Fall 2003 - The Paul Merage School of Business

Graduate School
of Management
Fall 2003 • Issue 3
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Faculty Leading IT Research—
Mary Gilly, Alladi Venkatesh
Ken Kraemer, Vijay Gurbaxani
Dean’s Message
1
The School
ITM from the Inside Out
3
Community
First American Fast Forwards
with Technology
4
Research
Faculty’s IT Research
Hits Home & Away
7
Leadership
Irish Eyes Are Smiling On IT
8
Students
Get MBA, Jumpstart Career
10
Alumni
Grads Create Top Tech Jobs
12
14
Class Notes
Coming Up
GSM & Alumni Network Events
Cover photos by Robert A. Peterson Photography
Background image, Corbis
The UC Irvine Graduate
School of Management has
always lead discovery and
education in the use of
information technology (IT) to more creatively and effectively
manage. This first issue in our second year of i is an opportunity to provide an update on current innovations in the
strategic use of information technology coming from our
faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Nearly two decades ago, our own Professor Kenneth Kraemer,
Taco Bell Professor of Information Technology for Management, was among the first to warn that organizations’ heavy
investments in technology did not necessarily lead to expected
payoffs. Later our faculty were among those to say that revolutionizing technologies do not change complex
interdependent organizations and markets overnight.
This issue describes just a few of the many ways UC Irvine’s
Graduate School of Management’s faculty, staff, students and
alumni are taking the lead.
On the facing page you’ll meet two innovative leaders on our
staff who helped GSM achieve its fourth-place ranking in IT
by the Wall Street Journal this fall. We describe the research
of Professors Mary Gilly and Christine Beckman in helping
the U.S. Navy to better understand the role of Internet access
on the morale and family life of service personnel deployed in
far flung locations overseas. Professors Ken Kraemer and Vijay
Gurbaxani and their colleagues are examining different
aspects of oursourcing. Professor Alladi Venkatesh is working
with a community innovator to study how residents use the
information resources in California’s first fully-networked,
planned community.
i is published three times a year by the
UC Irvine Graduate School of Management
Communications Office, MPAA Suite 210
Irvine, CA 92697-3130
Parker Kennedy, president of The First American
Corporation, co-chair of our Real Estate Program Board and
member of the school’s Dean’s Board of Directors, tells how
First American’s pioneering use of the Internet helped to catapult the company to a $4.7 billion, world-wide information
resources provider.
Editor
As you would expect, our students and alumni are pioneers in
this revolution as well.
Linda McCrerey
Contributing
Writers
Susannah Abbey, Aurora D. Abt
John Gregory, Imran Husain
Photography
Robert A. Peterson, Michael T. Jones,
Liz Mediavilla, Linda McCrerey, Wilson Kwong
Art Direction
Patricia Bacall, Bacall:Creative
Printing
Meridian Graphics
Dean Jone L. Pearce
The School
John Clarke
ITM
from the
INSIDE OUT
By John Gregory
GSM could not be leading the Information Technology
for Management revolution without its own world class IT
infrastructure. John Clarke and Tom Eppel are Mr. Inside
and Mr. Outside, respectively, of GSM’s highly-touted
ITM program.
By day, the sandy-blond-haired Clarke manages the
school’s technology infrastructure, from its Support Center
to its Catalyst, the award-winning intranet for students
and faculty. By night, unless there is a tech problem that
keeps him at the office, Clarke removes his assistant
dean/chief information officer hat and relaxes at home by
going, in his words, “right back to geeky things like high
definition TV, TiVo and wireless systems for the house.
I also like dogs; I have two of them.”
By day, the salt-and-pepper pony-tailed Eppel manages
the integration of ITM into the school’s curriculum.
By night, the German-born assistant dean of curriculum
development spends time in his garage in Temecula, Calif.
No ordinary garage. Eppel converted it into a black-walled
disco studio where he records music and watches movies
on a monster screen. Once a year, Eppel opens his studio,
complete with fog machines and lightshow, to GSM
students who bid for a dance party during the school’s
Challenge for Charity auction.
The human sides of Clarke and Eppel help them place
their customers—GSM students, faculty and staff—first.
“Notice that the ‘T’ is in the center of ITM, but it is not
the focus of our program,” Eppel told incoming MBA
students during orientation meetings last month. “Instead,
technology is the enabler that links information to management. ITM never has been a trendy dot-com program
and we don’t train software developers or technologists.
“GSM teaches business leaders the fundamentals of management with a twist; namely, how business functions are
affected by and can be dramatically improved by the
wealth of information that technology brings to the table.
This makes our MBA program more competitive.”
Thomas Eppel
1
This fall, the Wall Street Journal
ranked GSM the fourth best
business school in the world for
information technology. “That’s
quite an achievement,” Clarke says,
“when you consider how young we
are and that only MIT, Carnegie
Mellon and University of Texas are
ranked above us.”
a Web site from scratch for their
students,” Clarke says. “Now,
professors put their materials
on Catalyst.”
CIO magazine named Catalyst
as one of the top 50 intranet
systems in the world and the
only one developed by a university. GSM has drawn
enough attention to prompt business schools at UC
Berkeley and Purdue University to license Catalyst for
their faculty and students.
Communications student assistants Wilson Kwong
and Vien Lao edit photos on new LCD monitors.
Clarke began building GSM’s technical infrastructure
in 1986, starting with instructional labs. Under Clarke’s
direction, GSM became the first business school to install
network connections in every seat in the large classrooms,
and the second school to give laptop computers to all
students. Clarke and Kenneth Kraemer, professor of
management information systems, obtained a grant
from Toshiba in 1986 for the laptops.
