Archive for August, 2010

Carla Hassan, ’98, has been promoted to Vice President, Sparkling Beverages, PepsiCo International. In her new role, Carla will lead the strategic and platform development for the company’s international sparkling beverage portfolio.

Most recently, Hassan served as the senior marketing director for Gatorade Marketing Communications. In this role, she led the transformation of the brand with consumers, cementing a new brand architecture and platform for future communication and consumer-brand relationships.

Hassan joined PepsiCo in 2004 as marketing director for Quaker Ready-to-Eat Cereals. She was then promoted to senior marketing director for G2 and Gatorade Tiger. Prior to joining PepsiCo, she worked for Kellogg’s.

Miguel Jardine, ’09, is taking garbage from the T-bird Commons and turning it into fresh and tasty produce.

It’s called VermiSoxx and it is a new sustainable way of growing organic food in places never before imagined. Without fertile ground or much space, produce can now be grown efficiently and even in the middle of the 110 degree Arizona heat.

The way it works, said Jardine, is that a machine called an ORCA liquefies food waste and provides the foundation for a portable plot of fertile land that is contained in three-foot long mesh tubes. The tubes are filled with earthworms and natural, renewable coconut husks called cocopeat.

“The earthworms eat contents inside of the tubes and produce rich soils loaded with beneficial nutrients in a plant-ready form,” Jardine said. “Seeds are sown and grown directly in the VermiSoxx where they can grow healthy and fruitful.”

Jardine is currently using the ORCA in the T-bird Commons to produce the liquid substance used to feed the worms.

The ORCA was invented in South Korea about nine years ago for the Asian market and was first imported into the U.S. about three years ago, Jardine said.

Jardine is currently developing a Web site to further explain his creative new approach to growing fresh food.

“The company’s business model is based on the principle of replicating a local solution worldwide,” Jardine said. “After all, there is no need to ship waste from one place to another when it can be used instead to grow food right there.”

Welcome new alumni! Have a look at photos from the August 20, 2010 farewell reception, flag ceremony and commencement. Click here

A number of our alumni have made headlines recently for their work.  Here’s a wrap up of a few notable stories:

Mike Litton ,’74, was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle for curing the sweet tooth of customers in the Bay area for the past 10 years.  Litton and his expanding company Bridge Brands Chocolate, formerly called San Francisco Chocolate Factory, were recently featured in the San Francisco Chronicle. In the story, Litton says he was about to attend law school in Los Angeles when he instead followed the advice of a friend and enrolled at Thunderbird. According to Bridge Brands Chocolate’s Web site, customers can choose from a delicious selection of colorful tins filled with gourmet-quality chocolates in flavors such as Wine Lover’s Chocolate and Tea Lover’s Chocolate.

Eric Braun, ’76, was named in the Standard Democrat for joining Darlington School, a prestigious boarding school, as a new French instructor. He has six years of experience teaching French and Spanish at Riverwood International Charter School in Atlanta and previously taught English in Bogota, Colombia. Braun’s background in international business will be an asset to Darlington’s world languages program.

William Sparks, ’80, was named a finalist in the InvestmentNews Community Leadership Awards. Sparks was a finalist in the mentoring Excellence Award category. The committee selected Sparks for his generosity and commitment to improving the lives of others in his community.  As a finalist, he has been invited to attend the Community Leadership Awards Dinner on September 14, 2010 in New York City.

The latest issue of business magazine Inc. recently ranked Philadelphia-based The Hub as one of the top 5,000 fastest-growing businesses.

Owned by alumnus Bill Decker ’02 and John R. New, The Hub was ranked #1916 for its 140 percent three-year growth and 2009 revenue of $2.3 million. The business was founded in 2005.

The Hub Meeting and Event Centers offers offsite meeting management services and onsite facilities management to companies that own their own meeting space and want to operate it more efficiently or want to generate revenue from it.

Prior to launching The Hub with his business partner, Decker felt that meetings were generally ineffective and dull. However, the T-bird graduate soon changed his mind after he and New developed a new way to make meetings dynamic and interesting.

Decker’s professional background includes pharmaceutical marketing and sales, strategy and process management consulting and energy.

U.S.-based non-profit Children International – which boasts a T-bird director — recently graduated 27 women from a year-long program in Guadalajara training them to become Community Health Promoters.

The women are now in charge of promoting healthy lifestyles to prevent the spread of infectious diseases in their communities. They are also trained to act in emergencies where proper medical services aren’t available and an ambulance cannot be on time, said Guadalajara Director and ’03 T-bird Gastón Ramirez.

Children International is a non-profit humanitarian organization that works in 13 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, helping families who face poverty by creating programs focused on improving health, strengthening education and training youth and women to become active leaders in their communities.

Currently, more than 335,000 children worldwide receive benefits.

The recent graduates were the mothers of sponsored children from the organization’s Jalisco agency. 

