Kellogg Real Estate Conference and Venture Competition winners: (l-r) Stefan “Steve” Jeitler, LL.M 19; Kyle Raines MBA 21; Esmond Ai, MBA 20; Nithya Rathinam, MBA 21; Hind Katkhuda, MBA 20; and Julia McElhinney, MRED+D 19. Photo: Kellogg School of Management.

A team of six Berkeley students won the sixth annual Kellogg Real Estate Conference and Venture Competition for their plan to fill vacant ground-floor retail spaces in cities with package pick-up centers and e-commerce pop-up shops.

The competition, hosted April 10 at Northwestern University at the Kellogg School’s Guthrie Center for Real Estate Research, aims to encourage entrepreneurial real estate ventures.

Nine international semi-finalist teams were asked to create a scalable, profitable real estate business—complete with supporting financials and profit projections—that would transcend traditional real estate and help solve urban and social issues.

The Berkeley team included Esmond Ai, MBA 20, Kyle Raines, MBA 21, and Nithya Rathinam, MBA 21, all students in the Evening and Weekend MBA Program. They were joined by teammates Hind Katkhuda, FT-MBA 20; Julia McElhinney, MRED+D 19, who is earning a master’s degree in real estate development and design from Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design; and Stefan “Steve” Jeitler, LL.M 19, a master of laws candidate at Berkeley School of Law.

Raines said their proposed real estate venture, named Click + Mortar, would provide secure delivery options through package pick-up centers—and help businesses that sell mostly online to benefit from small, short-term brick-and-mortar presences in key urban centers.

“We see the social and economic challenges of empty Bay Area retail spaces every day,” McElhinney said. “So we wanted to create a viable and scalable business that would address this issue locally, drive profits, and offer opportunities to expand to other urban areas facing the same challenges.”

“An incredibly creative solution”

The team spent four months researching the concept, talking to developers, property managers, e-tailers like Sugarfina and Ministry of Supply, and package locker providers. The idea includes signing discounted, long-term master leases in large, vacant retail spaces; adding package lockers to part of the space; and filling the remaining area with small, short-term retail lots.

“Our students found an incredibly creative solution to an intractable problem,” said their faculty adviser, real estate Professor Nancy Wallace, co-chair of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics. “Their idea is so compelling that they’ve already found real property owners and clients who are willing to sign on if Click + Mortar launches.”

The team members are currently considering how best to bring this business idea to fruition. They have seed capital from the competition’s $25,000 cash prize and an additional $75,000 to apply toward co-working space and legal and accounting professional services. In addition, several investors who attended the event have already requested pitch decks.

Before the competition, Rathinam said she believed that real estate offered a limited range of traditional career paths. “With Click + Mortar, I now have an opportunity to start off on my own and build something that is very unique and that solves an important urban issue all at once,” she said.

This is the latest in a string of Haas real estate wins. This week, another Haas team won the NAIOP San Francisco Bay Area Real Estate Challenge, dubbed the “Golden Shovel” competition, for the second year in a row. In December, a Haas team took the top prize at the University of Texas McCombs’ National Real Estate Case Challenge.

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L-R: William Rindfuss, executive director of strategic programs in the Haas Finance Group; Daniel Clayton, MBA 19; Linda Kreitzman, executive director of the MFE Program; and Michael Bausback , MBA 19, at the Berkeley MFE commencement, where the students were honored for completing MFE courses. Photo: Noah Berger

What MBA student Daniel Clayton learned about the Berkeley Master of Financial Engineering program during his class orientation week two years ago quickly grabbed his attention: if space was available, MBA students could enroll in data-intense MFE classes like Financial Innovation, Dynamic Asset Management, Investments & Derivatives, and Behavioral Finance.

Clayton, MBA 19, jumped at the chance. “It was an awesome opportunity,” said Clayton, who is a CFA charterholder, and had worked in finance for six years before heading to Berkeley for his MBA. “I set the goal early that I should try to graduate with three or more of these courses to add more quantitative skills to my strong finance base. It’s the “quants” who will be key to the future of the investment field by driving markets, developing new and innovative investment strategies, and disrupting decades-old industries.”

The top-ranked MFE program trains an elite group of students in financial engineering and data science, many who go on to work at top banks, tech companies, and startups. Since 2001, when the MFE program launched, a select number of its courses have opened up to MBA students to provide an opportunity to deepen their knowledge of quantitative finance and data analytics, preparing them for a job market that increasingly demands these skills, said Linda Kreitzman, executive director of the MFE program. On average, five MBA students take one or more courses each year.

“I saw this coming years ago and, in the future, the MBAs will need to be more data science savvy,” Kreitzman said. “It’s a critical need in the very near future; why we don’t have more MBA students taking our courses is quite surprising to me.”

Students, family, and friends attend the 2019 Berkeley MFE Graduation. Photo: Noah Berger

For taking at least three MFE courses, Clayton was recognized along with Michael Bausback, also MBA 19, at the March 2019 MFE commencement.

The start of “a more studied experiment”

While the typical MBA student does not take the most quantitative and programming-intensive MFE classes such as Stochastic Calculus and Asset Backed Security Markets, they are able to enroll in the more qualitative courses.

In 2013, MBA student Benjamin Cooper fully capitalized on that opportunity. As a CJ White Finance Fellow, Cooper was matched with an alumnus as his mentor in his area of focus within finance, global asset allocation. “This was the start of a more studied experiment for MBAs taking MFE courses,” said William Rindfuss, executive director of strategic programs in the Haas Finance Group. “The mentor’s first bit of advice was to take as many MFE courses as possible.  Ben wound up taking five MFE courses over his two years, and really kicked off this idea of MBAs leveraging the MFE program—literally under the same roof—to expand their training and set of opportunities in the more quantitative ends of finance.”

Cooper, MBA 15, now works as a multi-asset strategist at Wellington Management in London.

Exploring machine learning and quantitative finance

Bausback and Clayton shared similar goals in taking MFE courses: to challenge themselves in the quantitative side of finance.

Bausback, who worked in economic consulting before he came to Haas at a job that required financial modeling and knowledge of trading derivatives, took courses that would prepare him with a deeper, most up-to-date set of finance skills. “I now have the confidence to explore and interact with the fields of machine learning and quantitative finance, both of which seemed inaccessible prior to the program,” said Bausback, who will work at Morgan Stanley as an associate in its Tech Investment Banking office after graduating. “Coming out of the program I realize I had never fully appreciated how financial markets actually work, how prices are driven on a day-to-day basis—and how human biases affect that more than a math model will ever tell you.”

Clayton said he added the most value as a member of the MFE student teams by developing qualitative analysis based on data the MFE students crunched. “Once they coded everything I could interpret the results, articulate the findings clearly, and suggest additional analysis,” he said. “The MBA and MFE skill sets actually complement one another nicely.”

One of the biggest takeaways of taking MFE courses was learning to work with engineers, he said. “I still can’t code in Python or do Stochastic calculus but I do now know how to communicate with financial engineers and understand the kind of analysis they are capable of producing. In the future, I will have a better appreciation for what goes into this kind of work and what is possible, which will make me much more valuable in the finance world.”

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The Golden Bear Real Estate team: (left to right) Bianca Doerschlag, M.Arch 19; Matt Tortorello, MBA 20; David Eisenman, MBA 20; Brynn McKiernan, MRED+D 19; and Matthew Anderson, EWMBA 19

The Team: Golden Bear Real Estate: Bianca Doerschlag, M.Arch. 19; Matt Tortorello, MBA 20; David Eisenman, MBA 20; Brynn McKiernan, MRED+D 19; Matthew Anderson, EWMBA 19.

