Cornell Johnson Alumni Celebrated at 20th Annual Diversity Symposium
More than 160 prospective students, alumni, faculty and staff attended the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business annual Diversity Symposium earlier this month. Hosted by the Office for Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) and held in conjunction with Johnson Means Business, the theme of the weekend’s events was “Belonging in Business,” which highlighted the personal and professional sense of belonging that everyone deserves. The event also delved into how to create an environment of belonging for a more welcoming and inclusive business world.
Continue reading…Chicago Booth Alumni Gift Funds Marketing Professorship and More
In recognition of the many ways that Chicago Booth has impacted his career, Jim Kilts (Booth MBA ’74) recently make a $4.25 million donation to create the Kilts Family Professorship and the Kilts Faculty Research Prize for Excellence in Marketing. His gift will also go toward providing additional support for the James M. Kilts Center for Marketing. This is just a small piece of the more than $12.5 million that the Chicago Booth alumni has donated to the school’s marketing efforts over the last 20 years.
Through his gifts, Kilts hopes that Chicago Booth will remain on the cutting edge of marketing education. He already believes it’s the best marketing school in the world, and he credits the exceptional faculty, data resources, and multi-disciplined approach with making that possible. Another piece of that success is the Kilts Center, which has a long-standing relationship with Nielsen; this allows them to distribute data sets to more than 1,000 researchers from 130 academic institutions.
According to Jean-Pierre Dubé, Sigmund E. Edelstone Professor of Marketing and Director, Kilts Center for Marketing, “Jim Kilts’ gift to create a new professorship and a new faculty research prize will play an instrumental role in supporting and recognizing ground-breaking research in marketing, while helping us to attract and retain the world’s top marketing scholars.”
About Jim Kilts
Jim Kilts started his career at General Foods when he was just a teenager. By college, he was a lab technician, and that paved the way for his future career. After earning his MBA at Chicago Booth in 1974, Kilts went on to become CEO of three iconic consumer goods companies: Kraft, Nabisco, and Gillette. Later, he founded a financial advisory and private equity firm, and he credits Chicago Booth with much of his success.
“It’s always been a great school and I owe my prosperity to the University of Chicago, the institution which changed my life,” Kilts says. “I hope my latest gift provides the added support to help make Booth the best marketing school in the world.”
Read more about the gift and the Chicago Booth alumni on the Chicago Booth news site.
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from its original source, Clear Admit.
5 Questions With Imran Kanga, Rotman’s MBA Director of Admissions
In our latest installment of the MetroMBA “5 Questions” series, we speak with Imran Kanga, Director of Recruitment & Admissions of the full-time MBA program at the Toronto Rotman School of Management. Kanga discusses what students should know before applying and the culture of the program.
What type of MBA student flourishes at Rotman?
Imran Kanga, Director of Recruitment & Admissions of the full-time MBA program.
“Students who flourish in the Rotman full-time MBA program are highly driven and motivated individuals who have demonstrated leadership potential and academic excellence in their prior work and education. Our students also demonstrate excellent communication and interpersonal skills and thrive in a team environment, which not only is a significant part of the program but also sets them up for success in the workplace after graduation.”
What should prospective students know about the Rotman MBA program before they apply/start?
“The Rotman MBA program is a big commitment, both in terms of time and money. I would encourage prospective students, before they apply or start the program, to thoroughly research the program, the university, the city, and the career opportunities that potentially await them. It is important for them to speak to faculty, alumni, our career coaches, current students, and also the admissions team to understand what the requirements are and what they can expect from the program.
The FT MBA program is extremely rigorous and demanding, but it is also a very rewarding experience, and students need to be prepared before starting the program.”
What makes Rotman stand out amidst other Canadian MBA programs?
“There are so many factors that distinguish the Rotman MBA from other Canadian programs. To focus on a few…
- Being part of Canada’s largest and top-ranked University, Rotman MBA students enjoy the benefits of not only all the resources that the business school offers but also the University of Toronto as a whole. This includes being part of an extended global alumni network and a strong brand that is globally recognized.
- Our location in the heart of the largest city in Canada gives our students unfettered access to the largest business network in the country.
- Rotman also has some unique labs such as the Creative Destruction Lab, which supports startups in technology and disruptive innovation to scale and also gives our students the opportunity to work with these companies. Our one of a kind Self-Development Lab uses advanced technology and analytics to help students improve their soft skills such as communication, negotiation and presentation skills.”
How would you describe the culture of Toronto Rotman?
“The culture at Rotman is very much student success driven. Faculty, staff, alumni, and various other stakeholders work closely with students throughout their MBA journey to ensure that they are set up for success both during and after the MBA program.
At Rotman, we are also extremely committed to diversity and inclusion. Our students are extremely diverse, coming from all over the world and have different education and work backgrounds, which fosters a culture of knowledge sharing, support, and collaboration.