Ramirez has also connected with fellow T-bird Laura Libman ’05 in Guadalajara after reading about her Tia Foundation in Thunderbird Magazine and enlisting her support.

Tia Foundation is a small Arizona-based NGO dedicated to driving sustainable health solutions in rural Mexico.

Associate Vice President of Communications and Outreach Frank Neville  presented the Thunderbird 2020 Vision to the Phoenix Chapter’s International Dinner held August 18, 2010 and Persian Room restaurant in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Susan Cordts, ’01, of Adaptive Technologies, Inc. was nominated by the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce as one of 11 finalists for its annual Athena Awards.

The Athena Awards honor women who excel in their fields and have given their time to their communities. Winners will be announced at an Oct. 28 luncheon.

A little getaway turned even more fun for Steven Lippman ’86 when discovered that the bed and breakfast where he stayed was coincidentally owned by a T-bird.

Lippman lodged at the Penrose Victorian Inn in Northampton, Mass during a recent visit to see some friends. After chatting with owner Dick Zimmer ’61, he realized that the two shared the same Alma Mater.

Lippman was so excited that he e-mailed T-bird to let us know.

“The inn is fantastic and I recommend it to anyone who is traveling to the Northampton area,” Lippman said.

He even shared a picture of himself and his friend Steve along with Zimmer and Zimmer’s wife, Nancy.

“It is always a pleasure to meet and share stories with fellow T-birds!”

Have you bumped into any T-birds recently? Share your story by e-mailing alumni@thunderbird.edu

Richard Schnell, ’78, has been named Vice President of Finance for The AVC Group.  His appointment is effective immediately. Schnell comes to The AVC Group from Nortek subsidiary SpeakerCraft, where he also served as Vice President of Finance from 2004. Before this, he served as Controller at Linear Corporation from 1999 to 2004. Other experience includes senior financial management positions at Dane-Elec Corporation, SmartFlex Systems, Fujitsu International Computers Limited, Quintec Interconnect Systems and ITT Corporation. In his 30 years of experience, Schnell has managed global operations for a number of leading multi-national companies and has extensive direct experience working in Mexico, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan and China. AVC Group was formerly the Linear Audio Video Control Group.

Jack Beldon III, ’05, has been promoted to Senior Manager at Deloitte Consulting in the Financial Services Strategy practice. He has led major industry restructuring initiatives related to the financial crisis and currently leads the firm’s task force in response to the Dodd-Frank Act. He is also a thought leader in Financial Services business process outsourcing and risk management.

Abhijit Bhandari, 06, has joined the UnitedHealth Group in India as the Director of Business Development, overseeing all business development activities including sales and marketing. In his previous role, Abhijit was the Regional Director for Assist America, a Thunderbird-owned company, for India, Middle East and Africa. He will be based out of Bombay.

Matthew Skelly, 06, recently joined Atlas Pipeline Partners as Vice President of Investor Relations. Skelly joins the team with more than a decade of experience working with market constituents on the buy and sell side in the capital markets. Most recently, Skelly was at the investment bank of JPMorgan covering financial institutions with a focus on the bank and thrift sector. Prior to JPMorgan, Skelly was a senior advisor at Taylor Rafferty, focusing on cross-border investor relations consulting and capital markets intelligence to more than 70 non-U.S. public companies. Atlas Pipeline Partners is active in the transmission, gathering and processing segments of the midstream natural gas industry.

Marc Adesso, 08, recently joined DeWitt Ross & Stevens in the Business, Estate Planning, Tax and Real Estate groups. Adesso is an associate in the Brookfield, Wisconsin office. Adesso focuses his practice on business formation and operation, family-owned enterprises, mergers and acquisitions, tax and estate planning. He has been a paralegal at DeWitt Ross & Stevens since 2008. Before entering the legal field, Adesso also worked in the areas of marketing and business development at several publicly-traded companies. In the capacity of independent consultant, he has written successful business plans for a variety of industries and has helped in guiding a number of IPO’s and mergers. DeWitt Ross & Stevens, S.C., is one of the top Wisconsin law firms with over 85 attorneys.

Jay Scherger, ’08, was recently hired by DunnhumbyUSA as a Senior Associate of Client Leadership. He will be responsible for developing business strategies and analytical plans for The Kroger Co. Prior to joining dunnhumbyUSA, Scherger served as manager of Latino Marketing Operations at DISH Network in Denver, Colorado.

Darren Simons, ’08, was recently appointed as Vice President and General Manager of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) for SourceRight Solutions. In his role, Simons has direct responsibility for all RPO delivery and client relationships across a diverse portfolio of mid-market and Fortune 500 clients in key industry sectors, including technology, engineering and manufacturing, insurance, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, consulting, banking and finance and retail. He brings 18 years of global management and leadership experience in the human capital services and talent acquisition space.  Simons joined SourceRight in June 2010. Most recently, he led staffing operations for a global BPO provider where he implemented cutting-edge recruitment technology to enable hiring approximately 20,000 people per year.