The Win: First Place in the NAIOP San Francisco Bay Area (SFBA) Real Estate Challenge, April 30. The friendly real estate competition between Berkeley and Stanford just celebrated its 30th year, with Haas taking home the coveted James W. Brecht Memorial Golden Shovel. The team’s $2,000 prize is donated to the nonprofit Challenge for Charity.

The Challenge: The City of San Jose challenged students to create a plan for an undeveloped 159-acre site located adjacent to Highway 237 and Zanker Road in North San Jose. The two teams spent 10 weeks researching a solution to the challenge and pitched a jury of six executives from the banking, real estate development, property management, and public utilities sectors.

The Pitch: The team proposed “Zanker Yards.” Since San Jose’s demand for office space is low, the team dedicated half of the development—3 million square feet—to industrial space for businesses like food distribution, manufacturing, water technology, (the development is site is located near a water treatment plant) and medical devices. The remaining half would be divided into 2.7 million square feet of office and retail space, a hotel, and 40 acres of open space.

The Clincher: Breaking with the U.S. tradition of sprawling, single-story industrial buildings, the Berkeley team proposed an architecturally innovative, multi-story design that drew inspiration from the world’s densest cities. The development would also accommodate nearly 15,000 employees in the initial phase and have flexible zoning that could eventually double that number.

The Haas Factor: The team credited Haas’ overall strength in real estate. Competition adviser Bill Falik—reprising his role from last year—and the faculty at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics worked to validate and challenge the team’s assumptions. They also helped connect the team to developers, property managers, prospective tenants and financiers. Leveraging these networks, the team conducted more than 60 interviews to hone their ideas and complete due diligence. In addition, this year’s team received coaching and moral support from last year’s winners, which helped the team stay inspired, refine their process, and benchmark progress.

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Victoria Williams-Ononye, MBA 19, (center) shared a job interview experience during the recent CMG Employer Roundtable event. (with Matt Hines, left, and Rafael Sanchez, right) Photo: Noah Berger

A group of employers, diversity leaders, and MBA students came together for the recent 2019 Berkeley Haas Employer Roundtable to share stories and to discuss the tangible steps employers can take to attract diverse talent.

The April 23 roundtable, sponsored by the MBA Career Management Group, explored many ways to nudge diversity strategies forward—by taking steps like setting up Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) (based on shared characteristics or life experiences,) supporting underrepresented employees’ career development, understanding how to tackle unconscious bias during the recruiting process, and sending diverse employees and allies to recruiting events.

Abby Scott, assistant dean of career management and corporate partnerships, and Haas Dean Ann Harrison welcomed conference attendees. Harrison noted the progress that the school has made with its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategy, a sweeping action plan that provides concrete ways to bolster enrollment of underrepresented minorities at Haas and to develop a more inclusive environment school-wide.

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion is front and center at Haas, so I think that we’re well positioned to continue moving that conversation forward in career management to address challenges in both recruiting and in creating a more supportive workplace environment,” said Jennifer Bridge, senior director of external engagement at Haas.

Hector Preciado, MBA 11, director of global sales development at tech hiring marketplace Hired (right) in a fireside chat with Élida Bautista, director of Inclusion & Diversity at Haas.

Several alumni speakers—Peter Poer, MBA 14, senior director of operations at test prep company Magoosh, and Hector Preciado, MBA 11, director of global sales development at tech hiring marketplace Hired—shared their personal experiences in hiring for diversity and their best workplace practices.

During a fireside chat with Élida Bautista, director of Inclusion & Diversity at Haas, Preciado, who came to the U.S. from Mexico when he was three years old, said that cultivating an inclusive company culture is even more important than recruiting diverse people.

Preciado said companies could do a better job in this area by supporting and funding Employee Resource Groups, giving these groups key problems to solve, and setting objectives and goals that are tied to the performance reviews of those involved with ERGs. He also recommended connecting summer interns to ERGs when they arrive.

Offering formal DEI training also gives employees the opportunity to identify as “certified” allies, Preciado said.

MBA students discussing diversity and inclusion at the roundtable event. Photo: Noah Berger

As allies, Magoosh’s Poer said that employees have to become more actively engaged in making change. “Just listening can also be an excuse to not do anything,” he said. “Don’t just listen.”

Poer discussed the journey he and his co-workers have taken since 2015 to decrease unconscious bias at the company and create a more equitable hiring system.

Magoosh worked to set and reach diversity goals that would track over the course of five years and hired IQTalent Partners to help the company find more diverse candidates.

The company focused on using inclusive language in job descriptions and decided to anonymize the first stage of the hiring process. When Magoosh removed the names from resumes, the rate of URM candidate resumes that made the pass-through to the interview phase doubled. Poer said that the quality of the candidates brought in to interview was exceptional—and that all candidates made it past the first round.

After the alumni speakers, a panel discussion that covered everything from interviewing challenges to finding the right mentors at internships was held with students Tam Emerson, Christina Chavez, Matt Hines, Rafael Sanchez, and Victoria Williams-Ononye, all MBA 19, and Catherine Start, MBA 20.

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Mark Rubinstein, a finance professor emeritus whose work had a profound impact on Wall Street by forever changing how financial assets are created and priced, died May 9 in Tiburon, California. He was 74.

Rubinstein, who retired in 2012 after nearly 40 years on the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business faculty, was a pioneer in applying mathematical tools to financial markets. He was best known for his contributions in options pricing, as well as the development of the first Exchange Traded Fund (ETF).

Prof. Mark Rubinstein surrounded by his beloved Shakespeare in his home library in 2002 (Berkeley Haas photo)

Rubinstein was intellectually fearless and known by his students as a sincere mentor who had extraordinary passion. He was also a quintessential Renaissance man whose curiosity and love of learning led him to acquire an impressive knowledge of Shakespeare, Ancient Greek, and Roman history.

“Mark was unusually honest and open-minded,” said Prof. Terry Odean, a colleague in the Haas Finance Group. “He was one of the few people I’ve known who would actually change his opinion when confronted with new facts or a better argument.”

Simplified options pricing

Rubinstein grew up in Seattle, the son of Sam and Gladys Rubinstein. After earning a bachelor’s degree at Harvard, an MBA at Stanford, and a PhD at UCLA, Rubinstein joined the Haas faculty in 1972.

His research efforts soon focused on options markets, which had just begun trading in Chicago. In 1979, working with John Cox and Stephen Ross of MIT, he developed the Cox-Ross-Rubinstein (CRR) Model, a “binomial” model for valuing a wide range of complex options. The model contributed to the growth of derivatives around the world and remains one of the most important valuation tools on Wall Street. A subsequent book, Options Markets (with John Cox), made option pricing theory accessible to a broad audience.

“His most famous contribution was in simplifying the option pricing model not only to a level that everyone could understand, but also to a point where everyone could use it effectively in the real world,” said Prof. Emeritus Hayne Leland, a finance colleague who worked closely with Rubinstein.

Leland O’Brien Rubinstein’s (LOR) influence

In 1981, Rubinstein joined with Leland and Haas Adjunct Prof. John O’Brien to form Leland O’Brien Rubinstein (LOR). The firm grew rapidly, and in 1987 the three founders were named among Fortune’s “Businessmen of the Year.” LOR developed a risk-hedging algorithm called “portfolio insurance.” To stem losses, the algorithm required selling off assets when markets declined, and portfolio insurance was accused of being a major accelerant of the October 1987 crash— when the stock market fell more than 20% in a day. These events and the role of LOR are recounted in Diana Henriques’ A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day in Wall Street History.

The market eventually recovered, and the crash may have warded off a real recession by bringing stock prices back down to reality, according a later analysis. Traders today still use strategies that are roughly equivalent to portfolio insurance.

