The Thunderbird Alumni Impact blog highlights the achievements and success stories of “T-birds” all over the world. Here you’ll find news and information from the alumni community as well as interviews, pictures and networking event information.
Thunderbird School of Global Management professors connect with alumni in live, interactive webcasts. Watch past events here.
by Gbemi Disu ‘06, Assistant Director of Leadership Annual Giving
Super First Tuesday in New York was held at the Galway Hooker Pub on March 2nd, 2010. Below are a few photographs from the event.
by Gbemi Disu ‘06, Assistant Director of Leadership Annual Giving
It is a truth universally acknowledged that any #1 school of global management should boast of an extensive research library and database (Indeed this is a modified quote from one of my favorite books by Jane Austen – Pride & Prejudice).
I frequently come by many alumni in my line of work who are saddened by the loss of access to the IBIC post graduation. This has been a topic of many discussions at Thunderbird and unfortunately at this time, the additional licensing costs are prohibitive.
As a small, not for profit institution that does not receive any government funding, Thunderbird is solely dependent on the generosity of its alumni and friends to efficiently run. The result of this is having to make tough decisions about resources and put into practice the business concept of cost management that we teach here on campus! As much as we here in the Institutional Advancement and Alumni Relations office would love to offer the IBIC databases as one of the many benefits afforded to our alumni, we are unfortunately not in a position to do so at this time.
My hope in sharing this post rouses us, the alumni community and backbone of Thunderbird, to band together and establish an IBIC Database Fund that will make this available to us all. It will certainly assist us in our varying professions! I believe that if we approach this with the same fervor as we have done for the Tower Restoration, we can be successful in our efforts. After all, we are T-birds!
While this is percolating in our hearts and minds, I am also aware that we all want a solution for the present. Therefore, if you are in need of information, you can utilize these alternatives provided by the helpful staff at the IBIC.
Happy Researching!
by Gbemi Disu ‘06, Assistant Director, Leadership Annual Giving
The purpose of my blog today is to applaud the efforts of recent alum Alicia Morris ’09 who successfully reinstated the matching gift program at Cisco for Thunderbird. I recall about a year ago chatting with Alicia about the challenges of educational fundraising. It turns out that Alicia was quite familiar with this topic as she had previously worked in development at the University of Chicago. She had stated how this solidified her philanthropic intent towards her alma mater as she was privy to how challenging it was for some institutions to raise funds. She mentioned that if only alumni globally realized that a gift of even $5 was better than no gift at all, it would boost educational funding significantly! I jokingly told her that I would remind her of these comments once she became Thunderbird alum herself! It turns out that I did not even need to do so. Alicia reached out to me for some information that she needed to get Thunderbird back on the list at her company in an effort to garner corporate matching gifts for the school! I was very impressed by her initiative and was curious about the outcome.
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by Gbemi Disu ‘06, Assistant Director of Leadership Annual Giving
Back here at the “Thunderbird Kingdom”, Glendale (A member of the last graduating class coined this phrase), we love to hear constructive feedback from our alumni on how we may best serve their needs. As a business school, I am sure the terms opportunity cost, scale of preference, trade offs, payback periods and return on investments are familiar words. However, in general, people tend to want things cheaper, faster, better –- myself included.
Recently, the idea of launching an alumni donor benefits society surfaced and it was termed the Thunderbird Flight Society. The main purpose of this is to provide additional benefits to alumni. I say additional as a plethora of benefits are already being afforded. These can be found on our Alumni Benefits page.
The beauty and the challenge of an eclectic global bubble like ours is the vast difference in needs and wants. While philanthropy is mostly an altruistic endeavor, we understand that providing some benefits helps incentivize some alumni to financially support the school.
