International Business Fellowships 2005

The Clausen Center commends the following Haas Students for their commitment to international business and policy as shown in their past, present and future endeavors.

Adam Gouttierre - MBA '06 and his fellow Haas MBA Chris Becherer spent a week in Kabul working with Afghan musicians and recorded a full-length 11 track album that is available through iTunes. The proceeds from the Afghan Music Project will benefit the music teachers of Kabul and encourage more young students, especially women, to study music. The story of their summer adventures can be found on DMEC, the Digital Media and Entertainment Club web site. There is a story in the HaasNewswire as well as an interview on MSNBC.

Sudhir Kaushik - MBA '07 conducted market research with small kindergarten and primary schools in India with the goal of establishing a youth program that celebrates cultural diversity and education modeled after the Junior Achievement Program of the Bay Area.

David Kwok - MBA '06 worked with CCX, based in Ukraine, to develop curriculum and course materials in a summer camp for 40 students building their business leadership skills. He formed a planning committee comprised of professionals from various backgrounds to research how to setup a foundation for a social venture fund to support corporate responsible companies in Kiev and other developing local markets for sustainable community economic development.

Margaret K. Rhee - MBA '06 travelled to La Paz, Mexico and Colombo, Sri Lanka to assess the viability and sustainability of a new water purification technology, the “UV Tube,” designed for rural households. Working with Conafe, the rural school education agency in Mexico, and Sarvodaya, a rural community development NGO in Sri Lanka, she and her team selected rural villages to install and monitor 27 trial UV Tubes. To understand the institutional and market environment for the new technology, Margaret spent the summer talking with end users in the rural villages, businesses which could build or supply the UV Tube, and NGOs and government agencies. Several institutional relationships were established locally for further collaboration; thus far, the UV Tube trials have been highly successful. Results from her research will be presented at the UNIDO-MOT Conference at UC Berkeley in April 2006 and will contribute to further research on the worldwide development of the UV Tube being done at the Renewal and Appropriate Energy Lab (RAEL) at UC Berkeley.

Stacey Wang - BA '06 did a spring semester study global studies program at Meiji Guicun in Yamamoto, Japan and continued her international business studies in London at the London School of Economics during the summer. She saw first hand the importance of culture, language and communication and how meeting people, connecting, and creating relationships are key factors in international business. She learned different viewpoints of Europeans and Asians on the future of globalization.

Interstate Fellowships

Dirksen E. Bussiere - MBA candidate- graduated with honors from Northwestern University with a B.A. in Molecular Biology and subsequently received an M.S. in Molecular Biophysics from Yale University and Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics from Duke University. After graduation, Dirk joined Abbott Laboratories, where he worked on developing antiviral and antibacterial therapeutics. Dirk left Abbott Laboratories to lead Chiron Corporation's Structural Chemistry group. At Chiron, Dirk serves as the Associate Director for Computational and Structural Chemistry and has worked on cancer therapeutic projects. He has collaborated with many foreign and multi-national pharmaceutical companies, including Pharmacia and Taisho Pharmaceuticals. He has also taught and lectured internationally. Dirk is interested in applying his scientific and business training to manage multi-national pharmaceutical and biotechnology efforts.

Janice Imrich is an MBA '05 candidate. Janice Imrich graduated from Georgetown University with a B.A. in Biology and a Minor in Fine Arts. Following graduation, she worked as a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton and EnviroIssues specializing in environmental regulation. In 2001, Janice helped Booz Allen establish a Seattle office, and manage and develop environmental consulting projects for the Pacific Northwest region. Janice will graduate from the Haas School of Business in May 2005 and will join Naverus Inc., an aviation consulting startup specializing aircraft navigation, as a Product Manager in their marketing department.

Chi-Kuan Wu is an MBA '07 student at Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He was with Sony from 1997 to 2004 including 2.5 years of international assignment in Tokyo, Japan (2000-2002). Most recently, he was a software engineering manager in VAIO PC product division. He also worked as software engineer and project lead in Sony San Jose and Tokyo offices developing multimedia applications. Chih-Kuan received an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, New York in 1997 and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Tamkang University, Taiwan in 1995.

Dion Harris is an MBA '07 student - Dion graduated from UC Berkeley in 1997 with a degree in Economics. He then worked for Gap Inc as a Corporate Strategy and Business Development analyst. In 2000, he joined Loudcloud Inc. as a product manager, where he managed the companys #1 revenue generating service offering, Database Management services. He currently works for PG&E as a Sr. Project Manager in Customer Research, where he manages market research projects and provides strategic recommendations for operational improvements that will ultimately improve overall customer satisfaction. He will graduate from the Haas School of Business in 2007 with an emphasis in marketing.