Stanford Business magazine

Newsmakers

No Retirement Yet for AARP Leader Rand

After running Avis and selling Equitant to IBM, Barry Rand, Sloan ’72/MBA ’73, retired to just being the chairman of the board of trustees of Howard University. Now at age 64, he’s taking on the fight for health care reform as the CEO of 40 million member AARP, the fearsome lobby for people age 50 and over.

Reform is necessary for employees and for businesses that want to stay competitive in the global economy, Rand told the Hill newsletter, which covers Congress and lobbying activities in Washington. A newcomer to lobbying per se, Rand made it clear he understands why he’s a rock star on the hill. People reach out to him, he joked, because “they know I’m a good guy … because I represent AARP.”

Secrets of Happiness

Writing a blog on maximizing happiness, Slate magazine blogger Gretchen Rubin interviewed Michael Melcher, JD/MBA ’93, a career coach and author of a book and blog called Creative Lawyer.

What repeatedly interferes with his happiness? she asked. His answer: “Comparing myself with others.”

And what is “a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?” she asked.

“Giving someone directions on the subway or helping them carry a bag up a flight of subterranean stairs,” he said, “makes me almost bizarrely happy.”

Chilean Winery Shares Napa Winemaker

As a GSB student, Courtney Kingston, MBA ’97, drew up the business plan for a vineyard on her family’s cattle ranch in Chile. Chilean growers warned her against planting red grapes in the cool, coastal area, where white wine grapes flourish, Kingston, who lives in Ladera, Calif., told the Almanac. But she persevered, and when local winemakers wouldn’t pay full price for her pinot noir grapes, she recruited a Napa Valley winemaker to show them how good a Chilean coastal red can be.

Kingston Family Vineyards’ reds and whites have drawn favorable reviews from critics, as well as from Kingston’s husband, Andy Pflaum, MBA ’99, who works in Silicon Valley but “moonlights as a taster.”

Kingston’s parents, brothers, and aunts are involved in the company and even the family animals play a role. The wines are named after ranch horses and, Kingston says, the cows have an important job ahead as the vineyards go organic.

They Make Smaller Desserts

What happens when you pair a business-trained cheesecake maker with a French-trained pastry chef in Northern California? They decide to introduce Americans to European-style gourmet, individual-sized desserts. Since it is America, however, they figure out how to make and sell them in large quantities to restaurants, retail bakeries, and through the mail.

After graduation, Paul Levitan, MBA ’91, bought a bakery specializing in cheesecakes and 10 years ago paired up with pastry chef Jean-Yves Charon to create Galaxy Desserts, a Richmond-based bakery that specializes in individual tarts, crèmes, cakes, and ultra-buttery croissants that Oprah has touted. 

One of Galaxy’s innovations, according to Baking Management, is a mousse duo, which is a pairing of two mousse flavors, in individual plastic shot glasses, that keep the glamour up and calories high for less cash.

Mentor of Colorado Teens

The “worst part” of mentoring high school students, says Jim Noyes, MBA ’74, is “working with those who are indifferent.” But, he adds, “it, in some way, fills my glass of difference back up.”

Noyes, whose career has included marketing timeshare resorts, lives in Carbondale, Colo., where he loves the skiing but spends much of his time volunteering with Habitat for Humanity and mentoring middle school and high school kids whose parents never went to college, according to the Glenwood Springs Post Independent. One way he recently filled up his glass of difference was to help a high school senior design her own Habitat summer program for the Latino population of the Roaring Fork Valley.

Love the Game

After his parents nearly made Eric Reveno, MBA ’95, give up basketball in high school when his attention to academics slipped, he changed his tune and the 6-foot-8 player got into Stanford twice. After graduating from the Business School in 1995, he became an assistant coach helping Stanford men’s basketball to seven 20-win seasons. He then became the head coach of the University of Portland, where he has revived the Pilots men’s team after 11 losing seasons.

“I went to business school, and I realized that there were a lot of interesting things out there,” he told the Portland Oregonian. “But to be successful and happy, you should go into what you’re passionate about, and I’m passionate about teams.”

The best times, he said, occur when he borrows ideas from other coaches or mentors and applies them to the specifics of his team.

Candidate Newsom's Spouse on Saying the Wrong Thing

As San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom campaigns for governor, his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, MBA ’01, reserves her right to say the wrong thing. As a child growing up in Marin County Jennifer sometimes felt like making a mistake was “the end of the world,” she told the San Francisco Examiner.

Now, she said, “I tell my husband all the time, ‘I’m going to say something stupid, and either city hall or your campaign is going to be frustrated with me. But really, I’m human, and it’s not the end of the world. There’s going to be another headline the next day, and if people are so fixated on being perfect, what a boring world.”

Carbon-Neutral Winery

The first carbon-neutral winery in the country, according to the Ukiah Daily Journal, is Mendocino County’s Parducci Wine Cellars, owned partly by Thomas Thornhill, MBA ’77. “Our aim is to craft quality wines and a healthier planet,” he said. The 35-employee winery does this by making wine from locally grown grapes and using certified sustainable farming practices, 100 percent green power, and earth-friendly packaging. In 2007, the winery received the California Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award.

Leader of Splenda

The stock market value of troubled Tate & Lyle, which makes Splenda sweetener, soared to a seven-month high after the announcement that Javed Ahmed, MBA ’84, would take over the company. Ahmed was plucked from consumer products group Reckitt Benckiser, where he was executive vice president, Europe, and widely credited with helping “to transform a tired portfolio into world-beaters,” said the Times of London.

Tate & Lyle has been on a downward slide, culminating this year in the loss of its listing on the FTSE 100. The Times called the appointment of Ahmed “a symbol of Tate’s determination to prove that it is not a dull commodity player but a specialist operator worthy of a higher stock market rating.”

Prudent Investor

In the midst of the market downturn last March, Preston Athey, MBA ’78, told Forbes magazine: “I haven’t lost 10 minutes of sleep. If you manage your affairs prudently and you do the right thing, you don’t have to worry.”

Athey, who manages T. Rowe Price’s Small Cap Value Fund, also sings bass in a six-man a cappella group, blasts Beethoven in his Toyota Camry, and has the “frump and charm of a history professor,” the magazine reported. His fund, which was closed to new investors for about 10 years until May 2008, returned an annualized 10.6 percent since he took over in 1991.

Self-Financing Primer for Entrepreneurs

The Business School’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies offers students practice in pitching their business plans to venture capitalists, but sometimes entrepreneurs are better off without investors, according to two alumni who advise entrepreneurs.

Investors “don’t just write a check and disappear,” Tim Berry, MBA ’81, told Thomson Reuters. The founder of Palo Alto Software once had a venture capital investor that he bought out. Yet he also confided that self-financing is stressful. “When I brag that I own my company and it’s a good company, I could also mention that my wife and I at one point had three mortgages and owed $65,000 in credit-card debt.”

Bruce Maxwell, MBA ’88, who runs Venture CFO, suggested putting profits first and growth second during the recession. “Only grow where the deal has an attractive profit margin,” he said. “When better times return, you will have a small war chest of working capital that you have amassed, which you can risk on investment in your own expansion.”