The Admissions office would like to thank the following alumni for their help in recruiting prospective students. If you would like to be involved in future Admissions events, please email admissions@owen.vanderbilt.edu.
Atlanta
Bella Abel, MBA’09
Matt Abel, MBA’09
Javier Canas, MBA’05
Jared Degnan, MBA’09
Travis Dunn, MBA’11
Astrid Huebner, MBA’09
Erin White, MBA’09Austin
Paige Brown, MBA’10
Michael Chao, MBA’11
Chapin Hertel, MBA’10Beijing
Chuan-Cheng “Tim” Wu, MBA’04Boston
Jack Hartley, BA’04, MBA’11
Charlotte
Katie Branner, MBA’06
Kate Haffey, MBA’11
Hendrix Munowenyu, MBA’07
Wes Wilson, MBA’07
Chicago
Macee Bumpus, MBA’09
Amanda Fend, MBA’09
John Ford, MBA’05
Gaurav Goel, MBA’11
Carrie Rennemann, MBA’07
Dallas
Fred Curcio, BS’03, MBA’10
Allison Earnhart, MBA’10
Michael Metcalf, MBA’09
Gavin Richey, MBA’10
Delhi
Gunish Jain, MBA’98
Denver
Marie D’Englere, MBA’10
Houston
Brooks Despot, MBA’09
Bill Lambert, BE’03, MBA’08
John Robella, MBA’10
Jay Vandenberg, MBA’05
London
Mike McCooey, MBA’02
Los Angeles
Michael Clinton, MBA’07
Josh Gorham, MBA’07
Joe Parise, MBA’10
Jessica Sikca, MBA’09
Serdar Sikca, MBA’09
Courtney Simons, MBA’07
Mexico City
Ramon Montano, MBA’06
Miami
Nathan Hite, BA’02, MBA’10
New York
Dwyla Beard, MBA’11
Andrew Bogle, MBA’04
Justin Ferguson, MBA’11
Henrique Hauptmann, MBA’04
Cam Johnson, MBA’11
Carolina MacRobert, MBA’11
Jonathan McEvoy, MBA’09
David McGroarty, MBA’11
Priya Saha, MBA’06
Simon Schoon, MBA’11
Hunter Young, MBA’11
Philadelphia
Adam Lambert, MBA’10Raleigh
Mike Shapaker, MBA’97
Salt Lake City
Doug Archibald, MBA’10
San Diego
Gwen Murray, MBA’06
San Francisco
José Arellano, MBA’11
Chris Caughman, MBA’08
Emily Dunn, MBA’05
Karen Kremeier, MBA’05
Tapish Kumar, MBA’08
Kelly Leo, BS’03, MBA’11
Keith Whitman, BS’03, MBA’11
Sao Paulo
Luis Berlfein, MBA’97
Fred Muzzi, MBA’09
Eduardo Oliveira, MBA’99
Francisco Pinheiro, MBA’95
Mario Ramos has a hard time containing his excitement about the freshly unveiled Americas MBA for Executives program at Vanderbilt. To hear him talk, you’d think that he’s among the inaugural class of 12 Owen students who’ll be traveling to Brazil, Canada and Mexico in the coming months to learn about those economies. He’s not, though: Ramos, EMBA’10, already has earned his business degree, and if there’s any disappointment in his voice, it’s because he never had a chance to reap the Americas program’s benefits.
“I had to learn it the hard way,” says Ramos, Vice President of Engineering at Schneider Electric, one of the multinational companies that not only have a huge Nashville presence but also make Vanderbilt and Music City an ideal hub for this new style of international education.
Schneider Electric brought Ramos, a native of Mexico, to Nashville, and he has since grown with the company, tasting the increasingly global flavors of modern business firsthand. His experiences have afforded him valuable insight, which Tami Fassinger, BA’85, Associate Dean of Executive Programs and head of the Americas program at Owen, gladly welcomes. Ramos is among several alumni who have helped shape the program with their advice.
Mario Ramos
Fassinger stresses that businesses cannot rely on the same old parochial strategies in this global era, and so the Owen School has tailored the Americas program, which officially launched in early August, to offer its participants something new and different. To borrow a phrase from modern combat journalism, the program “embeds” students in international experiences while they work toward their MBAs. In addition to learning about global business management practices in the classroom, students gain real-world preparation on the ground, both in Nashville and thousands of miles beyond.
“One of the important things about this program is that by having discussions with people who do business directly in those countries, we’ll have debate and ask questions as to what is the right answer.
The conversations will be diverse.”
—Mario Ramos
The Americas students spend the first year at their home schools, with some interaction with one another via the Web. Global study teams are then formed during the second year by making use of technology for conferences and virtual meetings. The second-year students also rotate together to each campus for immersion in weeklong residencies that incorporate each locale’s cultural advantages and challenges.
Fassinger says that students will work both virtually and hands-on “across borders, language, culture and time zones … on various coursework assignments and a yearlong capstone project.” The academic payoff is that each student will graduate with an Americas certificate conferred by the four participating universities as well as an MBA from his or her home school.
“More important,” she says, “they will have taken a deep dive into expert topics by Americas region and school, spanning everything from family-owned enterprises unique to Mexico to cross-cultural negotiations in Canada to sustainability models in Brazil to launching new ventures in the U.S.”
As a practical matter, managers will be sharpening international networking skills each step of the way. Learning how to apply those skills across linguistic and geographical borders is one of the most important aspects of doing business globally, says Ingrid Calvo, EMBA’09, a native of Colombia who works as International Controller for Gibson Guitar.
“In other countries it’s mostly about relationships,” as opposed to in the U.S., where “you get down to business right away,” she says. In her work, which now has her heavily focused on China, it’s critical to establish and maintain business relationships with government officials and business partners.
Ingrid Calvo
Calvo can testify to the effectiveness of her Vanderbilt MBA in these situations. “It has provided opportunities for me, has strengthened my core skills in managing global business, and has better prepared me for additional expatriate assignments,” she says.
She admits, though, that the international component of the Americas program would have been ideal, had it been available. “If given the choice,” she says, “I would have preferred to have been part of the Americas program.”
Ramos, who hopes to direct Schneider employees into the program in the future, knows from experience how valuable cross-cultural pollination can be. “When Tami first mentioned the possibility of opening up an Americas program, I was pretty excited,” he says. “It’s a tremendous opportunity. There are a lot of people in Latin America who could benefit from this type of program.”
And it’s equally valuable for Americans looking to the greater world market for production and distribution, Ramos adds. “It will help companies managing teams or trying to build their businesses in Latin America,” he says. “It will give them a lot of insight into the local environment—how to do business there, how to deal with the government, how to do business in a different culture.”
Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, has 130,000 employees worldwide, producing a variety of systems that are designed to manage and conserve energy. The company has spread into markets like India and China, but Ramos says the Americas program’s lessons will translate anywhere. “There are various ways of going to market. Organizational behaviors are affected by different cultures with different values,” he says. “You need to understand how that works to really be able to do business in these countries.”
Looking at an Entire Hemisphere
As new as the Americas program is, international business has long been a focus for Owen. The idea for such a program was first planted soon after the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S., Canada and Mexico in 1994. “About 15 years later, we were finding that our Executive Development Institute client companies were looking at an entire hemisphere rather than individual countries for management decisions,” Fassinger says. “When we started to notice that, we thought that we needed to address it pragmatically.”
In the late ’90s, Owen experimented with a short-lived International Executive MBA program based in Miami. The IEMBA students were bright and hard-working—many of them have since gone on to prosperous careers in the Americas—but the logistics of the program itself proved too challenging. Among the roadblocks to the Miami venture were the lack of a Vanderbilt facility in the city and the added complications of monthly travel time and expenses for participants.
After talking with IEMBA alumni, Owen took steps to ensure that the Americas program is more practical than the Miami experiment. Fassinger says physically locating the new program at Vanderbilt is important because the university already has an acclaimed Center for Latin American Studies with which Owen can share human and academic resources. Also the decision to schedule weeklong residencies during the second year, as opposed to biweekly or monthly classes in each location, means less travel for those involved.
