On a Wednesday morning, a group of five MBA for Executives students in the conference room at Grace Cathedral are discussing what people hate—and love—about their commutes.

Johanna Liu, MBA 15, (center, above), grabs a marker and starts sketching the circles and lines of a diagram that help her group to visually organize information. It’s called mind mapping, and the ultimate goal is to help her team capture messy data so it can generate dozens of ideas that apply to commuting—by car, train, van pool, bus or motorcycle.

The 69 students are just starting the EMBA Program’s Applied Innovation Week and the room is buzzing. Held April 14-18 in San Francisco, the week combines consumer-focused design coursework, visits to some of the hottest local design firms, talks by top corporate innovation leaders, and the creation of a business model canvas to deepen the students’ understanding of innovation in their own organizations.

Led by Haas Senior Lecturer Sara Beckman, (below), Applied Innovation Week is one the five EMBA field immersions, all with a special industry or curricular focus. The week immerses students in the mindset, skillset, and toolset associated with innovative thinking. Her core-curriculum course Problem Finding, Problem Solving (PFPS), teaches students how to collaborate effectively, open up problems, and find more innovative solutions.

“It’s a challenging process, but after this week the students should leave with an understanding of a new framework for innovation and problem solving that they can apply in their own workplaces,” she says.

Immersion Goes Global

The Class of 2015 completed its first immersion week in Napa Valley, centering on Leadership Communications with Haas Lecturer. Mark Rittenberg, and then in Silicon Valley,  focusing on entrepreneurship with Prof. Toby Stuart. Students will travel to Brazil in August for a week led by Haas Lecturer Flavio Feferman, and to Washington DC in December, for a week led by Prof. Laura Tyson.

“EMBA’s field immersions are designed to be transformative,” says Assistant Dean and EMBA Executive Director Mike Rielly. “We go deep, immersing the class in new experiences and curriculum, and connecting them to industry leaders, influential CEOs, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders who often become part of their lifelong networks.”

The Frontier of Design

The San Francisco Applied Innovation Week kicked off in downtown San Francisco Tuesday night, with an event at Autodesk Gallery featuring Bill O’Connor founder of the Autodesk Innovation Genome Project—a study of 2.6 million years of innovations that looks for patterns to distill innovation to its essence.

The week also included visits to SF design firms  Cooper, frog, IDEO, and Lunar, and a meeting with local corporate innovation lab leaders who are members of the Berkeley Roundtable on Applied Innovation and Design (BRAID).  Students also participated in a storytelling session with Haas Executive-in-Residence David Riemer and a session on leading innovation in organizations with Haas Executive-in-Residence Barbara Waugh.

How Might We….?

Back at Grace Cathedral Wednesday, students are huddled around tables in small groups. Marymoore Patterson, BCEMBA 10, who spent more than 20 years in customer research with Panasonic, is moving about the room, assisting Beckman with the student commuting exercise.

The students have come prepared—armed with research on commuting-related topics ranging from which towns and cities have the worst roads, to rising incidents of road rage, to the percentage of commuters who ride to work alone. They’ve also interviewed people about their commuting experiences—highlighting safety, traffic, convenience, and affordability issues as well as the emotional responses, positive and negative, people have to their commutes.

Each student has two minutes to tell a story from those interviews. Liu, director of pharmacy at Santa Clara Family Health Plan, says her subject “basically hates BART. If there’s no parking spot when he shows up at BART he has to go home and email his boss that he’s telecommuting.” Liu said the man was once stuck for hours in a dark tunnel without cell phone service after BART broke down. Ryan Evans, an Air Force reserve pilot, discussed the pros and cons of using a free van pool with a commuter. It's free and safe, Evans said, but the downside is "you give up time for money because you have to stop and pick up people in the van pool."

Getting to Insights

By lunch, the group’s mind map is done and Post-its featuring dozens of ideas are stuck in rows next to the map. (“Road rage incidents are on the rise!” “West Coast cities have some of the worst roads in the world.” “Over 75 percent of the commuters drive by themselves.”)