Catalyst is the brainchild of Clarke and several members of
his staff, including Ben Mehling, instructional development
manager. “For almost a year, I looked into purchasing an
existing intranet,” Clarke says. “At the same time, Ben and
his gang had been writing their own system for us. I knew
Catalyst was a winner when I saw how comprehensive the
calendar was for faculty and students.”
The Catalyst Calendar lists the class schedule, dates for
quizzes and other assignments, field trips, teacher assistant
sessions, faculty office hours, campus events and PowerPoint lectures. When users click on the Courses tab, they
find syllabi, required texts, faculty policies and links to
Calendar. The Personal tab focuses on career management,
including a resume database, posting of interviews and
internships and a “roadmap” so students can chart their
progress since arriving at GSM. Catalyst has a directory
for classmates, professors, staff and alumni. In the Student
Lounge section, students can view their grades.
The most frequently used section of Catalyst is GSM’s
E-Library. Here, students, faculty and staff gain access
to industry databases, encyclopedias and other references,
newspaper and magazine databases and links to other
libraries on campus and throughout the UC system.
During student orientations on Catalyst, Clarke drew a
laugh when he showed a slide of a hunched-over professor
writing, “I will put my course on-line next year,” multiple
times on a blackboard, á la Bart Simpson. “That’s how
things were before Catalyst—every professor had to create
Mr. Inside—“the emperor of our infrastructure,” as Eppel
calls Clarke—also manages the four-member Support
Center, open six days a week, days and evenings. During
the summer, the faculty-student Help Desk installed 153
new computers with LCD pivot displays and Windows
XP operating systems.
Meanwhile, Mr. Outside works with faculty to tweak the
ITM portions of GSM’s core classes, the electives that are
oriented toward information technology, and the ITM
labs. Eppel says financial statement analysis has replaced
e-commerce as the most popular elective with a strong tech
bent. Other electives include investment portfolio-building, brand management simulation, business dynamics,
supply chain management and the social and political
implications of IT.
Laboratories include the Lincoln Mercury Lab in
Marketing, taught by Professor Connie Pechmann. She
describes how information that is used with data mining
techniques can produce marketing targeted to small
demographic areas. There are other labs on operations
management, management science and e-business. ITM
is embedded into the PhD curriculum as well.
Eppel assists with other IT-related programs at GSM,
such as the Center for Entrepreneurship’s annual campuswide Business Plan Competition and the Irvine Innovation
Initiative (I3), in which students the work with experienced
entrepreneurs to transform business ideas into viable enterprises. “Students, businesses and other stakeholders work
with GSM’s faculty, staff and alumni to further develop
ITM at the school,” Eppel says. “Whether we get their
feedback from surveys or by talking to them informally
over a beer, we pick up knowledge that makes our program
even better.”
Community
First American
FASTforwards with
TECHNOLOGY
By Linda McCrerey
Parker S. Kennedy stands with one foot in the past and
one in the future. This balance has made him a valuable
resource over the years as co-chair of several GSM Real
Estate Conferences.
Parker S. Kennedy
As president of The First American Corporation, he has built
a modern marvel based on traditional values and a venerable
history. First American traces its roots to 1889 and has been
headed by Kennedy family members since 1894.
We monitor the owner’s real estate taxes, appraisals, closing
escrow paperwork, even foreclosures.”
Parker S. Kennedy believes in an old-fashioned work ethic,
loyalty to the firm, diligence, thoroughness and friendly
customer service. At the sprawling company headquarters
in Santa Ana, Calif., the formal layout and Jeffersonian
architecture belie the advanced technology infrastructure
that made First American the nation’s leading diversified
provider of business information.
First American also launched into diversification, acquiring
non-title businesses, including motor vehicle information,
credit reports, drug screening information, criminal records,
and property and casualty insurance—the list keeps
growing. With each new acquisition, First American strives
to leverage its IT infrastructure to speed information delivery
across the company’s network and directly to its customers.
How did First American grow from family-owned Orange
County Title Company to a Fortune 500 company—an
international powerhouse with 28,000 employees in 1,400
offices and $4.7 billion in revenues?
Five years ago, the company completed a merger with
Experian that combined their respective real estate information subsidiaries into a new company. Thus, First
American found itself in the business of holding the
nation’s largest database of real estate data—1.5 billion
recorded documents with details such as last owner and
sale price. Spotting yet another opportunity, the firm began
selling property information to itself and its competitors.
By seizing opportunities, diversifying and using IT to
create innovative products and services.
Parker S. Kennedy realized that parties to real estate transactions didn’t want to deal with 20 different companies,
just one. So he aggressively bought up “mom-and-pop”
real estate-related businesses that did transactions by hand.
From 1985 to 1995, First American made 60-plus acquisitions, using computer technology to unify the holdings
and automate their operations.
“We saw an opportunity to sell customers one product,
real estate information,” he says. “We decided to provide
everything needed to close real estate transactions, such as
credit information for the lender and flood zone reports.
Kennedy praises his IT staff, especially John Hollenbeck,
executive vice president of technology, and Roger Hull,
senior vice president and chief information officer.
“Working together, they changed the way real estate
is processed,” he says.
One of Orange County’s most generous benefactors,
First American several years ago gifted $100,000 to GSM,
which supports the Real Estate Management Program
headed by G. Chris Davis.
3
Research
Faculty IT Research
HITS HOME & Away
By John Gregory
A naval officer spent four months at sea and, without access
to the Internet or phones on board, communicated only by
snail-mail with his wife and children. Ten years later when
he went to sea, he could email home almost every day. He
helped his wife buy a TV by surfing the Net for retail stores
near their home, 11,000 miles from the ship.