First Exchange Traded Fund

In an effort to protect investors without dynamic selling, LOR then pioneered the SuperTrust, an S&P 500-based fund that traded as a single security—which in 1992 became the first Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) in the United States. Rubinstein and Leland provided the economic arguments that convinced the SEC to give the first exemption to rules in the 1940 Investment Act that had prevented ETFs. These exemptions later became standard, and helped form the regulatory framework for what has arguably become the most important financial innovation in the last quarter century. In the years since, ETF funds’ assets have grown to more than $5 trillion globally.

Founded the Master of Financial Engineering Program

Rubinstein was elected President of the American Finance Association in 1992, and was named as the IAQF Financial Engineer of the Year in 1995. In 2001, he helped to found the Berkeley Haas Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) Program, which was the first such program in a U.S. business school and is consistently ranked #1.

MFE Program Executive Director Linda Kreitzman called Rubinstein a giant in his field. “He had a huge impact on our students’ lives and also our alumni. He was a brilliant, kind person and he’ll be deeply missed.”

An avid student of history, Rubinstein examined the development of modern theories of investment in his 2006 book,  A History of the Theory of Investments:  My Annotated Bibliography. He continued his academic research and mentoring of doctoral students at Berkeley throughout his career, and after his retirement, continued to nurture his intellectual curiosity with research and writing on classical Greece, Rome, and the early history of Christianity.

Rubinstein is survived and dearly missed by his wife Diane, and his children Judd and Maisie.

A memorial service will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 9 at Fernwood Mortuary, 301 Tennessee Valley Rd., Mill Valley.

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In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we’re featuring profiles and interviews with members of our Haas community.

Michael Kim (front row, center) is one of 68 students in the new class of Berkeley MBA for Executives. Photo: Noah Berger.

Twenty years after he founded 180 Snacks, a healthy snack company he started up in his kitchen, Michael Kim, EMBA 20, decided to seek a formal business education. His goal was to leave his $30 million company in good shape for his children.

Kim, who arrived in the U.S. from Korea as a child and attended UCLA as an undergrad, launched 180 Snacks in 1998 for personal reasons. He wanted to feed his four kids an alternative to the sugar-packed Twinkies, Hostess donuts, and candy bars that he grew up with. The trick was making his snacks not only healthy but delicious. Today, the Anaheim-based company’s products—organic Almond Square Crunch, Pistachio Squares, Nut & Seed Crunch, and the latest, the Skinny Rice Bar—are sold online and at big retail chain stores including Costco, Trader Joe’s, and CVS.

We spoke with Kim about his childhood as an Asian immigrant, the hurdles he faced, and why he enrolled in the Berkeley MBA for Executives Program.

Where did you grow up and what was your experience growing up Asian in your community?

I was born in Seoul, Korea, and lived there until I was 10 years old, when my parents emigrated to Southern California. I lived in many places as a kid, usually in the rougher area of Los Angeles. We were a typical Asian American family. My parents went through tough times, working 12 hour days, carrying multiple jobs, and they finally managed to own and operate a small beauty supplies shop. Growing up in America was tough, mainly due to racial discrimination, but I was determined to make the best out of the cards I was dealt.

“I want my children to know that they are 100% American, and at the same time, they are 100% Korean.” – Michael Kim, EMBA 20.

Did you learn about Asian American history at all in school?

No. When I came to the U.S. in the early 1970s, as many Asian families did, Asian history wasn’t of interest yet in schools. As part of the first wave of new immigrants, my parent’s priority for their children was to assimilate by making sure we learned English and adapted to American culture quickly. They believed that was the expressway to college and the guaranteed path to success in America.

You have four children in their 20s. Was their upbringing different from yours?

They were all born in the U.S., so their first language, unlike mine, was English. They grew up in Southern California, surrounded by a large Asian population, so it was very competitive—in fact, too competitive—so we moved to Mission Viejo, California, to give them a more normal childhood. My two sons have since graduated from university (UC Irvine and UC Berkeley)  and I have two daughters who are still in school (at Wellesley College and UC Riverside). My children understand about 90 percent of spoken Korean, but they can only speak about 40 percent. They’re working on it!

Why is that important to you?

As a Korean American, I believe that understanding the mother language and ancestry is of paramount importance. I want my children to know that they are 100% American and, at the same time, they are 100% Korean. We take many trips to Korea and to many other Asian countries so that the Asian heritage is ingrained in their identity, alongside their pride in being American. I am the 29th generation of the Kim family and I want my children to be proud to be the 30th generation, and for their children to be the 31st generation of the Kim family.

Michael Kim (center) with his family: Josephine, Eugene, (wife) Katherine, Timothy, and Rachael.

How did 180 Snacks break into Costco?

It started in the Fall of 1998 when I approached the regional Costco buying office, at a time when being an Asian American and selling to the mainstream U.S. market was not so well received. When I got there, they saw a young Asian fellow and said, “Delivery is in the back.” They assumed I was a delivery guy because I wasn’t white. However, after the meeting with the buyer and some trial sales, my product was well received. The real shocker came when the buyer gave me a whole truckload for an order, which was impossible for me to fulfill. My journey into the world of Willy Wonka’s snack factory had become real.

What brings you back to get an MBA after running a successful business for years?

With my company, I did everything instinctively. I came back here to see if I did it right—so this is more of a confirmation for me. My sons Timothy and Eugene are now training with me to be the company principles. But we’re a small family that sells to major chains so I want to make sure that when I leave this company everything is set up the way it should be. At Berkeley Haas, I am wearing different shoes than the rest of my cohort. So many people here want to be entrepreneurs and live the American dream. I hope that my experiences encourage future entrepreneurs, and that I can be a reference and share my experiences. This is just one small way I can give back.

Who are your Asian heroes?

I read a lot of Confucius and Taoist teachings growing up. The teachings of these great teachers share many similarities with our Berkeley Haas Defining Leadership Principles: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself.

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Raymond Miles, a former Berkeley Haas dean and professor emeritus whose leadership has had a deep and lasting impact on the Haas campus and community, passed away on May 13 in Albany, California. He was 86.

Former Dean and Prof. Emeritus Raymond Miles

Miles is credited with growing the school’s thriving alumni network, securing a campus that invites community, and hiring prestigious faculty members who have included two Nobel Laureates. As a scholar, he was a trailblazer in strategic management, defining human resource management styles commonly taught today.

“Ray Miles was an outstanding scholar and a visionary leader. He helped build the fields of organizational strategy and innovation at Berkeley Haas and around the world,” said Former Dean Laura Tyson, distinguished professor of the graduate school. “He represented all of the stakeholders at Haas—the students, the faculty, the alumni, and the business community, and he began the planning and fundraising process that enabled the move of the Haas School to its new complex. He dedicated his professional life to our community and we will miss him.”

Crash course in management

Born in Cleburne, Texas in 1932, Miles got a crash course in business management when he was just 22. Attending the University of North Texas (UNT), he paid for his BA in journalism by working nights for the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad. There, he said, he learned hard lessons about how managers should best supervise their employees—and how they shouldn’t. Those musings led to a lifetime of inquiry into strategic management, making Miles an early pioneer in thinking about how companies could align their strategies with the goals they were trying to accomplish.

After marrying Lucile Marie Dustin in 1952, and training and serving as an Air Force pilot, he earned an MBA at UNT and then a PhD at Stanford on a scholarship. Eventually, he landed in Berkeley, where he embarked upon a 50-year career in research that helped to crystalize the concept of strategic management. He put his leadership teachings into practice as dean in the 1980s.

The emergence of human resources

When Miles first arrived at Berkeley as a new professor in the Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations group in the fall of 1963, the concept of strategic management was in its infancy. His 1965 Harvard Business Review article, “Human Relations or Human Resources?” led managers to think differently about how to utilize people in their organizations.

