Archive for the ‘Student Life’ Category

By Naomi Gunnels, ‘11 MBA

Lemonade Day introduces kids to entrepreneurship! This citywide event encourages kids to start a lemonade stand and sell their lemonade to the entire community. The children get to be creative while learning to set goals, develop a business plan, establish a budget, seek investors, and provide customer service - skills they will use for the rest of their lives. The youth also learn the value of hard work and the worth of a dollar. At the end of Lemonade Day, participants often open a bank account for the first time and give back to a charity of their choice. Schools, community groups and businesses get involved to make this all happen. Lemonade day is the perfect opportunity to show kids their community cares while training the next generation of entrepreneurs through a FREE, fun, engaging, experiential activity.

The Mayor of Glendale is incredibly excited about this program! Lemonade Day supports the Mayor’s efforts to foster positive development of youth and teach leadership skills. We want as many children within the City of Glendale to participate, and have backpacks for 1500 participants. We hope to work with the Glendale, Deer Valley and Peoria School Districts as well as private schools in the area. ASU expressed an interest in collaborating with Thunderbird, and several students may shadow our Mentors in order to take that entrepreneurial learning to a village in Ghana that the ASU Global Resolve initiative is working with.

Additionally, following in the tradition of the Walker Center, the Thunderbird Entrepreneurship Network plans to give back to the local community by not only bringing Lemonade Day to Glendale, but by also organizing a group of Thunderbird Mentors (current students and, potentially, Alumni) who will teach three classes focused around Pricing/Sourcing, Marketing and a Business Plan (location, investors, goals). The Thunderbird Mentors will volunteer one Saturday morning in late March or early April to teach these classes. We plan to reach over 300 participants with this Mentoring program. Recorded Mentoring sessions will also be available online.
Currently, we need help reaching out to the community to spread the world about Lemonade Day. We would love any help we can get! Volunteers are also welcome. For more information, please email Naomi Gunnels at naomigunnels@global.thunderbird.edu.

Lemonade Day Summary
When: May 1st, 2011
Where: Throughout the city of Glendale

Naomi Gunnels is pursuing her MBA at Thunderbird and is the Lemonade Day city director for Glendale. She has a BA in International Relations, comes from a family of Entrepreneurs and recently worked as a retail manager with locations in DisneyWorld and DisneyLand. She speaks German and can read Hieroglyphics.

By Ryan Conway, Thunderbird Full Time MBA

In my Operations Management class the other day we were talking about the concept of process flow, which my professor likened to the feeling that runners get when everything is functioning on all four cylinders and they feel as if they could go on forever.Now that my trimester is halfway over I feel as if I have hit that groove. The last month has been non-stop, including an external job fair in Chicago, an internal job fair here at Thunderbird, prepping for numerous interviews, and oh yeah, midterms.

Additionally, my Business Intelligence project has now been assigned and I am happy to say I received my first choice.

Read the rest of this post on the Financial Times’ MBA blog.

By Shally Sarawagi, MS-Global Management ‘11

Two weeks ago, 19 Afghan women entrepreneurs arrived at Thunderbird. Most of them did not speak fluent English, and had never visited the United States before. They were here to participate in Project Artemis, an intensive, two-week training program that teaches business skills, leadership and entrepreneurship. By the end of the program, they had become an integral part of the Thunderbird family.

Friday, October 29th was a day of bittersweet feelings for Thunderbird as well as for the Project Artemis graduating fellows. The ceremony was so touching, I found myself reaching out for the tissue in my purse, and I was not the only one! These women set an example for all women around the world with their courage and determination. They showed us that we can break free from social shackles and financial setbacks and really build a substantial career if we only believe in ourselves.

“Every graduating fellow is a role model for their community,” said Nasimgol Azizi at the graduation ceremony. I would say each one is a role model not just for their community but for each one of us. They are all entrepreneurs in a country where the economy has been crippled by decades of warfare. Entrepreneurs are the need of the hour in Afghanistan. By doing what they are doing, they are creating history in their country, paving the way for social reforms in uplifting the rights of women.

Read more »

By: Jacqueline Lee, M.A. Global Affairs and Management, 2010; President of International Development Association

On Friday, September 17, 2010, Thunderbird students gathered at the Thunderbird School of Global Management campus to voice their support for the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2015, and to call their leaders to action.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Heads of State and Government, along with the private sector, foundations, international organizations, civil society and research organizations met from September 20-22 in New York to discuss the progress of the Millennium Development Goals with a deadline of 2015.  In response to this summit Thunderbird for Good, International Development Association, and Microfinance Association hosted a STAND UP event to gather fellow Thunderbirds and take the STAND UP 2010 pledge: to end global poverty and to demand world leaders to commit and take action towards achieving the UN M.D.G.s.

STAND UP 2010 occurs “every year across the globe where events are organized to bring attention to the worldwide crisis that we all face — poverty.” (standagainstpoverty.org).  This year from September 17-19 right before world leaders gathered at the UN Summit, citizens across the globe gathered and voiced to their leaders demanding an end to poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

“The MDGs offer us a roadmap to end poverty and its root causes. 189 world leaders adopted the MDGs as part of the Millennium Declaration, agreed to at the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000.” (Source: standagainstpoverty.org).

At this summit, U.S. President Barack Obama announced the new U.S. Global Development Policy-the first of its kind by an American administration-fulfilling its pledge on MDG 8 which emphasizes Global Partnerships and building coherent and predictable development framework because:

“…the purpose of development-and what’s needed most right now-is

creating the conditions where assistance is no longer needed. So we

will seek partners who want to build their own capacity to provide for

their people. We will seek development that is sustainable.”

