Archive for the ‘Alumni Impact’ Category

The family of the late Jamaican singer-songwriter Bob Marley values sustainability, peace and philanthropy, so it comes as no surprise that two T-birds were chosen to lead a global brand in partnership with this prominent family.

Director of marketing Karen Korponai ’98 (at left) and director of sales Jen McVey ’98 (at right) work together for House of Marley — an earth-friendly, audio electronics and lifestyle product company that adheres to the Marley family core values: Equality, unity, authenticity, sustainability and charity. The House of Marley also donates 5 percent of its profits to its charitable organization, 1Love.org.

The company, launched in 2011 in partnership with the Marley Family, focuses on growing a profitable global enterprise while also making a positive impact on the world.

“I’m excited to dedicate my time and energy to helping develop a new way of doing business, one which aligns with my personal values and beliefs,” Korponai said.

The company’s products are sold online and in retail stores around the world, including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong, South America, The Middle East and the Caribbean. This year, House of Marley plans to expand into at least 30 more countries.

“Working with another T-bird is always great because you are both thinking globally,” McVey said.

Surprisingly, McVey and Korponai did not know each other when they were classmates at Thunderbird, but the two are glad to be working together now.

“The people I met at Thunderbird care about making a difference,” Korponai said. “We’ve lived in various countries and when you couple that with our business background, we have more of global perspective in developing solutions.”

An example of developing global solutions is their internal global sales and marketing meetings. Instead of just focusing on their own market, they gather international intelligence from their counterparts around world to make better marketing decision and product adjustments throughout the entire brand.

Korponai and McVey are also philanthropists at heart and gravitated toward House of Marley’s focus on charity. 1Love.org supports causes such as global hunger, clean water and child education, which are important to the Marley family.

“A lot of companies have gone to the Marley family wanting to use their name, but it didn’t support their core values,” Korponai said. “It’s not uncommon for House of Marley management to ask themselves, ‘What would Bob Marley do right now?’ and to listen to his music for inspiration.”

Rombout Peer ’91 and his wife, Jacqueline, journeyed to Australia for sabbatical in search of what they wanted for their lives. What they ultimately discovered is that helping others find direction also adds meaning to their own lives.

After years in politics and management consulting in the Netherlands, a sabbatical in Australia and time developing their idea in South Africa, the pair launched Peer Facilitation in 2008. The consulting firm transforms executive leadership training into a program that helps the chronically unemployed uncover their skills and passions.

The program begins by teaching participants to develop trust, recognize emotional intelligence and deal with individual responsibility. Participants then learn to align their goals and passions while they formulate a plan for reintegration to the work force.

“This program actually shifts the mindset of these people — who don’t believe in anything anymore — so they can be effective,” Peer said. “If you resolve the mindset before addressing the skills, than they can really be valuable to their employers.”

Early results have been positive. Within one year of implementing the program in the Netherlands, the Peers received a national award for Best Practice in addressing unemployment issues in the country. Within 18 months, more than 400 long-time unemployed people had completed the program. Many participants have found more than work — they have found themselves.

Peer recalls one participant, a roofer who had suffered an emotional downward spiral. He had lost his career, his family and was contemplating suicide. During the first few days of the workshop, the man swore at people and refused to participate.

“At the end, he came up with tears in his eyes and said it was the most amazing experience he has ever had,” Peer said. “With some assistance, he was able to start his own roofing company.”

The program gained momentum and drew international attention. But suddenly Jacqueline Peer became sick and died within months. Peer was devastated.

He struggled to move on but ultimately decided he had to continue the program himself. Unfortunately, public funding dried up because of Europe’s financial crisis.

“Sometimes I wonder how to keep going, but one of the last things she told me was that she would guide me from another dimension,” Peer said.

Today, Peer has relocated to Johannesburg — where he first developed the program — and in a city where the unemployment rate is at least 20 percent. He is working to make the same impact in South Africa that he made in the Netherlands. He also hopes to bring the program to the United States.

Peer credits Thunderbird for much of his success and said that his education not only equipped him with the skills to start a business but, also sparked an interest in social entrepreneurship.

“People always ask me, ‘Aren’t these people unemployed for a reason?’” Peer said. “But I believe people are people, and this type of work is about giving people an opportunity. When you give them these types of leadership skills, they can make a difference.”

This note comes from Gary Miller, T-bird alumnus class of 1973.

“We had a good group of friends in school and nothing has changed. Constantine Theodorou flew in from Athens, Greece, while all else flew in from around the USA.

We all enjoyed getting caught up and plan on seeing each other annually. In the photos are Constantine Theodorou, Gary Miller, Jimmy Sanchez,Norm Gottlieb, Peter Wallin, Bob Lautz, Baxter Urist and Santiago Hinohosa.”