Tami Fassinger
In all, the Americas program provides a more balanced approach than its IEMBA predecessor—as Fassinger says, it’s “a complete immersion experience and a complete Vanderbilt experience.”
Of course, practical concerns, such as tuition, credit and diplomas, had to be worked out prior to launch. “One of the things institutions struggle with is: How do you transfer credit? How do you figure out admission differences?” Fassinger says. “We decided only to enroll our own students and not share revenue, so we went with schools that have great admissions standards of their own. Second, we figured out a formula where we all are responsible for an equal part of the delivery of the second-year residency experience.”
Each of the partners brings something unique to the residency weeks. For example, in Vancouver, an international city with strong Asian business interests, focus will be placed on cross-border negotiation and collaboration. Meanwhile Brazil will offer lessons in sustainability and bottom-of-the-pyramid marketing. In Mexico, where most of the businesses are family-owned, attention will be paid to global competitiveness among such companies.
“When they come to Vanderbilt, they will look at American innovation,” Fassinger says. “We’ve been talking to the big companies that make Nashville great: Nissan, Bridgestone, LP, Schneider, Gibson. And we will use the Nashville Entrepreneur Center to show how to launch startups that can become the next multinational companies.”
Interaction with prospective students in the U.S. showed there was a need for the Americas program. “They wanted a deeper global experience than what we had previously offered,” she says. “We surveyed our pool of candidates, and it was clear there was a demand for it.”
Ramos says that Vanderbilt already has an international mindset, but in the past, much of the discussion was “very U.S.-centric” by nature. “One of the important things about this program is that by having discussions with people who do business directly in those countries, we’ll have debate and ask questions as to what is the right answer,” he says. “The conversations will be diverse.”
William Thomas
Universal Business Principles
William Thomas, BE’92, EMBA’11, Executive Director of Quality and Sales Engineering for Bridgestone Americas, just graduated from the Executive MBA program in July. Like Ramos, he is somewhat envious of the opportunities that await the students enrolled in the new Americas program.
“If this international program had been available when I was starting in ’09, I absolutely would have taken it,” he says. “Our business, the tire business, is becoming more of a global game. The managers in the 21st century need a global perspective.”
Bridgestone provides training to prepare employees for the international market, but Thomas emphasizes the value of the Americas program. “By having them physically take classes in Canada, Mexico and Brazil, it puts them in contact with other cultures and begins the process of changing the way they think about doing business in another country,” he says.
With Bridgestone, Thomas learned international business by serving as Assistant Plant Manager, Responsible for Quality Assurance, at the company’s Buenos Aires facility. “What I discovered with my experience in Argentina is that there are universal business principles that can be applied across borders,” he says. “But the cultures you operate in require you to modify your approach to make yourself more effective.”
Thomas is now investigating how this new program might benefit his staff. “I’m talking to two of my managers in Argentina who are contemplating going back to school and getting their MBAs in Buenos Aires,” he says. “I asked them to consider going to Sao Paulo and getting in this Americas program instead [through FIA, Vanderbilt’s partner in Brazil].”
Thomas also looks around the Nashville office to identify Bridgestone managers who are hoping to supplement the international preparation they already receive at the company. One such employee is enrolled in the inaugural Americas class: Bridgestone’s Phillipia Pundor, Section Manager, Global Mobility and Immigration.
Phillipia Pundor
“We have a number of teammates who work on foreign assignments outside their home countries,” Pundor says, pointing to the approximately 50 expatriates she assists throughout South and Central America as well as in the Netherlands, Portugal, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Thailand and Japan.
Pundor, who has a background in industrial/organizational psychology, says the Americas program offers precisely what she needs. “I’ve looked at a number of different graduate programs, and Vanderbilt was definitely the most attractive,” she says. “This will put me in a position of growth and opens a lot of avenues into roles across the organization.”
Fellow student Jon Haworth has a similarly positive outlook on the program. He, however, took a more indirect path to it. The Vice President of Product Innovation and Plant Operations at Des-Case Corp., which manufactures filtration products for industrial lubricants, was set to enter the Executive MBA program a year ago, but the birth of his son put his enrollment on hold.
It was a fortunate turn of events.
“As they rolled out the Americas program, I quickly jumped over to that, because the international component of our business has been growing so fast. There will be things I learn from Day One in this program,” he says. “It’s exactly what I need to move up in this company.”
“It’s not just a typical international program where you talk about how business is done elsewhere. In this case, you actually experience it.”
—Jon Haworth
Jon Haworth
The son of Baptist missionaries, Haworth grew up in Brazil and is fluent in Portuguese. He also has worked abroad quite a bit for Des-Case, which sells products in 52 countries. His experiences overseas have impressed upon him the need for broader international skills.
“The American way doesn’t always get the job done,” he says. “On the other side of the world, they approach it from a totally different perspective.”
His understanding of this fact has made him appreciate the opportunity at hand all the more. “It’s not just a typical international program where you talk about how business is done elsewhere,” he says. “In this case, you actually experience it.”
He adds, “I haven’t heard it stated this way elsewhere, but in my opinion, while this program focuses on the Americas, the things you learn can transfer elsewhere. It’s really a global program, even though it’s not marketed that way.”
Fassinger agrees. “Jon is right that the learning can transfer,” she says. “We just made the decision to be more thorough about the nuances in the Americas, rather than spread ourselves too thin across many cultures.”
Michael Bowling
Congruent to the Culture
Michael Bowling, EMBA’97, grasps the idea of transferring knowledge as well as anyone. He talks with satisfaction about his experience as an Executive MBA student and how it helped him prepare for his current role as President of AT&T Mexico—a remarkable leap considering that he had never traveled outside the U.S. prior to his Owen experience.
Bowling went to work for AT&T 21 years ago with an electrical engineering background, but it was his desire to explore a different career path that brought him to Vanderbilt.
“I looked for a program that had the kind of impact that I thought I wanted on my career,” he says. “I wanted an executive program to learn the business half to help in my progressions.”
The lessons he learned were invaluable, he says, adding that Owen planted the seed that led him to work in Venezuela, Peru and now Mexico. “On our class trip [the required international residency], I think it was the first one for the EMBAs, we were here in Mexico City,” he says, recalling that he sat in the city center and “sketched out a plan to be an expat.”
After that trip, he became determined to take his career global.
“And here I am,” he says with a laugh.
These days, he’s loaning his expertise to Fassinger and her colleagues at ITAM in Mexico City. “I’m very positive about the program,” he says. “I think it will be great.” In particular, he believes the expanded international study component will pay off.
“It’s critical for leaders in business today to not just understand, but to be able to be effective in a global environment,” he says. “What you’re trying to do is reach your business objectives, but they should be congruent to the foreign culture you’re operating in. You aren’t going to be able to change the foreign market to fit your paradigm.
“The ones who aren’t successful are the ones who can’t drop out of their own mindset, the ones who say, ‘This is how we do it in the U.S.’ You might as well say, ‘This is the way we do it on the moon.’”
From left, Faith Rhoades, Carol Slivka, Kelli Powers and Nat Richardson
Few people get to witness the evolution of a brand new hospital from an insider’s perspective. Even fewer get to play a hand in how it takes shape. Yet, thanks in no small part to Vanderbilt’s Master of Management in Health Care program, four health care administrators from Huntsville, Ala., have had just such an opportunity.
Kelli Powers, Nathaniel “Nat” Richardson, Faith Rhoades and Carol Slivka—all members of the MM Health Care Class of 2011—spent the better part of the yearlong program collaborating on a capstone project to evaluate a new facility being built by their employer, Huntsville Hospital. Their project has continued to influence decision making in the organization well after graduation, but it isn’t the only part of their studies that has left a lasting impression. During their frequent trips up Interstate 65 to the Owen School, the four forged deep bonds with each other and their classmates, and the resulting friendships and experiences they’ve taken back with them on the southbound return have been life-changing.
“I haven’t felt so pumped about a program and the educational experience in a long time,” says Richardson, Vice President of Operations at Huntsville Hospital. “What’s been energizing has been the number of individuals in the classroom who are so spread out across the health care spectrum. We sit in a room with so many dynamic minds.”
