last year, she discovered a key skill she needed to develop.

“I learned how to work on a team,” says the Arlington, Va., resident. “I used to be really bad at it, but now I use what I learned about teamwork in school every day.” Reiling, whose father earned his MBA at Berkeley, decided she wants to follow in his footsteps after attending B-BAY, which is going on its sixth year this summer. Founded for middle school students in 2008 by the Haas School’s Center for Young Entrepreneurs at Haas (YEAH) , the intensive program continues to extend its reach in curriculum and student diversity.

This summer will mark the second year YEAH offers a session to high school students with housing.  In addition, more international students will be attending the program—including students from Belgium and Brazil for the first time—thanks to recruiting across the globe.

Tuition from B-BAY supports the Center for Young Entrepreneurs at Haas, which teaches business skills in under-resourced Bay Area schools during the school year. Along with teamwork, business concepts such as entrepreneurship, accounting, marketing, and corporate social responsibility are tailored for students’ levels. As a final project, middle school students create a business website, while high school students present a business plan and critique a case study.

Lecturer Frank Schultz is one of the Haas faculty members who have been donating teaching time to B-BAY for the last five years. His coursework emphasizes leadership and teamwork. One of his experiential exercises teaches students about organizational structures such as forming (students getting together), storming (students competing with ideas), norming (coming up with a mutual plan), and performing (teams handling the decision-making process).

“The students learn that if they have disagreements during the storming point, they should not necessarily feel as if they got a bad team,” he says. “Disagreement, negotiation, and coming to a consensus on a direction are fundamental to moving on to the norming and performing stages.”

Joyce Zhao, 17, a high school junior from Guangdong province in China and 2013 alumna, is applying what she learned in school this year. “Some fundamental ideas related to business and economy are helpful for my AP economics study now,” she says.

Meanwhile, 2010 B-BAY alum, Jonathan Lee, 17, of Lafayette, Calif., has used his knowledge to help him place as a finalist in a regional and state business competition. Thanks to B-BAY, he says, “I felt like I was already comfortable with all the material.”

Visit the Center for Young Enterpreneurs at Haas website.

Eva Luna Reiling

Haas Real Estate Conference to Drill Down on Big Data, San Francisco Gentrification

$
0
0

Hot topics like Big Data and land-use conflicts and development in San Francisco will be among the subjects discussed at the 19th Annual Fisher Center Real Estate Conference April 28 in San Francisco.

In addition, Fisher Center Chairman Ken Rosen will share his popular forecast for the upcoming year. He will be joined by Cal alumnus Robert Lalanne, BA 78 (Archit.), UC Berkeley’s new vice chancellor for real estate, as the other keynote speaker.

Conference panels will also tackle issues including government involvement in capital markets, the intersection of real estate and Big Data, and what’s ahead for California in residential markets.

Industry experts who will speak at the conference include:

The conference runs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, immediately followed by a cocktail reception.

Registration link: regonline.com/19thAnnualConference Conference website: groups.haas.berkeley.edu/realestate/ExecEd/AnnConfinfo.html

Global Social Venture Competition to Award Record $55K in Prizes, Celebrate 15 Years

$
0
0

Eighteen entrepreneurial teams from around the world will gather next week at the Haas School to compete for a record $55,000 in prizes at the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) finals.

Held from April 9 to April 11, the GSVC global finals will showcase a broad range of innovative business ideas addressing everything from celebrity-sponsored nonprofit fundraising to salinity sensors for small-plot shrimp farmers—all designed to generate positive social impact.

Celebrating its 15th anniversary, the competition has awarded more than $500,000 to emerging social ventures since its founding by Berkeley MBA students.

To help celebrate the anniversary, several GSVC alumni will give presentations during a conference that coincides with the April 11 public finals. Keynote speakers will include Kirsten Saenz Tobey, MBA 06, founder and chief impact officer of 2007 GSVC winner Revolution Foods, and Priya Haji, MBA 03, co-founder and CEO of SaveUp and co-founder of GSVC 2005 winner World of Good. Carlos Orellana, MBA/MPH 10, founder and CEO of salaUno is the keynote speaker for a private awards dinner on April 11.

Conference breakout sessions include: GSVC Alumni: Learnings from 15 Years of Global Change; Social Intrapreneurship: Making a Big Impact Inside a Big Company; and Financing Social Ventures, among other topics.

“For the last 15 years, the GSVC has empowered entrepreneurs to launch sustainable ventures that are improving the health of ecosystems and communities from Berkeley to Burkina Faso,” says GSVC Co-chair Ali Kelley, MBA 15. “As students, we are encouraged to apply business skills to effect positive, real-world change. Social impact is ingrained in Haas culture.”

This year’s competition attracted some 500 team entries from 44 different countries.

Teams are drawn from a global network of 14 partner schools and outreach organizations, including two newly added Latin American schools: Universidad de los Andes, Colombia and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. After competing in one of several regional semifinals, the top two teams from each region advance to the global finals held each spring at UC Berkeley.

This year, 22 teams, including 12 Haas-affiliated teams, participated in the U.S. western regional semifinals held March 21 at Haas. The two regional winners that will move on to the global finals are LegWorks and earthenable.

LegWorks, which includes Emily Lutyens, MBA 13, has developed an artificial knee joint that it says costs less than one-tenth that of existing products and enables users to walk more efficiently, safely, and comfortably. The group hopes its device will help lower-limb amputees in developed as well as under-resourced countries, where disabilities often lead to poverty.

“Our vision is to develop and supply all components of a complete prosthetic leg solution for amputees no matter where they live or their ability to pay,” Lutyens says.

Earthenable makes earthen floors that provide Rwandans with a healthier alternative to dirt floors. The $30 earthen floors—made of packed, sealed materials such as gravel, sand, clay, and fiber—cost far less than the $300 to $500 for concrete floors.

Next week’s GSVC global final consists of two consecutive rounds. During the private first round on April 10, the 18 finalist teams will present to a panel of judges, which will then choose six to eight teams to compete the following day for cash prizes at the public global final.

In addition to the $25,000 grand prize, $15,000 second prize, and $7,500 third prize, the finalists on the second day can win the $1,500 People’s Choice Award, which is bestowed by audience votes. All remaining finalists from the first day are eligible to win the $1,000 Quick Pitch Award, which is also determined by audience votes.

This year’s competition also features a $5,000 award sponsored by Intel for the best technology solution. All finalist teams will also benefit from an April 9 GSVC boot camp (offered last year as well) that provides workshops and educational training to finalists.

Registration is required for the April 11 GSVC global finals, which runs from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For more information about the GSVC global finals and conference, visit gsvc.org/finals-conference.

GSVC
Viewing all 115 articles
Browse latest View live


Latest Images

<script src="https://jsc.adskeeper.com/r/s/rssing.com.1596347.js" async> </script>