First Semester in Summary

Post By:

Masato Muso

MBA, 2013

Touring Fenway Park with classmates

The first semester was often a period of information overload with multiple events happening at the same time.  When I faced the challenge of managing my time and choosing which events to pick, I thought about what I want to get out of my MBA.

Throughout the semester there were many memorable experiences, but there are 3 major highlights.

Integrated Project

Integrated Project team hard at work

This is a team-based project that includes acquiring a brand and re-branding it to make it a successful product.  The project runs throughout the semester and all subjects, including accounting, finance, marketing, and distribution, had to be addressed to make a successful final presentation. I learned and experienced more about team dynamics and team collaboration through this process that other schools do not offer.  We all understood that we could not accomplish this project as individuals and we had to lean on each other to accomplish our project goals.

Boat Cruise and Winter Gala

On the fall boat cruise

Aside from all the team projects and studying, we also had official student council run events that included the ‘prom’ of graduate school.  We all had fun dancing the night away and hanging out with friends!  I have enjoyed getting to meet  and know more of my classmates through these events.

West Coast Networking Club–Technology Trek

West Coast Networking Trek with classmates

Coming into this MBA program, I knew I wanted to work on the west coast. So I joined the West Coast Networking Club and visited technology companies through their Technology Trek.  We visited companies such as Google, VMware, Cisco Systems, Accenture, IBM, and so forth.  Actual visits to these companies really allowed me to visualize myself working there and I was able to get an “inside scoop” from managers who worked there.  This was a unique opportunity to see more of the real world and introduce myself to technology companies. 

Lastly, I wanted to mention that I have never been more challenged to push myself to the next level than I am in the MBA program.  An MBA is a balancing act of career search, academics, clubs, interview preparations, networking, and fun.  Throughout this process, I have appreciated the support I have received from my fellow classmates and friends.  When we can help each other to succeed together, we see how everyone is in a win-win scenario.  Without a doubt, I could not have survived my first semester without the help of very intelligent and insightful friends. 

Masato Muso is a 1^st Year General MBA, focusing on a marketing concentration. 

StartUp Scramble

Post by:
Phan Huynh
MS-MBA, 2013

If I ever got a tattoo, it’d say “fortes fortuna adiuvat."  Fortune favors the bold. 

A fortune. I don’t pursue goals, I pursue fortunes. And I don’t mean gold. I mean vast amounts of freedom – the freedom to scoff at forty hour work weeks, the freedom to teach unpaid at a community college, to master the Theremin, to write short comedies about my folks, to fly cross country in a hot air balloon. And to earn my keep, I’ll happily build and manage community social enterprises (for-profit entities with for-profit claws but a nonprofit soul, like Grameen Bank).  

To favor. Different from a promise, because lady luck still calls the shots. But she can be wooed.  

The bold. People may not like them or think they’re smart enough, but that’s neither here nor there because the bold are too busy not giving a crap. And the bold are always smiling, as if their magic eight ball actually works.  

My ongoing pursuit towards boldness more or less began my first semester at Boston University School of Management. I cautiously pushed my comfort zone, sometimes sacrificing study time for networking events, clubs activities, and business competitions. I even took time during finals week to submit my pet project (a website that generated social gatherings to build community) to a startup competition.
 

 By the second semester, I was itching to up the ante. My opportunity came in the form of the Startup Scramble. First, it was a commitment of two and half days. Second, there was a small fee. And third, I’d have to forfeit that weekend’s homework. The Old Phan nagged, but the Bold Phan ultimately put his foot down.

Scramble Day 1: Stephen Douglass (Scrambler founder and Master of Ceremonies) had us shed our shells by pitching our worst business ideas. He had also brought in speakers from Microsoft and Highland Capital. That day I met Rey Faustino, a Harvard Public Policy student by day and a social enterprise hero by night. I was instantly sold on Rey’s proposal: One Degree, the Yelp of social services.

Scramble Day 2: I attended three hour-long presentations on business entities, accounting, and web development, which inspired me to learn Dreamweaver. Rey and I brainstormed revenue models and market assumptions, machine-gunning our ideas onto whiteboard after whiteboard. We left after our admittedly crappy “dirty pitch”, but we were pumped about at our progress. 

 

Scramble Day 3: Rey and I spent most of the day improving our dirty pitch, with the help of six mentors from local companies. We consumed many more whiteboards. The day ended with the ten teams pitching to a panel of four judges. Most of the presentations had evolved leaps and bounds. One Degree was announced the winner and Rey went home with a Microsoft Kinect trophy.

