Executive MBA Capstone Project Spotlight: TriStar Energy
When 2011 graduate Jeff Williams, CFO of Tri Star Energy, started to work with an Executive MBA C-Team, he was looking for help in confirming the organization’s existing plans, financial models and valuation. As he says, “I was a financial guy, I was a Vanderbilt alum, and I understood what they were going through. I expected them to struggle understanding our business and they definitely did, but they overcame the obstacles by asking tons of good questions and by putting in the time needed to understand what we did and how to maximize value.” And the results? “We were forced to look at our organization in the mirror and see where we needed to invest our time and energy in order to increase our enterprise value. The recommendations they made were totally contrary to where we were headed at the time, but our management team and our Board both realized that the C-Team was right and we needed to do a bit of a strategic pivot, which we are now in the process of doing. It was definitely a value-added experience…” So much of a value that Jeff ended up hiring one of the team members to lead the financial planning and analysis group at Tri Star after graduation!
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