Christine Elfalan, EMBA 15 and head of product at The Bouqs Company, an online flower retailer, is nudging the group forward, trying to narrow the information down and complete Beckman’s key question, which she uses in all of her exercises to move from insights to concept generation: How might we…?  

“The objective for the morning is to get to that insight, working with a specific framework around commuting,” Beckman said. “How might we reduce the stress for commuters, how might we help commuters connect with their commuters while commuting?”

The team weighs three potential ideas from each member. With two minutes to deadline, they quickly votes and come up with winning ideas: “save time” and “relax.” Their question: how might we save time and relax while commuting?

For their final project, the class will apply the day’s innovation process to one aspect of their jobs. On Thursday and Friday, the class, assisted by Haas lecturer David Charron, used the same process to help students innovate new business models for their own organizations.

The innovation work proved more difficult than expected, said Ryan Blood, EMBA 15, who works with a Seattle-based energy company.  “I have to solve problems at my job but I don’t think of myself as an innovator,” he said. “But even though it’s not my usual role, I’m discovering that I can learn to innovate.”

- Photo of Sara Beckman by Lucky Sandhu

Former Vice President Al Gore, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and best-selling author on climate change, will speak at Haas on Wednesday, April 29.

Gore’s talk, which will take place at International House at UC Berkeley at 12:30 p.m., is part of the Dean’s Speaker Series. The event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Business and Social Impact at Berkeley-Haas.

Registration is required for the event. Priority seating is being given to Haas students, staff, and faculty via email. All others may check back on the Dean’s Speaker Series web site in the coming days.

Gore plans to discuss the climate crisis and the road forward for humanity. Following his talk, he will participate in a fireside chat with Prof. Laura D’Andrea Tyson, director of the Haas School’s Institute for Business and Social Impact (IBSI), and Dean Rich Lyons, answering questions from students and audience members.

Gore, 66, who lives in Nashville, Tn., was honored with the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for "informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.”

He’s the author of the bestsellers Earth in the Balance, An Inconvenient Truth, The Assault on Reason, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, and, most recently, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change. An Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar for best documentary.

Today, Gore spends the majority of his time as chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit organization he founded that focuses on solutions for the global climate crisis.

"From his non-profit Climate Reality Project to his commitment to investing long-term in companies that value environmental sustainability, Al Gore works tirelessly to prove the business and policy case for sustainable capitalism," Tyson said. "Gore serves as an inspiration to anyone who cares about protecting the future of the planet."

Gore is co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, a firm that makes long-term investment decisions on sustainable business practices. He’s also a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and serves as a member of Apple, Inc.’s board of directors.

From 1976 through 1985, Gore served in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and again in 1990. He was inaugurated as Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years.

The Dean's Speaker Series brings to Haas distinguished individuals from around the world, who are leaders in their fields of business, government and social sectors, to share their views on innovative leadership.

These events are made possible in part by the Mary Josephine Hicks Distinguished Speaker Series Fund.

Sixteen alumnae returned to Haas to mentor and share career advice with Haas undergraduates at the third annual Women's Empowerment Day April 10.

After Marvin Gaye’s Ain’t No Mountain High Enough rallied the crowd at UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium, Cynthia Marshall, BA 81, and senior vice president of human resources at AT&T, shifted gears to the day’s more serious theme: empowering women in the workplace.

Marshall, (pictured) who grew up in Richmond, Ca., and is a 30-year veteran of the telecommunications industry, described how a male boss at her first job told her that she looked “too ethnic” because she wore her hair in braids and red shoes with heels. She described going home that night and, with her mother’s help, taking out the braids, and scraping enough money together to buy new, neutral-colored shoes.

Her message today: be comfortable with who you are and stand your ground.

“[Her message] wasn’t so much about being assertive in the workforce, but remaining true to yourself and supporting other women,” said Emily Benjamin, BS 16, who plans to work in the tech industry after graduation. “The workplace is tougher for women, but she encouraged us to know ourselves, be ourselves, and know that we can do anything.
 
Haas Undergraduate Women's Empowerment day was founded in 2013 after Haas alumna Krystal Thomas, BS 94, and Undergaduate Assistant Dean Erika Walker, teamed up with the idea of connecting alumnae with current students. The goal is to provide support, mentorship, and expand networks for young women planning careers in business.