 
Fortes fortuna adiuvat. The Startup Scramble was a bold move for me, and I was rewarded handsomely. One Degree became the concentration for my semester-long entrepreneurial class. Now I’m upping the ante again by working with my new buddy Rey to enter One Degree into the Harvard Business Plan Competition and the $100K Mass Challenge. Next, I’m considering a move to San Francisco this summer to help launch the pilot across several schools. I’ve still got a way to go before hot air ballooning, but at least for now, I can postpone that tattoo.

 

Phan grew up in California where he earned his engineering degree (UCSD '06).  In 2009, he kissed his surfboard and career goodbye and moved to Boston to be a PM for the EITC Antipoverty Campaign.  Phan is now pursuing a MS/MBA, with a Public Nonprofit concentration, so that he can help nonprofits put on for-profit armor. 

Link Day 2012

Post By:

Sonal Dhingra

MS-MBA/PNP, 2013

On a sunny Saturday morning in February, 60 BU MBA students eagerly made their way up to the 4th floor of SMG for what promised to be a very memorable day. These students ranged from 1st and 2nd year full-time students to part-time and IMBA students – all with a variety of experiences and backgrounds, and all eager to serve 15 non-profit organizations from our community. BU MBA Link Day is an opportunity for small- to medium-sized nonprofit organizations to access cutting edge managerial expertise. Launched in April 2001 by students in the BU MBA Public and Nonprofit Management concentration, this one-day consulting experience brings together nonprofits, MBA students, academics, and local professionals to analyze a specific problem facing an organization and provide practical strategic solutions.

Rebecca Onie of Health Leads giving the keynote address

We kicked off the day with Dean Freeman welcoming all of our participants, non-profit organizations and 18 professors – who served as mentors and subject matter experts with teams for the day. He also welcomed our keynote speaker: Rebecca Onie, founder of Health Leads (formerly Project HEALTH). Ms. Onie spoke of her organization and how they worked to get doctors the right tools to be able to help patients with not just medical issues on the surface but the root causes of diseases such as a lack of food on the table or child care at home. The line from her speech that struck me most though was: “vision does not change the world, execution does”. That is exactly what we were all here to do.

After the keynote, all the teams were off to get started. The hours flew by and the student teams worked throughout the day with their organizations to deliver workable solutions. Several teams created successful marketing plans for established organizations while others created presentation decks for fledgling groups so that they could articulate their vision and mission to prospective funders. All of the organizations valued the help they received and in the end 15 organizations left feeling better prepared than when they had arrived. We even had an organization offer one of our student participants a spot on their board right on the spot! 

What I really liked about this day was that each of us helped make a difference in our community in single day. It can be easy to forget to remain connected since we are all busy students - but each of us was so eager to give up a Saturday to engage with our community. In fact, all student slots were filled in just 4 days – a new record – and a testament to the commitment of our students to remain active and give back.

Thank you to everyone who participated. This day was a success not only because we got a lot of great work done but also because we made a difference, in a single day. Get ready for Link Day 2013 – it will be here sooner than you think! 

 For more information on Link Day, please see this video.

Sonal is a first year MS-MBA student in the Public and Non-Profit Management Program.  She is also the first year representative for Cohort C on the Graduate Student Council, a BU on Board Fellow with AmericaSCORES Boston and served as the Student Recruitment Chair for Link Day 2012.  When not in class you can usually find her rushing to all sorts of meetings around campus. 

Brazil Field Seminar

Post By:
Emily Nichols, PEMBA 

This January, 22 intrepid MBA students found their way to Salvador, Brazil, to participate in the 6^th annual SMG Brazil Field Seminar. Our group was led by Professor Kristen McCormack and her fearless Brazilian counterpart, Pedro Lins, (our “mom” and “dad”) and we were kept safe and generally on track by Gail Justino Miller from the Graduate Programs Office.

The group spent two weeks traveling around Brazil – from Salvador to the Campinas/Sao Paulo area, then on to Rio, with a stopover in breathtaking Paraty. The course was focused on the idea of “sustainable business” – where an enterprise strives to have little or no negative impact on the environment and community, while also being positioned for long-term business success. Obviously, this ideal is a work in progress for most companies, but the ones we visited across Brazil are making great strides in their unique approaches to this concept.