A U.S. computer company hired workers in India to
perform tasks for less pay than what its American workers
earned. Executives signed a labor contract after meeting with several of the
Indian workers, all of them sufficiently experienced. Months into
the contract, the work was lagging
far behind schedule. The executives
flew to the scene and found to their
surprise that the work was being
performed by a different group
of workers who lacked experience.
Email Battlefield: Military Families
Many members of the armed forces face prolonged separation from their families and a high level of job stress. The
spouses of U.S. Navy personnel at sea are left behind to
run the household and fulfill other family duties and
events, such as birthdays. Human resources officers and
recruiters from the Army, Marines, Air Force and Coast
Guard worry as the Navy does that overseas duty creates
hardships that cause personnel to leave
the service early.
Is there any way to reduce the pains
of family separation?
A wine connoisseur in Southern
California had fits finding a local wine
club to join. He knew only of clubs
far from home. He finally discovered
one in his neighborhood by browsing
the bulletin board of a unique
community intranet system.
Outsourcing computer jobs, dealing
with military family separations,
finding a wine club on an intranet—
welcome to the wide world of research
conducted by UC Irvine’s Center for Research on
Information Technology and Organizations. CRITO
brings together scholars, many of whom are GSM faculty
members, to study how technology changes organizations
and society.
The Navy family, the intranet and two outsourcing
studies—one on jobs overseas, the other on business
process management—illustrate the variety and social
impact of CRITO’s research, and demonstrate how GSM
faculty members are leading the IT revolution.
Mary Gilly
Marketing Professor Mary Gilly and
colleagues reporting for duty, Sir. If their
three-year study for the Navy on newer
communications technologies bears out
their current hypothesis, there could be
a victory at sea as well as on land for all
military branches. Their project, just
underway and scheduled to finish in
2005, will examine the impact of email
and the Internet on household decisionmaking, familial relationships and
employee morale. The study is expected
to benefit not only all military branches
but also private enterprise—consulting
companies, oil rig operators and others
with widely dispersed employees or units.
“We believe email and other newer technologies offer
absent spouses a quick and inexpensive way to remain a
part of household decisions and family events,” says Gilly.
She and her research partners at Temple University and
Cal State Long Beach expect the study will find that
emails, e-greeting cards, photos and live web cams will
strengthen family bonds in the military.
Gilly’s team will conduct in-depth interviews with Navy
personnel in San Diego, their families and support groups
regarding decision-making by the absent spouses, attitudes
Nai-fu Chen’s ideas on banking reform can help
nations avoid the “moral hazards” that often precipitate financial crisis in nations. Below, Chen
meets with students after class.
Alladi Venkatesh and the wired home
about their family life and toward their jobs. “We hope
to attend a family orientation for a battle group ready to
be deployed to see what they say about email and family
cohesion,” Gilly adds.
In a separate study, Christine Beckman, assistant professor
of organization and strategy, is managing a three-year study
for the Navy on how the Internet and other computermediated communication (CMC) affects individuals,
groups and organizations. Beckman and PhD student
Taryn Stanko will interview approximately 25 Navy personnel on their personal and professional use of CMC, then
conduct a written survey of up to 1,000
Navy enlisted personnel and officers.
Outsource Jobs
“Many companies fail to adequately consider the costs that
come with sending work to other countries,” says CRITO
Director Ken Kraemer. Thus, some corporations wind up
with surprises, headaches and unexpected costs of the magnitude of the firm whose labor contract with “experienced”
workers in India was violated.
On the other hand, companies such as General Electric
have more than 20,000 employees in India and are reaping
benefits from outsourcing jobs to other countries. Exult, a
human resources outsourcing company based at UC
Irvine’s Research Park, recently launched
operations at its offshore unit in Mumbai.
“We anticipate that email and other
new forms of communication can act
as a ‘status equilizer’ among different
social groups within organizations,”
Beckman says. “These changes in
communication patterns will likely
lead to increased employee commitment
through higher employee morale and
higher retention rates. The Internet
and CMC are tools that may help
alleviate work-family conflict by
allowing employees to feel they
have more control over their job
and home activities.”
All told, the current trend of outsourcing
jobs to offshore locations—whether the
experience is successful or not—has
serious ramifications for employment in
the United States.
Kraemer and Jason Dedrick, a PhD
student at GSM, began work this summer
on a three-year study, funded by the Sloan
Foundation and IBM Corporation, which
will help managers assess the risks and
rewards of outsourcing jobs.
5
Ken Kraemer
Among the risks that Kraemer and
Dedrick will analyze are:
outsourced processes. “And with so
much technology infrastructure in
the hands of outsiders,” Gurbaxani
says, “they must build an appropriate IT infrastructure that can be
integrated with external service
providers.”
• Security. “Do companies compromise their need for security of
intellectual property when they
outsource work to other countries?” Kraemer asks.
• Cost. “Would it be cheaper to
set up your own shop in China or
India as hiring a company in that
country to do the work?”
The Wired Home
Vijay Gurbaxani
• Workforce tradeoffs. “How can
companies, if they plan to outsource, keep good workers to manage the outsourcing
process?”
• Role of IT. “How does the use of the information and
communications technology enable firms to relocate
knowledge work offshore?”
Outsource Business Processes
Numerous IT providers offer corporate clients a service
called business process management, which transfers such
activities as accounts payable/receivable from the company
to the outside provider. Vendors charge much less than
what corporations spend to conduct their own engineering
design, human resources, software development and other
business processes.