As a member of the team tasked with developing this society, I am reaching out to you all, my best resource, to garner your thoughts on what you want. Understanding the limitations of being a small, not-for-profit institution with no government funding, please share your thoughts on what top 5 things you would like Thunderbird to provide that you would be willing to pay for if asked to. While this will not be a fee based society but rather donation based, you can be as creative as you want. In doing informal focus groups with a few alumni things like a global recipe site, global music playlist, IBIC database, etc., there are a few ideas that have been thrown out there. The sky’s the limit with our flight society! Hope to hear from some of you soon!
by Gbemi Disu ‘06, Assistant Director of Leadership Annual Giving
Joyeuses Fêtes! Felices Fiestas! Jie Ri Yu Kuai! Boas Festas! Tanoshii kurisumasu wo! Buone Feste! Hau’oli Lanui! Ii holide eximnandi! Forhe Feiertage! Mutlu Bayramlar! And of course, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
As I make preparations for my upcoming Singapore and Malaysia trip to spend the holidays with my fellow T-bird alums and friends, I am still filled with travel envy at some of the fantastic holiday locations my other T-birds are jetsetting to this upcoming holidays. I soon learned that this emotion is a common phenomenon amongst our global community!
In the spirit of friendly competition and vicarious living, we are inviting all alums out there to send us pictures of their holiday vacation from anywhere in the world! We will be selecting the best of these and highlighting them in a future Alumni E-Newsletter. We accept pictures of your Thunderspouse, Thunderpet, Thunderbaby and, of course, your Thunderfamily! Please only send in pictures that are appropriate for a diverse audience and you are comfortable having others see. Also include a brief description of the location/setting.
As you head out to our respective parts of the world to spend time with family and friends, we here at Thunderbird would like to wish you safe travels and happy holidays!
by Gbemi Disu ‘06, Assistant Director of Leadership Annual Giving
One would imagine that by now I would be used to the blistering cold winter temperatures of the midwest. Afterall I lived there for a few years after graduating from Thunderbird.
However, as I nearly get blown into Lake Michigan by the howling wind, I am quickly reminded of why this African (me) moved back west to sunshine AZ!
The only thing that warms my now frozen bones is the warm reception I have received from my favorite group of people in the world – Tbirds! On this trip, I have connected with alumni from all decades and the ideals that make up the core of our mystique is still present.
I continue to remain a proud alumni and hope you do too. Here is a toast to our alma mater and receiving warm receptions anywhere in the world!
by Gbemi Disu ‘06, Assistant Director, Leadership Annual Giving
I recall my classmates and I chanting these words with gusto the first Friday we arrived on campus. It was campus crawl and the end of foundations. We had started and survived our first week together. (August 2004)
Fast forward to May 2006. We walked proudly across the stage and stared at each other with a feeling of sadness and anticipation of what the world has in store for us. How we had made and sustained our connection to each other 2 years prior. We had simulated our way through data analysis, cried our way through Swaps & Options in Finance 3, and finally turned in that final exam that solidified our freedom! We were T-birds, the world was our oyster!
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by Gbemi Disu ‘06, Assistant Director, Leadership Annual Giving
From the inception of the school in 1946 to the Global summerims and winterims, there is one thing that has always remained constant here at Thunderbird: the love of travelling and exploring the world! Therefore, in the spirit of taking flight, we have launched our Thunderbird Flight Society Alumni program. Another way to stay connected to the school and choose what sort of global traveler you are. And as with all loyalty programs, we of course offer you various benefits!
As an alum, you already receive the following benefits: Access to MTB, Global Connect, B2B, E-Newsletter, Faculty Webcasts, Thunderbird Magazine/Annual Report, Access to the Global Mindset Inventory and 30% discount on full time courses, winterims & summerims.
by Gbemi Disu ‘06, Assistant Director, Leadership Annual Giving
While I did not coin the phrase Thunder-Razzi, I feel it is an apt description of the next series of blogs that I plan to post. Finally my obsession with taking pictures can finally be of use, relatively speaking of course. I recall on my graduation day, a reporter from the Arizona Republic asked me what the one thing I will take away from Thunderbird was. At this time, I did not know that she was a reporter and assumed she was just a friendly guest of some other graduate. My penchant for being different led me to avoid the obvious answers of how the education was top notch, the professors were amazing, etc. In my mind, those were a given, thus I laughed heartily and said something to the effect of “I am most grateful for the fact that no matter where in the world I am, I will always have a friend and a place to stay!” Yes, I know, simply pure genius! In my defense, I didn’t realize this would be published or I would have given my response deeper thought!
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by Gbemi Disu ‘06, Assistant Director, Leadership Annual Giving
I came across an article from CNN the other day that got my feathers just a little bit ruffled and so I thought of sharing it with you, dear readers, to get a little bit of your insight on the commentary. Here is a link to the full article.
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