Students visiting International Paper

Our visits explored topics as broad as the vast informal economy in Brazil, responsible waste management, sustainable supply chains for beauty products, transparency in food production, cloning trees for less impact in paper production, shopping mall development focused on the growing middle class, and chemical companies funding programs that address the root causes of poor health among impoverished children. We were taught capoeira by kids growing up in Rio’s favelas, visited a project focused on re-building the Brazilian sea turtle population, and met the recipients of microcredit loans who insisted on stuffing us with goodies from their fruit stand.

While Brazilian culture is known for kicking back in Havaianas with a caipirinha in hand, we were moving constantly on the trip to fit as much as possible into our time there (though we didn’t entirely neglect the former). While the trip was certainly an academic undertaking, what we all brought back in our hearts were the people we encountered. We were met with warmth and generosity at every turn, and were truly impressed with the commitment to sustainability we saw at all levels of the companies we visited – from interns and tour guides to the most senior executives. Mr. Andre, an inspiring Santander microcredit recipient, exhorted us all to use what we’ve been given, and “run the world the right way.” We returned to Boston with a renewed sense of purpose and headed back into the semester and our futures, determined to try and do just that.

It’s difficult to summarize two intense weeks in a short post. Each of our team members blogged from the road, so if you want more detail on any of our visits, please click through to the posts I’ve linked to above – or visit the home page of our blog here.  

Emily is a part-time MBA student, concentrating in International Management and Marketing. Her day job is working at Cone Communications as a cause strategy and corporate responsibility consultant. You can follow her on Twitter @emilynichols.

The Family Business

Post By: 

Jordan Shulz, MBA 2012

While it has been a fun and wild ride, business school has turned out to be the perfect opportunity to have a baby.  The more open schedule afforded by being a student has allowed our family of (now) three to spend extra day time together that would otherwise not likely happen.  While there are times of studying that are interrupted by our lovely little daughter's needs, there are also times where we study together and play together (see pictures).  My wife and I have enjoyed the process of learning to be parents and balancing family time with her part-time work schedule and my school schedule.  As others in the BU MBA program have also had children before or since enrolling in the program, we have shared many stories together as well as the delight of the experience that only parents know.  Here's to higher education as a family value!

Jordan is a 2nd year MBA candidate focusing on Entrepreneurship and Real Estate.  He is interested in mentoring and community impact through his work.  When not studying or working he can be found bicycling around Boston or with his wife, playing with their 4 month old daughter.

This is Good Business

Post By:
Matt Scott, MS-MBA 2013
Rob Gordon, MBA 2013
Sam Cecala, MS-MBA 2013

The first semester of BU’s full time MBA program culminates with the Integrated Project, a semester-long team assignment integrating the skills and techniques learned in the core courses of accounting, finance, statistics, marketing, organizational behavior and especially executive skills. The project centers on selecting a neglected consumer product brand and developing an acquisition and revitalization plan. At the end of the semester, each team presents to their respective cohorts and professors, and the best team from each cohort is judged by a panel of alumni and industry experts in the “Best of the Best” finals, the last event of the semester. Among all of the great presentations in our cohort, we were honored to have been selected by our peers to represent cohort D.
 
This is the story of how our team won the whole thing.

Before we even knew the details of the project, our team was sent on a scavenger hunt through Boston. We probably should have taken some pictures of this, but we didn’t. Still, we had a great time.

Here’s a quick rundown of our squad: 

Matt Scott: Former pro tennis player and health care researcher. When asked to describe himself, Matt says he “carries his stress in his hips.”

Rob Gordon: Michigan alum, Dunkin Donuts enthusiast, and Tom Brady apologist. Despite his carefree demeanor, he has a shockingly in-depth knowledge of hair care products for men and women alike.

Guo Shan: The most patient Chinese language instructor we could hope for. If there’s a harder worker in the BU MBA program, we’d like to meet her. She also moonlights as a private detective. Role models include Angela Lansbury and Gene Parmesan (he’s the best).

Jess Friesen: Raised in Malaysia, schooled in Illinois and awesome the world over, Jess kept us grounded and smiling throughout it all. Jess always sneezes 5 times—no more, no less.

Andres Biguria: A supply chain guru, don’t let his name or ridiculous impressions fool you, he’s not Italian–he’s from Guatemala by way of Memphis, and loves joking about your dad.