Richardson was the first from the Huntsville team to commit to the MM Health Care program, which is designed to provide students with the business fundamentals and skills to manage people, programs and processes within health care organizations. While firmly entrenched in his present position, he wanted to further his education through a degree that would have direct benefits for his current job and career trajectory.
Jeff Samz, who had previously worked at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, brought the MM Health Care program to the attention of his colleagues at Huntsville Hospital.
Richardson heard about the MM Health Care program from Jeff Samz, Chief Operating Officer of Huntsville Hospital and former CEO of the Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute. “He knew I was seeking the next level in my career,” says Richardson, who aspires to a C-level position at a large hospital system. “This program seemed to provide the most value and also aligned with where I am in my career.”
Samz’s and Richardson’s enthusiasm soon caught the attention of Slivka, Huntsville Hospital’s Director of Finance; Rhoades, Director of Medical Staff Services; and Powers, CEO of Athens Limestone Hospital, which is affiliated with the Huntsville system. Rhoades had begun graduate work elsewhere but readily switched gears for the chance to study at Vanderbilt with her colleagues.
“When the human resources director asked me if I was interested in changing to Vanderbilt, I said, ‘In a nanosecond,’ because of the reputation of the school and because I had a chance to take it with three other people from my organization. That’s life support,” Rhoades says. “The other contributing factor was the health care focus.”
Slivka shares this sentiment. “I don’t see myself doing something outside of health care. If you’re going to do this at this point in your life, you want to have some immediate take-away and provide some real-life value back to your company,” she says. “Huntsville Hospital has been willing to make an investment in me for knowledge I’m going to bring back and use. I really like that part of it.”
Huntsville Hospital enthusiastically backed the team approach to graduate education as it naturally aligned with the organization’s succession planning. “They’re interested in advancing their careers, and it’s a way for us to retain some of our top people,” Samz says. “Investing in them, we think, will pay off not only in the skills they learn in the program but it will keep them with us.” Samz also believes the fact that the four formed a “working pod” will continue to benefit the organization in the long term.
The program was appealing to Huntsville Hospital in other ways, too. There was Vanderbilt’s stellar academic reputation to consider, as well as the MM Health Care program’s flexible format, which is geared toward working professionals. Plus, the students were exposed not only to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which is widely regarded for its patient care, research and biomedical education, but also to Nashville’s dynamic health care business community, which includes Hospital Corporation of America and a variety of other health care companies.
“There’s just nothing else like the Nashville market,” Samz says.
The Future of Health Care
“What the world needs is changing,” says Dr. Mark Frisse, MM Health Care Faculty Director, Professor of Management and Accenture Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt. He explains that the MM Health Care program helps students see way beyond the limits of their institutions to the future of health care.
“First we expose them to a radically broader view of the world,” he says. “Then we bring the world into the classroom. This can only be done a few places in the country.”
Larry Van Horn played a key role in launching the MM Health Care program.
Larry Van Horn, Associate Professor of Management and Executive Director of Health Affairs at Owen, adds, “The cost, quality and access problems facing the U.S. health care system are monumental. The clinician who understands the science of medicine and the science of business is in a position to create more value for our health care system.”
MM Health Care students attend classes every Thursday night and one weekend each month. Traditional B-school classes—such as marketing, finance, accounting, logistics, operations and leadership—are taught on weeknights, while the weekends are dedicated to health care. Frisse believes the classroom experience serves as a great leveler for everyone in the program. “You can’t tell the doctors from the administrators,” he says. “They have a uniform identity. They’re all students.”
The classroom benefits the faculty as well, he adds, noting that the high caliber of students helps energize the instructors. “The best teachers want to run these classes because they learn from these experiences,” he says.
Mark Frisse
During the course of the year, students develop close friendships, becoming sounding boards for one another. “Every day we’re texting or Skyping or emailing. Everyone relies on one another. Everyone wants everyone to succeed,” says Rhoades, who came into the program with a bachelor’s degree in health care management.
Richardson echoes that sentiment. “There’s a wealth of knowledge in that room. Everyone is from different walks of life and different regions of the country,” he says. “You can’t put a price on that much mind value.”
For Rhoades, the lessons of the classroom often can be implemented at work on Monday morning. She credits the high-quality instructors. “That started from Day One in the very first class. That is what knocks the socks off me. They are beyond experts,” she says.
Powers agrees. “It could not have been timelier. I’m looking at productivity and wait time [at Athens Limestone], and I’ve been able to bring what I’ve learned back to work,” she says. “It’s wonderful to be able to discuss ideas with people who don’t necessarily report to me.”
Meanwhile Slivka’s co-workers noticed a positive change in her right away. “I have a different set of eyes and I analyze things a little bit differently,” she says. “My boss said he can tell a difference in the way I look at things and in the comments I’ve made.”
“First we expose [students] to a radically broader view of the world. Then we bring the world into the classroom. This can only be done a few places in the country.”
—Mark Frisse
The degree is perfectly suited for students like the four from Huntsville, says Sarah Fairbank, MM Health Care Program Director. “I tell prospective students we are designed for two kinds of people,” she says. “It’s for people who have been ‘siloed,’ who are working in a narrow field with lots of specialization. That might be a contracts person, a supply chain specialist, someone from the finance side or a physician with a narrow specialization in medicine. These are people who need a broader view of health care, along with management tools.
“The other type of person we see is someone who is coming into the health care field with a generally technical background—an operations specialist or IT specialist who has worked in other industries and is now in health care.”
Students range in age and experience. Some are young professionals preparing for a future in health care, while others are midcareer and ready to move up the ladder. There are also physicians who later in their careers want to use their accumulated wisdom in new and different ways.
A key element of the curriculum is personal coaching since the students are often transforming their own roles within their organizations. “The coaching was phenomenal,” Powers says. “It has helped me get on track and be more productive. I’m a very organized person, but I’ve learned that I need to devote specific time to reading articles and delegating.”
Sarah Fairbank
The average time commitment outside the classroom for the MM Health Care degree is at least 10 to 15 hours per week, though the initial learning curve may be steep at first for students who have been out of school for many years. In addition to these hours, the Huntsville students had to shoulder the extra commitment of traveling further than most students—approximately 100 miles each way. The routine is intense, Rhoades admits, but still very doable. “It’s such an achievable goal, so it takes the pain out of the travel,” she says.
Rhoades says it helped that members of the Owen community were standing ready to ensure their success throughout the whole process. This was no more evident than when deadly tornadoes ripped through northern Alabama last April. Staff, faculty and fellow students rallied to assist the Huntsville team and their communities.
“The support has been incredible. They pay such close attention to the needs of the students,” Rhoades says. “We in Huntsville have especially realized that. In bad weather, when it became clear we couldn’t get there, they quickly rounded the wagons and got some technology together. We had a live class by tapping in electronically.”
Breaking New Ground
As professionals make their way up the ladder, Fairbank explains that the challenge becomes, “How do you get people to look at you differently?” An integral part of fast-tracking that change in perception is another key part of the curriculum: the capstone project, an eight-month consulting engagement during which a team, usually of four people, takes on an institutional problem as if they were professional consultants. Through the project, the students are able to demonstrate immediate economic value by tackling important organizational issues.
“We seek to ensure that everyone coming out of our program projects a dramatically enhanced identity within their organization,” says Frisse, who oversees the teams’ work.
For the Huntsville team, their capstone project’s focus was evaluating the potential impact of a brand-new hospital in Madison, Ala., a community outside of Huntsville. The Madison area is growing, vibrant and affluent, with an average household income of $90,000. Many residents are scientists and engineers working for NASA, the defense industry or technical firms.
“When the human resources director asked me if I was interested in changing to Vanderbilt, I said, ‘In a nanosecond,’ because of the reputation of the school and because I had a chance to take it with three other people from my organization. That’s life support.”
—Faith Rhoades
The group concentrated specifically on how to position obstetrics services in Madison. “This is the first hospital to be built in Alabama in many years,” Rhoades says. “Not very many people get to participate in building a hospital from scratch. But we also had to consider that we belong to a hospital system with other hospitals that we need to be concerned about. It’s not all about us. This is about creating the best business for everyone so that we’re all successful.”