“Ray was one of the early contributors to the idea of human resources as a strategic function,” said James Lincoln, the Haas Mitsubishi Chair in International Business and Finance Emeritus, who worked with Miles at Berkeley’s Institute of Industrial Relations. “Instead of thinking about employees as personnel, he put forth the notion that human assets are as important as the financial and physical assets of a company and need to be managed in a strategic way. Of course everyone thinks that now, but back then, it was new.”

In the next decade, Miles studied how organizations could improve, eventually developing his breakthrough 1978 book, Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process, written with his former student Charles Snow, PhD 72. They argued there were three distinct types of successful companies, each with its own management style: prospectors, defenders, and analyzers (and one unsuccessful type, reactors). Once a company figured out which class it belonged to, it could design its management structure and processes accordingly. Furthermore, the authors wrote, companies could change over time in response to their environments.

The book has become a classic in the management strategy field and is still regularly cited.

In later research, Miles continued to explore new concepts in the field of management strategy, creating the notion of “fit” that would help companies determine the best company strategy and how to create their structure and process accordingly. “That underlying idea of having the right strategy and structure for the market environment is still front and center of what every business school teaches in MBA courses on strategy and organizational design,” said Glenn Carroll, a former Haas professor who now teaches at Stanford.

Building campus and community

Raymond Miles, second from right, shows off progress on the new campus to Haas alum Steve Herrick, BS 60, and other supporters who were active in the building campaign.

Miles proved the validity of his management strategies as dean of Haas between 1983 and 1990. His tenure started at a time of crisis for higher education, with both federal and state funding slashed. At the same time, the business school was bursting at the seams, cramped into Barrows Hall with several other departments. Berkeley’s chancellor, however, was reluctant to include a new building for the school in its capital campaign.

To manage the crisis, Miles expanded the school’s advisory board with dozens of business people who urged the school to raise money for a new building by itself. Miles commissioned former Berkeley architecture chair Charles Moore to design a new building on the site of the old campus hospital that could create community and serve as a bridge to the rest of the university. Moore’s elegant model, with interconnected buildings around a central courtyard and arches connecting it to campus, helped sway the administration. With the help of former dean Earl “Budd” Cheit, Miles secured what was then the largest gift in UC Berkeley’s history to build it.

At the same time, Miles helped grow the Cal Business Alumni Association (now known as the Berkeley Haas Alumni Network) into an active, thriving community and hired the school’s first full-time development director to increase outreach to alumni and bring the vision of a new building to fruition. By the time Miles stepped down in 1990, plans were well underway for the building, which broke ground in 1992 and opened in 1995.

Miles with daughter-in-law Amy Miles at the 2012 Haas Gala

During his time as dean, Miles also boosted the school’s academic potential and prestige by helping to expand the faculty. He doubled the number of endowed chairs to 24—then about a fifth of the Berkeley campus total—recruiting such luminaries as Nobel Laureate Oliver Williamson.

Miles also advanced the field of business education by supporting new programs to build on the school’s unique interdisciplinary heritage and blending of research and application, which he described as “theory-based professional practice”. The Program in Organizational Strategy focused several disciplines’ research on strategic decisions facing organizational managers. The Program in Entrepreneurship and Innovation focused on the process of developing a business plan and the broader issues of how technological and economic innovation is stimulated or stunted. And the Program in International Competitiveness focused on the need for new strategies in a rapidly changing global economy.

Miles also believed that the business school should not be an island, isolated from the community around it. In 1989, he started the Boost@BerkeleyHaas program—formerly known as the East Bay Outreach Program and then Young Entrepreneurs at Haas (YEAH)—to bring local high school students from families who traditionally hadn’t gone to college to Haas to learn about business and entrepreneurship and get comfortable on campus. The program just celebrated its 30th anniversary. It serves about 140 young people annually, and the overwhelming majority go on to college.

A “powerful people-developer”

Miles with Ann Hsu, MBA 98, the 2012 Raymond E. Miles Alumni Service Award winner, at the Haas Gala

Former Dean Rich Lyons, the William & Janet Cronk Chair in Innovative Leadership, credits Miles with having a huge influence on him and other Haas leaders.

“Ray was an important mentor to me, and a powerful people-developer more generally. You always had the sense that he had your best interest—and the school’s best interest—at heart. It’s hard to get more ‘beyond yourself’ than Ray,” Lyons said, referencing one of the school’s four Defining Leadership Principles.

Prof. Candi Yano, associate dean for academic affairs and chair of the faculty, noted that until quite recently, Miles continued to come into the office nearly every day and was continuing to publish research articles on organizational strategy and innovation. “He leaves a remarkable legacy,” she said.

In honor of the significant impact Miles has had on Berkeley Haas, the Cal Business Association created the Raymond E. Miles Alumni Service Award in 1990. This award is presented each year to an alumnus who exemplifies superior volunteer leadership.

Miles is survived by his daughter Laura (Jim), sons Grant (Patti) and Ken (Amy), brother Don (Jodi), and seven grandchildren: Justin, Michael, Nathaniel, Anthony, Sarah, Courtney and Brooke. He was predeceased by his wife Lucile in 2014.

A memorial service will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley on Saturday, June 15, 2019 at 2:00 p.m.

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Following medical setbacks that ended his football career, Russ Udé has delved into his many other interests, including banking, marketing, music and volunteer work with low-income youth. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)

In summer of 2015, Cal football had its eyes on Russ Udé, a 6-foot-3-inch, 230-pound star linebacker, as a key addition to the team’s struggling defense.

Sports reporters wrote that Udé, who came to UC Berkeley from Westminster, a private school in Atlanta, had the talent to follow in the footsteps of Cal football players who went on to the National Football League (NFL). And Udé hoped he’d follow that path.

But knee injuries he suffered in high school kept threatening to dash his dream. For fear of losing college scholarships, Udé played through his injuries, helping to lead his team, for the first time since 1996, to the Georgia High School Association Class AAA semifinals.

Udé chose to attend Berkeley, but redshirted his freshman year to fully rehabilitate from knee surgery. Then, the following summer, he struggled with an illness that caused him to lose 25 pounds just two weeks before football training camp. He played football his sophomore and junior years, but his medical setbacks forced him to retire from sports after that.

 A former Cal football player, Russ Udé left his dream of an NFL career behind during his junior year after a series of medical setbacks. Multi-talented, he’s built his own non-traditional career path as a student at Berkeley Haas. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)

“I’m at peace with it now”

Udé’s parents had always pushed him to also excel off of the field, so after a few dark months, the college junior redirected his energy to his business classes at Berkeley Haas and to launching a career in the entertainment industry.

“I’m at peace with it now,” says Udé, a Berkeley Haas senior who graduates this Sunday and will head to a job at either Deloitte or Merrill Lynch in Southern California. “I’ve learned so much from my experiences. You have to roll with the punches and keep going. I never wanted to self-identify as just an athlete, nor did I want anyone to marginalize me.”

Born to Nigerian parents, Udé moved as a child from Nigeria to London to Belgium before the family settled in Atlanta. At the time, his mother, Uche, was a fashion designer with her own label, Uccé, and Udé modeled as a teen during fashion week in Atlanta. (He was also featured in an episode of ABC’s “Grown-ish.”)

Graduating senior Russ Udé poses next to his car near the Grizzly Peak overlook in the Berkeley hills. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)

Releasing a single

In addition to his mother’s creativity and drive, Udé says he’s been inspired by the multifaceted careers of fellow Atlanta native Donald Glover and other successful creative types and business executives.

“Donald never puts limitations on himself,” Udé says. “He just does what he wants to do. That’s what led me to study business. I felt if I had a business education, I could take it and run with it and apply it to whatever interested me.”

