Haas NewsWire


Haas NewsWire, October 30, 2000


**Special Reminder: Tom Siebel speaks at Haas on Tuesday, October 31, at 12:30 p.m. in the Wells Fargo room. Ray Lane will speak Friday, November 3, at 4:00 p.m. in the Arthur Andersen Auditorium.**


CONTENTS
Third Annual UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition Launches November 8
The Real Estate and Economics Symposium Looks at Times Ahead
Initiative to Connect Alumni and Students in the Workplace is Off to a Fast Start
Perez-Reyes Receives the Chancellor's Distinguished Staff Award
Zoe-Haatehc Scheffy Appointed New Manager of Accounting and Personnel Services
Haas in the News
Happening at Haas

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HAAS HEADLINES


THIRD ANNUAL UC BERKELEY BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION LAUNCHES NOVEMBER 8

The third annual UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition will officially launch on November 8 at 6:00 p.m. in the Arthur Andersen Auditorium. The main event will introduce the rules of the competition to attendees, and will be followed by a mixer giving entrepreneurs the opportunity to mingle and hopefully begin to form teams. All faculty, students, staff, and alumni of the Haas School and UC Berkeley, as well as members of the community, are invited to attend.

The UC Berkeley Competition has quickly established itself as the one of the leading entrepreneurship competitions in the country. In addition to access to venture capitalists and Silicon Valley business leaders, participants hone skills to turn ideas into fundable ventures through a series of workshops and mentorship.

The purpose of the competition is to encourage the creation of viable and fundable business ventures. Teams from the previous two years have secured a total of $91.45 million in funding. The breakdown of the funding to date is:

Class of 2000:


Class of 1999:


To be eligible to enter, each team must contain at least one current UC Berkeley student or alumnus. Additional information on this year's competition will be available later this week at http://bplan.berkeley.edu.

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THE REAL ESTATE & ECONOMICS SYMPOSIUM LOOKS AT TIMES AHEAD

The Haas School's Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics will examine issues of real estate and economic outlook in the face of changing demographics and e-commerce markets on Monday, November 13, at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. This symposium continues a 23-year tradition of excellence and has become the premier west coast event for academics and practitioners in the field of real estate.

Haas School faculty and faculty associates of the Fisher Center for Real Estate are invited to attend free of charge. Students who wish to volunteer and help at the Symposium can also attend for free.

"This is an opportunity to hear some of the most successful and thoughtful people in the real estate industry," says symposium co-chairman Robert Edelstein, co-chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics. Edelstein will moderate several of the day's panels along with symposium co-chairman Richard Wollack, chairman of the CB Richard Ellis' Global Capital Markets Group and member of the Fisher Center's Policy Advisory Board, who has been involved with the conference for 20 of its 23 years.

Lawrence Chimerine, president of Radnor International Consulting, Inc., starts the day's presentations with a talk titled "Real Estate and Economic Outlook." Chimerine has been one of the premier forecasters of the economy for the past two decades. "Almost every person speaking is a brand name," says Edelstein. "It is designed for real estate professionals, but at the highest level. The conference is at the interface of academe and practitioners."

Later in the morning, Haas Lecturer Noel Nellis, partner at Orrick, Herrington, and Sutcliffe LLP, will moderate the "What's Happening in the California Real Estate Market?" panel, which will include Warren E. "Ned" Spieker, BS 66, chairman, Spieker Properties, and Douglas W. Shorenstein, president and CEO, Shorenstein Company, L.P. and a member of the Haas Advisory Board.

J.S. Holliday, historian, author, and director emeritus of the California Historical Society, kicks off the afternoon's panels with a speech on "The Origins of California's Image as America, Only More So." Holliday's latest research draws comparisons between the 1849 gold rush and "new gold rush" in Silicon Valley. Haas Lecturer Lynn Sedway, executive managing director of Sedway Group, a division of CB Richard Ellis, will participate in the "Real Estate Financing and Investing" session. The complete agenda can be found at http://haas.berkeley.edu/realestate/.

Faculty who wish to attend, and students who wish to volunteer, should e-mail Zee Zeleski (zeleski@haas.berkeley.edu), who is handling the registrations. Please note that complimentary registrations are available only for Haas faculty and student volunteers. All other registration information can be found at http://haas.berkeley.edu/realestate.

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INITIATIVE TO CONNECT ALUMNI AND STUDENTS IN THE WORKPLACE IS OFF TO A FAST START

Begun as a pilot program this fall, a Haas School initiative that brings alumni and students together for learning and networking, has had great success in its first few months. Organized by Dan Israel, MBA 01 & MBAA VP for Alumni Affairs, with the support of the Haas Alumni Affairs Office and the Haas Alumni Network, "Haas at Work" brings small groups of Haas students to the workplace of alumni for a two-hour session to help build bridges between current students and the Haas alumni community.

"It's been wonderful to see such a strong response from alumni interested in giving back to Haas. I'm hopeful this program will continue to build stronger ties between MBA students and alumni," says Israel.

The sessions give the alumni a chance to educate Haas students about their companies and industries. With just four to six students at each event, they are still manageable for the busy host companies and personal for the students. "This visit to OffRoad was fantastic -- a highly informative, engaging meeting," says Ruthanne Feinberg, MBA 01, who participated in the program. "It was a great chance for us to discuss in a small group their business -- opportunities and challenges. We also had access to high level executives, including the CEO."

