Archive for the ‘Alumni stories from the field’ Category

By Virginia Mungovan

As Dow Chemical’s manager of innovation and new business development of Latin America, Charly Eid ’05 is getting noticed. In March 2012, news site CNN Expansion recognized this Thunderbird School of Global Management graduate as one Mexico’s “30 Promising Business Leaders in their 30s,” saying his alternative energy initiatives will generate $100 million by 2014.

Eid said people looking at his background might question how he fits into his current position. “I’m an IT guy by background. Not chemical. Not an engineer. But I am here to innovate,” Eid said. “For innovation, you only have to connect with the right people. We always think that it comes from a great idea, but if you don’t connect with someone, it doesn’t happen. My job is managing the collaboration.”

Eid is currently managing a project to build the first solar thermal plant in Latin America. As a Mexico native, Eid believes in what his company is doing for the region. “We are taking care of the community through our efforts in sustainability,” Eid said.

He speaks passionately about the potential for good that he can do within Dow. “Many people in Mexico don’t have clean water,” he said, “but our technologies are being implemented in order to bring clean water to our country.”

Passion is what drives Eid. “I have passion for my life,” he said. “When I was at Thunderbird, I had passion for that. I am passionate about my work. I am passionate about everything that I do.”

That includes his role on the board of Dow’s Disability Employee Network. “It’s not a charity thing,” he said. “It’s trying to give skilled and talented people with disabilities the same opportunities as everyone else.”

The topic of disability hits close to home for Eid. One of his best friends had an accident that caused her to lose motor skills. “She lives in Lebanon,” Eid said. “But for me it’s a way to show her I care about making a better world for her.”

Eid met his wife, Ingrid Gonzalez ’05, when they were classmates in the Global MBA for Latin American Managers program, a dual-degree program with Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. Eid had intended to leave Mexico for his MBA, but after receiving a promotion at his former job, he also wanted to keep working. The distance-learning program, which uses live satellite technology, allowed him to do both and gave him the international education he was looking for.

“That program opens you up to the rest of the world,” he said. “It puts countries together to talk about problems. It gives you a global mindset.”

Photo: Lea Ellermeier Nesbit is in the middle

By Virginia Mungovan

When Lea Ellermeier Nesbit ’94 saw a news report that technology giant 3M had bought a dental company for $97 million, she knew the time was right to sell her startup. Nesbit and her partner had launched Lingualcare in 2003 with no money or customers, but after four years their customized orthodontic braces had successfully gone from concept to reality.

The product was unique because it was 100 percent customized, making it easier for orthodontists to place it on the back side of the teeth, completely hidden from view. Lingualcare was not only manufacturing and selling these braces, the company held several patents related to the dental technology.

Nesbit knew she had a valuable product, but she didn’t wait for 3M to approach her. Instead she tracked down the investment banker who made the $97 million deal and hired him to help sell her company. 3M presented a cash offer for Lingualcare in 2007, and Nesbit and her partner decided to sell.

Getting to that point was not easy, though. “I didn’t get here on the straight path, that’s for sure,” laughed Nesbit, a Nebraska native.

Her father died when she was young, and Nesbit became estranged from her mother and left home at age 16. After that, Nesbit was left to her own devices.

“I dropped out of high school,” she said. “I had to. I needed to get a job.” While working, Nesbit earned her GED and even attempted college at the age of 17. “College didn’t go well,” she said. “I came back to work as a short order cook for a hotel in the morning and I sold shoes in the afternoon.”

But Nesbit did not believe this was all life had for her. “I decided I was meant for more,” she explained. At 19 years old, Nesbit took another try at college and never looked back – earning her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at El Paso and her MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management.

“Coming out of Thunderbird I was changed. Thunderbird made the world a smaller place for me. I wasn’t afraid of not being able to figure it out,” Nesbit said. “You realize it’s just about people and those people have the same hopes and dreams and fears that you have.”
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Three T-birds recently found themselves together in Monterrey, Mexico during a business meeting to discuss process automation and paperless business.

Garth Knudson ’99 – who shared this great photo with us – has been working for the past four years in international sales for HandySoft, a software and solutions vendor based in Washington D.C. One of his roles is to develop partnerships in Latin America, so he has been working with T-bird Enrique Vignau ’00 (2nd from left) since 2010.  Most recently, he met Ruben Dario Trevino Gonzalez ’00 (on right).

Thank you T-birds for sharing this photo with us! Have a photo to share? E-mail alumni@thunderbird.edu

Siobhan MacDermott ’05, Chief IR and Policy Officer for AVG Technologies in the Netherlands, rang the opening bell in the New York Stock Exchange when the company went public on Feb. 2, 2012. 

MacDermott, who is pictured in the front wearing pink, shared this great photo with us.

Congratulations to MacDermott and AVG Technologies!