One gender issue that was top of mind at the conference: the wage gap between men and women. Women represent almost half of the workforce, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. While they are the equal, if not main, breadwinner in four out of ten families, women earn far less than men. In 2013, female full-time workers made just 78 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 22 percent, according to the Institute.

Throughout the event, speakers encouraged students to be assertive about fair pay when accepting a job and negotiate salaries and pay raises. They also encouraged students to apply to more jobs and to expand their search to industries outside the “pink ghetto”—or fields dominated by women.

“Your success is ultimately dependent on being assertive,” said Jess Mersten, BS 16. “I like to think that my gender won’t restrict my options in what I pursue.”

Alumnae from companies ranging from Facebook and Yelp to Speedo and LeapFrog participated in the day, which featured speeches from Marshall and Kellie McElhaney, an adjunct assistant professor at Haas and faculty director at the Center for Responsible Business. Throughout the event, undergraduate women nominated by faculty and staff participated in roundtable discussions with 12 alumnae, rotating to a new table every 40 minutes. Select students also received a one-on-one coaching session.

Benjamin said that the event has already helped build her network.

“The trust that Haas students and the alumni can share is absolutely incredible,” Benjamin said. “It shows that if you are vocal about what you want and have people around you willing to help, there is nothing that can stop you.”

By Seung Y. Lee

Learn about the new North Academic Building and view the webcam and time-lapse videos of the construction.

Fifteen entrepreneurial teams—fresh off a new, rigorous four-month accelerator program—have converged at Haas this week for the 17^th annual UC Berkeley startup competition finals. Now known as LAUNCH, the Thursday finals will feature keynote addresses from Dilbert creator Scott Adams, MBA 86, and Chris Hulls, CEO of Life360, as well as a new format designed to propel early-stage startups into fundable companies.

Franklin Russell, MBA 16, who is co-chairing LAUNCH with Dan Schoening, MBA 16, says the switch to the accelerator model was designed to improve outcomes for competitors. “Today roughly 90 percent of startups fail, often because they don’t have everything in line before they try to accelerate their growth. We wanted to create a program that will help companies navigate the complexities of early stage growth," he says. The accelerator program is run out of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship.

This year’s 15 semifinalists were chosen from more than 100 entries, all which were required to have a UC-affiliation. Each semifinalist team has gone through intensive boot camps and four months of coaching from world-class faculty and professional mentors selected for their areas of expertise. The group includes seven teams connected to Haas, and seven connected to other UC Berkeley programs.

The program culminates Thursday when the teams compete for $50,000 in prizes, pitching products and services from climate change risk assessment to personalized DNA monitoring to an adaptive vibrator, before the competition judges—a panel of venture capitalists and industry thought leaders.

Haas-affiliated teams include:

• Blowfish Health, providing an asthma-monitoring device (founded by Henry Leung, EWMBA 15)
• Lendsnap, producing an application that streamlines the loan-application process (founded by Orion Willow Parrott, EMBA 14)
• Optucourse, improving online learning via live online discussions (founded by Jonathan Heyne, FTMBA 15)
• SmartBod, making adaptive vibrators that help women understand how to improve their sexual experience (co-founded by  Bobby Davis and James Wang MBA 15, FTMBA 15)
• Wetravel.to, connecting independent tour organizers to travelers through an online marketplace (co-founded by Johannes Koeppel and Zaky Prabowo, along with Casey Lord, all FTMBA 15)
• Xendit, providing a money management application to simplify and improve global money transfer (co-founded by Moses Lo, FTMBA 15)
• zPillow, producing a noise-canceling pillow (co-founded by Chidananda Khatua and Janice Chien, both EWMBA 16)

After completing a final boot camp tomorrow, the semifinalists will pitch to judges at a private semifinal round on  Thursday. Five teams will move to the final round held that evening before a live audience, competing for the $25,000 First Prize and $15,000 Runner Up Award. In addition, all 15 semifinalists are eligible to win the $5,000 Faculty Choice Award—given to the team that most fully embraces and utilizes the LAUNCH program—and the $5,000 Audience Choice Award, which members of the public and audience vote on either before or during the event.