The Huntsville system first built a wellness center, physician office building and urgent care center on the property in Madison. The success of those ventures demonstrated the viability of a hospital. “Owen helps you think strategically, and that’s what [the new hospital in] Madison is all about,” Rhoades says. “Many years ago, the strategic planning began with a purchase of land. It began with a vision and a goal. Everything you gain from Owen classes and programs ties into that kind of scenario. I put it into practice every day in my job.”
For Powers, the capstone project was particularly interesting since the new hospital in Madison had the potential to impact her facility, Athens Limestone Hospital, the most. While some factors will remain unknown until the facility is up and running next year, Powers says the planning process helped alleviate undue concern about the new hospital’s potential impact and shifted the focus to the strategic side.
Richardson adds that building obstetrics services around the strategic mission of each of the hospitals makes sense, since the birth of a child often provides a family’s first exposure to a medical facility. “We have to get it right so that the mother and the child have the absolute best experience,” he says. “And we have to make sure that we design it so we don’t hurt the other hospitals. We may eventually find that it’s best to provide those services primarily at one hospital. It’s a very delicate situation, and we have to get it right.”
Besides generating practical ideas for Huntsville Hospital to implement, the project also helped the students learn how to work together as a team. “The strength of our team is that we’re coming at the project with different knowledge skill sets. We all come from diverse areas that are all important to the outcome we seek,” Richardson says. “I love writing and doing the research and pulling things together. Kelli has a global perspective on what other organizations are thinking. Carol looks at everything from the financial standpoint: What’s the bottom line impact from the standpoint of income statements or the balance sheet? Faith brings the whole physician perspective to the table.
“Now I appreciate my team members at a whole different level.”
Richardson also appreciates just how far he himself has come during a year’s time. It has been a journey marked not so much by miles logged on the odometer or hours in the classroom, but rather by immeasurable moments of progress. In the end, the MM Health Care program delivered him closer to his lifelong goals and gave him something that should pay dividends the rest of his career—confidence.
“I know I’m ready for my next project,” he says, “no matter where or what that’s going to be.”
This past spring Bruce Brockenborough, EMBA’01, President and CEO of Hannan Supply Co., issued a challenge to the Executive MBA Class of 2011. If they would raise at least $145,000 for their class gift with 100 percent participation, he would pledge money of his own to help launch much-needed scholarships within the EMBA program. The Class of 2011 responded by raising a total of $150,000—the largest amount ever raised by an EMBA class—with every student contributing. Brockenborough followed through as well, and the combined gifts established both the Brockenborough Family Scholarship and EMBA 2011 Scholarship funds, which will provide financial support for deserving EMBA students.
Knight (left) and Bosslet will go just about anywhere to get the interview they’re after.
How did you two end up working together? And what’s the story with this name “Blark!” that follows you everywhere?
Blake: “Blark!” started as an inside joke. It’s a play on our two names.
Clark: In case that wasn’t obvious.
Blake: We flash it at the end of each video as a production credit in the Owen Podcast Series. We didn’t think anyone would notice, but as our first year progressed, our classmates co-opted “Blark!” and began referring to us as a single entity. So I guess at least a few of them had been watching.
Clark: We suspect they started using it because they hadn’t bothered to learn our individual names yet.
Blake: Well, to be fair, we didn’t exactly make it easy for people to differentiate us. We’re both from Texas and we both majored in marketing as undergrads at Texas A&M. We both joined OwenBloggers at the beginning of our first year and started working for the school’s Marketing and Communications office as social media consultants. We both have dark glasses and wives who are arguably out of our leagues. People act like we must be lifelong friends, but one year ago we’d never met.
Clark: Well, that’s not exactly true. As we’ve recently pieced together, we apparently met at a house party as undergrads, just after Blake started dating his future wife, Kristi, who happened to have a couple of classes with me. More than likely, we were loitering around the keg and talking about music, since Blake was in a popular local band at the time and I secretly idolize musicians. And that was it.
Blake: After the chance encounter, we went our separate ways. I had a pretty unique hybrid background of marketing and design, and so I worked for two successful startups in Dallas as their one-man marketing machine. Clark … I don’t even know why he got a marketing degree.
Clark: Yeah, I put it to good use. I started in state and local tax at KPMG and then joined the internal strategy group at Texas Children’s Hospital.
Blake: But Owen brought us back together.
Clark: It was very much like the movie Serendipity.
Blake: Strikingly similar. My wife recognized Clark’s name on the list of admitted students, which prompted an email, which prompted calls, which prompted meeting up before school even started.
Clark: All of which prompted lots and lots of scheming. We definitely both have an innate drive to create stuff when we think there’s a need. Or, in the parlance of our peers, to “blue sky” it.
So how did the Owen Podcast Series come together?
Blake: Early on, we agreed that Owen, and just about every other business school we visited, could have a more robust media library. This would allow prospective students to feel like they really know the school’s people and culture during their search process, even before visiting the campus to experience it firsthand.
“Everyone in this era has built up a natural layer of skepticism, and when you feel a sales pitch coming on, you immediately put up a mental barrier. We wanted the podcasts to avoid that sheen.”
—Clark Bosslet
Clark: This notion was the seed of the Owen Podcast Series, which built upon previous Owen podcasts by adding an interview format and bringing in an eclectic mix of guests, ranging from faculty members to community leaders to local business owners. The goal is to showcase everything that makes Owen and the surrounding community unique.
Blake: Prospective students don’t just care about the curriculum and pedigree of the schools they seek out. That’s important, but they also care about the culture and social activities outside the walls of academia. It’s a package deal, something we were keenly aware of after talking our wives into dropping everything and moving to Nashville. Based on that, we knew that prospective students and their partners want to know they’ll have some fun during the whole grad school experience.
Clark: The city of Nashville has a strong creative class and a strong entrepreneurial spirit. It’s a lot more than a country music scene, or even a health care scene, although it obviously has all of those things, too. We really believe the city is a key part of the Owen value proposition.
Blake: We found the school to be incredibly fertile ground for organic, student-led innovation. Before stepping foot in a classroom, we brought our podcast idea to the admissions team, who saw it as a great marketing tool, not only for prospective students but the Owen community at large. We were then put in touch with Yvonne Martin-Kidd, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications.
And how did the idea go over?
Clark: We were two anonymous, overeager students. They could have easily scoffed. But after presenting our vision, the response was overwhelmingly supportive.
Blake: It was, “What do you need to get going? Cameras? We have HD, Flip, handhelds and studio lights. Microphones? We have lapels and handhelds, all wireless. Anything you need is at your disposal whenever you need them. And, by the way, once you get going we can give you a prominent spot on the new website we’re creating for Owen and possibly include featured podcasts in our newsletters.”
Clark: It was pretty unexpected. They not only signed off on the project, but they wanted to become actively supportive in its success. Blake and I both came from an undergraduate school with almost 50,000 students. Texas A&M has a strong culture of student involvement, but there’s a lot of red tape. In this case, the speed of approval and level of encouragement was incredibly refreshing.
We have a lot of precious commodities right now: time, resources, administrative champions and lots and lots of smart people around us. It’s a recipe for doing some really fun stuff.
How did you become affiliated with OwenBloggers?
Clark: OwenBloggers has always prided itself in leaving off the veneer, so to speak. It’s far less engaging as a member of an audience when you feel like you’re being pitched to. Everyone in this era has built up a natural layer of skepticism, and when you feel a sales pitch coming on, you immediately put up a mental barrier. We wanted the podcasts to avoid that sheen. It needed a home within the constellation of online touch points at Owen, and it found a kindred spirit in OwenBloggers.
Blake: We were both familiar with the site after visiting it many times as prospective students, and we were excited about the opportunity to partner with something that had a built-in audience and an established brand. The site was flush with material and had a broad international readership, but had outgrown the blogging platform it was created on. We met with the current and past leadership of the site, who were already tossing around the idea of moving the site onto WordPress (a popular blog publishing platform).