Thanks for sharing Gary! Want to share your alumni stories? Email Alumni@Thunderbird.edu

By Thomas Rhoden ‘09

This project had pretty simple beginnings. I remember that I was sitting under the thatched roof of last season’s rice crop in the school where I kept my office, when one of the younger students in my English enhancement class brought in a stack of crinkled papers. At first I was not sure what the boy wanted me to do with the yellowing sheets of paper. I quickly remembered that in my exhaustion from leading a full schedule of other classes and discussion groups that morning, I had been too tired to keep up being anything even slightly resembling a proper teacher of the English language that afternoon and had given out a quick assignment to the group of bright-eyed learners to turn into me in an hour.

So here the child was with the class’s finished product, well-handled and ink-imbued. I traded a few thank-yous for his disheveled ream of papers and promptly set the pile aside. I knew I would have a chance to look over them the next day since I had nothing planned.

When I did finally tackle the stack, I was very surprised to find the contents within to be captivating and endearing.

The in-class assignment had been something along the following: Please write three paragraphs about your past. I had been expecting nothing more than the normal drill of working on the past tenses. But the students’ essays to this question ended up being so genuine and their accounts of struggle and disenfranchisement so startling that I knew I wanted to understand better their particular plight.

I wished to learn more about the refugees that I worked with and their unique experiences fleeing to and living in the refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border as well as the complicated process of being resettled to a new host country. When I had another opportunity to meet with the class, I also asked them to write essays about their present situation and future dreams. I did this exercise with most of my classes.

Atop those green-wet mountains that border Thai and Burma, life continued on in the refugee camps as it always had, slowly, sparsely, until my own one-year commitment in the camps came to an end. Given some time to reflect over the experience, I knew it was time to reevaluate those essays to see if they could be brought to larger audience. This book is the final product of that process.

The main objective in compiling this manuscript is to increase awareness about the issues facing refugees and former political prisoners of Burma. Depending on which organization one cites, the total number of refugees in Thailand can vary by the tens of thousands, but most would agree that there are at least 150,000 Burmese refugees living in the camps that border Burma and Thailand.

I started the project on Kickstarter to raise funds for the production, distribution and marketing of the book. When compiling the budget for this project, I was pretty happy to see that I was able to save costs on all fronts.

Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing way to raise money for these types of creative projects. I’ve set a fundraising goal and a deadline by which I need to meet that goal. The trick is that if I don’t reach our goal by this deadline, I don’t get any of the funds that our supporters have pledged. On the bright side, I can go over our goal (and hope to do so). I’ll use any additional funds on additional marketing resources so we can reach an even larger audience.

I’m incredibly grateful to everyone in the Thunderbird community, both the alumni and current students, as well as the professors and staff for your support and encouragement. I can’t wait to share the book with all of you.

To make a pledge to my project, please see my page here.

The Alumna-led Arlington Street People’s Assistance Network (A-SPAN) was recently named Nonprofit of the Year by the Arlington Chamber of Commerce in Virginia.
The nonprofit’s Executive Director is T-bird Kathleen Sibert ’83.
The organization was selected for the award because it has proven to be a viable, ongoing, full-time business that has experienced significant growth. It is also well-known and delivers exceptional service, is a leader in its industry in Arlington and displays an interest in the Arlington community.
Sibert is among the many Thundercouples in our alumni. She is married to Mike Rugala ’84.

Market investor Howard Lindzon ‘91 has one source for financial ideas: His own microblogging platform, StockTwits. “I built it for me,” the Thunderbird School of Global Management graduate said April 21, 2011, during a campus visit. “It is the only product I use.”

Lindzon is not alone. More than 300,000 unique visitors share ideas on StockTwits each month, and Lindzon has nearly 200,000 Twitter followers. He has rung the NASDAQ closing bell and been featured in the New York Times, Fast Company and TIME.

“People used to trade around the world at desks,” Lindzon said. “But computers and electronic data have changed things so much, those jobs are gone.” He said investors now share ideas from home, and sites such as StockTwits bring these people together in active communities that never sleep.

He said StockTwits empowers people to become smarter faster, and it provides a forum to learn from others’ mistakes. “People are telling you more about their mistakes,” he said. “That makes people smarter.”

Lindzon calls the StockTwits community “verticalized.” Microbloggers write about a range of topics on Twitter and other social media sites, but everybody who comes to StockTwits shares a passion for investing. The StockTwits community is also curated, which means the site promotes its best contributors and blocks spammers.

Lindzon, who lives in Coronado, California, credits the popularity of the site to three major trends. “You have a confluence of events,” he said. “You have a shrinking world, you have the true bubble of the 1990s that created all of this bandwidth, and then you have this social layer.”

Learn more in the Thunderbird Knowledge Network video below.