Registration is required for the April 30 LAUNCH public finals, to be held at Andersen Auditorium from 5:30-9:00 p.m. For more information about LAUNCH, visit launch.berkeley.edu.

-By Karen Sorenson

In an impassioned campus speech, former Vice President Al Gore urged nearly 400 Berkeley-Haas students, faculty and staff, alumni, and community members to “stop tolerating the destruction of humankind” and the environment and to redouble efforts to stop climate change.

The talk, which took place Wednesday at International House, was part of the Haas School's Dean’s Speaker Series and was co-sponsored by the Institute for Business and Social Impact (IBSI). Following his talk, Gore participated in a fireside chat with IBSI Director and Haas Prof. Laura D’Andrea Tyson, and Dean Rich Lyons, (pictured below with Gore), answering questions from students and audience members.

While Gore expressed optimism that the climate change challenge would be met, he emphasized the obstacles that stand in the way—especially the breakdown of effective government in the United States.

“Democracy has been hacked,” he said. “Our political system has decayed. It’s an outrage. We are in danger of losing our democracy. We better wake up.”

“I’ve always heard as you get older you get more conservative,” he added, acknowledging an evolution in his thinking about politics since his days in the Clinton White House. “It’s been kind of the opposite for me.”

Gore opened by highlighting the importance of accounting for the “whole spectrum” — every system that supports humanity — and not just focusing on what we can see. “We need to shift our way of looking at things by finding new perspectives,” he said.

One way to do this, he said, is to recognize the value in natural resources and quality of life and not just things you can buy. “If the only tool you use to measure value is a price tag, then things that don’t have a price tag begin to look as if they have no value,” he said. “What about the cleanliness of air and water? What about a business’s treatment of its employees?”

Policymakers need to change the way they measure value, he said. Depletion of natural resources, for example, isn’t included in GDP, he said, so we’re running out of water. “California — particularly agriculture — is facing dire circumstances because of this historical drought.”

Gore said 90 percent of heat energy trapped in the earth’s atmosphere by global warming pollution is going into the oceans, “and so you get these much strong storms” that destroy areas of the United States and other parts of the globe. He called for a decrease in our reliance on carbon, and swift adoption of cleaner, sustainable energy sources like wind power.

“Mother Nature,” said Gore, “is telling us that we have to change.”

Yet, despite the obstacles, “We are going to solve the climate crisis,” he predicted. “We are going to win this.”

He encouraged students to challenge policymakers and bring innovative ideas to companies that support sustainable practices. “We are seeing the greatest business opportunity in the history of the world with the decarbonization of the economy.”

Gore, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and bestselling author on climate change, is the chairman of the Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit he founded to find solutions to the global climate crisis, and to inspire people to get involved in “making a global shift from dirty fossil fuels to clean, renewable energies like solar and wind.”

To see the entire talk, watch this video produced by the Haas School of Business.

- By Anne Brice

Has the Bay Area real estate market reached its peak? How is technology changing the real estate business? These topics and more will be discussed at the 20th Annual Fisher Center Real Estate Conference May 19 in San Francisco.

Fisher Center Chairman Kenneth T. Rosen, will share his popular economic and real estate forecast for the coming year as keynote speaker. His talk will be moderated by Fisher Center Co-chair Robert H. Edelstein. (Pictured: Edelstein (r), with Rosen).

Rosen will be joined by a second keynote speaker, Carol Galante, I. Donald Terner distinguished professor of affordable housing and urban policy, and a former Federal Housing Administration (FHA) commissioner. Her talk will be moderated by Larry Rosenthal, who is both assistant adjunct professor at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, and program director at the Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement.

Additional conference sessions will focus on real estate capital markets, supply and demand trends, and the direction of public Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).