Our Dean Tiff Macklem is focused on continuous improvement, innovation, thought leadership, and research excellence, which is also central to Rotman’s culture.”
Where is your favorite place to visit in Toronto? Why?
“As a foodie, my favorite area of Toronto is the downtown core, which has a wide variety of restaurants and cuisines from all over the world, owing to the city’s incredibly diverse population.”
Top 10 Schools that Specialize in Healthcare Management
Healthcare Management MBAs are becoming a popular track for students who want to enter a growing industry that’s ripe with innovation. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, medical and health care managers, also called healthcare executives or healthcare administrators, are responsible for planning, directing, and coordinating medical and health services. They manage entire medical facilities, departments at nonprofits, and medical practices for physicians.
BLS reports that employment of health care management personnel is projected to grow 20 percent from 2016 to 2026, which is much faster than the average for nearly all other industries. This is partially because the Baby Boomer working class is aging into retirement, thus increasing more demand for healthcare services. The average pay for health care management professionals is an estimated $98,350 per year ($47.29 per hour).
While some health care managers have a bachelor’s degree, master’s degrees also are common in the field. If you’re a prospective MBA hoping to enter the health care field following graduation, are you aware of all the specialized healthcare management majors, courses and programs offered at business school across the nation? Many of the country’s top business schools have put together special options for students looking to get an in-depth look at one of the largest and fastest growing sectors in the US economy. Let’s take a look at the best of the best. Continue reading…
Clark Atlanta Announces New Dean, and More – Atlanta News
It’s time for a newsflash! Let’s take a look some of the biggest business school and MBA news coming out of Atlanta metro this week.
Silvanus J. Udoka Named Dean of Clark Atlanta University’s School of Business — Clark Atlanta News
According to a press release issued by the school, Clark Atlanta University President Ronald A. Johnson announced the selection of Silvanus J. Udoka, Ph.D., as dean of the university’s School of Business Administration. The current professor and chair of the Department of Management will enter his new role on June 1, 2018.
“I am honored to have been selected to serve as dean of Clark Atlanta University’s School of Business Administration,” Udoka said. “The history of the institution and the storied reputation of the School of Business Administration is palpable and the opportunities to create a transformative, innovative learning environment — attributes that first compelled me to pursue this assignment — align with my own mission to produce business and industry leaders who will not only compete successfully within the contemporary business environment, but apply critical thought, analysis and creativity to develop new market paradigms across vast sectors of the global economy. We are going to do great and exciting new things at Clark Atlanta.”
You can read more about Udoka’s promotion here.
25 Alumni Recognized During Emory Entrepreneur Awards — Emory Business News
Last month, the Emory Entrepreneur Network and Emory Alumni Association recognized 25 entrepreneurs Emory University alumni at the second annual Emory Entrepreneur Awards. According to the school, the awards celebrate alumni entrepreneurs who have innovated in their start and industry.
Several of the recent Emory entrepreneur honorees pose during last month’s event / Photo via emorybusiness.com.
“As you’ll see tonight, we’ve got a really good diversity of different folks from different industries and different business that they’ve created,” Steve Greenfield, co-president of the Emory Entrepreneur Network said. “Thankfully, with the support of folks like the Emory Alumni Association and Goizueta, we’ve finally gotten some momentum behind this.”
You can see the list of honorees here.
New Mentoring Program Pairs MBA, Master’s Students With Professionals — Georgia State University Newshub
The J. Mack Robinson College of Business recently launched a graduate mentoring program that helps MBAs build relationships with seasoned industry veterans. The new six-month program matches mentors using an algorithm that examines factors such as industry, years of experience, career goals, and expected outcomes.
“We are employing the latest technologies to ensure our new graduate mentoring program is another way in which we deliver on our vision that ‘no one gets closer to business than Robinson,’” dean Richard Phillips said.
Learn more about the mentoring program here.
These are the Top 5 Contenders for Amazon’s HQ2, According to Bank of America – Business Insider
In non-school news, a handful of Bank of America industry insiders believe that Atlanta can very well be the final destination for HQ2, Amazon‘s much publicized soon-to-be second headquarters.
“Bank of America considered two factors in choosing the cities: how closely each city mirrors Seattle (the site of Amazon’s current headquarters), and how attractive the city’s financial, employment, education, business, housing, transportation, and innovation sectors are.”
Amazon’s Seattle headquarters / Photo via Elaine Thompson/Associated Press.
The company has not yet released details of its pending final selection. You can read more about the industry expert’s predictions here.
Beyond Business School: Emory Goizueta MBA Alumni Make Waves
One of the key quality indicators of an MBA program is its alumni. By looking at a school’s alumni, you can get a sense of the kinds of individuals who are drawn to the program, the impact the program can have on your future career, and the type of network you’ll have access to. At Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, this network includes Nick Harris, the director of digital operations and optimization for United Airlines in Chicago, and Elizabeth Halkos, the chief operating officer at Purchasing Power, an e-commerce company that provides voluntary benefits programs to employers to help their employees improve their financial well-being.
