Alumni in the News
The World Is Her Canvas
COLUMBUS: With photos and paintings, celebrating the daily lives of women around the globe.
Photo Courtesy Jamie Columbus
Traveling with her camera and documenting the daily lives of tribal women around the world has been a passion for the last two decades for painter and photographer Jamie Columbus (MBA ’89). In celebration of International Women’s Day, an exhibition of her photos and oil pastels from some of the 42 countries she has visited (usually as a backpacker staying in villagers’ homes) was on display in March at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center in upstate New York. Rather than depicting women’s struggle or repression, Columbus’s collection exudes “an aura of quiet fulfillment,” the Rochester Chronicle and Democrat reported (March 1, 2009). “It’s more about the inner beauty of their lives,” Columbus explained.
Can’t Forget the Motor City
In a flurry of activity in Detroit in March, the acronym “HBS” was almost as much in evidence as “GM.” It wasn’t just the departure of GM chief Rick Wagoner (MBA ’77) and the accession of his replacement, Fritz Henderson (MBA ’84). Also on the scene were Diana Farrell (MBA ’91) and Ron Bloom (MBA ’85), key players on the presidential task force that’s deciding what to do about the U.S. auto industry.
As a longtime special assistant to the president of the United Steelworkers union, Bloom previously used skills he honed at Lazard Frères to help restructure the U.S. steel industry. Among his many admirers is distressed-assets financier Wilbur Ross (MBA ’61), who got to know Bloom from across the bargaining table when Ross was trying to buy up steel companies that Bloom represented. Observed Ross, “He’s very, very pragmatic, not overly ideological, and a very, very good negotiator” (Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2009).
Sounds Like a Plan
BRENNEMAN: A fast way to make money.
Photo by Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times
Rigorous, thorough analysis is the precursor of an effective business plan, right? Maybe not. In an interview about leadership in the New York Times (March 15, 2009), Greg Brenneman (MBA ’88), chairman of private-equity firm CCMP Capital, suggested that, for starters, simply stepping back, avoiding too much detail, and eschewing buzzwords might be a better way to go. He recalled that shortly after he and Gordon Bethune (AMP 111, 1992) took over Continental Airlines, “the first thing we did was we sat down at his dining room table, and I just had out a notepad and we started drinking wine, and we switched to Scotch, and we just started to endeavor to write down everything that was brain-dead about the airline.” The result was the one-page Go Forward Plan, with easy-to-understand guidelines, such as “The fastest way to make money is to stop doing things that lose it.” “And so,” Brenneman said, “we stopped flying to places that lost money.”
Shaking Up the System
STERNBERG: A career putting leadership to work where others fear to tread.
Photo by Suzanne Dechillo/The New York Times
In a lengthy article examining New York City’s education reforms, the Weekend Australian magazine (March 7, 2009) zeroed in on the Bronx Lab School (BLS), often pointed to by the city’s education-reform officials as its proudest achievement. Located in the building that formerly housed Evander Childs High School, once one of the most dangerous educational facilities in the country, BLS last year graduated 95 percent of its senior class, and all of those graduates were accepted at college. Marc Sternberg (MBA ’00) founded BLS in 2004 and has been its principal ever since. A Teach For America alumnus, Sternberg insists on teachers and a curriculum that engage his students — youngsters from the neighborhood, who are not specially selected. “The kids are the same kids who went to Evander, literally and figuratively,” noted Sternberg. “The difference-makers here are the adults.”
As a teacher, Sternberg felt that children’s education suffered from a dearth of strong school leadership, so he decided to enroll at HBS. “The core tenets of leadership that have worked for General Electric and other big corporations can make a school work as well,” he said.
The Power of Prayer
These days, getting money and housing together is a tricky issue. So there was good news from Florida, one of the hardest hit real-estate markets, when the Miami-area chapter of the Collective Banking Group (CBG) renewed its partnership with, and received commitments from, six major banks in the region. The Collective Banking Group is a national organization of African-American churches that agrees to conduct its business with partnering banks and encourages parishioners to do the same.
The CBG was formed in 1993 by Reverend Jonathan Weaver (MBA ’75), a pastor in Bowie, Maryland. “It’s quite a reversal from twenty years ago,” Weaver noted. “Collectively, churches have shown the banking community just how much economic power they wield” (Miami Herald.com, March 20, 2009).
Decisions through the Ages
WATANABE: A primer for all ages on how to think entrepreneurially.
Photo Courtesy Portfolio/Penguin Group USA
In business and education, Japan and the United States seem to alternate as inspirations for one another, and Ken Watanabe (MBA ’05) may be the latest guru in this intellectual game of import-export. Watanabe went to school in Japan until the eighth grade before moving to America where he completed his higher education, joined McKinsey, and eventually returned to Japan. It was there he had an idea for a book, pitched to middle-schoolers, “in response to a national drumbeat of Japanese criticism about its education system that emphasizes rote memorization,” USA Today reported (February 25, 2009). Titled Problem Solving 101, it became a best-selling business book and is now available in America.
The book has two case studies, about a band looking to boost its exposure and a teenager trying to raise money to buy a computer. By getting readers to analyze the issues involved and breaking projects into steps, it helps youngsters (and adults, too) to develop initiative and logical decision-making.