So you do some programming as well?
Clark: This was all in Blake’s sweet spot. When we found out about the WordPress initiative, I basically volunteered Blake’s Web design and programming expertise to build the new site. The only thing I more willingly offer than my own time is someone else’s.
Blake: We had the opportunity to combine the veteran OwenBloggers site and the yet-to-be-tested Owen Podcast Series into a multimedia conglomerate, the likes of which had never been seen before … at least in graduate student-led media circles … in the southeast United States … to our knowledge.
Clark: We are basically young Rupert Murdochs. I hope he doesn’t do anything stupid before this article appears.
And all of this is in your first month or so as students?
Clark: I think it sounds more ambitious after the fact. At the time, we just wanted to create content. We were excited about starting the next chapter in our lives and about having access to some really great minds. Honestly, the podcast series was mostly an excuse to reach out to interesting people and pepper them with questions, all under the guise of content creation.
“When you see a professor speak passionately about something, it helps you uncover what’s behind the syllabus and understand why Owen students are regarded not only for their spreadsheets
but also their convictions.”
—Blake Knight
How do you decide on which guests to interview?
Blake: We started looking for guests here at Owen, which is ripe with passionate personalities and big thinkers. We wanted to provide a relaxed, intimate look into people whom incoming students would be interacting with their first year. Faculty such as Michael Burcham, Lecturer of Entrepreneurship; Dave Owens, Professor of the Practice of Management and Innovation; and Larry Van Horn, Associate Professor of Management; as well as Read McNamara, Executive Director of the Career Management Center, all sat down with us to talk about what drives them personally and professionally. While we touch on the requisite questions regarding their roles at Owen, we’re really looking to establish the people behind the message and create a real experience for the viewer. Simple lighting, one camera shot, natural settings, and, with the exception of raucous bird squawks and ambulance noises, very few edits.
Clark: In one of our first episodes, Bart Victor, the Cal Turner Professor of Moral Leadership, mentions the Carnegie Bargain, which is the mindset that one must first do well financially in order to have the means and freedom to do good philanthropically. And then we talked about the misplaced focus of many organizations on fixing the suffering of poverty instead of alleviating the poverty itself, which is a key tenant in the Project Pyramid courses here at Vanderbilt. It was, at least in my mind, genuinely interesting stuff, and I think that’s when we realized the true potential within the series. Our litmus test has always been: If I’m a prospective student and I stumble upon this, is this compelling? Does it flesh out my opinion of the school? And if the answer is yes, it has some value.
Blake: I think people really connect with genuine passion. It comes through the screen and grabs you as a viewer. When you see a professor speak passionately about something, it helps you uncover what’s behind the syllabus and understand why Owen students are regarded not only for their spreadsheets but also their convictions.
Clark: Once we had our sea legs, we started looking into the community to find local business leaders who are focused on making Nashville unique. No one would call us shy, but it was still daunting to essentially cold call someone to ask them to be on a podcast that’s still more of an idea than a product.
Blake: As it turns out, we had an ace up our sleeve: being students. People are definitely more receptive to the idea of sitting down with students, especially if they can tell you’ve done your homework and know their craft a bit.
Clark: Blake and I have a certain aesthetic, and that aesthetic is good beer and good music.
Blake: We reached out to local companies like Yazoo Brewery, Third Man Records (Jack White’s label) and Hatch Show Prints and asked for an hour of time with the owners. These are all small shops, so their time is valuable, and they’re not hurting for media coverage, not that we even qualify. But when we prefaced the request with “I’m an MBA student from Vanderbilt,” they gladly opened their doors to us.
Clark: I think that’s a testament to two things—the cachet of the Vanderbilt name and the tremendous sense of community here in Nashville.
Blake: At the end of the day, we really enjoy it. We meet incredible people and talk about great ideas. When our podcast with Ben Blackwell, Director of Operations of Third Man Records, was picked up by the local media, there was an admitted sense of pride in knowing our efforts helped raise the local profile of the school.
So what’s next for “Blark!”?
Clark: The hardest part is not coming up with the ideas, or even initially bringing them to fruition. That’s easy because it’s thrilling and somewhat finite. The hard part is sustaining something once the newness and the sense of accomplishment has worn off a bit. So a big focus for us this year is making sure the podcast series and the website are sustainable. The quick turnover at business schools can kill a lot of good ideas because capturing that institutional knowledge is so challenging. But we are blessed to have some really great peers at Owen right now. There’s a palpable eagerness among the student body to make Owen a better place while we’re here.
Blake: We recognize that this is a unique point in our lives. We have a lot of precious commodities right now: time, resources, administrative champions and lots and lots of smart people around us. It’s a recipe for doing some really fun stuff that’s not only personally rewarding but also reflects well upon the school.
Cheryl Chunn has been named Associate Dean of Development and Alumni Relations. She previously worked as Director of Development, Departmental Programs, for Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Mark Cohen, Professor of Management and Law, has rejoined the Owen School following a leave of absence as Vice President for Research at Resources for the Future, a noted environmental think tank in Washington, D.C.
Brian McCann, MBA’04, Assistant Professor of Strategic Management, has become a permanent, full-time faculty member.
Fond Farewells
Bob Blanning, Professor of Information Technology, Emeritus, was among 16 retiring Vanderbilt faculty members honored during Commencement May 13.
Tricia Carswell, Associate Dean of Development and Alumni Relations, has stepped down to become Executive Director of Principal Gifts at her alma mater, Furman University.
Jon Lehman, Associate Dean of Students, has stepped down to become CEO of PAX Scientific, an engineering research and product design firm, but will continue to teach at Owen.
Ron Masulis, the Frank K. Houston Professor of Finance, who was away on a leave of absence to the University of New South Wales, has elected to join that university on a permanent basis as the Scientia Professor of Finance.
Mike Shor, Assistant Professor of Management, has accepted an opportunity to become Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Connecticut, where his wife is also a faculty member.
For the past 24 years, the Financial Markets Research Center (FMRC) at the Owen School has hosted a spring research conference designed to facilitate discussion between academic researchers and business practitioners. Starting with the 1987 Wall Street crash, many of the best minds in finance have assembled at the annual event to analyze topics ranging from globalization to securitization.
This year was no exception. Brett Sweet, Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer at Vanderbilt, chaired presentations on regulating risky banks, while Margaret Blair, the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise at Vanderbilt Law School, led a session about the federal rule-making process.
The primary focus of this year’s FMRC conference, held May 5–6, centered on implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Almost a year after the bill was signed, federal regulators continue to draft new rules overseeing hundreds of trillions of dollars’ worth of activity that touches everything from the credit-default swaps that played a role in the 2008 financial crisis to overhauling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, the task of implementing the law has proven so massive that regulators have pushed many of its deadlines back six months to Dec. 31, 2011.
Even as regulators finish their work, however, many questions remain (including from those within the government) about the law’s ultimate impact.
Mortgage Reform
Edward DeMarco talked about mortgage reform in his keynote speech at the FMRC conference.
Regarding home mortgages, Edward J. DeMarco, Acting Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), said in his FMRC keynote speech that keeping Fannie and Freddie in an indefinite state of conservatorship—which has stretched on for more than three years—poses risks to an already fragile sector. Total taxpayer support of the companies could climb to $363 billion by 2013, according to FHFA estimates, and so far none of the reform proposals put forth by Congress and the White House have gained much political traction.
“The only thing Congress can agree on is not renewing their original charters,” he said.
Whatever plan does finally emerge for Fannie and Freddie, DeMarco indicated that there are at least three elements that any framework must include:
Uniform mortgage standards: From collecting borrower data to developing guidelines for home appraisals, he said the industry needs consistency and transparency throughout the life of a loan. Without these elements, the world of private capital won’t be able to price and evaluate risk correctly.
Diversity of product offerings: Lenders shouldn’t lock themselves into offering only traditional 30-year fixed-rate mortgages just because data standardization is needed. “This is a big country with lots of people in many different situations,” he said. “The mortgage market of the future really needs to be not just liquid and stable, but it needs to have an appropriate diversity of offerings.”
