CalBusiness - The Magazine of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley

Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone Welcomes New Students

The Berkeley-Haas culture took center stage at orientation this year as new students gleaned life lessons from several keynote speakers, including Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

Inflation Stock Returns, Nonverbal Cues

New faculty sound off on research.

Haas Makes Strides in Diversity with MBA Class of 2013

New Students by the Numbers

Undergrad Program #3 in U.S. News

Chamberlins Seed Online Education

Letters

The CalBusiness iPad App

Leadership Skills at Failure's Edge

Haas Ranks High on Startup Cred

Haas Recognizes Teaching Stars

Exec Training in Innovation, Ethics

Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone Welcomes New Students

Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone Welcomes New Students
The Berkeley-Haas culture took center stage at orientation this year as new students gleaned life lessons from several keynote speakers, including Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

Stone shared insights and experiences as a serial entrepreneur in his talk at the Full-time Berkeley MBA Program orientation. Stone’s keynote kicked off his appointment as the school’s fourth executive fellow, a part-time professional faculty position.

Stone talked about technology as an important tool, but said it is the human spirit that is the thrust, motivator, and cause of great change. “You are here to study business, but also to learn how to live a meaningful life,” he told students.

New Students By the Numbers

Full-time MBA
237 students
3,444 applicants
33% international students
37 countries represented

Evening & Weekend MBA
250 students
85% Bay Area residents
25 to 44 age range
25% women

Undergraduate
355 total students
2,064 applicants
93 transfer students
3.69 average GPA, UCB students
3.81 average GPA, transfers

PhD Program
15 students
547 applicants
7 international students
19 to 44 age range

Orientation Speakers

Full-Time MBA:
Biz Stone, Twitter Co-founder
Tom Kelley, MBA 83,
General Manager, IDEO

Evening & Weekend:
Michael Gallagher, BS 67,
MBA 68, Retired Playtex
Products CEO & Haas
Board Chair

Undergraduate:
Brad Howard, BS 79,
Owner, Howard Tours

Inflation Stock Returns, Nonverbal Cues

New Faculty Sound Off On Research
Meet the new assistant professors who joined Haas this fall.

Dana Carney
Management of Organiztions
Former Position: Asst. Prof., Columbia Business School
Phd Social Psychology, Northeastern

"I am interested in the incredible power of tiny, ordinary, nonverbal cues. I am working with students on some of the powerful ways in which ordinary, everyday, nonverbal behaviors can exert extraordinary impact on thoughts, feelings, and choice."

Yaniv Konchitchki
Accounting
Former Position: Asst. Prof., Marshall School of Business, USC
PhD, Stanford

"I specialize in financial reporting effects of macroeconomic information—such as inflation and exchange rates—on equity prices. In one research project, I found that inflation effects can help predict future cash flows, although this relationship is not fully reflected in stock prices."

Alastair Lawrence
Accounting
Ph.D., Rotman, University of Toronto

"Some of my recent research relates to how individuals use financial disclosures. Specifically, this research suggests that individuals tend to invest a greater percentage of their portfolios in firms with accessible and transparent financial disclosures and that they earn higher returns in firms with such attributes."

Haas Makes Strides in Diversity with MBA Class of 2013

An even more diverse group of Berkeley MBA students will hone their leadership skills at Haas this year, thanks to the school rejoining the Graduate Consortium for Study in Management and three Springworks Scholars in the entering class.

This year’s entering full-time MBA class was the first to apply to Berkeley-Haas since the school re-entered The Consortium in March 2010. Applications from under-represented minorities for
the class of 2013 jumped 44 percent and the percentage of under-represented minorities enrolled nearly doubled to 9.6 percent of the class— the highest percentage in recent years.

The Consortium is an alliance of top U.S. business schools and corporations aimed at fostering diversity among graduate business students and corporate leaders. Berkeley-Haas withdrew from The Consortium in 2003 after 10 years of membership because of California Proposition 209, which prohibits public institutions from participating in programs that give preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. The school rejoined after The Consortium expanded its mission to include awarding fellowships to all U.S. citizens and permanent residents who demonstrate a commitment to advancing diversity and inclusion in U.S. business schools and companies.

