- Top Stories
- Knowledgebase
- Speakers
- Conferences
- Multimedia
- Research News
- Media Mentions
- Stanford Business Magazine
- Features
- Knowledge Network
- Columns
- Class Notes
- Past Issues
- Search Stanford Business
Quotable
“I understand the technology. I understand the medicine. But you have to make a business out of it. That was the part I was missing. That was what attracted me to Sloan.”
William New, Sloan ’81, at the Sloan Program’s 50th anniversary celebration in September. A physician and engineer, he founded the medical products company Nellcor immediately after graduating from the program. He is now chairman of the Novent Group, which funds young medical companies.
“A brand is a promise to a customer. A successful brand delivers on that promise.”
Marketing Professor Jennifer Aaker at the Nonprofit Management Institute in September; she advised nonprofits to establish a brand to build relationships and then actively manage and measure the relationships.
“Nobody has to work for you. They all have a choice. It’s our assignment to be able to energize them and influence them so that they all want to be around us.”
Bill Amelio, Sloan ’89, explaining that the best leaders learn to treat employees like volunteers. Amelio, who is president and CEO of Lenovo Group, took part in a leadership panel at the Sloan Program’s 50th anniversary celebration September 13–15. 
Video
New photo courtesy of Oregon Health & Science University; Amelio photo by Anne Knudsen
Alumni Snippets
New Ventures
Mountainous Equity
Baby boomers have been snapping up land in the Mountain West as fast as they can fire up their private jets, and two Business School alumni—one with a background in conservation, the other with experience in investing—are riding the boom.
Environmentalist Carl Palmer and former venture capitalist Robert Keith, both MBA ’03, founded Beartooth Capital Partners, a real estate private equity firm, to generate strong financial returns through the restoration and conservation of ecologically important ranchland. Beartooth purchases properties in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, a sublime landscape of mountains, rivers, and meadows in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Before reselling parcels, which usually measure upward of 1,000 acres, the company restores habitat to make it attractive to wildlife—and, consequently, to buyers—and places the properties under conservation easements that encourage agriculture and permanently limit subdivision and development. Founding a company like Beartooth was a dream of Palmer’s—he presented the original model as a project in Joel Peterson’s real estate investment class at the Business School. “I felt this could be a real engine for conservation,” Palmer says.
Marketing Software
Cofounded in 2006 by Jon Miller, MBA ’99, Marketo provides on-demand marketing automation software for business-to-business marketing professionals. Marketo’s first product automated the process of generating business leads. Its second, which was introduced in November, helps analyze those leads and nurture the most promising prospects. Miller, who serves Marketo as vice president for marketing, founded the company with two fellow veterans of Epiphany, a customer relationship management firm.
StairMaster for Brains
The gym wants three hours a week for body maintenance. Now Alvaro Fernandez, MBA ’01, is asking for another hour and a half to work out your gray matter on his website, SharpBrains.com. Doing crossword puzzles is good, Fernandez told the Birmingham News, “but like your body, you don’t just exercise one part of the brain.” Fernandez, who cofounded the startup with a neurologist, predicts the “same surge in brain exercise that occurred with physical fitness in the ’70s.” The Los Angeles Times, which also interviewed Fernandez, described the new business of mental exercise as “a StairMaster for the brain.”
Online Tuition Coach
According to College Company cofounder Monisha Perkash, MBA ’03, “Everything you’ve been told about the process of applying to college first and then finding the financing is wrong.” College Company’s TuitionCoach helps families calculate college costs, navigate the labyrinth of funding possibilities, learn how to fill out financial aid forms, and analyze aid offers, all online. It also gives personalized advice by email. Perkash, who is CEO of the company, credits one of her high school teachers with finding her the financial aid she needed to attend college. “I’ve decided to dedicate my life to doing the same for other students,” she told the Oakland Tribune.