Sam Cecala: The ideas man. This wasn’t always a good thing, but was usually entertaining. He has amassed and publicized a large collection of Matt Scott quotations on current events that oddly parallel those made by public figures.

Without doing too much preliminary research (you can make yourself crazy overanalyzing at this stage), our team selected the hair care category on the advice of Guo Shan. We then selected the Selsun Blue brand on the advice of our resident hair expert, Rob Gordon, whose life mission was to bring back the old slogan “Never wear black without the blue.” Words to live by. 

Over the first half of the semester we held weekly team meetings and analyzed purchase and promotion data from the AC Nielsen database. Central to our research agenda was getting to the bottom of key consumer attributes, namely: Who is the purchaser? Who is the user? (But you just told me you were the purchaser!) BU’s first-rate library resources, professors, and second-year students were instrumental throughout the journey. The project is daunting, but proved rewarding as we applied the concepts and methods we learned in class. 

Everything was multiplied after our interim presentation, as we began to develop our marketing and brand revitalization plan alongside our final valuation. Although we had one sleepless night before the final product was done, coming together to give our final presentation to our cohort and professors was exhilarating, and getting to do it again for the entire MBA class and faculty was even better. 

We could write about this stuff all day, but we’re getting our hair did this afternoon, so we’ll wrap up our tale with some pictures. Please enjoy.

Here’s us at the reception after taking home the prize

The night before our pitchbook deadline. We pulled an all-nighter… Things got weird.

The IP will come to define your first semester in the full time program. You’ll learn a ton, you’ll lose some sleep, and no matter how arduous the process, you will come to appreciate it in the end.

Matt Scott is a first-year MS-MBA in the Health Sector Management Program

Rob Gordon is a first-year MBA with a Finance Concentration

Sam Cecala is a first-year MS-MBA with a Leadership and Organizational Transformation concentration

An IMBA's Experience with the Job Search Process

Post by:
Brian Driscoll
International MBA, 2012

It’s OK to Change Directions: When I began the IMBA program in China in May 2011, my intent was to secure a position as a Product Manager but as my courses continued, I discovered that my strengths were more closely aligned with operations and process management than with marketing or consumer behavior. As you progress through the MBA, it’s important to continuously evaluate the direction of your interests and be able to switch gears quickly.

Develop an Initial Plan: Develop your 30-second pitch early - people are always interested to hear what you want to do after your MBA and they will ask whether or not you’re ready to answer. To develop your pitch, you’ll need to reflect on your skills, previous roles, and potential career path with target companies in mind. Be ready to tailor your pitch to your audience on the fly.

Narrowing Search Criteria: To keep the job search practical, it’s critical to narrow down your list of target companies. Each application may turn into a life-changing decision, so prioritize your most important criteria. I searched based on location, manufacturing capabilities, industry, size, and revenue. This process also helped me develop my answer to the standard interview question “Why do you want to work for us?” Even after honing in on a target profile, it’s ok if your list of companies still remains broad.

Job Search Success: In January 2012 I proudly accepted a position with United Technologies’ Operations Leadership Program. While having a BU MBA certainly breaks down barriers to get your resume on the desks of hiring managers, companies often expect more from MBA candidates than they do from others. But don’t let this intimidate you, because Boston University has more than enough resources to help you land the right job for your career.

UTC Interview Phases: The UTC Interview Process consisted of two phone screens, a weekend assignment, and a “Superday” onsite interview. The “Superday” involved an overnight stay, dinner with current OLP associates, presentations, team negotiations, and a panel interview. The sessions were intensely challenging but team skills, presentation skills, and operations concepts that I’d sharpened through the BU MBA were critical to my successful outcome.

Support from Feld Career Center and BU Professors: I first found and applied to UTC’s position through one of my weekly searches on MBA Careerlink. The Feld Career Center’s Gary Bergman provided excellent support and personal attention throughout my job search. His Career Management course, mock interview feedback, cover letter & resume templates, and advice in my negotiations were all critical to the successful progression toward my final offer. The pre-interview meetings I had with professors Janelle Heineke (OM726) and Nitin Joglekar (OM880) were also extremely important for me to readily apply their course concepts in the scenarios I faced in my interviews. And most importantly, I received a lot of helpful support from my classmates around the time of my interviews.

Brian is an International MBA candidate with experience in startup companies and bringing product designs into production. You may find him exploring around Boston with friends or studying at a nearby Starbucks.