Industry experts who will speak at the conference include:

Matt Lituchy, Chief Investment Officer, Jay Paul Company
Tup Fisher, portfolio manager, real estate debt, Washington Capital Management, Inc.
Mark Darley, senior vice president, Grosvenor Americas
William Witte, chairman and CEO, Related California
Rachel Flynn, AIA, director of the planning and building department, City of Oakland
Eric Angstadt, planning and development director, City of Berkeley
Josh Sharfman, Chief Technology Officer, C.A.R.
Mark Lammas, Chief Financial Officer, Hudson Pacific Properties, Inc.
Todd Kohli, principal, Populous
Boaz Ashkenazy, partner, CMO, Studio216

The conference will be held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Register for the day-long event here.

Group, non-profit, student, and Berkeley Real Estate Alumni Assoc. (BREAA) discounts are available.

Classroom lectures have always provided fertile ground for new areas of research for Prof. Panos Patatoukas, who is inspired by conversations with MBA students.

“For me, teaching doesn’t feel like a job, it is my passion and hobby,” says Patatoukas, an assistant professor who joined the Haas Accounting Group in 2010 after graduating from Yale University.

For his boundless enthusiasm, research insights, and teaching accomplishments, Patatoukas earned a spot on the recently published Poets & Quants World’s Best 40 Under 40 Business School Professors list, as well as the corresponding Top-10 B-Professors list of Fortune Magazine.

“Panos is perhaps the most engaging professor and as well as the most caring professor I have ever come across,” one student told Poets & Quants. “Panos cares a great deal about his students. He is always available when students needed help, well beyond his required office hours.”

Patatoukas currently teaches Evening & Weekend MBA students enrolled in the Financial Information Analysis & Valuation course. He says he particularly enjoys breaking down and communicating complex ideas —and feeds off the energy of his students.

“The students I teach are incredibly motivated and I am always learning something new from them," he says. "They’re always surprising me with their insights and intellectual curiosity.”

Patatoukas’ place on the Poets & Quants list is one of a growing roll of honors he has received in recent years, including “Club 6” Excellence in Teaching awards annually from 2010-2013; and the Earl F. Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award in 2012, the highest teaching award granted by students.

Prior to arriving at Haas, Patatoukas earned a total of five degrees, including a PhD in accounting and finance from Yale University, plus two master’s degrees in management from Yale, a master’s in accounting and finance from the London School of Economics, plus a BA in accounting and finance from Athens University of Economics and Business, where he graduated as valedictorian.

Patatoukas' areas of research include corporate valuation, financial statement analysis for measuring and forecasting economic activity at the firm level and at the aggregate macroeconomic level, and supply chain management. He has been published in several top-tier academic journals and, in May 2013, he received the Hellman Fellows Fund Award for Distinction in Research, a UC Berkeley campus-wide award given annually to an assistant professor. He also received the Schwabacher Award for Distinction in Research and Teaching in February of 2012. The Schwabacher Award is the highest honor for distinction in research and teaching awarded to a Haas assistant professor.

Patatoukas, who is 33, says he’s found a new home in Berkeley, which he likens to Athens, where he finds people are intellectual yet down-to-earth. That’s a combination he ties to his favorite Haas Principle: Confidence without Attitude.

“I am very proud of being part of UC Berkeley,” he told Poets & Quants. “The history and values of Cal fit my personality and background. Confidence without Attitude is one of the defining principles of the Haas School of Business that I associate with and implement in my life.”

Related: Yaniv Konchitchki Makes "World's Top 40 Under 40"

The 2016 Berkeley MBA for Executives Class arrived on campus for orientation May 13, an experienced and global group including five pilots, four doctors, and senior execs from top companies in the Bay Area and beyond.

Dean Rich Lyons, Senior Assistant Dean for Instruction Jay Stowsky, and entrepreneurship Professor Toby Stuart, welcomed the 69 students, who spent time with senior staff to learn about academic and resource opportunities. Following that, current and former students shared inside advice on juggling work demands, family obligations, and the intense studies demanded of Executive MBA students.

A “Best of Berkeley” welcome dinner followed at Memorial Stadium, hosted by Dean Lyons. The dinner, during which Professor Emeritus and Nobel Laureate Oliver Williamson was honored, featured food inspired by Berkeley-based Chez Panisse restaurant.