Clarity about the role of the taxpayer: To properly calibrate how risk is assigned, priced and managed, DeMarco said it’s imperative that investors fully understand the role of the taxpayer in any future mortgage finance system.
Derivatives Oversight
There’s a climactic scene in Michael Lewis’ bestselling book The Big Short in which Dr. Michael Burry, the neurologist-turned-investor, finally sees his $1.9 billion bet against subprime mortgages start to pay off—that is, until he contacts his counterparties and tries to collect.
Under the Dodd-Frank Act, federal regulators drafted new rules overseeing trillions of dollars’ worth of financial activity in the U.S.
As it happened, the very banks from which Burry purchased the products that, in theory, should have been making him rich were also the same institutions responsible for pricing his investments.
“It was determined by Goldman Sachs and Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, who decided each day whether Mike Burry’s credit-default swaps had made or lost money,” Lewis wrote.
Under the Dodd-Frank Act, many of those kinds of privately traded derivatives—worth as much as $600 trillion—will now be transparently priced and exchanged through a central clearinghouse. In addition, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will split oversight of these financial instruments with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Joanne Moffic-Silver, Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the Chicago Board of Options Exchange, told FRMC conference participants that her company is interested to see how the two federal overseers handle these new regulations.
“One question with the Dodd-Frank Act is: Will having two agencies split jurisdiction over functionally equivalent products work?” Moffic-Silver said. “Ideally, and this is my personal opinion, there should be little or no difference between the SEC and CFTC on swaps rules.”
As written in the new law, the SEC will handle swaps that are backed by securities like a single or narrow group of stocks; the CFTC will manage the rest, including 22 listed categories that include interest-rate, credit-default and currency swaps.
But Moffic-Silver said Dodd-Frank includes a number of possible exceptions that would exclude various swaps from being traded through a clearinghouse. In addition, the new law allows for the creation of a new “Swap Execution Facility” (SEF) that would be an alternative to listing on an exchange. Current proposals from both the CFTC and SEC differ on some of the specifics of how these SEFs would operate, Moffic-Silver pointed out.
“The rule-making process has been interesting. The SEC and CFTC do talk, they do meet, and they have a current memorandum of understanding where they are supposed to coordinate regulation of similar products,” Moffic-Silver said. “But the proposals have differed in some very important areas.”
‘Bail-ins’ instead of Bailouts
On Sept. 15, 2008, the world awoke to what Andrew Ross Sorkin, writing in The New York Times, called “one of the most dramatic days in Wall Street’s history.”
The storied brokerage firm Merrill Lynch was sold for $50 billion, just half of what it had been worth the previous year; and after failing to find a buyer, Lehman Brothers filed the largest bankruptcy on record, culminating in a painful $150 billion liquidation.
“When an airline goes out of business, air traffic control doesn’t go haywire. When a phone company goes down, we can still make phone calls. But when banks go down, it’s different.”
—Wilson Ervin
After those catastrophic events, Congress approved a $700 billion bailout several weeks later to help banks unload their “toxic” mortgage-related assets to prevent further shocks. Now, instead of once again using taxpayer money to help prevent a contagion risk that could bring down the banking world, there’s discussion about designing a “bail-in” mechanism.
Wilson Ervin, Managing Director at Credit Suisse, explained in a presentation at the FMRC conference that a “bail-in” would give regulatory officials the authority to impose a resolution designed like a prepackaged bankruptcy. “Think of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy on steroids,” he said.
“When an airline goes out of business, air traffic control doesn’t go haywire. When a phone company goes down, we can still make phone calls,” Ervin said. “But when banks go down, it’s different.”
Using the case of Lehman Brothers as an example, Ervin said by writing down assets and converting a portion of the debt to new equity, the bank could have preserved a capital base of more than $40 million, giving it some hope to raise additional investment from other financial services firms.
“The process would not be pretty, but overall investors should be relieved by the result,” Ervin wrote in an Economist essay he co-authored on the subject. “In [the Lehman] example the bail-in would have saved them over $100 billion in aggregate, and everybody—other than short-sellers in Lehman—would have been better off than today.”
New Vanderbilt Research
In addition to the speakers from government and private industry, several members of the Owen faculty presented new research, including Bob Whaley, the Valere Blair Potter Professor of Management, who discussed his collaboration with Jacob Sagi, the Vanderbilt Financial Markets Research Center Associate Professor of Finance, in launching NASDAQ’s Alpha Indexes. Also Nick Bollen, the E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Finance, shared results from a recent paper investigating hedge fund investment strategies, while Hans Stoll, the Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker Jr. Professor of Finance and Director of the FMRC, presented new research with Thomas Ho, the FMRC Research Professor of Finance, examining the interaction between financial markets and regulations.
hen looking at most world maps, we take for granted our points of reference. North is up, south is down, and the U.S. is in the top left corner, just as it was when we first learned geography in grade school. Not everyone, though, subscribes to this point of view.
For decades, a group of trailblazing mapmakers has tried changing the world as we know it by changing how we see it. Their so-called reversed maps depict what seems like an upside-down world, where countries in the Southern Hemisphere have supplanted their neighbors to the north. The underlying message is that the perch from which we view the world is an arbitrary one. North is still north, of course, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it should be at the top of the map. Nor should countries at the top be considered “above” everyone else—either literally or figuratively.
After graduating from college, I learned this firsthand, but without the aid of a reversed map. Torn over my job prospects (or lack thereof), I did what many 22-year-olds with wanderlust do: pick a place on the globe and go. Joined by a couple of friends, I set out for Chile, a country I knew very little about, with the intention of staying a year. My thought was that I would teach English to pay the bills and travel around South America at every opportunity, all while brushing up on my Spanish.
I ended up doing all of these things, but the experience as a whole left a much deeper impression on me than I ever could have imagined. During the course of the year, I made lifelong friends and gained a lasting appreciation for the culture. I also came to realize that my preconceived notions of what it means to be American were limited at best. In truth, our New World neighbors have rightful claim to that name as well, for in spite of our differences, we share a corner of the world with a common pioneering spirit.
Of all the discoveries I made that year abroad, I probably learned the most about myself. It’s ironic that I had to travel halfway around the globe to get to know the person in the mirror better, but that’s exactly what happened. Finding a new vantage point from which to view the world afforded me a much better understanding of my place in it.
I imagine the inaugural class of the new Americas MBA for Executives program, which is discussed in this issue’s cover story, will come to a similar realization. One of the program’s main selling points is the exposure to business practices in Brazil, Mexico and Canada, but the unspoken value is the personal journey that will accompany those experiences. By immersing themselves in those cultures, the students will be letting go of the familiar and looking at the world—and themselves—with a whole new perspective.
In other words, they’ll be doing those trailblazing mapmakers proud. vb
When looking at most world maps, we take for granted our points of reference. North is up, south is down, and the U.S. is in the top left corner, just as it was when we first learned geography in grade school. Not everyone, though, subscribes to this point of view.
For decades, a group of trailblazing mapmakers has tried changing the world as we know it by changing how we see it. Their so-called reversed maps depict what seems like an upside-down world, where countries in the Southern Hemisphere have supplanted their neighbors to the north. The underlying message is that the perch from which we view the world is an arbitrary one. North is still north, of course, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it should be at the top of the map. Nor should countries at the top be considered “above” everyone else—either literally or figuratively.
After graduating from college, I learned this firsthand, but without the aid of a reversed map. Torn over my job prospects (or lack thereof), I did what many 22-year-olds with wanderlust do: pick a place on the globe and go. Joined by a couple of friends, I set out for Chile, a country I knew very little about, with the intention of staying a year. My thought was that I would teach English to pay the bills and travel around South America at every opportunity, all while brushing up on my Spanish.
I ended up doing all of these things, but the experience as a whole left a much deeper impression on me than I ever could have imagined. During the course of the year, I made lifelong friends and gained a lasting appreciation for the culture. I also came to realize that my preconceived notions of what it means to be American were limited at best. In truth, our New World neighbors have rightful claim to that name as well, for in spite of our differences, we share a corner of the world with a common pioneering spirit.