Like Glover, Udé’s interests are eclectic. The summer before his senior year at Berkeley, Udé worked as an investment banking intern in San Francisco. Meanwhile, he was hired by Universal Music Group to do urban marketing and brand partnerships. With Ethan Erickson, a former kicker for Cal football, he created a YouTube content series. Udé also produces and records music, citing influences from Kanye West to Pink Floyd to the rapper Kid Cudi. Last February, he shot his first music video in London and, on his 22nd birthday, released his first single, “Makin’ Conversation,” under the name “RussThe404.”

 “I’ve learned so much from my experiences,” says former Cal football player Russ Udé. “You have to roll with the punches and keep going.” (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)

Being a student—as important as being an athlete

Udé teaches, too. On most Monday nights last fall, he co-facilitated a two-hour DeCal class and lecture series at Berkeley Haas on the music business.

Steve Etter, a Berkeley Haas finance lecturer who advises student athletes, says Udé was the driving force behind Udé’s own non-traditional career path. “Haas is not an entertainment industry-focused school, so he had the courage to let everyone know what he wanted to do here,” says Etter. “And for Russell, being a student was always as important as being an athlete.”

In class, Udé left strong impressions. “Russ is like no other — a true Renaissance man: creative, entrepreneurial, intellectual, multi-talented, interesting and, his most compelling attribute — he is interested,” says associate professor Dana Carney, who taught Udé in her leadership course. “He loves life and is interested in everything — how it works, why it is, who the players are.”

Grizzly Peak, with its stunning views of the campus and the entire Bay Area, has always been a been a special place for Russ Udé. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)

“He was a real force,” adds lecturer Dan Mulhern, who also teaches leadership to undergraduates. “He has a big presence, literally, but he was also very thoughtful and very engaged and, at times, outspoken in a good way.”

Shooting for the stars

Udé also gives back. Over the past few years, he’s joined in Berkeley and Cal football community outreach programs to teach middle school students leadership skills, to volunteer with after-school programs for kids in low-income school districts and to speak on panels to Berkeley students and student-athletes on the importance of professional development.

Udé says he’s excited to graduate, but that he also will miss his Berkeley family.

“My own family lives so far away, but I have a bunch of friends here whom I consider close family,” he says. “I’m just excited to spend time with them at graduation, but there’s so much I want to achieve after.”

“I’m shooting for the stars,” he says.

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MBA Bree Jenkins is the student speaker at her Haas School of Business commencement ceremony on May 24. (Photo courtesy of Bree Jenkins)

This “I’m a Berkeleyan” article first appeared on UC Berkeley News.

“If you had asked me five years ago if I’d be walking out of Berkeley to start a new elementary school in Hayward, California, I would have politely smiled and shook my head. I had no interest in going to graduate school, never mind business school.

At the time, I was an industrial engineer at Disney, and every day, I created magic. My favorite project was with Disney Cruise Line, supporting the largest dry dock in cruise line history, the Disney Wonder. In Cadiz, Spain, I joined thousands of people from all over the world renovating the ship. We switched out ceilings, floors, stages and walls to convert to new themes like Tiana’s Place (a restaurant themed to Disney’s the Princess and the Frog), my team handling the scheduling.

My work was chaotic and intense, and I couldn’t have been happier. Decades could have passed quickly and I might have stayed on at the company, if not for one question nagging me: Were there other jobs, other opportunities, that I could equally love and find purpose in?

That’s what brought me to Berkeley to earn my MBA, with a focus on social impact.

Growing up in Flint, Michigan, I was steeped in a community that cared deeply about its children, but lacked adequate resources. My mom, a military reservist, earned her bachelor’s degree in business and worked seven days weeks — sometimes only to come home to eviction notices on our apartment door. She struggled knowing that the schools were not providing a great education, and she needed a better job. So, we moved to Southfield, Michigan, where we found both.

From left: Bree with her grandma, Shirley, and her mom, Angela. (Photo courtesy of Bree Jenkins)

A different zip code meant a better school and more opportunities. I had access to the Academic Games, where I could “get my nerd on,” competing to outwit my opponents with mathematical equations. My mom encouraged me to join the band and, thanks to a small black clarinet and a brilliant teacher named Mr. Scott, I learned to train my fingers and mind to the sounds of music. Our lives changed.

Years later, at Disney, I recognized that I had gained everything my mother could have wished for when she moved my brother and me to Southfield: responsibility, independence, mobility and financial security. But it wasn’t enough. While I enjoyed these privileges, my family and friends back in Flint, who were just as talented and intelligent, lacked the security that I felt. They were let down by their zip codes and school districts.

So, when I was considering my career path at Berkeley Haas, I thought of all the teachers and mentors I had and how my educational experience had changed me. Through a social impact speaker series at Haas, I heard someone talk about their work in education and got curious. How could I use my skills in operations in this field?

I turned to my Consortium mentor and friend, Om Chitale, who helped me find an internship as an Education Pioneers Fellow at ACE Charter School Network. Because of him, I started thinking about how I could work in education and, as a result, I built Cheetah Tank, a Shark Tank-style pitch competition for elementary school students in Oakland. Co-created with the incredible Andrew Davis, the program focuses on idea generation stemming from the simple question, ‘What problem are you trying to solve?’ This project, and an introduction from Om, led me to my full-time position at Hayward Collegiate Charter School.

As head of operations, I’m working with our determined founder, Neena Goswamy, to open a new tuition-free charter school to serve the students of South Hayward and provide them with an opportunity for an excellent education. I know that opening this school will not be easy. I’ve been working on it part-time since January, while finishing my MBA program. Each time we speak with families, we promise that we will prepare their scholars to have agency over their lives. We are being given an incredible responsibility to make a positive difference, striving to ensure that our students leave us as hardworking, creative and kind individuals. Not only that, we want them to know where they come from — and that they represent and belong to a community that supports them.

I believe that who we are surrounded by affects what we think is possible. Whether it be in the form of blood relationships, teachers, my amazing partner and his relatives, my peeps at Disney or the talented individuals inside and outside of Haas who I call my friends, my family has held me up and shown me that anything is possible for me. As I leave Berkeley this month, I want to do the same for my young students.”

Bree says the people she’s had in her life — family, friends, colleagues — have held her up and shown her that anything is possible. “As I leave Berkeley this month, I want to do the same for my young students.” (Photo courtesy of Bree Jenkins)

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Photo: Josh Edelson

Rain didn’t dampen the spirits of the Berkeley Haas undergraduate Class of 2019 Sunday morning, as close to 400 students were urged to make an impact on the world and “elevate and empower” others.

The threat of bad weather moved the typical commencement ceremony from the Greek Theatre to Chou Hall’s Spieker Forum, where Dean Ann Harrison welcomed the crowd indoors, thanking parents, families, and friends for supporting the grads.

“Today we celebrate your achievement,” said Harrison, herself a Berkeley undergraduate alumna in economics and history. “You have persevered through four years of a rigorous undergraduate curriculum. You have mastered new knowledge and skills, and you have adopted a larger view of the world. You have met new people, volunteered for great causes, and made many friends. You should be proud of yourselves. I know we are.”

Dean Ann Harrison (right) told the grads “You have met new people, volunteered for great causes, and made many friends. You should be proud of yourselves. I know we are.” Photo: Josh Edelson

“Living life consciously”

Commencement speaker Steve Etter, BS 83, MBA 89, a Haas finance faculty member who co-founded Greyrock Capital Group, pointed out the diversity and accomplishments of the 2019 class: three quarters of the grads started at Cal as freshman, while a quarter came from the community college system. Many hail from around the globe, including Asia, Europe, and Latin America; and many, like Etter, are the first generation in their families to attend college. A third of the class completed simultaneous degrees across 34 majors.