Events have included speaking to the students over lunch; setting up brief presentations from different employees at a firm; or taking them on a tour of the office/facility. "Having the group of Haas students visit DigitalThink was great fun," says Jeff Marshall, performance consultant at DigitalThink, Inc. "The students' interest in and knowledge of the e-learning industry impressed me. It was also wonderful to give career advice and catch up on the latest happenings in the MBA program. I can't wait for the next opportunity to have another group visit."

The companies that have hosted or are scheduled to host students so far this fall include: Genesys Telecom Labs, Alliant Partners, Vitaminic, Versata, netcentives.com, DigitalThink, PRTM, netcustomer.com, Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, OffRoad Capital, Extensity, Flexsilicon, Tularik, ExchangeWave, CommerceOne, Wind River Systems, High Tech Business Decisions, What U Want, RestaurantPro.com, Centillium Communications, Dreyer's, AOL, Sporteum, Gap, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, EXP.com, Charles Schwab, and Visa.

To participate, as a student or as an alumni host, send e-mail to Dan Israel or call the Alumni Relations Office at (510) 642-7790. For more information, check out http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/alumni/involve/haasatwork.html.

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PEREZ-REYES RECEIVES THE CHANCELLOR'S DISTINGUISHED STAFF AWARD

One of Haas' own, lecturer Arturo Perez-Reyes, and sixteen members of the eBerkeley E-commerce Task Force and Implementation Task Force received the Chancellor's Distinguished Staff Award.

Perez-Reyes is special assistant to the vice chancellor for budget and finance as well as advisor to vice chancellor for business and administrative services. This semester he is teaching "Business Communications" at Haas. He has taught at Haas since 1989.

The eBerkeley E-commerce Task Force and the Implementation Task Force have worked to launch an e-commerce web site at Berkeley, where on- and off-campus consumers could purchase goods and services, such as books or parking passes. Implementation of the site is still underway.

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ZOE-HAATEHC SCHEFFY APPOINTED NEW MANAGER OF ACCOUNTING AND PERSONNEL SERVICES

Zoe-haatehc Scheffy has served as the new Manager of Accounting and Personnel Services for the Haas School since September. She has worked with Haas Accounting and Personnel Services since February 1999. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley in anthropology, an MA from Indiana University in folklore, and is a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University in Folklore. Zoe's current goal for the department is, "To get people paid!"

Zoe leads the newly formed Accounting and Personnel team, made up of Jamie Abernathy, Robbie Jackson, Carole Wilson, and Tsering Dhundup. The Accounting and Personnel Services office will continue to serve the Haas community with four account representatives who handle personnel appointments, payroll, and vendor payments. In addition, the Accounting/Personnel office is a resource for health and retirement benefits information and BFS user questions. "We are currently hiring a replacement for the vacancy left by my change in position," says Zoe.

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HAAS IN THE NEWS

A memorial article on the late John Harsanyi, professor emeritus and Nobel Laureate, written by Frederick E. Balderston, professor emeritus, appeared in the November issue of California Monthly.

In the same issue, California Monthly also published a photo of Dean Laura Tyson and Paul Newman from his appearance at Haas in September.

John Brennan, MBA 91, was profiled in Fortune's October 30 issue in an article titled "Impact Player." In the profile Brennan talks about his career path going from a partner-track consultant at Andersen to joining the startup Charitableway to becoming vice president for corporate strategy at Hewlett Packard.

Dean Tyson's column in the October 30, BusinessWeek, "Earth to America: The World Won't Go Away," was about the American public's lack of interest in foreign issues, until they appear on the television screen. Tyson explained how globalization will continue to effect the lives of the average American.

NetBusiness Online reported on October 28 that Gruner+Jahr, a Bertelsmann company, has purchased a 10% stake in Handy.de, the German startup founded by Thorsten Rehling and Dirk Friese, MBAs 00, during their time at Haas. The article is available at http://www.net-business.de/startup/news.html?id=972741382.1&ssid=ba44641d4bc618bb4c512a898a09e3

Severin Borenstein, E.T. Grether Professor in Public Policy and Business Administration and director of the University of California Energy Institute, was quoted in the San Jose Mercury News on Friday, October 27. Borenstein explained that it is unlikely that the state will be able to recover from electricity generators the high profits they earned this summer in California. He added that the profits were due to market power exercised by some producers and that the state needs to assure that consumers can respond to high real-time prices by next summer.

The New York Times featured James Hong, MBA 99, and his new Web site AmIHotorNot.com in the article "Face Time with a Twist" on October 26. A previous article on AmIHotorNot ran in the London Observer.

Tyson was mentioned in the Kyodo News on October 25 for a report she co-authored, "Future Directions for US Economic Policy Toward Japan."

October 24, Tuesday, Borenstein did interviews on KCBS radio live and 6pm KPIX TV news. In both he commented that the record 3rd quarter earnings Chevron had just announced were due to the very high price of oil and the tight and insufficiently competitive gasoline markets in California.

Tyson was profiled in the Financial Times on October 23 in a piece on her first two years as dean.

Professor M. Frances Van Loo's Contemporary Philanthropy class was mentioned in the September 18 issue of "Food for Thought," an online newsletter of CompassPoint Nonprofit services. The newsletter can be found at: http://www.compasspoint.org/publications/food4thought/fft2000_09_18.html

Van Loo's class was also mentioned in "Philanthropy News Network" newsletter on August 31. That article can be found at: http://pnnonline.org/giving/class0831.adp.

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HAPPENING AT HAAS

SEMINARS

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