“What used to require substantial investment in fixed
assets can now be bought on a variable-cost basis from a
service provider, which often has offshore delivery capability,” explains Vijay Gurbaxani, professor of information
systems and director of the CRITO Industry/University
Consortium. Gurbaxani is an internationally recognized
expert on strategies for IT outsourcing. Earlier this year
he won the Outsourcing World Achievement Award in
the academic category from PricewaterhouseCoopers
and Michael Corbett and Associates.
Gurbaxani and a colleague from Pepperdine University
have embarked on a three-year study for CRITO on
outsourcing business processes. Gurbaxani describes the
relevance of their study to the business world: “Companies
are looking for guidance to figure out what processes are
the best candidates for outsourcing, and how contracts for
these services should be specified.”
The study will examine how companies, in order to
operate efficiently and compete in the global marketplace,
must coordinate outsourced business processes with internal processes and integrate and leverage information from
High-speed Intranet service and
gazillion-channel cable systems are
becoming commonplace in new
housing developments. A handful of
communities across the country have
taken the extra step by installing an intranet in which residents
can offer their opinions about local issues, join community
and social groups, exchange medical information with nearby
medical facilities and check out the latest events at schools and
shopping areas.
Networked homes like this are the heart and soul of
Alladi Venkatesh’s research interests. Venkatesh, professor
of marketing, is one of the world’s leading authorities on
networked homes. He has written several papers and hosted
a worldwide conference on the subject at UCI’s Beckman
Center last spring.
Via interviews with families and other methods, he is studying
whether a housing development in Southern California can
blend the promise of new technology with its social utopian
goal of being a successful planned community. Venkatesh and
his assistants have interviewed 25 families to date and will
add more in the coming months. Last July, he presented
some of his initial findings at the annual Human-Computer
Interaction Conference in Crete, Greece.
He found that several online “regulars” in the community
he is studying tend to dominate the intranet’s community
discussions. “Other families complain that the dominators
thwart an even-handed expression of views. And technology
plays a key role in formation and expansion of community
groups, such as the club that the wine connoisseur joined,
when intranet users see them posted on the community
bulletin board.”
Venkatesh says technology is changing home life in other ways:
• Individuals can now maintain relationships with forms
of communication that offer low and high intimacy.
• The intranet improves the scheduling of events and
gives families more security measures.
• Wired networks enable people to choose a form of
communication that suits their needs.
Leadership
are
IRISH Eyes
SMILING on IT
By John Gregory
On Paul Tallon’s Web site, browsers will find a virtual
Ireland: links to Irish travel spots, a virtual tour of the
Guinness brewery and all sorts of Gaelic words and
phrases. Go n-eire an bother leat is Gaelic for “May the road
rise to meet you”—that is, may you not be overcome by
obstacles.
Tallon’s teaching career and
studies are all about obstacles—
how future and current business
managers can avoid them in the
complex world of technology.
Tallon, a 34-year-old native of
Ireland and PhD graduate of
GSM in 1994, is assistant professor of information systems at
Boston College’s Carroll School
of Management. He also conducts studies on information
technology as a research associate
for CRITO, UC Irvine’s Center
for Research on Information
Technology and Organizations.
One of his favorites was a study
in 2000 on how IT contributes
to improving business productivity. Tallon edited sections of a
book, Advances in Management
Information Systems Series, to be
published next year.
philosophy of science. Alladi turned popular concepts
upside down. Instead of following the phrase, ‘If it ain’t
broke, don’t fix it,’ he urged us to ‘break it anyway.’ He was
telling us to broaden our horizons.”
While at GSM, Tallon worked on surveys with Ken
Kraemer, Vijay Gurbaxani and other
faculty members. He served as an
instructor at GSM from 1997 to
2001, then joined the faculty at
Boston College.
His fondness for Ireland hasn’t
stopped him from traveling to far-off
places like Zimbabwe and the Czech
Republic, and serving as an IT consultant in Geneva, Switzerland with
the United Nations and World Trade
Organization during the 1990s.
When Tallon is on the road, he is
game for trying different foods. “My
only bad experience was in the
Philippines when I thought I was
getting minced meat and found out
too late it was pigs ears.”
Paul Tallon, PhD
After receiving his bachelor’s and
master’s degrees at University College Dublin, Tallon conducted cost-benefit analyses for Price Waterhouse in New
York City. To expand his career interests, he sought his
doctoral degree in management at GSM.
“Two classes at GSM were turning points for me,” Tallon
says in his subtle Irish accent. “A course in IT and society
made me aware of the huge impact of information technology. The real eye opener was Alladi Venkatesh’s class, the
Tallon and his wife Cathy are settled
comfortably into the Boston area. At
the Carroll School of Management,
he teaches information management
and analysis, IT for financial services, e-commerce and, starting this
fall, an introductory course on IT.
“I have to walk a fine line between students who are technically proficient and those who are techno-phobic, who
can’t even program a VCR. I tell them, ‘That’s OK,
because if you want to become a good driver, you don’t
have to know how a combustion engine works. You must
master other skills.’”
Go n-eire an bother leat.
7
Students
Get MBA,
JUMPSTART career
Four new students with different IT job backgrounds have
something in common: they believe an MBA degree will
provide a critical boost to their careers. Here they explain
why the Executive, Full Time or Fully Employed MBA
program suits their job goals.
Rick Neff
exploring the current industry buzzword, ‘financial engineering,’” he says.
Industry watchers predict a slingshot effect in IT job opportunities over the next few years, as millions of baby boomers
retire, Neff says. He hopes these shifting
demographics and increased demand
will fuel his next start-up.
After selling two IT start-up firms for
just over $18 million, serial entrepreneur Rick Neff isn’t satisfied with his
successes. “I’ve always followed my gut
feelings without the benefit of a formal
business education,” says Neff. He
found that funding a start-up is risky
business, and it made him nervous. So
this fall Neff entered GSM’s Executive
MBA program to fine-tune his abilities
in preparation for his next venture.