Instant Conferencing
In parts of Africa, the word boma signifies a fortified area that protects its inhabitants. Boma Systems was cofounded by Alan Larson, MBA ’90, with the same purpose. The company’s Push 5 telephone system allows a subscriber experiencing an emergency to instantly and silently call as many as 12 people with a single push of the speed dial 5 button on the phone. If the caller is able to talk, he is placed in an instant conference call with everyone who answers. Even if not, the service informs the contacts of the emergency alert from their friend. Boma’s second product is a non-emergency version of the first. With Boma Instant Connect, the caller sends a message announcing a conference call to whatever group she chooses, stays on the line, and speaks with all who pick up.
Spreadsheet
GMIX Photo Contest
MBA students who do internships between their first and second year
in the Global Management Immersion Experience (GMIX) program return to
campus anxious to share their explorations in photos, so a contest was born. From its 1997 beginnings in China, the internship program has expanded to 41 countries.
Alum Commissioners Analyze Foreign Aid
During 20 meetings in Washington, D.C., interspersed with study trips to 18 developing countries, the U.S. HELP Commission failed to find a single government official or development expert willing to defend the way the United States currently delivers foreign aid.
Members of the bipartisan commission were selected by the president and Congress to analyze U.S. foreign development assistance and find ways to improve its effectiveness and efficiency. Leo Hindery, MBA ’71, (pictured above, at right) the commission’s co-vice chairman, and Eric Postel, MBA ’83, were appointed by former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. The two Business School alumni joined forces on a study trip to Malawi and later worked long hours on the committee that wrote and revised the commission’s final report, which was delivered to the president, secretary of state, and Congress Dec. 10.
Invasive Plants on Her Don’t List
“Fifty percent of invasive plants in California are introduced by gardeners,” says Ashley Boren, MBA ’89. Boren is executive director of Sustainable Conservation, which has teamed with stakeholders in the horticultural industry, environmental organizations, and government to prevent gardeners from innocently cultivating plants that jump from garden to wilderness and take over. Not all non-native plants are invasive, but the group has identified and listed the state’s worst offenders, suggested attractive alternatives, and posted the information where California gardeners can easily find it at www.plantright.org.
The taskforce is also enjoying considerable success at enlisting nurseries and garden centers to voluntarily stop selling 21 identified invaders.
Study Groups Keep Alumni Brains Limber
When Chris Tilghman, MBA ’04/ MA Education ’05, was a student, he loved study groups. “I showed up here and said, ‘This community is awesome. How do I preserve this opportunity to learn?’” The answer: Tilghman started a program that allows alumni and doctoral students to learn from each other.
The Community Study Group program, which now is organized by the Business School’s Lifelong Learning department, offers six-week courses in which one or two PhD students meet with a group of 12 to 18 alumni to explore a given topic—most recently, “Power, Status, and Social Hierarchy.”
Classroom Links Former Adversaries
“Some of my fellow students don’t exactly have a warm spot in their hearts for activist groups,” wrote executive education participant Mark Powell, vice president for fish conservation at Ocean Conservancy, in his blog at blogfishx.blogspot.com.
Powell’s fellow students in last year’s Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability executive program included other managers of environmental organizations as well as executives from Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and ConocoPhillips. Over six days in September Powell, and presumably others, gained understanding.
“I heard specific case studies of people building alignment where there was once no alignment, to real advantage,” Powell wrote. “I heard business leaders in the class groping for solutions, just like me. What do ya know?! As they say where I come from: ‘Well, shut my mouth.’ And maybe, once or twice, I did.”
Firsthand Experience for Budding Entreprenuers
The Center for Entrepreneurial Studies racked up nine successful years of its Entrepreneurial Summer Program (ESP) last year. The program offers financial and other forms of assistance to MBA students who forgo hefty corporate salaries to spend 8 to 10 weeks working in a company that’s just getting started or is in its early stages of growth.
About 30 students a year take advantage of the program. “I suspect that if we didn’t have the ESP, the number working for small startups would be less than half that,” said Irv Grousbeck, director of the Center.
