Project Runway

Stacey Estrella (MBA ’93), a corporate communications executive at a Silicon Valley software firm, started sewing for fun just two years ago. But her beautifully crafted dresses and suits helped her beat out thousands of other hopefuls to earn a slot on the reality-TV hit show Project Runway, a test of fashion creativity and skill under time constraints and other pressures. “The cameras are on you from the time you wake up until the time you go to bed,” Estrella told the San Francisco Chronicle (July 9, 2006). “My approach was to be very positive and say very little.”

Despite being voted off the show by the judges (but not by viewers responding to a live online poll), Estrella picked up valuable lessons that she’ll use in her design business (www.staceyestrella.com). “I learned to work faster,” she said, “and I’m more aggressive and taking more risks with design, draping, and construction.”

Teamwork Testament

Not only have Marion Sandler (HRPBA ’53) and her husband, Herb Sandler, been married for more than forty years, they’ve worked together nearly that long as business partners. They grew their company, Oakland-based Golden West Financial Corp., from a two-branch S&L into such a financial powerhouse that Wachovia paid $24 billion to purchase it last May, the San Francisco Chronicle reported (June 4, 2006).

In an interview with the couple, now in their 70s, Marion Sandler told the Chronicle, “We’ve almost never not worked together. We are extraordinarily compatible. I just can’t describe it.” The Sandlers met and married in New York, where Marion was one of the first women to work as a securities analyst on Wall Street. “I started at Bloomingdale’s,” she recalled, “but I didn’t want to make a career there. Wall Street was very exciting.”

In 1963, seeking new opportunities, the pair moved to California and bought Golden West for $38 million. With that investment and their sub-sequent hard work having paid off handsomely, the Sandlers, while remaining involved with Wachovia, will now devote most of their time to philanthropy.

The “A” List

Started in 1995 in Columbus, Ohio, by Angela Hicks (MBA ’00), Angie’s List is a consumer-driven report card on numerous local services (plumbers, car mechanics, and moving companies, not to mention solar panels and Christmas decorating) in 56 American cities. List members, who pay to receive fellow consumers’ evaluations, include some 425,000 homeowners. Company revenues should hit $14 million this year. “Companies don’t pay to be on the list,” Hicks told the Washington Post (July 13, 2006). “You can only give one report on a given company once every six months. You can’t stack the deck.”