Share your news and photos at alumni@thunderbird.edu

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

From left to right: Salmon Rabie, Marty Mohn Brady, Ken Paley, Shirin McElhinney Borrett, Nelle Newton Placek, Lisa Hamilton Youngdahl and Laurie Krieger Kohl.

Seven T-birds from the Class of 1977 recently reunited in Aspen, Colorado after 34 years.

The group had a great visit sharing stories of their children and world travels.

A special thank you to Marty Brady ‘77 for sharing this special picture with Thunderbird!  Have you gathered with T-birds lately? Share your photos with us at alumni@thunderbird.edu

In photo: Front Row (left to right) Lorrain McCord ‘97, Mortada Mohamed ‘81, George Hiller ‘72 & Richmond Chapter Leader, Eugenio Reyes ‘92.
Back Row (left to right) Elizabeth Glynn ‘85, Kelly Fish ‘90, Barney Lehrer ‘89 Not pictured: Kelly Murphey ‘88

Eight T-birds recently discovered that they had more than their Alma Maters in common.  They also serve on the same board.

The National Association of Small Business International Trade Educators (NASBITE) has a total of 24 members on its International Board of Governors and eight of them are T-birds.

At a recent Board of Governors meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, the group gathered from across the U.S. and Mexico to further their organization’s mission of advancing global business practice, education and training.

Elizabeth Glynn ’85, Export Advisor/Global Trade Educator of EMG Global Business Solutions took the time to share this great photo with Thunderbird.

Thank you Elizabeth! If you have recent photos with fellow T-birds to share, please send to alumni@thunderbird.edu.

Thunderbird graduate, Thomas Hedges ‘75 admits, “I’ve always been kind of a dreamer.” Many of his dreams have come true. His company, Hedges Family Estate, owns five vineyards in the Red Mountain area 200 miles southeast of Seattle, Washington and produces over one million bottles of wine a year. But this adventurous entrepreneur was not always living the dream, and he credits his Thunderbird connections for helping him get to where he is today.

Hedges recalls back to 1987 when he was trying to break into the wine business. He had found an opportunity to buy excess bulk wine that wineries could not afford to bottle or market. He knew he needed a loan to finance his new adventure, but SeaFirst Bank did not give him the news he was hoping for. “The guy said he couldn’t finance me,” says Hedges. “I got into my beater car and drove to Lake Washington. I sat there crying, literally crying, looking through the phone book for another bank.”

This was not Hedges first disappointment, and it is not the beginning of his story either. Rewind back to 1975. Hedges had just graduated from Thunderbird with a degree and a French girlfriend named Anne-Marie that he had met while away on a school-sponsored summer program in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The couple married in France, and then moved to Vancouver, Canada when Hedges was offered a job with Castle and Cooke Foods, marketing Dole pineapples. Hedges was later promoted to Manager of South American Marketing in Argentina. He laughs as he remembers how his global education came into play. “They said they wanted someone whose wife wasn’t from Iowa,” he says. “They wanted someone with international experience.”
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Watch as the most recent additions to the T-bird Alumni Network share their greatest Thunderbird Adventures.

Thunderbird held Summer Commencement on Friday August 19 in Phoenix, Arizona.

This letter comes to us from Kelly Pursley ‘08.

I work as a tourism consultant in central Bulgaria with a regional economic development NGO and local municipality, evaluating the existing 11 tourism strategies and ultimately, developing an over-arching regional tourism strategy. I have been looking for Bulgaria’s current national tourism strategy in an effort to understand the synergies among the national, regional, and local strategies. However, locating this document has been daunting.

After several weeks of searching for the illusive Bulgarian national tourism strategy, I finally received an email from the Ministry of Economy, Energy, and Tourism. This was a key turning point in this consultancy, and was made possible though the Thunderbird alumni network. The networking chain of contacts that helped me secure this necessary document is long and somewhat unexpected.

Before departing the Phoenix area for Bulgaria, Cindy Yeager (’08), a friend and classmate who now works for Thunderbird for Good, e-mail introduced me to a few T-bird alumni in Bulgaria. Luckily, Roman Vasilev (’03) and his wife, Michele Fedor (’03) met me for dinner in Sofia, shortly after I arrived. While Michele provided me with several key marketing articles and websites, Roman put me in touch with the Director of Marketing for the Invest Bulgaria Agency.

This Bulgarian Director of Marketing then provided me with two contacts in Bulgaria’s Ministry of Economy, Energy, and Tourism.

Nearly four weeks after my original search began, I received an email from Evgueni Spassov, Chief-expert of Tourism Product Development in Bulgaria. I had heard of Mr. Spassov, but he provided me the document I needed and wants to meet with me and cooperate on this project. In a business environment, where collaboration is rare and “information is power”, the Thunderbird network made it possible for me to excel in my work.

(Photo: the National Theater in Sofia, Bulgaria, one of the city’s most famous cultural attractions.)