Skip to Content

Stanford Business magazine

 

Spreadsheet

Around the Globe in 950 Miles

Was it the hard-boiled egg at breakfast or the dumplings at dinner? Thirty-eight days into a 15,200-mile, muscle-punishing, round-the-world relay run, Sean Harrington, MBA ’07, didn’t know what had caused his food poisoning, but he was happy to have a recovery day to finish reading Anna Karenina before he left Russia.

CFOs Rely on People, Not Just Numbers

It isn’t enough to be a financial whiz; successful CFOs are also good politicians, said Al Castino, chief financial officer of Autodesk, a desktop design company with sales that have nearly tripled since he joined the business. His success would not have been possible without understanding “the levers to influence people,” Castino, MBA ’77, told an audience at the Business School, where he delivered the annual Arjay Miller Lecture in May.

On the Eighth Day God Created Diet Coke

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts has a recurring nightmare. He is in Rome visiting the Sistine Chapel. “I look up at Michelangelo’s incomparable fresco of the Creation of Man. I see God stretching out his arm to touch the reclining Adam’s finger. And then I notice in the other hand Adam is holding a Diet Pepsi,” Dana Gioia, MBA ’77, told Stanford University’s 2007 graduates at their commencement in June.

Saved by a Secretary

If you want to see the view from the top, you’d better listen to the view from the bottom. Jeffrey Bewkes learned this lesson in his first job after business school.

Bewkes, MBA ’77, was working at Citibank in international accounting, lending money to ships, when Greek shipping heiress Christina Onassis called frantically and asked him to move $24 million in gold from Athens to New York. Cold War tensions were high, and Onassis was sure the Soviets were poised to invade Greece.

As Bewkes recalls, he panicked...

Black-Owned Firms Face Unique Hurdles

When Robert J. Dale’s small but lean, black-owned advertising agency captured a five-year, $100 million contract with the Illinois Lottery in 2003, it suddenly found itself subject to capricious new invoicing rules, an unheard-of five audits, and six-month delays in payments.

Hearing similar stories from other minority business owners, Dale, MBA ’73, confirmed that his experience was not unique. Black-owned businesses that become serious competitors with their white-owned counterparts often experience deliberate attacks aimed at undermining their success, he said.

Quant Jock Proves Naysayers Wrong

Michelle Clayman, MBA ’79, founded a New York asset management firm that now invests $6 billion. Not bad for a girl whose grandmother said her education would “make her eyeballs spin around in her head,” Clayman recalls. Later, after she graduated from Oxford University, Clayman’s father marveled that she, a girl, had found a job. When she quit that job to attend the Business School, he warned against it, cautioning that she might never get another position.

Today such antiquated attitudes are almost funny. But not quite. Clayman concedes they have left their mark on her. For example, when she received an email inviting her to headline the Women in Management (WIM) banquet in May, she demurred, replying, “Oh my gosh. Am I interesting enough?”

Bill Walsh Legacy: Big League Biz Skills

When Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh died July 30 at the age of 75, he was lauded on sports pages around the country for his role as teacher and mentor to players in the National Football League. But there was more to the story.

“Bill was a master educator in many areas, whether of players, coaches, business people, or students,” Business School Professor George Foster recalled. “He was always interested in making those around him continue to learn and grow and be better people. He was pivotal in building all the major sports business initiatives at Stanford University.”

Think Like an Immigrant

Google executive Omid Kordestani remembers growing up watching an American TV sitcom about an African American family; he says it was a defining moment in his life.

Kordestani, MBA ’91 and Google’s senior vice president of global sales and business development, was a teenager when he emigrated from Iran to England, where he and his mother and brother intended to take up residence. There, on the telly, he encountered The Jeffersons. “There was this incredible optimism that came through the show—and that hope is what drew me to this country,” said Kordestani at the San Jose State University (SJSU) commencement in May. “Even The Jeffersons’ theme song was inspiring—it was called ‘Moving on Up.’ What the show embodied, what it illustrated for me, was a family pursuing the American dream and they were—moving on up!”

Talk Dollars and Cents, Not Parts Per Million

As an advocate for the environment within the Mexican government, Adrian Fernandez-Bremauntz regularly clashes with powerful industry groups and fellow government ministers. One of his strategies is to talk dollars and cents, as he did when quantifying air emissions from one of Mexico’s largest power plants near the city of Tuxpan, Veracruz. Fernandez-Bremauntz, who is president of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Ecología, estimated that the facility alone costs $13 million each year in negative effects on public health, including premature deaths.

For the Record

MBA Class of '09 Profile

General
Total Applications
5,741
New Students
362

Women
38%

International (includes Permanent Residents)
34%

US Minority
23%
Advanced Degree Holders
11%
Years of Work Experience
Range
0-12
Median
3.9
School/Geographic Representation
US Institutions
79
Non-US Institutions
77
Countries (including the US)
54
Undergraduate Majors
Humanities/Social Sciences
46%
Engineering/Math/Natural Sciences
35%
Business
19%
Top 5 Previous Industry Experience
Consumer Products (manufacturing & services)
34%
Investment Management 1
22%
Consulting
17%
Nonprofit/Government
10%
High tech (manufacturing & services)
9%

1Investment Banking, Hedge Funds, Private Equity, Venture Capital.

Source: MBA Admissions Office as of September 17, 2007