The group tasted water sourced in the Sierras by Stewart Wells, EMBA 15, founder of startup California Artesian; and sipped wines from Cannonball Wine Co., founded by Yoav Gilat, MBA 2005. The dinner also honored other Berkeley culinary pioneers, including John Scharffenberger of Scharffen Berger Chocolate.

“These students are off to a phenomenal start to their 19 months together, inside and outside of the classroom,” says Mike Rielly, assistant dean and director of the MBA for Executives Program. “Soon, they will be immersed in the unique brand of Haas education, including rigorous academics built around a significant commitment to experiential learning; a student experience that forges life-long personal and professional networks; and access to the world-class resources of Berkeley-Haas.”

“Incredible spirit from day one.”

With deep international roots, 51 percent of the class was born outside of the U.S., in 22 different countries including Thailand, Norway, Ireland, Russia, India, Mexico, and Liberia. About a third of the students are commuting from outside of the Bay Area, including one student who will commute from China.

The group has an average of 12 years work experience in industries ranging from high tech and retail to energy and consulting. They work at a total of 67 companies, including Schwab, Amazon, Treasury Wine Estates, Genentech, PG&E, Microsoft, Twitter, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, and Deloitte. The class also includes a pediatric surgeon, an anesthesiologist, a radiologist, and a pediatrician. A third of the group is women (pictured below) and the average age is 36.

“With this class, we’ve assembled a very diverse group of experienced professionals,” says Marjorie DeGraca, assistant dean and director of admissions for the MBA for Executives Program. “More than that, they embody our Haas values and fit perfectly in our culture. You could feel their energy and incredible spirit from day one of orientation.”

Anita Ratnathicam, an area manager with Noodles & Company, said she chose Haas because of the warmth she experienced during the admissions process—and for the school’s cross-campus commitment to sustainability in business. Ratnathicam plans to build a food service consultancy after graduation, focused on sustainable practices, helping restaurants conserve water, reduce waste, and source locally.  “Having access to a world-class business education, coupled with other aspects of the university, such as the Berkeley Food Institute, made it the only program I wanted to be a part of,” she says.

Michael Boos, a pilot with Southwest Airlines, was drawn to Haas for its emphasis on culture, which is the hallmark of the Southwest brand. (An interesting fact about Boos is that he was part of the mission in Afghanistan that helped rescue Marcus Luttrell, a former United States Navy SEAL, a mission that the movieLone Survivor is based upon.)

“I was incredibly excited to have found a business program that dovetailed so perfectly with my career,” says Boos, who intends to use his MBA to move into a management role at Southwest. “There isn't a school on the planet that more closely resembles the very aspects of my company that I admire most.”

“I’ve felt super welcome.”

Over the coming months, this new class will participate in experiential learning, which comprises 25 percent of the curriculum. At the center of this EMBA format are five field immersion weeks, led by Haas faculty on location, including leadership communication in Napa Valley, entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, applied innovation in San Francisco, innovative pricing in Singapore, and an end-of-program domestic immersion to be announced soon.

Students dove into accounting and economics classes Thursday and Friday, attending an inspiring lunch Friday with Patrick Awuah, MBA 99, who built Ashesi University in his native Ghana in 2002 to help educate the country’s next generation of leaders.

After a boat tour from the Berkeley Marina to San Francisco’s AT&T Park and dinner at the Ferry Building, class resumed Saturday for the last day of academics for this session.

Ratnathicam says the week was both overwhelming and amazing. “From the first time I came to Haas I’ve felt super welcome.… People are connecting here,” she says. “During all of my visits, everyone I met here from students to the admissions team to the faculty, people weren’t just talking the talk with the Defining Principles (Question the Status Quo, Confidence without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself ). They were walking the walk.”

Related: Berkeley MBA for Executives Class Dives into Applied Innovation

Photo courtesy of Andrew David Kuo

Students in the Undergraduate Program, Full-time MBA, and Evening and Weekend MBA classes will toss their caps in commencement ceremonies in the Greek Theater this week.