He and brother Dennis created Bicore
Monitoring Systems, developer of
a pioneering diagnostic pulmonary
monitor. His next venture was
Portsmith, Inc., maker of connectivity
options for handheld mobile computing devices. Neff sold both start-ups to
buyers with expanded distribution
channels and financial backing.
Neff ’s entrée into IT began with a BS
degree in electrical engineering and an
applied mathematics minor at
Carnegie Mellon University, followed
by 15 years of corporate and entrepreneurial experience, including an
internship with Microsoft founder Bill
Gates. Neff chose the EMBA program
because “it is full of dynamic, interesting people, all of whom have terrific
professional and personal experiences
to share,” he says. With EMBA classes
meeting four days a month, he can
pursue side projects while enjoying the
Southern California lifestyle.
—Aurora D. Abt
Doug Panter
Rick Neff
Shifting careers is a lot of work for most
people, but it’s fun and games for Doug
Panter, Fully Employed MBA ’06. He’s
turned a passion for play into a career
track with an IT basis.
These sales were Neff ’s wake-up call to learn
more about funding a new business. For
Portsmith, Neff and partners provided their
own startup capital, shouldering all the business risks themselves. Next time, Neff will use
the OPM method—“other people’s money.”
With his persuasive charm and innovative
ideas, getting a meeting should prove easy.
His challenge? Acquiring the “businessspeak” to woo blue-chip investors. He
hopes to learn this dialect at GSM.
Neff ’s reinvention process began before he
entered GSM—he’s taken UCI extension
courses to gain exposure to nanotechnology
and the C# and ASP.Net programming languages. “I’m interested in integrating Web
services with emerging technology, possibly
Panter taught elementary and high school
for six years, also coaching volleyball and
track. He didn’t see teaching as a long-term
career, nor was he interested in school
administration.
Doug Panter
Panter spent the summer of 2001 exploring
new career options. A longtime sports fan
and Sony PlayStation enthusiast, Panter
tracked down a marketing contact at Sony
Computer Entertainment America in San
Diego. That contact is now his boss, and
Panter works as a marketing specialist in
Sony’s sports game department, 989 Sports.
Although he had no professional experience in marketing
or the interactive entertainment industry, Panter’s knowledge of sports and video games made him a good fit for
his new job. “All those years of watching SportsCenter
on ESPN finally paid off,” he says.
Panter chose to get an MBA to turbocharge his career. The
fully Employed MBA program allows him to keep his job
while going to school. “Because I don’t come from a business
background, the degree will round out my knowledge
of business,” he says. “It’s also a great way to open doors.
The interactive entertainment field in general is burgeoning.”
Panter creates marketing materials for videogames across all
media, including packaging design and online, print and
television advertising. He educates Sony’s sales staff on new
products and gives presentations to key accounts. As a
teacher, Panter developed his public speaking skills and the
ability to tailor his message to his audience. His years of
coaching have helped him bring multiple corporate departments together for a common goal.
Thinking of changing careers? “Networks are
invaluable,” Panter says. “GSM has been
emphasizing this since our first residential
course. I landed my job by getting a name and
running with it.”
—Imran Husain
Ray Ie
Throughout the 1990s, the IT field seemed to
hold unlimited potential for talented workers.
But the economic downturn of the past few
years has resulted in massive layoffs, forcing
many to seek employment in other fields.
This grim reality hit Ray Ie and Brian Kreitzer,
both of whom were laid off from BroadVision,
a leading e-business software company. Determined to
regain high-paying jobs, they find themselves back in
school in the Full-Time MBA Class of 2005.
Ie joined BroadVision in 2000 as a software implementation consultant in Chicago. He was laid off after two years
but stayed with
BroadVision as a contractor for six months, then
became a freelance Web
developer. But facing a
saturated domestic
market, with added competition from overseas
freelancers, Ie decided to
earn an MBA degree.
“While I was freelancing, I had a number of ideas for entrepreneurial ventures, but didn’t know how to execute them,”
Ie says. “I want to learn how to take an idea and make it an
actual business.”
As an implementation consultant, Ie developed a talent for
problem-solving. “We were always short on time or had
unforeseen issues cropping up,” he says. “I began anticipating
problems before they arose and found ways to prevent them.”
Ie hopes to apply the management theories he learns at
GSM to a government or non-governmental organization
focused on international economic development. “I want to
contribute to something that generates a wider payoff than
corporate profits,” he says. “So many of the world’s social
problems are rooted in economic problems.”
—IH
Brian Kreitzer
Brian Kreitzer joined
BroadVision as a consultant in
El Segundo, Calif. until he was
laid off in 2001. He took a job
stocking products at Home
Depot in Huntington Beach,
Calif. After five months, he
was promoted to “racetrack
manager,” responsible for
customer service, coaching associates on the sales process and
assigning tasks.
His GSM education is already
helping Kreitzer become a
better manager. He initially
took a very straightforward
Brian Kreitzer
approach to assigning tasks to
employees, but this didn’t
always motivate them. “At our residential course, I learned
that you need to see the situation through three different
lenses: political, cultural and functional. I had been looking
only through the functional lens,” he says.
Kreitzer will be able to transfer valuable job skills to a
future career in business finance or real estate investments.
For example, he can apply his analytical thinking skills
from writing software code to financial statements as well.
And working at Home Depot has given him a new appreciation for customer service and interpersonal skills.
“Whatever your function in a given business, you have
customers. You need the skills to serve them well and retain
them,” he says.