Hail, Stanford, Hail
Even Beethoven might not recognize the da da da DUM of his Fifth Symphony as performed, excruciatingly, by a long-haired, leather-clad “keytar” player in one of three 30-second TV spots that ran during Stanford football games last fall. And neither may a few Stanford alumni understand why their beloved hymn, “Hail, Stanford, Hail,” was used as the punch line of the hilarious tongue-in-cheek series.
San Diego Fires Ignite Volunteerism
Early in October, Daisy Gordon Crompton, MBA ’97, drove her stepson to school and then returned to her home in La Jolla, Calif., near San Diego. At least she tried to return. The street was barricaded because of a massive landslide in which six houses eventually were lost and many more damaged. Crompton and her family could not sleep in their house for another two weeks. Two days after their return, a series of horrific fires broke out in San Diego County, and Crompton spent the following week working 12-to-16-hour days at the county’s emergency command center as a volunteer. How did she feel after all that stress? “Lucky,” she said.
Executive Education Barcelona Bound
The Business School’s Center for Social Innovation is taking its message on the road. In March it will cosponsor a new executive education program with Escuela Superior de Administración y Dirección de Empresas (ESADE), one of Europe’s most highly regarded schools of management. The program, Corporate Social Responsibility: Strategic Integration and Competitiveness, will explore ways in which companies can incorporate societal and environmental perspectives into strategic thinking.
Turnaround Artist Faces Down Bankruptcy
In an industry known for stiff competition, market volatility, and demanding customers,
Continental Airlines CEO Larry Kellner found a formula guaranteed to smooth the ride.
When Kellner joined Continental as CFO in 1995, he confronted $2.3 billion in debt defaults, no cash, and a third potential bankruptcy. He proceeded to come up with a turnaround plan that defied conventional wisdom and some of the standard operating practices of the times.h,” he said. “I fly our competitors on a regular basis—I want to see what they are doing, how they are rolling out their service, what we can take from them. I will gladly take anything anyone does that’s smarter.”
Even Ordinary People Can Change the World
Never underestimate the influence of Oprah, the power of presidential praise, or the impact of a great idea.
Last fall, television host Oprah Winfrey welcomed former President Bill Clinton to her show. Clinton was promoting his latest book, a paean to philanthropy called Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World. Front and center in the audience were Matt and Jessica Jackley Flannery, MBA ’07, who had founded the online microfinance site Kiva, praised in Clinton’s book for giving ordinary people everywhere the opportunity to change the world by making small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries.
For the Record
| Placement Report: MBA Class of 2007 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Industry |
% of Class |
Median Base Salary |
Median Base + Bonuses |
Consulting |
29 |
$120,000 |
$162,000 |
Private Equity/LBO |
12 |
$125,000 |
$252,500 |
Investment Management |
10 |
$120,000 |
$187,500 |
E-Commerce/Internet Services |
7 |
$105,000 |
$142,000 |
Hedge Funds |
7 |
$125,000 |
$300,000 |
Consumer Products & Services |
5 |
$92,500 |
$120,550 |
Investment Banking/Brokerage |
5 |
$95,000 |
$235,000 |
Biotech/Pharm/Medical |
5 |
$102,500 |
$117,500 |
Real Estate |
4 |
$110,000 |
$203,000 |
Hardware |
3 |
$110,000 |
$125,000 |
Nonprofit |
3 |
$70,000 |
$90,000 |
Venture Capital |
3 |
$150,000 |
$225,000 |
Media/Entertainment |
2 |
$115,000 |
$150,000 |
Software |
2 |
$110,000 |
$143,250 |
Financial Services-Diversified |
1 |
$95,000 |
$170,000 |
Other Services |
1 |
$110,000 |
$110,000 |
Total does not equal 100% due to rounding Top Functions: Consultant, 35%; private equity analyst, 14%; investment portfolio manager, 12% Base Salary: Median: $115,500 (range: $54,000-$300,000) Signing Bonus: Media: $20,000 (range: $4,000-$180,000) Other Guaranteed Compensation: Median: $40,000 (range: $5,000-$410,000) Source: Stanford Business School Career Management Center |
|||