Four hundred seniors will celebrate the end of their undergraduate studies at 9 a.m. Tuesday, and on Friday at 2 p.m., 251 Full-time and 250 Evening & Weekend MBA students will receive their degrees.

Following Haas school tradition, both commencements will feature notable alumni as speakers.

Undergraduate Ceremony

At the undergraduate ceremony, Linda Lang, BS 80, retired chairman and CEO of Jack in the Box, will share her thoughts on values-driven leadership.

Following Lang’s address, the class will recognize the recipient of the departmental citation for outstanding achievement, the top Haas community fellow, and honor five students who exemplify the Haas Defining Principles: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always and Beyond Yourself. 

Ryan Khalessi, who majored in business with a concentration in global management in Asia and the Middle East, is the student speaker. Khalessi co-founded the non-profit Amir Khalessi Foundation, which promotes worldwide literacy. He also serves as program manager for the Young Entrepreneurs at Haas (YEAH), a mentoring program for underserved high school students.

Full-Time & EWMBA Ceremony

At Friday’s MBA ceremony, Belden CEO John Stroup, MBA 95, will deliver the commencement address. Since 2005, Stroup has served as CEO of St. Louis, MO-based Belden, Inc., a Fortune 1000 company that designs and manufactures cables, connectors, serves, and routers. Stroup attended the Haas evening program while working full-time at precision-engineering manufacturer Parker Hannifin in Rohnert Park.

The Full-time MBA class selected Sandeep Pahuja as its student speaker. A former Procter & Gamble account executive, Pahuja interned at IDEO last summer while explore his interest in design consulting. He also served as a student career coach and was a fellow at SkyDeck, the UC Berkeley accelerator, where he worked with faculty and students on startups. 

Brandon Middleton, a business development manager at Microsoft, is student speaker for the Evening & Weekend MBA class. Middleton is a former board member with the San Jose Repertory Theatre and former Berkeley board fellow with the Mural Music & Arts Project.

During the ceremony, academic achievement awards will go to those with the highest GPA from each program, while service and leadership awards will be awarded to full-time students who contributed the most volunteer hours, and who made the greatest lasting impact in improving their community and the school.

The winners of the Cheit teaching awards for faculty and graduate student instructors will also be honored during the ceremonies.

The 2015 Cheit Awards for Excellence in Teaching:

• Prof. Christine Parlour, PhD program
• Lecturer Rob Chandra, Undergraduate Program
• Prof. Panos Patatoukas, Financial Information Analysis, Evening Class
• Prof. Xiao-Jun Zhang, Financial Reporting, Weekend Class
• Prof. John Morgan, Full-time MBA 
• Prof. Toby Stuart, Executive MBA Program  
• Prof. Laurent El-Ghaoui, MFE Program

Full-time MBA Honorable Mentions:

• Prof. Ernesto Dal Bo
• Assoc. Prof. Lucas Davis
• Prof. Ross Levine

The 2015 Cheit Outstanding Graduate Student Instructors are:

• Victoria J. Chiang, Undergraduate Program
• Moulay Driss Belkebir Mrani, MBA 2015, Evening & Weekend MBA Program
• Ken Lee, Full-time MBA Program
• Lucy Hu, Executive MBA Program
• Raymond C.W. Leung, MFE Program

Haas has collaborated with global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company Accenture to create new classes and a lecture series designed to give MBAs the tools required to understand and work with big data.

This spring, finance and economics Lecturer Greg La Blanc kicked off the first phase of that alliance, teaching Data Science/Data Strategy to a group of graduate students from Haas, UC Berkeley's Haas School of Information, and Development Studies majors.

Haas also launched a series of popular lectures supported by Accenture that covered topics including the role of data science in retail and supply chain management to “Everything you wanted to know about big data but were afraid to ask,” from companies including Facebook, Cloudera, Safeway, Wells Fargo, Walmart Labs, and BlackRock.

This fall, Thomas Lee, a visiting assistant professor and research scientist, and Dave Rochlin, a Haas lecturer and the executive director of Haas@Work, (a program that sends teams of Berkeley MBA students to global firms to research business challenges), will teach another new course called Data Analytics. Accenture will help craft the course.