Etter, who has taught at Cal for the past 24 years—even while going through cancer treatment—shared four themes “for students to live their life by” when they leave Berkeley Haas: choosing to have a good day instead of a bad day, every day; focusing on how you treat others on a daily basis—not just friends and family, but everyone from the airport security checker to the Starbuck’s barista; thinking about ethics and “living your life consciously within your views”; and finally, focusing on your contributions to society.

Stephen Etter, who has taught at Cal for the past 24 years, shared four themes “for students to live their life by” when they leave Haas. Photo: Josh Edelson.

“This has nothing to do with how your work day contributes to the world economy,” he said. “This focus is on the donation of your time, knowledge and dollars outside of the workforce.”

Hip hop music’s link to business

In his speech “Business is Boomin’,'” a nod to a DJ Khaled lyric, student speaker Sreyas Sai Samantula noted that the business world and the hip hop world share a lot in common. “At its core, hip hop music is a catalyst, paving the way for progress and change,” he said. “It’s about uplifting yourself and your community and, in its purest form, it’s about utilizing personal success as a means of elevating others. Business should be the same.”

Watch student speaker Sreyas Sai Samantula’s commencement speech: Business is Boomin’.

Holding a diploma is a privilege that many others around the world will never have, he told the grads. “Many of my brothers and sisters in my birthplace of South India who go hungry for food every day will never have this privilege,” he said. “Many of our brothers and sisters right next door in Oakland and L.A. who suffer from violence, discrimination, inequity every single day of their lives will never have this privilege….. but that can change.”

Like song writers, business people, through the companies and products they create, share a distinct and rare opportunity to inspire millions of people, he said. “On our professional journeys, we have the ability to elevate and empower others,” he said. “As Haas grads we need to understand that we do have the power to be socially responsible, to support diversity, and to invest in our communities no matter what we’re doing, what industry we’re in.”

Photo: Josh Edelson

And the award winners are….

Culture of Haas Award:

Ana Mancia for Question the Status Quo

Patrick Ong for Confidence Without Attitude

Mark Ansell for Students Always

Jaskirat Gaelan for Beyond Youself

The Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching: Janet Brady, distinguished teaching fellow

The Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) Award for Excellence in Teaching: Cori Land, MBA 19

The Departmental Citation for the most outstanding academic achievement: Tyler Barbee, who has been inspired throughout his life by the determination of his older, autistic brother, Connor. “In his time at Berkeley and at Haas, he has sought to develop a similar work ethic and perseverance as his brother in all that he does,” Harrison said.

Haas culture award winners: Mark Ansell for Students Always; Patrick Ong for Confidence Without Attitude; Ana Mancia for Question the Status Quo; and Jaskirat Gaelan for Beyond Youself. Photo: Josh Edelson

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Jaskirat Gaelan, BS 19, at commencement last Sunday, where she was honored with a Culture of Haas Award for “Beyond Yourself.” Photo: Joshua Edelson

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we’re featuring profiles and interviews with members of our Haas community.

When Jaskirat Gaelan, BS 19, was honored at last Sunday’s commencement with the “Beyond Yourself” Haas Culture Award, few would argue that it wasn’t deserved.

The daughter of immigrants from Delhi, India, Gaelan has served as president of the Haas Business School Association (HBSA), and as an associate consultant with the student-run Bay Area Environmentally Aware Consulting Network (BEACN), helping local nonprofits and small businesses to be more environmentally friendly and profitable. She’s also used her henna and photography talents to collect donations for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

We spoke with Gaelan, who will work at Accenture in San Francisco after graduating, about growing up Sikh in Modesto, California, her family’s commitment to education, and her commitment to service.

Jaskirat Gaelan, BS 19, with her parents, Manpreet (Mona) Kaur and Bhupinder (Sunny) Singh, who brought her to Berkeley when she was little to show her the Campanile and “what college was like.”

Tell us about your background.

I immigrated to California with my parents from Delhi, India, when I was four years old. We first lived in Alameda, and my parents used to bring me to Berkeley when I was little to show me the Campanile and to show me what college was like. Getting me into a good school was a really big deal for them.

We later moved to Modesto, California. My parents had an ice cream store and a small convenience store and worked from 6 a.m. until 10 at night. I started working when I was young and helped them with whatever they were doing. This year they opened up a beautiful furniture gallery. They inspire me with the mentality: We start with what we have and dream big.

Gaelan at her preschool graduation in Alameda, about a year after the family immigrated from India. (Family photo)

How did the diversity of California influence you?

I love that my parents chose to immigrate to California. California is a melting pot and I really felt that. My friends were a diverse group—Mexican, Taiwanese, Indian. What brought us together was the desire to learn and ask questions and explore. I think that’s why we all got along so well. We all believed in how important school is and had the curiosity to learn and seek help and ask questions. Many of us have parents who immigrated here and were busy with their businesses and didn’t go through the process of the SAT and learning about scholarships and financial aid.

What was your experience as an Asian American and a Sikh at Berkeley Haas?

I took a class in Asian-American history my freshman year. I loved it, I loved the people. It created an avenue for us to open up to each other about our families, our pasts. It’s been exciting here. I’ve met many other Asian Americans, children of immigrants. We realized that so many things about us, from how our parents encourage us to the types of jobs we want, are all very similar.

Before coming here, I never really had other Sikh students in my classes. (The Sikh population isn’t that large in Modesto.) But here, I could connect with many through the Sikh Students Association and other clubs. That was beneficial because they understood what my family is like, what my culture is like. They’ve helped me with applications and job searching, even praying with me before a class or cheering me up. Having that encouragement was why I was able to get through and figure things out.

What lessons have you learned from your community and culture that you want to share with others?

I’ve learned to help others. You can make a difference in more than your own life. Any success we have is much sweeter if it helps more than just you. Incorporate service at every point in your life, however you can, whether it’s helping one person, or a school, or a business, or a community. I’ve also met a lot of Asian Americans who have helped me to learn who I am and who I want to be. Regardless of your background, be willing to share your culture. It’s so valuable to be surrounded by diverse groups of people. Figuring out things together will help empower us even more to make an even bigger impact.

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Education pioneer Patrick Awuah, MBA 99, founder of Ghana’s Ashesi University, will be welcomed back to campus this week as the 2019 MBA commencement speaker.

Commencement for both the Full-time MBA and Evening & Weekend MBA programs will take place on Friday, May 24, at 2 p.m. at the Greek Theatre.

Born and raised in Ghana, Awuah came to Berkeley Haas after attending Swarthmore College and working at Microsoft. His son’s birth inspired him to want to give back to his home country by establishing a new university that would offer a liberal arts education.

In past interviews, he has emphasized the need to teach through critical thinking rather than through rote memorization, which was the general practice in Ghana. His dream was to develop ethical and entrepreneurial leaders who would go on to revitalize Ghana and the African continent.

At Haas, Awuah turned his idea into a project through the International Business Development (IBD) Program. For several years, Berkeley MBA students helped build the business plan for Ashesi University, and Haas faculty served as advisers. Classmate Nina Marini helped Awuah launch Ashesi in 2002 in a rented facility with just 30 students. Today, Ashesi has a new 100-acre campus outside Accra with an enrollment of more than 1,000 students who hail from 15 African nations. The school has more than 1,200 alumni.

“Patrick is an inspiring business leader who truly represents our Defining Leadership Principles,” said Laura Tyson, former Haas dean and faculty director of the Institute for Business and Social Impact. “We are very proud of all that he has accomplished and honored to welcome him back for commencement.”