—IH
9
Ray Ie
Alumni
GRADS Create
TopTech JOBS
An MBA degree from GSM was the ticket to top technology jobs for three alumni. They describe their career paths
and offer a glimpse of the future of IT.
Michael Bellomo
An MBA degree in 2002 gave Michael Bellomo a new
chance to write about what truly fascinates him—the
intersection of technology and business.
Bellomo wrote IT bestsellers as Windows 2000 Administration for Dummies and Unix: Your Visual Blueprint to
the Universe of Unix. In September 2002, he ghost-wrote
Itanium Rising, a memoir for Jim Carlson, former vice
president of marketing at Hewlett Packard. He’s hard at
work on another book about Internet retailer eBay.
Bellomo is a paragon for MBA Career Centers everywhere.
During his post-MBA job search, he tracked his efforts and
created a time/effectiveness study of what approach worked
best. Conclusion: cold calling is the most effective job
search technique, hands-down.
Refusing to accept rejection from ARES, a boutique
consulting firm with government and private contracts,
Bellomo called the company president to introduce himself
and describe his qualifications. The president invited him
for an interview and subsequently offered him a job.
“I and four other GSM grads—May Gritz, ’97, Stephen
Jordan, ’02, Robert Runnells, ’02, and Isabel Satra, ’02—
practically founded the Seal Beach branch of ARES,” he
says. His position gives him entree into the intriguing
world of aerospace design. Last spring he worked with the
task force investigating the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster. His job was to set up an IT data collection system on
the shuttle fragments.
As a result of an ARES contract with Boeing in Huntington
Beach, Calif., Bellomo landed a role as the “voice of Boeing”
in a multimedia presentation. The presentation will address
Michael Bellomo
NASA and U.S. Congress on Boeing’s new orbital space
plane, the next generation shuttle.
—Susannah Abbey
Michael Mahon
When Mike Mahon was earning his MBA degree in
1980-’81, he saw the future of management, and it was
information technology. “GSM is right on in its ITM
emphasis,” Mahon says. “Employers today are looking
for well-rounded, skilled professionals who can bridge
the business and technology environments and who have
good communications skills. CEOs and CFOs are actively
involved in IT budgets and operations to propel their firms
forward. They realize they must have ‘best in class’ Web
services and customer applications to be competitive.”
Mahon is one of 20 or so principals for IBM Global
Services, Western region. Based in La Jolla, Calif., he commutes to Orange County every couple of weeks to provide
integrated technology services for customers, which means
helping them tie technology to their business practices.
He sells IBM’s systems and services for infrastructure and
systems management, security and privacy and business
continuity/recovery services. Mahon has his own “practice”
and is responsible for his own clients, staff, performance
measurements, profits and losses.
“Firms today have made most of their hardware, software
and application purchases, but they haven’t fully utilized
these assets,” Mahon says. “We are helping them to maximize applications using IBM’s On Demand technologies so
that they have little or no downtime. We ensure that their
operating systems and business applications are always
available, even during power outages or hacker attacks.”
Customers won’t lose revenue, because they can move
to IBM and do business in a duplicate data center.
Mahon remembers when IBM
didn’t hire outsiders, only undergraduates who were taught the
IBM way.
In 1994, IBM suffered a “neardeath experience” and executed
major layoffs. Overhauling its
corporate culture, IBM now hires
experienced professionals such
as Mahon who act as senior
managers for other companies,
bringing their knowledge into
IBM. “IBM today is a matrixed
organization, no hierarchy. It has
come from back office to front
office,” he says.
accounting, going back and reconstructing their financial records.
Diligent networking in Silicon Valley
paid off, and her startup successes and
reputation grew. Ruben mastered the
ability to communicate complex
technology ideas to the business world.
She has helped start about one dozen
high-tech companies, serving as acting
CFO, taking engineers through the
rigors of business plans, presentations
and attracting venture capital.
Michael Mahon
Asset management has been a hot growth area for the last
one and a half years. As firms have cut costs, keeping track
of IT assets has gained priority. This involves tracking software licenses, knowing what firms have and what they are
using, so that IT investment will pay off, he says. Mahon
is a totally mobile manager, traveling with his laptop
computer to IBM branch offices that house customers’
operating systems and data.
Since March 2002, Ruben’s job as director of government affairs at Keyhole,
Inc. has been a magic carpet ride. Started with funding from
Sony Broadband Entertainment, Keyhole creates threedimensional models of the earth using aerial and satellite
imagery streamed over the Internet to standard PC users.
This technology is used on television news “fly-over” visuals.
Mahon is a former chair of the GSM Alumni Network
and a Mentor for the last three years. He has organized IT
seminars for GSM and the Orange County business
community.
“In the past ten years, job growth was in IT services. In the
future, job growth will be in markets and managers.”
––Linda McCrerey
Andria Ruben
Andria Ruben
IT entrepreneurship is a perfect pursuit for fast-tracker
Andria Ruben, ’90. Her career as a startup czar grew
from a single, indelible lesson in GSM’s Introduction
to Management class: every business succeeds financially
and fails financially.
“I decided then and there to understand numbers. I overcame
hatred for math for one thing—the bottom line,” she says.
After earning her MBA at age 22, Ruben envisioned herself as
a chief executive. Finding no entry-level CEO jobs, she joined
Coopers Lybrand as an auditor, then did consulting work.
Ruben quickly found her niche: helping IT engineers
with zero business or accounting skills start their own
companies. Without financial records, the engineers
couldn’t pass financial audits. So she did forensic
Ruben teaches technology and conducts training for long-term
governmental customers such as U.S. Geologic Survey and
U.S. Department of Defense. Based in Mountain View,
Calif., she travels extensively, spending about half-time in
Washington, D.C. This year she set up systems with engineers
and military personnel for peacekeeping forces in the Congo.
