Stories
Stories
Erik Sorensen (22nd OPM)
Currently the managing director of Club Sultan in Marbella, Spain, an exclusive European holiday ownership club, Erik Sorensen specializes in marketing luxurious vacation opportunities. "My business is about positioning, targeting the right clients, and having a lot of fun," notes the enthusiastic Sorensen, who attended OPM to gain some formal training in areas in which he already had instinctive competence. "I loved OPM," he states. "When I went through the program, I expected it to be a country club, but instead it was a lot of hard work. I came away with a great deal of respect for the faculty and the institution." Like many who attended the OPM reunion, Sorensen traveled a great distance. "I love to learn," he says, "and I saw this as an opportunity to expand my knowledge of business."
Lynda and Kathy Barco (15th OPM and 23rd OPM)
In 1958, Lynda Barco and her husband, Charlie, started a small excavation company in Jacksonville, Florida. As the company grew, Charlie Barco enrolled in OPM to better understand the economic changes that were affecting their business in the 1970s. "When he got back from the program," Lynda Barco remembers of her late husband, "he made a number of changes to put us on a better track." Now chairman of the 75-employee Barco-Duval Engineering, Lynda and her daughter, company president and COO Kathy Barco, are both OPM graduates themselves. "One of the best aspects of OPM is the opportunity to learn from my classmates," notes Kathy.
Bernard Foulquies (3rd OPM)
Representing the fifth generation of his family in the industrial textile business in England and France, Bernard Foulquies attended OPM after filling out an application he found in an airline magazine. "After watching Europe struggle to regain economic strength following World War II, I wanted to get in touch with the 'modern' business world, which at that time I associated with America," recalls Foulquies. "I enjoyed it immensely," he says, noting that professors such as Dick Dooley, Phil Thurston, Renato Tagiuri, and Marty Marshall all possessed "great teaching ability and great knowledge." "By the time I returned for the second session, I realized that not only was I gaining knowledge, but others were finding my European experiences beneficial," he observes. Foulquies was particularly pleased to see global representation at the fall OPM Reunion. "HBS has become more international. It is wonderful to be able to speak freely about issues of common concern with colleagues from other countries. The frank exchange of views on business, beyond being interesting and instructive, builds bonds and helps to avoid conflicts. Being able to break down international boundaries, as we do in OPM, is very important."
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