Awuah, who was profiled in BerkeleyHaas magazine, has earned many accolades, including:

• A MacArthur Fellowship (the “Genius Grant”)
• Placement on Fortune magazine’s list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders
• The WISE Prize for Education
• A 2014 Schwab Foundation “Social Entrepreneur of the Year” award
• The John P. McNulty Prize awarded by the McNulty Foundation and the Aspen Institute
• The UC Berkeley Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award
• The Haas School’s own Leading Through Innovation Award
• An honorary doctorate from Swarthmore

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Berkeley Haas Asst. Prof. Juliana Schroeder has been named to Poets & Quants’ “Best 40 Under 40 Professors” list for 2019.

The list, now in its seventh year, aims “to identify the world’s best young business school professors in terms of research prowess, teaching chops, and impact they have on current students, former students, colleagues, business education research, and society and the world in general.” Competition for the list was especially fierce this year, with nominations submitted by 2,643 people for 188 qualified professors. Schroeder received nearly 80 nominations from students and members of the Haas community.

In a separate article that called out favorite professors mentioned by MBA students who the publication interviewed from the Class of 2019, Assoc. Prof. Drew Jacoby-Senghor was featured.

Asst. Prof. Juliana Schroeder, Management of Organizations

Schroeder, who has been at Berkeley Haas since 2015, is a rising star in psychology for her work on how we make sense of other people’s minds, and a rockstar to her students for her dedication to their success.

Over and over again in teaching evaluations, students describe Schroeder as passionate, accessible, incredibly organized, and inclusive of students with diverse backgrounds (international students and under-represented minority students) and different personality types (extroverts as well as introverts). More than a few describe her negotiations course among their faves at Berkeley Haas.

“Juliana is a source of powerful positive energy—enough to keep a large class awake in the session that starts at 8am and goes for three hours! She is great at artfully engaging the audience during the class discussion and spreading the dynamics of the conversation uniformly across the class,” wrote one student.

Though she’s near the beginning of her career, Schroeder has already racked up almost 30 awards and honors, including the Association for Psychological Science’s Rising Star Award and the International Social Cognition Network’s 2018 Early Career Award. She was named as a 2018 Schwabacher Fellow, the school’s highest honor for assistant professors, and last year students in the full-time MBA program honored her with a Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching.

“I really care about my students and I try to get to know each one of them. Since I teach negotiations, I try to understand how each student’s negotiation skills fit into the broader context of his or her personality and life,” Schroeder says. “I stay in touch with a lot of my students and continue to coach them as they recruit for post-MBA jobs.”

To compile the “Best 40 Under 40” list, Poets & Quants judged professors on their teaching (70%), based on the number and thoughtfulness of nominations received, and their research (30%), based on Google scholar citations, awards and grants, and media appearances.

Asst. Prof. Drew Jacoby-Senghor, Management of Organizations

Asst. Prof. Drew Jacoby-Senghor (Photo: Copyright Noah Berger, 2019)

Jacoby-Senghor was mentioned by Bosun Adebaki, MBA 19, as a favorite professor. Adebaki noted that Jacoby-Senghor, who teaches Negotiations and Conflict Resolution, knows how to connect with students and breathes life into mantras like “Focus on interests and not positions.”

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The new class of 68 Berkeley MBA for Executives students who arrived at Berkeley Haas this month is an accomplished professional group that includes a cardiac surgeon, a professional chef, a healthy snack entrepreneur, and a rocket scientist.

Photo: Noah Berger

“We’re so excited to welcome this interesting new class,” said Susan Petty, director of admissions for the Berkeley EMBA program. “They have talents in so many areas inside and outside of their professional lives, and their backgrounds are incredibly diverse.”

Students average between eight to 22 years of work experience in industries ranging from tech and retail to energy and consulting. The group works at a total of 65 companies, including Amazon, Facebook, Abbott, Intel, Google, Chevron, Sephora, CVS, Applied Materials, and McKesson.

About 34 percent of the class arrived from outside of the Bay Area, hailing from Colorado, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and Washington DC. More than half (54 percent) were born outside of the U.S., including China, Canada, Romania, Israel, Iran, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. More than half are are multilingual.

The average age among the students is 37, and about a third are women.

Students said they’ve returned to Haas for an MBA for many reasons: to change a career path, start a company, or gain new skills to move up in their existing jobs.

Ben Nagar, a software engineer at Facebook who is from Israel, started a mobile payment company that he ran for three years, shutting it down in 2015.

“It was a great experience, but I needed more tools,” he said.

Nagar said he came to Haas to learn more about business operations, entrepreneurship, and innovation. “I like the mentality of the school and the pride in culture here,” he said. “It’s innovation oriented. I felt like it was the right place for me.”

Paris Latham, who works at Oakland-based Nelson-Nygaard, where she’s using data and maps to create more livable and connected communities, said she wanted MBA skills “to implement change for good in a larger way.”

Latham, who grew up in Berkeley and whose mother earned both an MBA and a law degree from UC Berkeley, said she’s especially excited about the EMBA immersion trips, experiential learning weeks that comprise a quarter of the EMBA curriculum. “I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone,” she said. “Everyone is really serious about the program and it’s nice to know that there will be an unmatched level of commitment.”

Shahed Behed Behjat, who serves as the Oracle lead at aerospace company PTI Technologies in Oxnard, California, said he’s hoping to start a group fitness company based on traditional Persian fighting methods that combine movement with weights.

He said he chose Haas because he wanted a residential MBA program. “If I’m going to come all the way to graduate school I wanted to meet the people and get to know them,” he said. “For me, that’s 50 percent of the experience.”

Some facts about the Class of 2020:

• Three students have four children each—and the class has a total of 73 children. One student has a son who will enter UC Berkeley this fall as a freshman in the College of Engineering.
• 28% of the class is the first generation in their families to go to college, and 33% hold at least one advanced degree, including two PhDs, two MDs, one JD, and a pharmacy degree.
• 12% of the class has served in the military, including the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard. One student led special ops forces through combat missions, and another carried out the largest drug bust in U.S. history, Petty said.

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Catherine Start Pradhan, MBA 20: “I aim to make my family and the broader Pilipino community proud.”

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we’re featuring profiles and interviews with members of our Haas community.

Catherine Start Pradhan, MBA 20, is the daughter of Pilipino immigrants. Raised in Union City, California, she went to UC Berkeley as an undergraduate, studying political economy, and quickly became involved with the Pilipino campus community. We talked to Start Pradhan about growing up in a close, extended family in ethnically diverse Union City, advocating on campus and off for Pilipinos in careers and education, and her favorite family dishes.

How did your family first come to the United States?

My maternal grandfather was recruited to the Navy and served in Vietnam. Through the Navy, my Lolo (grandpa) and grandma were able to move to the U.S., along with my aunt and my mom, who was 13 then. They initially lived on the naval base in San Diego, later moving up to the base in Alameda and settling in the Bay Area.

My paternal grandfather was recruited to the U.S. Army and served in WWII. My father moved to the Bay Area  to find work after completing his engineering degree in Manila. He had been petitioned by his parents who had already moved to the U.S.

Catherine during her first trip back to the Philippines with her grandparents in the swing that they bought her mother for her fourth birthday.

Several relatives similarly immigrated here from the Philippines, so I have a huge family who all live within a 10-mile radius of each other here in the Bay Area. That 30+ group of people in the bleachers cheering at the top of their lungs while holding a shiny banner that spelled “Catherine” at my high school graduation? That was my family.

Where did you grow up and go to school?

I was born and raised in Union City, California, a 75,000 person town about 25 miles south of Berkeley. My high school had over 4,000 students and was very ethnically diverse. In fact, my high school offered Tagalog (the Pilipino national language) as a result of the large Pilipino population in Union City and was one of the first in the country to have an ethnic studies department.