Stephanie Fujii, executive director of full-time MBA admissions, says the school has seen “tremendous results” in the first admissions cycle since renewed Consortium membership. “Being part of this organization reinforces how important diversity is to Berkeley-Haas,” she says. “We develop leaders who redefine business. So we must have students who reflect the diversity in the business world today, and we must create an environment that fosters diversity of thought.”

Berkeley-Haas also welcomed three Springworks Scholars this year, tying with Kellogg for the most Scholars at any graduate business school: Alia Al Kasmi, Christina Chang, and Sherry Chen, all MBA 13. San Francisco-based Springworks focuses on creating pathways for under-targeted groups to have a greater role in the innovation community.

Back to top

Undergrad Program #3 in U.S. News

Haas tied for third place with the University of Michigan Ann Arbor in a U.S. News & World Report ranking of undergraduate programs released in September. The Haas Undergraduate Program has held the third spot in the ranking since 2003, except in 2009, when it came in second. The ranking is based entirely on a poll of business school deans and undergraduate program directors.

Leadership Skills at Failure's Edge

As a former partner in a private equity firm that helped turn around such companies as Uniroyal Goodrich Tire Co., Peter Goodson knows the leadership skills needed to rescue a failing business.
That's why Haas recruited him to teach a new course called Turnarounds: Effective Leadership in Creating Value.

"What was different about this course from other courses on leadership was that it concerned the leadership skills you need to head in an entirely different direction," Goodson explains. "It's like playing speed chess. You have two seconds to make moves. You have to move because you're about to lose the business."

The weeklong course brought together 44 evening and weekend MBA and Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA students in July. The class, like a failing business, was
intense. "The most important thing I learned was the necessity of having a solid framework for what needs to be done to get to the bottom of a problem and the courage to execute it," says Berkeley-Columbia student Joel Guttierez.

Chamberlins Seed Online Education

The Haas School will explore complementing classroom learning with online approaches, thanks to funding from the Chamberlin Family Donor Designated Fund at the UC Berkeley Foundation.

Steve and Susan Chamberlin, the fund's creators and former members of the Haas professional faculty, have recommended the $1 million distribution to pilot online educa-tion initiatives. The funds will be shared by a consortium con-sisting of Haas, UC Berkeley's College of Engineering, the Graduate School of Education, the School of Information, the School of Public Health, and UC Berkeley Extension.

The distribution from the Chamberlin Family Fund will match funds being raised
individually and jointly by the benefitting units for the pilot program.

Haas Ranks High on Startup Cred

LinkedIn ranked Haas the fourth most entrepreneurial business school. LinkedIn created the ranking
by sifting through more than 120 million public profiles and analyzing tens of thousands of startup founders' profiles. The firm identified more than 130,000 entrepreneurs who are founders or co-founders of companies after 2000 that have a LinkedIn company profile and 2 to 200 employees.

The MBA website Poets & Quants noted that "LinkedIn has produced the ideal 'put up or shut up' analysis" by ranking schools based on producing actual startup entrepreneurs.

Exec Training in Innovation, Ethics

Two new courses in February at the Center for Executive Education will focus on two important issues
in today's ideas-driven economy: innovation and ethics.

Mark Meaney, ethics and compliance director at the University of California Office of the Regents, developed the ethics course. The first of its kind, the course will reflect the key strategic and leaderships positions that ethics and compliance directors increasingly hold within companies today.

Jerome Engel, founding executive director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, Is creating the new innovation course. It will examine the roles of the enterprise, the individual, and culture in the innovation process.

Learn more about each class at executive.berkeley.edu.

Letters

The Business of Life

I loved how the Summer 2011 issue revealed the scenes behind the successes-—how Brendon Yahn went to research shrimp farms in Cambodia only to learn they had failed, how Eve Alexander felt
surprised when the Saudi women remained upbeat after the arrest of a female driver, how Josh Mogabgab found relationships to be a critical factor in his recommendations for revitalizing Telegraph
Avenue. I was particularly moved by Gordon Massie's words about his inner conflicts during and after his time at AIG. Thanks for articles like these that expand my view of the business of life.
Malcolm Brooks, MBA 89

Share your views about CalBusiness by sending a letter to the editor at letters@haas.berkeley.edu. Accepted letters may be edited for clarity.

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