Of all the discoveries I made that year abroad, I probably learned the most about myself. It’s ironic that I had to travel halfway around the globe to get to know the person in the mirror better, but that’s exactly what happened. Finding a new vantage point from which to view the world afforded me a much better understanding of my place in it.
I imagine the inaugural class of the new Americas MBA for Executives program, which is discussed in this issue’s cover story, will come to a similar realization. One of the program’s main selling points is the exposure to business practices in Brazil, Mexico and Canada, but the unspoken value is the personal journey that will accompany those experiences. By immersing themselves in those cultures, the students will be letting go of the familiar and looking at the world—and themselves—with a whole new perspective.
In other words, they’ll be doing those trailblazing mapmakers proud.
Innovation in education, much like in business, originates from intellectual curiosity—from asking “Why not?” and “What if?” in a structured and often empirical way. At Owen, our innovation is sparked by a business world that is always evolving. This can be seen in the unique and powerful ways in which our faculty’s research addresses specific needs brought to us by the business community. It’s also evident in the program creation that has taken place at Owen during the past six years.
Programs like the MS Finance, Master of Accountancy and Master of Management in Health Care are all products of resource- and market-based opportunities, creative thought and a willingness to act. Likewise the new Americas MBA for Executives, which is the topic of this issue’s cover story, arose from the need to provide students, particularly those who are seeking assignments in the Western Hemisphere, with a better understanding of global business.
By building innovative programs such as these, we’re able to expand our brand and product offering, while also attracting applicants who are valued by the employment market both in good economic times and bad. Years of experience and observation have taught me that the only real sustainable competitive advantage in business is to surround yourself with the best and brightest. Education is no different. A school like ours can maintain a successful path only if it’s able to attract, hire and matriculate exceptionally talented individuals.
The programs you read about in this issue of Vanderbilt Business illustrate the great strides we’ve made, but there’s still much work to be done. To compete with other schools, we must find the resources to continue bringing the best students and faculty to Owen. Your support is the key to our success, and I hope that we can continue counting on it in the months and years to come.
Innovation in education, much like in business, originates from intellectual curiosity—from asking “Why not?” and “What if?” in a structured and often empirical way. At Owen, our innovation is sparked by a business world that is always evolving. This can be seen in the unique and powerful ways in which our faculty’s research addresses specific needs brought to us by the business community. It’s also evident in the program creation that has taken place at Owen during the past six years.
Programs like the MS Finance, Master of Accountancy and Master of Management in Health Care are all products of resource- and market-based opportunities, creative thought and a willingness to act. Likewise the new Americas MBA for Executives, which is the topic of this issue’s cover story, arose from the need to provide students, particularly those who are seeking assignments in the Western Hemisphere, with a better understanding of global business.
By building innovative programs such as these, we’re able to expand our brand and product offering, while also attracting applicants who are valued by the employment market both in good economic times and bad. Years of experience and observation have taught me that the only real sustainable competitive advantage in business is to surround yourself with the best and brightest. Education is no different. A school like ours can maintain a successful path only if it’s able to attract, hire and matriculate exceptionally talented individuals.
The programs you read about in this issue of Vanderbilt Business illustrate the great strides we’ve made, but there’s still much work to be done. To compete with other schools, we must find the resources to continue bringing the best students and faculty to Owen. Your support is the key to our success, and I hope that we can continue counting on it in the months and years to come.
Respectfully yours,
James W. Bradford Dean, Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management Ralph Owen Professor of Management
Bappa Mukherji is the CEO of Gics Foods, which packages food into convenient microwaveable retort pouches.
Ashoke “Bappa” Mukherji is no stranger to pressure. Soon after graduating from Vanderbilt with both an MBA and a law degree, he was thrust into one of the more challenging roles a budding young attorney could ask for—sitting second chair in a first-degree murder trial. It was his first trial ever.
When asked about the stress he was under, he laughs, “It could have been worse. At least I wasn’t the one on trial.”
Mukherji spent the ensuing years at a Nashville law firm, where he concentrated mostly on mergers and acquisitions. Advising clients on these deals suited his Owen School background, but he always wondered what it would be like to “move to the other side of the table,” as he puts it, and go into business for himself.
In 1997, with the help of two business partners, Mukherji did just that, launching a startup that manufactured recycled toner cartridges. That idea eventually blossomed into Guy Brown Products, a Brentwood, Tenn.-based office products distributor that had revenue close to $200 million in 2010. Mukherji served as CEO of the company until he stepped down last fall.
“At Guy Brown we differentiated ourselves from competitors by focusing exclusively on selling to large, geographically dispersed organizations and doing it better than anyone else,” he says. “It’s similar to what I’m doing today—studying the market and figuring out where our company has room to operate.”
The company he’s referring to is Gics Foods, a food packaging business in Greenville, S.C. Appropriately enough, this latest venture is all about pressure—albeit a different sort from what Mukherji is used to.
Under his guidance as CEO, Gics packages food into retort pouches, which are plastic laminate and metal foil containers that can withstand the high temperature and pressure used to cook what’s inside them. Convenient microwaveable bags of rice are just one example of this growing technology that’s revolutionizing not only how food is preserved but also how it’s prepared.
“We’re the first company focused solely on retort packaging,” he says. “That’s what makes us stand out.”
Mary Schapiro, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, named Owen professor Craig Lewis the SEC’s new Chief Economist and Director of the Division of Risk, Strategy and Financial Innovation (Risk Fin) this past May. Lewis, the Madison S. Wigginton Professor of Management in Finance, had been working on sabbatical at the SEC since January 2010.
“I am honored that Chairman Shapiro has offered me the opportunity to lead the division and the SEC’s economists at this critical juncture,” Lewis says. “I look forward to fostering durable new analytic models that will promote efficient and effective work throughout the agency, from rule writing through enforcement.”
Lewis joined the Owen faculty in 1986 and has since been widely published on a range of financial issues. His interests and current research topics include stock and futures markets, margin adequacy, corporate earnings management, corporate financial policy, executive compensation, selective disclosure, and herd behavior by equity analysts.
“This is a great opportunity for Craig, a highly respected professor and researcher here at Vanderbilt who’s deeply admired by his students,” says Jim Bradford, Dean of the Owen School. “His appointment as Chief Economist at the SEC exemplifies a long tradition of high-caliber, real-world work that has earned the finance faculty here a place of prestige among business schools.”
Risk Fin, created by the SEC in September 2009 to help identify market risks and trends in the wake of the financial crisis, was the SEC’s first new division in 37 years. It provides sophisticated, interdisciplinary analysis across the entire spectrum of SEC activities, including policymaking, rulemaking, enforcement and examinations. In addition to this role as an agency think tank, Risk Fin was created to help break down silos that compartmentalized the SEC’s institutional expertise.
Lewis’ position with the SEC is a two-year appointment. He is currently on a leave of absence from Vanderbilt.
Craig Lewis
Mary Schapiro, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, named Owen professor Craig Lewis the SEC’s new Chief Economist and Director of the Division of Risk, Strategy and Financial Innovation (Risk Fin) this past May. Lewis, the Madison S. Wigginton Professor of Management in Finance, had been working on sabbatical at the SEC since January 2010.
“I am honored that Chairman Shapiro has offered me the opportunity to lead the division and the SEC’s economists at this critical juncture,” Lewis says. “I look forward to fostering durable new analytic models that will promote efficient and effective work throughout the agency, from rule-writing through enforcement.”
Lewis joined the Owen faculty in 1986 and has since been widely published on a range of financial issues. His interests and current research topics include stock and futures markets, margin adequacy, corporate earnings management, corporate financial policy, executive compensation, selective disclosure, and herd behavior by equity analysts.
“This is a great opportunity for Craig, a highly respected professor and researcher here at Vanderbilt who’s deeply admired by his students,” says Jim Bradford, Dean of the Owen School. “His appointment as Chief Economist at the SEC exemplifies a long tradition of high-caliber, real-world work that has earned the finance faculty here a place of prestige among business schools.”
