Thunderbird for Good

It has been a very busy first week with our “Global Cohort” entrepreneurship fellows from Latin America and the Caribbean, featuring lots of business courses at Thunderbird, site visits around Arizona and some time for shopping and cultural activities. Be sure to check out a few of the photos from the classroom here. Several faculty joined us in the classroom, including:

• Professor Karen Brown discussed goal setting and how to set realistic expectations.  Brown works very closely with project managers, and getting them to adopt a winning mindset. According to Brown, “The effective project leader must have the presence of mind to recognize when a broad, visionary perspective is appropriate, and when it is time to don the manager’s hat and dig into the details.”

• Professor Nathan Washburn covered business development and growth strategies, including the reasons why business owners take risks. “Critical to risk taking success is the ability to sustain effort through challenges and difficulties,” he said. “When executives are motivated to take risks because of confidence, then this confidence sustains them through the problems that arise.”

• Professor Mary Sully de Luque covered Human Resource Management and Strategic Vision. The best leaders, according to de Luque, are visionary, yet are also empathetic and also good listeners. “Communication is essential, but it is not a one-way street,” she said. “Great leaders and managers learn to listen to their employees, their customers and their competitors.”

On Thursday evening, the group headed to South Phoenix to visit the offices of Univision Phoenix 33, where the group toured the studio, met with reporters and producers and learned how the news was made. The group also sat in on a taping of Enlace Arizona, with anchor Gerardo Higginson. See more photos of the Univision tour here.

On Saturday, the fellows learned more about Arizona and Southwestern history and culture at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, before heading over to Frances, Smeeks, Halo Piercing and Stinkweeds Records. Georgeanne Bryant, founder of Frances and Smeeks and a good friend of Thunderbird for Good, talked to the fellows about overcoming small business challenges and the importance of local marketing and displays. Bryant was recently interviewed about her work with Thunderbird on ABC 15. See the interview here— “Shop in Phoenix for a Cause.”

Be sure to see images from the day at the “Saturday Site Visit” gallery on Flickr here.

(Photo: Ms. Valeria Rodriguez Codina of Argentina and Ms. Leo Munroy of Guatemala are interviewed by Univision’s Enlace Arizona host Gerardo Higginson. The segment will air on Saturday, June 23 at 7:30 a.m. Photo by Tim Clarke)

Posted: 06|18|12 at 12:19 pm.
Filed under: 10000 Women,.
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