3-D imagery is still so new that many users aren’t familiar
with its vast potential, especially in disaster prevention and
crisis management. “There’s nothing government does that’s
not geo-referenced—that is, based on location. We enable
large amounts of data to be accessed on desktops of many
users, quickly,” she says. “Better decisions happen if you
have the right tools.”
––LM
11
Alumni
CLASS
NOTES
1980s
Gerry Gallagher, ’86, sold Oblique Filing
Systems after eight years and plans to
relocate in Southern California.
1990s
2003-04 GSM Alumni Network Board, front row, from left: Ed Thomas, ’99; Pam Adams, ’98; Greg Lai, ’88;
James S. Dalton, ’91, is president of
Stanton Dumin, ’00. Middle Row: Leslie Daff, ’89; Steve Acterman, ’99; Sandra Findly; Jeff Pratt, ’99;
Eco Soul, Inc., a not-for-profit involved
Bob Bettwy. ’92. Last Row: Maxwell Seraj, ’04; Sheila Burke, ’01; Kyle van Hoften, ’97; Peter Cullen, ’82.
Not pictured: Robert Sterling, ’01; Kristin Clarke Batoy, ’96; Jasmine Shodja, ’01; Enrique Cruzalegui, ’02.
in environmental projects (www.ecosoul.
org). Their current emphasis is educational outreach about the future hydrogen
economy. James received his MESM (masters of environhalf years as a marketing manager, was recently named the
mental science and management) from the Bren School of
director of marketing for the western region for Expanets.
Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa
Kyle and wife, Kathe, welcomed Ashley Nicoll in June 2002.
Barbara, where he is a lecturer in the global studies departKyle is also an indoor cycling instructor at Lakeshore Towers
ment. He lives in Santa Barbara. Jeffrey H. Wagner, ’92, is
24-hour Fitness and volunteers many hours on the GSM
vice president of finance and taxation at Nextwave Telecom,
Alumni Network Board of Directors. Karyn Womach, ’97,
Inc. Jeff Herzfeld, ’94, is senior vice president,
and husband, Curtis, are pleased to announce the birth of
Pharmaceutical Group, McKesson Corporation in San
their second son Tristan Gregory in January. Pamela M.
Francisco, and has two children. Rachel Schreiman, ’94,
Adams, ’98, is serving as president of the GSM Alumni
moved with her husband and three boys to Fairfax County,
Network Board of Directors and works as financial consultnorthern Virginia. Debra Goldman (Friedlander), ’95, and
ant for A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc. in Newport Beach, Calif.
her husband announce the birth of a son, Braden Jake, in
Rajeev Agnihotri, ’98, was promoted to manager at Deloitte
May. Steve McLain, ’95, and his wife, Magda, welcomed
Consulting in August. His daughter, Riya Agnihotri, was
new daughter Loren Elizabeth in August. Christopher B.
born in September. Kurt de Pfyffer, ’98, writes, “Sarah and I
Rudolph, ’95, recently returned to Southern California
bought a home in Dana Point last summer and have been
from Seattle, after two years as the director of 747 program
enjoying the weekends shopping at Home Depot!” Ryan
quality, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Chris now serves as
Jesser, ’98, announces the birth of a daughter, Abigail
the director of quality, systems safety and reliability for
Elizabeth, born in August in Boston, Mass. Shana Gayle
Space Systems, a component of Boeing Integrated Defense
Martin (Levy), ’98, and husband, Sean Patrick, are living in
Systems, in Huntington Beach, Calif. Chris and his wife
Huntington Beach, where she works for ACT managing disPatricia, ’95, are expecting their third baby in 2004. Katie
tribution centers in seven states. William Millard, ’98,
Koehler Bianchi, ’96, and husband Gino are proud to
accepted a project management position with Perot Systems
announce the birth of their first son, Luca, in May. Katie
in September. Baris Tanir and Deniz Erkan, both ’98,
continues to work with Marriott International as vice presifounded a supply chain management consulting company in
dent of human resources, and after stints in Mexico City
Los Angeles (www.scmdoctors.com). Benjamin Chen, ’99,
and Miami, she is again living in Orange County. John and
has accepted a sales operations manager position at Bausch
Myuriel (Kim) von Aspen, both ’96, are happy to announce
& Lomb in their surgical division in San Dimas, Calif. He
the birth of their daughter, Lauren Sophia, in June. Jodeen
and wife, Hellen, announce the birth of Ashlyn in April.
(Madren) Howes, ’97, is the director of staffing at Universal
Eric H. Y. Deng, ’99, is director of engineering, developing
Studios Hollywood. She and husband, Jeremy, welcomed
high-end stainless steel kitchen and restaurant appliances for
their first child, a daughter, Sydnee Ann, in July. Alfred
Jade Products Company, a division of Maytag. First-born
Ricci, ’97, returned to Orange County after four years of
son, Payton Tyler Deng, turns one year old in October.
living in Europe. After completing his MBA, he spent two
Charles Evans, ’99, is now with Corky McMillin Companies
years with Ernst & Young International based in Vienna,
as vice president of finance. Ari Potash, ’99, writes, “I got
Austria. While assistant vice president at Deutsche Bank in
hitched in September to my lovely wife Jamie, moved to
Frankfurt, Germany, Al met his wife Isabel and they now
Florida, and accepted a new position with the same
reside in Costa Mesa. Kyle van Hoften, ’97, after two and
company, Household/HSBC.” Jeff Pratt, '99, recently
accepted a new position with Option One Mortgage in
Irvine, Calif., as senior manager of portfolio risk. Jeff
recently married Dana McKinnon. Sasha Talebi, ’99, is
managing the first in a series of master-feeder hedge funds
(i.e., both offshore and domestic investors) based in Cayman
Islands with long/short equity trading model and marketneutral strategy. Sasha and his wife, Shadi, are proud to
announce the arrival of Ryan Sebastian in July. Veronica
Chestnoy Taylor, ’99, just bought a home out in the horse
country of Tewksbury Township, New Jersey, and hopes any
old pals from GSM will call her when visiting the area.