Can you talk about what the the Pilipino community is like at Cal?

There are eight Pilipino undergraduate student groups dedicated to various interests from STEM careers to culture building and collaboration within the Pilipino community at Cal was impressive. At the beginning of every year, leaders from each organization would get together for what we called calendering day, during which we looked ahead to the upcoming year and scheduled event dates so as to not host events at the same time to maximize attendance. I joined a group called Partnership for Pre-Professional Pilipinos (P4), an organization dedicated to advancing Pilipinos in law, business, and other professional fields. P4 became my family at Berkeley, and I met some of my best friends through the organization.

As an MBA student, I work with P4 members as a mentor and recently attended their flagship Professional Sunday event, an afternoon of professional development and networking sessions.

Catherine with her parents at UC Berkeley undergraduate commencement in 2011.

What was it like visiting the Philippines for the first time?

Growing up I had always wanted to visit the Philippines, and finally made it happen as an adult. During the summer of 2016, I worked as an intern for Edukasyon.ph, an ed-tech social enterprise focused on increasing access to higher-education opportunities for Pilipino youth. What really stood out to me was the culture of support I felt from people in the space.

I was working on a project to support Edukasyon.ph’s inclusive education efforts and on the first day of my internship, I set up over 10 meetings with people who wanted to help, and each of them connected me to several more. During my second week, I found myself invited to a meeting with community leaders from all over the Philippines who had been advocating for inclusive education policies.

That summer, my grandparents had also been visiting the Philippines, so I was lucky enough to spend time with them in their hometown, Imus, Cavite. It was surreal to meet new family and tour the places in scenes of stories my grandparents told me growing up, with them as my tour guides!

What does it mean to you to be Pilipino-American?

For me, being Pilipino-American means valuing my family and being there for them. Growing up, I spent virtually every weekend with my extended, close-knit family. We spend holidays together and hold joint birthday parties, and show up for each other for dance recitals, graduations, and more recently, births of babies. Just earlier this year, I became both a Tita (auntie) to a new nephew as well as an Ate (older cousin) to two new babies.

Catherine with her extended family at her wedding last year in Saratoga.

Of course, no family gathering is complete without an overabundance of food, another part of my culture I cherish. My favorites include my Lolo’s beef tapa, thinly-sliced grilled sirloin marinated in calamansi, (lime), soy sauce, and sugar, and my grandma’s nilagang bulalo, a hearty beef marrow stew.

What is challenging for you?

Being Pilipino-American sometimes means needing to clarify your identity. Because of the Philippines’ complex colonial history, it can be hard to place Pilipinos racially in the U.S. On several occasions, I have been mistaken for another Asian race or Latino.

Being Pilipino-American also means being resilient. Throughout history in both the Philippines and the U.S., Pilipinos have endured instances of oppression, tyranny, and inequality. Pilipinos have fought for their country’s independence, but also marched for civil rights in the U.S. There is strength and perseverance in our blood.

Finally, it means remembering where I came from. My grandparents and my mom and dad made sacrifices and brave moves to create a better life for myself and future generations, and I am where I am today because of them.

That said, I am proud of my heritage and extremely grateful for the community I’ve felt from fellow Pilipinos throughout my life. As a second generation Pilipino-American, I aim to do what I can to build that community within business, and ultimately make my family and the broader Pilipino community proud.

The post Catherine Start Pradhan, MBA 20, on helping the Pilipino community rise appeared first on Haas News | Berkeley Haas.

For hundreds of years, a tiny group of négociants or wine brokers have determined the price that distributors, importers, and eventually consumers will pay for France’s top wines. These prices are based on the barrel scores of elite tasters, along with the brokers’ own expertise—and a generous splash of guesswork about the market.

That tradition-bound system is getting a data-driven shakeup this month with the debut of a new pricing algorithm on London’s Liv-ex fine wine market.

Visiting Prof. Burak Kazaz

The algorithm was developed by Burak Kazaz, a Berkeley Haas visiting professor (and the Steven R. Becker professor at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management), and Hakan Hekimoğlu of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. They established “realistic prices” for the 2018 en primeur (or wine futures) campaign—wines from last year’s vintage that are aging in the barrel and will hit shops and restaurants next year.

“This is the most important progression in making a transparent market for wine futures since the négociant system was established more than 300 years ago,” says Kazaz, who pioneered the field of wine analytics. “The realistic pricing will tell buyers and consumers whether a wine is underpriced or overpriced, leading to more effective and transparent purchase decisions. It will also tell winemakers how they can determine their own selling price to négociants.”

The algorithm incorporates temperatures, precipitation, market conditions based on the Liv-ex 100 index of top wines, and price trends based on barrel scores for wines from Bordeaux’s leading chateaus determined by tasting experts Lisa Perrotti-Brown (of The Wine Advocate) and James Suckling (formerly of The Wine Spectator). These influential tasters sample young wines a year after they are barreled, and one year before they are released to the market, scoring them on a 100-point scale.

The “realistic pricing” algorithm allows distributors and consumers to translate a Bordeaux’s score into a dollar amount, getting a clear idea of whether they’re getting a good deal or overpaying. For the 2018 vintage, the algorithm predicts a 3% price increase per additional point compared with the 2017 vintage.

The algorithmic pricing system is expected to shake up the wine futures market, but also to make it less risky, since investors will have a data-driven price for the first time and winemakers will know what price to set for their young wines. Kazaz and Hekimoğlu’s study was recently featured in Robert Parker’s influential Wine Advocate.

While the wine futures market doesn’t exist in the U.S., where individual wineries tend to set their prices, Kazaz is exploring the idea of bringing data driven-pricing to the U.S. market.

Kazaz teaches operations and supply chain management in the Berkeley Haas MBA program.

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Kellie McElhaney teaches students to be “equity fluent leaders.”

Kellie McElhaney, distinguished teaching fellow and founding executive director of the Center for Equity, Gender, & Leadership at Berkeley Haas, has been named among the “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” by the San Francisco Business Times.

McElhaney was featured among more than 100 Bay Area women leaders in real estate, law, tech, finance, health care, and education, among other industries. The women chosen all share a passion for what they do and are leaders in their organizations and their communities, according to the SF Business Times.

McElhaney joined Berkeley Haas in 2002 as an adjunct professor and founded the Center for Responsible Business, serving as its executive director. In 2008, The Financial Times rated Haas #1 in the world for corporate social responsibility.

Over the years, McElhaney has been interviewed as an expert on gender equity and inclusiveness, women in business leadership, the gender pay gap, and #MeToo by media outlets ranging from Bloomberg and The Washington Post to NPR and Forbes.

McElhaney, who earned a PhD from the University of Michigan, told the SF Business Times that her biggest professional accomplishment was being dubbed “chief inspiration officer” by her MBA students. She said she’s also proud of teaching more than 1,000 Berkeley students a year to be “equity fluent leaders,” a term she uses to describe leaders who understand inclusiveness and how to lead people from all gender and ethnic backgrounds. McElhaney is currently teaching “The Value of Equity Fluent Leadership” across all degree programs.

She said the biggest challenge of her career was finding her voice to stand up to gender discrimination and harassment. “I’ve learned that I need to practice what I teach, and that by speaking up, I help countless women, not just myself.”

Her sister, Mary Lynne, is her personal hero, she said. A triathlete who weathered difficult professional and personal circumstances after she came out, her sister was able to reclaim “her authentic self,” McElhaney said.

“She’s a fearless big sis crusader for me and always has my back,” she said.

McElhaney, the mother of two college-age daughters, serves on the board of Sierra Global Management LLC and is involved in the community as a board member of the national nonprofit Empower Her Network. She also serves on the gender equity committee for the California Athletics Board.

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