Nick Harris — ’08 EvMBA
Nick Harris’ job is all about enhancing the online shopping experience for United Airlines customers. To do this, he spends his days studying the behavior of visitors to United.com, from using their smartphones to shop to purchasing a service bundle. He then looks at what the competition is doing to ensure that United Airlines keeps on top of the latest trends.
Talking about his job, Harris told Goizueta: “An average week for me usually involves looking at a wealth of information or data and trying to understand what types of hypotheses we can generate based off how customers are behaving or transacting with our channels.”
For example, one of Harris’ main tasks is ensuring that consumers can purchase products on the United Airlines app as easily as they do on a webpage using their smartphones or computer. He also has to keep up with what the giants of customer service—Google, Apple, and Amazon—are doing.
Harris told Goizueta that when these companies offer a new service or do something really intelligent, they set a new standard that United Airlines has to keep up with. “You’re not just competing against others in your industry; you’re competing for mind space and time with all of the other devices and apps that are on customers’ phones,” he says.
However, this can be difficult for a large company that’s nearly 100 years old, but that challenge is part of what Harris enjoys. Harris regularly partners with other product owners to enhance the digital experience, collaborating across teams to assess metrics together to identify opportunities to improve the overall United Airlines customer experience.
“One of the things that we’ve been doing a lot is looking at web analytics data and marrying that with transactional data. As a company, we have loads of transactional data, which is one of the things that I absolutely love about being at a company this size,” explains Harris.
Nick Harris
His interest in working for a company like United Airlines was one of the reasons that Harris chose Emory for his MBA. Prior to attending Goizueta, he was employed at a small tech firm and considering launching an investment group with a few friends. The problem was that Harris didn’t have the right tool set and background to succeed. So, he began to look into the Goizueta Evening MBA program.
“I felt it was worth the investment to go back to school and take the time to grow in a structured learning environment, in order to build that tool set,” he says. “This way I could evaluate our opportunities and learn the science of business.”
But, in the end, it wasn’t just the classroom experience that impacted Harris, it was the relationships that he built. In particular, his relationship with Professor Patrick Noonan led him to the airline industry. “We were talking one day, and Noonan says, ‘If you really like this work and you’re interested in doing optimization, you should think about the airline industry, given all of the work they do from a space revenue management standpoint,” remembers Harris. And the rest was history.
Elizabeth Halkos – ’01 MBA
As the chief operating officer at Purchasing Power, Elizabeth Halkos has a good deal of leadership experience, which was recently recognized during the 14th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Halkos was praised for raising the bar professionally and as a teacher and mentor for young women looking to launch their own ventures. This and her other accomplishments led her to be named a Silver Award Winner in the “Female Executive of the Year, Business Services: 11 to 2,500 Employees – Business Services” category.
Since 2002, the Stevie Awards have honored women executives, entrepreneurs, employees, and the companies they run globally. Each year, more than 170 professionals worldwide come together on five specialized juries to nominate the top women and organizations across more than 60 nations.
Elizabeth Halkos
After earning her MBA with a concentration in statistics and data analytics at Emory Goizueta in 2001, Halkos went on to work as a brand manager at Earthlink, Inc. and an account executive at Monster.com. From there, she served two years at the Inforte Corporation, where she consulted with such clients as Miller Brewing Company and Ocean Spray. Then, finally, she found her way to Purchasing Power in 2006.
Halkos started at Purchasing Power as the vice president of sales and marketing and quickly moved up the ranks. By 2010, she was promoted to chief marketing officer and then to chief revenue officer by 2014. In January of 2017, she was appointed to her current role of COO.
Halkos’s achievements at Purchasing Power include driving the top line revenue from $30M to more than $400M over a decade and helping the EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) grow from $5M to more than $40M. Most recently, she played an integral role in launching Purchasing Power’s 2017 rebranding campaign, which included new channel partnership strategies. This resulted in a 19 percent revenue and 80.5 percent adjusted EBITDA growth, compared to the same six months the previous year.
Halkos’s responsibilities at Purchasing Power include oversight of sales, account management, client services, customer experience, customer care, customer operations, business-to-business marketing, and public relations. She is also responsible for leading the broker and employer growth strategies for the company, which has helped Purchasing Power place on the “Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies” for nine years in a row.
Outside of her job at Purchasing Power, Halkos is still very involved at Emory Goizueta. Since 2008, she has served as a board member, and previously served as president and vice president of the board. Recently, Halkos was also chosen as the recipient of Emory University’s “Annual Service Award” in recognition of her involvement in mentoring and supporting students at Goizueta.
To learn more about MBA alumni at Emory Goizueta, visit the school’s website.