Thunderbird alumnus Andy Ogawa and his family, together with the Red Cross, is challenging donors to donate for Japan disaster relief. Every tax deductible dollar you donate, the Ogawa family will match equally in contributions to the Red Cross up to $500,000. Together we can donate One Million Dollars to the Red Cross.

In their words: “Hiro and Betty, Andy, Mako and Tina, Marcus, Lisa and Athena, thank you all for your contributions. We are a Japanese and American family in the San Francisco Bay Area with deep ties to both nations. We are genuinely moved by people’s willingness to lend a helping hand for good; It’s when we feel the human race rises to shine beautifully. Arigato!”

To donate: http://www.crowdrise.com/handsforjapan

Andrew Ogawa ‘98 is a managing partner at Quest Venture Partners in San Francisco. You can follow him on Twitter @andrewogawa.

For a list of seven examples of what not to do while networking, check out the latest blog post from T-bird Allan Starr ’69 on his blog called “Marketing Partners”

Excerpt from his blog:  “To make things easier on yourself, time your arrival so you can maximize the interactions you’re most interested in having. ‘Especially for people who typically shy away from networking, the inclination is to arrive on the later side,’ says Zack. The opposite is a much better strategy: Being the first person there, it’s calmer, laid back, and people haven’t yet settled into groups. You won’t feel like there’s no one to talk to.”

When Gita Patel ‘96 travels anywhere in the world, she always knows she can find a T-bird

“The first thing I do whenever I travel for business or pleasure is look up the T-birds there,” Patel said.

On her most recent trip, the New Jersey-based consultant traveled to El Salvador as a researcher for Bpeace (Business Council for Peace), a nonprofit organization that promotes women’s empowerment through encouraging entrepreneurship and job creation.

And, of course, the first thing Patel did was find her fellow T-birds.

“Within 36 hours, almost everyone I contacted got right back to me. Everywhere I turned, there was a T-bird. My Bpeace team couldn’t believe it.”

Patel’s Bpeace trip also coincided with First Tuesday, so she had additional opportunities to connect with alumni.

Even back at home in New Jersey, Patel uses her T-bird network.  In fact, it was at the Princeton Alumni Chapter’s panel discussion where she first met Toni Maloney, Co-founder and CEO of Bpeace, and realized she would be a perfect fit for their third country research team.

 “The way you are mining that Thunderbird network makes us think there are only 2 degrees of separation between you and the rest of the world, “ Maloney said.

“As a consultant, I have the flexibility and the mindset to jump into a project and run with it,” Patel said.

Flexibility and initiative are only a few of Patel’s strengths. She is also the caregiver and patient advocate for her older sister, who lives with a rare brain disease called Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis. This commitment is what has kept Patel living in New Jersey.

After graduating from Thunderbird, Patel’s career in the technology industry took off quickly.

However, just before her sister had become sick, Patel was transitioning her career from technology back to global business, and was considering working for the State Department in Arizona.

But as she was sitting in traffic one day, Patel had some doubts.

“I better watch out for what I’m asking for,” Patel said to herself. “I could end up with a great international job that’s doing mostly paperwork.”

And at that moment she realized something:

“My international passions are with the culture and people, and it may not be the actual job that I’m passionate about.”

Volunteering with Bpeace has allowed Patel to be more fulfilled, and she believes it also will take her down the career path she had envisioned. On her most recent trip to El Salvador, she was tasked with identifying if the country was a good fit for Bpeace’s next program launch.

“El Salvador looks promising,” she said. “The next step is market intelligence on the ground.”

But research aside, Patel also had a special trip filled with both of her passions – culture and people. She delighted in the pride that the citizens of El Salvador displayed for their country and was touched by the warmth and hospitality of everyone she met. And of course, she relished her time with her fellow T-birds and learned from them.

 “There’s definitely something to the Thunderbird mystique,” she says. “If we could just bottle it up and share it, that would lead to incredible things.”

A love of travel grew into a quest to learn the language of nature for environmental scientist Michael Goodsite ’08, Ph.D., director of a newly funded center that helps Nordic businesses and other organizations adapt to climate change.

“The evidence is talking to us,” Goodsite said. “Nature is talking to us. Scientists like myself are trying to interpret the language so we can objectively present to everybody what it is saying.”

The quest for knowledge has taken Goodsite from Arizona to the Arctic and many places in between. He earned an Executive MBA in Thunderbird’s European program in 2008 and then put his business skills to work with the formation of the Nordic Centre of Excellence-Nordic Strategic Adaption Research (NORD-STAR).

The center links natural scientists, political scientists, economists, management educators and business professionals in a virtual network that covers Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

NordForsk, a public organization that supports Nordic initiatives, announced a five-year $5.2 million grant on Oct. 18, 2010, to fund the center. Goodsite will lead the center at the National Environmental Research Institute at Aarhus University in Denmark, where he is a professor of atmospheric chemistry, climate change and global processes.
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