Risk Fin, created by the SEC in September 2009 to help identify market risks and trends in the wake of the financial crisis, was the SEC’s first new division in 37 years. It provides sophisticated, interdisciplinary analysis across the entire spectrum of SEC activities, including policymaking, rulemaking, enforcement and examinations. In addition to this role as an agency think tank, Risk Fin was created to help break down silos that compartmentalized the SEC’s institutional expertise.
Lewis’ position with the SEC is a two-year appointment. He is currently on a leave of absence from Vanderbilt.
A team of students from the Owen School placed third in an inaugural health service case competition held at Northwestern University April 29–30. The 2011 Health Service Case Competition was the first of what the recently formed Business School Alliance for Health Care Management intends to become an annual event. Sponsored by DaVita, a leading provider of kidney care in the U.S., teams of three students each developed strategies to take on a real-world business case related to health care management.
Vanderbilt’s team included Dr. Jennifer Rymer, BS’05, MBA’11, MD’11; Avery Fisher, MBA’11; and Jonathan Cook, an MBA candidate for 2012. The team received a $1,000 award for finishing third behind the University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern University.
A team of students from the Owen School placed third in an inaugural health service case competition held at Northwestern University April 29–30. The 2011 Health Service Case Competition was the first of what the recently formed Business School Alliance for Health Care Management intends to become an annual event. Sponsored by DaVita, a leading provider of kidney care in the U.S., teams of three students each developed strategies to take on a real-world business case related to health care management.
Vanderbilt’s team included Dr. Jennifer Rymer, BS’05, MBA’11, MD’11; Avery Fisher, MBA’11; and Jonathan Cook, an MBA candidate for 2012. The team received a $1,000 award for finishing third behind the University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern University.
Patrick Slay, Senior Associate Director and Director of Coaching, has enjoyed two stints at the Owen School’s Career Management Center (CMC), first in 1999 and then again starting in 2008. A national certified counselor, he works primarily with consulting, general management, operations and strategy MBA students, as well as MSF students. Among his responsibilities is organizing the school’s annual mock interview day each fall.
Q: What is mock interview day? When and how did it originate?
A: It’s an annual event that started in fall 2008. The CMC saw both the need to provide job interview practice to Owen students on a large scale and the opportunity to engage Owen alumni in giving back to the school. Each student gets 45 minutes to practice interviewing with alumni, but there’s also time to network a bit and learn more about the roles they might pursue. In all, 35 to 40 alumni representing different industries and job functions come back for the event, and about half are from outside the greater Nashville area.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you give students looking to improve their interviewing skills?
A: Practice, practice, practice. No matter how good you think you are at interviews, practice is still essential for being able to walk into a room and sell yourself for a job. We remind students that the person who gets the offer is not always the most qualified, but rather the person who best articulates how he or she can do the job at hand.
Q: What have you learned from being part of mock interview day?
A: That everyone seems to enjoy it. It’s great to see the energy in the building on the day of the event. Alumni like being back, catching up with old friends and helping current students. Students appreciate the time alumni put into it and the great advice they receive. There’s not a downside to the event—except maybe it’s not held often enough!
Q: How can alumni get involved in the process?
A: We solicit help from alumni based on the information we pull from VUconnect. I always remind alumni to keep their profile updated online. If they’re interested in helping with this event or in some other way, they can always contact the CMC directly and we’ll figure out how to get them involved.
Patrick Slay, Senior Associate Director and Director of Coaching, has enjoyed two stints at the Owen School’s Career Management Center (CMC), first in 1999 and then again starting in 2008. A national certified counselor, he works primarily with consulting, general management, operations and strategy MBA students, as well as MSF students. Among his responsibilities is organizing the school’s annual mock interview day each fall.
Q: What is mock interview day? When and how did it originate?
Patrick Slay
A: It’s an annual event that started in fall 2008. The CMC saw both the need to provide job interview practice to Owen students on a large scale and the opportunity to engage Owen alumni in giving back to the school. Each student gets 45 minutes to practice interviewing with alumni, but there’s also time to network a bit and learn more about the roles they might pursue. In all, 35 to 40 alumni representing different industries and job functions come back for the event, and about half are from outside the greater Nashville area.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you give students looking to improve their interviewing skills?
A: Practice, practice, practice. No matter how good you think you are at interviews, practice is still essential for being able to walk into a room and sell yourself for a job. We remind students that the person who gets the offer is not always the most qualified, but rather the person who best articulates how he or she can do the job at hand.
Q: What have you learned from being part of mock interview day?
A: That everyone seems to enjoy it. It’s great to see the energy in the building on the day of the event. Alumni like being back, catching up with old friends and helping current students. Students appreciate the time alumni put into it and the great advice they receive. There’s not a downside to the event—except maybe it’s not held often enough!
Q: How can alumni get involved in the process?
A: We solicit help from alumni based on the information we pull from VUconnect. I always remind alumni to keep their profile updated online. If they’re interested in helping with this event or in some other way, they can always contact the CMC directly and we’ll figure out how to get them involved.
ob Whaley, the Valere Blair Potter Professor of Management, and Jacob Sagi, the Vanderbilt
Financial Markets Research Center Associate Professor of Finance, rang the NASDAQ OMX opening bell in New York April 19 to celebrate the start of options trading on a new group of indexes the pair developed. Called Alpha Indexes, the new tools are designed to help investors measure performance between individual stocks and benchmark exchange-traded funds.
Bob Whaley, the Valere Blair Potter Professor of Management, and Jacob Sagi, the Vanderbilt Financial Markets Research Center Associate Professor of Finance, rang the NASDAQ OMX opening bell in New York April 19 to celebrate the start of options trading on a new group of indexes the pair developed. Called Alpha Indexes, the new tools are designed to help investors measure performance between individual stocks and benchmark exchange-traded funds. Watch CNBC coverage of the event.
The Owen School has launched a new Master of Accountancy program that focuses on preparing students for highly sought-after careers in valuation services for international public accounting firms. The MAcc Valuation program is currently recruiting students to join the first class starting in August 2012.
Responding to an increased demand for students able to handle functions such as assessing mark-to-model values, measuring brand goodwill and pricing acquisition targets, the new program draws on some of Owen’s core academic strengths.
“The master of accountancy program itself has been a great success story, and this next step is a logical one to take,” says Dean Jim Bradford. “This innovative new course of study will address the changing world of accounting as it relates to valuing assets and risk.”
Under the guidance of Karl Hackenbrack, Associate Professor of Accounting, Faculty Director of the MAcc Program, and Associate Dean of Evaluation and Program Development, the valuation track will graduate its first class in spring 2013. The full-time program runs 12 months and includes preparation for two of three levels of the chartered financial analyst (CFA) exams, as well as the certified public accountant (CPA) exam. Students will have the opportunity to take all three tests while in the program.
“All valuation students aspire to launch their careers with an international public accounting firm in service lines that deal primarily with business modeling, transactions and audit support,” Hackenbrack says. “This program really is at the nexus of finance and accounting. To succeed in a valuation service line, the professional must understand accounting rules and the finance behind those rules.”
Successful applicants must have solid quantitative skills, but also be well-equipped to handle client-facing roles, Hackenbrack adds.
In 2010 Bloomberg Businessweek’s recruiter survey ranked Owen’s accounting program fifth among U.S. MBA programs, ahead of institutions such as Harvard Business School and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. This year’s 28-person MAcc class had a 100-percent job placement rate, in part due to the relationships formed with partner firms Deloitte, Ernst and Young, Grant Thornton, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Mario Ramos has a hard time containing his excitement about the freshly unveiled 
When looking at most world maps, we take for granted our points of reference. North is up, south is down, and the U.S. is in the top left corner, just as it was when we first learned geography in grade school. Not everyone, though, subscribes to this point of view.
Friends and colleagues,
A team of students from the Owen School placed third in an inaugural health service case competition held at Northwestern University April 29–30. The 2011 Health Service Case Competition was the first of what the recently formed Business School Alliance for Health Care Management intends to become an annual event. Sponsored by DaVita, a leading provider of kidney care in the U.S., teams of three students each developed strategies to take on a real-world business case related to health care management.
uiting students to join the first class starting in August 2012.