-President Barack Obama
September 22, 2010
Delivered at the Millennium Development Goals Summit
United Nations Headquarters
New York, NY

Watch T-birds make the pledge on Youtube.

To find out more information about the STAND UP 2010 Campaign please go to: http://endpoverty2015.org/

Photo:  The Thunderbird Stand Up 2010 Event Team, left to right: Anali Cardenas (M.S.’10), Jacqueline Lee (M.A.’10), Leah Kumayama (M.A.’10), Megan Webb (M.A.’10), and Brian Brock (MBA’11);

By Megan Groves, Full-Time MBA ‘12

“I have never been around so many genuinely curious and friendly people from all over the whole world. People will come right up and approach you, just to say hello and ask where you’re from, and before you know it, you’re talking about current events and your dreams for your life and for the world. It’s really incredible…”

This is a blurb from a letter I sent my friends and family back home a few days after arriving at Thunderbird, and weeks into the program, this experience continues to deepen.

Where else in the United States can people from over 50 countries exchange a hug, a traditional American gesture of trust and friendship, before inquiring about their respective backgrounds and personal views? I dare say this is a rare and treasured act of affinity on American soil.

For many people, trust is given to another after ascertaining that they share a similar personal history or outlook on life. At Thunderbird, the instantaneous rapport is an already-given gift that gets further unpacked throughout the program.

The very nature of the studies accelerates these types of bonds. We have all left work, friends, family, our former identities, and in many cases, our native countries or languages behind in order to partake in this unique intellectual and interpersonal growth experience, and in this way, there is something we all have in common. But beyond that, I have found the quality of character of the average Thunderbird student to be open, warm, and curious, rather than the spiteful and competitive style of so many other reputable MBA schools.

Masters programs have the capacity to bring insightful leaders and social change agents into the world, and with Thunderbird’s climate of diversity, tolerance, and collaboration across cultures, this is no armchair academic degree.

Megan is a first trimester student at Thunderbird with a focus in consulting, entrepreneurship and online marketing. You can read more about her and her company at her website, Promoting Health from the Core: www.wholefoodstherapy.com

Yesterday evening Thunderbird hosted the Opening Ceremonies for our new Full-Time and On-Demand students. One of the most colorful parts of the evening is the parade of flags– where our international students carry the banner of their home country and speak about where they’re from. The incoming fall class this year is incredibly diverse: more than 50 percent of our students are from outside the U.S., and they represent 53 different countries.

As Kay Keck, our VP of Full-Time Programs said last night, “No other place, besides the UN, will you find this much diversity among your peers.” Some of the countries represented include Mongolia, Tanzania, Uganda, Greece and Georgia. How many flags can you recognize? Check out the photo album.

Each trimester, Thunderbird students, staff and alumni participate in ThunderCares day, a day of service that benefits several local charities. This trimester, T-birds helped out at Tiger Mountain community garden, Turn A New Leaf domestic violence shelter, Sun Valley Animal Shelter and St. Vincent De Paul food bank. ThunderCares day began in 2006 as a way to connect T-birds to the local community, and has since gone global as alumni carry on the tradition. Check out our photo album from Summer 2010 Thundercares. Kudos this year to Thunderbird MBA student Samir Bathija who helped organize the event!

More about past ThunderCares days here and here.

By Kate Robertson ’10, full-time MBA student

Kate is currently in Peru working on the next collection for Mayu, her alpaca knitwear business. It is a fair trade company run from Peru, her home base in Chicago and Thunderbird.

Thunderbirds are truly global, and we can prove it! We’ve just posted some of the entries from our student photo contest on our Flickr page. Check it out for pictures from all over the world. Do you know some of these T-birds?

Click on the picture to see more!

Thunderbird student ambassadors routinely ask alumni for gifts at the campus call center that reopened in fall 2009. But Tekena Koko ’10 went one step further.

Even before she graduates in August 2010, the call center worker pledged to give $50,000 over five years.

“I thought it would be great to make a difference in someone else’s life and get someone else to go through the life-changing experience I went through,” said Koko, who brought her 5-year-old daughter with her to Glendale, Arizona, and left her husband and 2-year-old twins at home in Lagos, Nigeria.

Overall, an average of 20 students from nine countries worked at the call center in fiscal 2009-10, generating alumni pledges of more than $233,700 from 2,264 alumni. Money raised supports Campaign Thunderbird, a campaign launched in 2008 to raise $65 million by the end of fiscal 2010-11.

The call center also helped Thunderbird achieve its goal of a 15 percent alumni participation rate in fiscal 2009-10.

“Originally I got involved with the call center because I had a background in sales and I believed I could contribute because of my experience, particularly in fundraising,” Koko said. “I knew I could raise funds.”

But that wasn’t enough for Koko; she wanted to give as well. So she talked to her friend, Gbemi Disu ’06, assistant director of Leadership Annual Giving at Thunderbird.

Disu arranged for Koko to give to the SHARE Scholarship, designed to help exceptional students in emerging markets attend Thunderbird. Scholarship recipients are set up with one or two donors as mentors, who maintain a relationship with the recipients throughout their Thunderbird experience and beyond.

Koko hopes others will follow her example of giving, but she mostly wants to give others from Africa the opportunity to have the Thunderbird experience.

“The friendships I have made so far are invaluable,” she said. “I never knew people would be so open despite differences in culture. And the professors are amazing.”

– Claire Ford