2000s
Tony Armand, ’00, announces the birth of daughter
Alexandra. Dina Ashker, ’00, married William M. Young in
a family ceremony in Niagara Falls, New York, July 4, and
they currently live in Bristol, RI. James Cummiskey, ’00,
has joined the Boeing Company as the director of tactical
systems, Integrated Defense Systems, in Seal Beach, Calif.
Christophe Diederen, ’00, became a dad for the first time of
little boy named Romain. He plans to move from Arlon,
Belgium to Melen, Belgium in order to reduce commuting
time to the office and enjoy life in his native city, Liege.
Maura Hudson, ’02, accepted a position as director of marketing for the Southern California offices of Trammell Crow
Company (NYSE:TCC), the third largest commercial real
estate firm in North America. Doug Saulsbury, ’00, and his
wife Monique are celebrating the birth of their second child,
Lauren Rose, born in June. Joseph Dill, DDS, ’01, has
accepted the position of director of dental products with
Premera Blue Cross of Washington, a newly created position
designed to focus specific attention to the dental markets in
Taiwan and Japan alumni get-togethers:
Professor Joanna Ho meets with GSM alumni in Tokyo, Japan and
Taipei, Taiwan—business leaders who help with the school’s
recruiting efforts. Taipei alumni who attended: Jason Kan, Eric
Wang, Eric Tseng, Eugene Yang, Mark Wang, Simon Jiang, Sophia
Washington, Alaska, Oregon and Arizona. Sean Dyer, ’01,
is now senior associate at Grant Thornton and moved back
to Southern California. Kevin Henson, ’01, is strategy and
analysis specialist at Boeing. He married Deanna Lee
Douglas, was promoted, and is moving to St. Louis,
Missouri. Stephen F. Wehling, ’01, obtained the Project
Managment Professional (PMP) certification from the
Project Management Institute. He has relocated to the San
Diego office of Verizon Wireless where he was promoted to
senior member of technical staff of the headquarters IT
strategic planning and engineering group. Pravin Datar,
’02, joined SAP America as applications consultant in the
strategic enterprise management wing of the company. Jeff
and Audrena Liu, both ’02, welcomed their first child,
Athan, in August. Jeff is a financial analyst at
Kia Motors. Audrena is a business analyst at The Boeing
Company. William A. Blackwell, ’03, has transitioned to
PIMCO's London office to start up fund administration
and shareholder servicing capabilities for the firm’s offshore
mutual fund platforms based in Dublin, Ireland and
Luxembourg. He and his wife Martha are expected to be in
London for the next three to five years and can be reached
via e-mail at [email protected]. Brett Boyd,
’03, is attending the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow,
Scotland for a one-year masters of science degree program
in pharmaceutical analysis, where he is specializing in
quality and management. James A. Ferguson, ’03, is the
president of Camino West Coast Services, aka The Tire
Guys Goodyear chain. Lori Devaney, ’00, has returned to
work after 18 months at home with her children. “I’m
spearheading the Entrepreneurial Services Division of Scott,
Bankhead & Co. in Santa Ana, Calif.”
Wu, Peggy Hu. Tokyo alumni include: Masayuki Yamada, ’99, who
helps keep Japan alumni connected; Masafumi Koizumi, ’98; Sadato
Tanaka, ’01; Masahito Hikawa; Yu Nagata, ’00; Keisuke Kimura, ’02;
Yasuhiro Iseki, ’03; Hideki Kogishi, ’01; JoAnne Jennings, ’00.
Alumni: Check news, photos and career services on your password-protected GSM Alumni Network Database site at
http://www.gsm.uci.edu/go/alumni. Questions? Contact the Alumni Relations office, 949-824-7167.
13
Fall events are fun under
sunny California skies. New
Full Time MBA students
mingle at orientation reception. GSM Family Picnic
features food, face
painting, dunk tank,
reggae band, bounce
house, games.
Coming Up
GSM & Alumni Events
* Open to Public
November
6
GSM Alumni Network Mixer. Info,
949-824-7167.*
11
Veterans’ Day Holiday
20
GSM Executive Speaker Series. Center for
Leadership Development event.
Info, 949-824-2728, [email protected].*
27-28 Thanksgiving Holiday
December
3
Real Estate Program Breakfast Series.
Info, 949-675-0603, [email protected].*
11
GSM Alumni Network Holiday Event,
“A Christmas Carol.” Info, 949-824-7167.
24
Winter Break Begins
n
nt
nti
rm
at
January
9
Winter Quarter Begins
19
Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday
20
GSM Alumni Network Breakfast Speaker Series,
with Orange County Register Publisher/CEO
N. Christian Anderson III. Info, 949-824-7167.*
21
Business Plan Competition Kick-Off. Center for
Entrepreneurship and Innovation event. Info,
949-824-1172, [email protected].*
28-30 Corporate Directors Conference. Executive
Education event. Info,
http://www.gsm.uci.edu/go/cdp.
Visit us on the Web at http://www.gsm.uci.edu
University of California, Irvine
Graduate School of Management
Irvine, California 92697-3130
25
Contact Us
Alumni Relations
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& Innovation
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949-824-7167
Shaheen Husain
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Denise Patrick
949-824-7311
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