La Blanc believes that big data—which can include complex files of 20 terabytes or more, massive amounts of information gathered from social networks, or unstructured data such as video and voice—might just be the most significant change to hit the business world since the Industrial Revolution.

“The usual processing methods don’t work with these data sets and the only way for MBAs to really learn how to handle big data is to actually work with it, and to interact with student engineers and data scientists," says La Blanc, pictured with Facebook data scientist Ta Chriaphadhansakul. "Combined with the experiential learning classes at Haas, this relationship with Accenture gives students that opportunity."

Teaching MBAs to think about business problems through a data-oriented lens resonates with Accenture, says Prith Banerjee, the company's managing director of Global Technology R&D. The relationship with Haas was formed on his watch, sparked by Haas alum Marina Gracias, BS 80, MBA 99, who has served as managing director of Financial Services at Accenture since 2013.

"Our efforts with Haas are mutually beneficial,” Banerjee says. “Haas students need to understand how to work with big data and how technology drives business outcome — and of course, we're interested in hiring people who excel at doing that."

John Miller leads Accenture's Data Insights R&D group within the Accenture Technology Labs, which serves as "home base" for the company's collaboration with Haas. In April, Miller's team invited students to a networking event at the company's San Jose Technology Lab, a visit that inspired both small group and one-on-one conversations about the value of big data and how it can best be used. And Miller's staff also visited campus to participate in a round-table discussion with students from the Data Science and Technology clubs.

"The timing of this collaboration is right for Haas and for us," Miller says. "We're all asking the same questions, like: ‘How can business leaders use data science to transform the way companies work?' and 'What skills are essential?'"

MBAs won't necessarily become data scientists, but they need to know how to work with big data, La Blanc says. And proficiency in a data-saturated marketplace doesn't develop solely through book learning, which is why the hands-on approach of Haas' relationship with Accenture is so important.

"If you want to change an existing framework, you can't just have a class," he says. "You've got to do research, collaborate with industry, and interact with alumni. This big data revolution is happening right here in the Bay Area, and we've got to get out there and engage to make the most of all this available knowledge and experience."

- By Kate Madden Yee

Berkeley-Haas researchers have partnered with colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago to conduct the largest-ever demonstration of advanced energy monitoring in industrial facilities.

The initiative, part of the cross-school E2e project, has just received a $5 million research grant from the California Energy Commission (CEC) to test an "intelligent energy management" system at 100 factories throughout the state. The system is produced by startup Lightapp Technologies, which is partnering on the project.

The goal is to provide reliable evidence on whether giving factories real-time data and analysis about their energy use spurs them to reduce waste and save power. If successful, the findings could be used to encourage thousands of California manufacturers—and even more worldwide—to deploy similar systems to save energy, lower costs, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

“Policymakers are looking to energy efficiency to reduce the world’s dependency on fossil fuels, yet our understanding of how business behavior influences energy use is still poor,” says Berkeley-Haas Professor Catherine Wolfram, Faculty Director of the E2e Project and Energy Institute at Haas and one of the principal investigators on the project. “This project will give us empirical evidence on what motivates businesses to save energy."

Photo source: Flikr

Lightapp Technologies, based in Israel, has developed software that gathers data from low-cost sensors set up throughout factories. The software allows facilities to track down hidden inefficiencies, and then analyzes the data to identify ways to use less energy. Initial deployments in Israel have helped cut energy costs by 5 percent to 27 percent, according to Lightapp.

The project will focus on compressed air systems, which do everything from running bottling lines at breweries to powering tools in automotive factories. “In some plants, compressors use more electricity than any other kind of gear—with a leaky compressor valve, money is literally disappearing into thin air,” says Elhay Farkash, Lightapp CEO.

The grant is part of CEC’s Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC), a program to develop and demonstrate the next generation of technologies to address the state’s clean energy goals. The four-year project will be conducted as a randomized controlled trial and factories will be recruited from a randomly-ordered list of the state’s facilities.

E2e is a group of economists, engineers, and behavioral scientists focused on understanding the energy efficiency gap. Formed in 2013, E2e was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In addition to Wolfram, the principal investigators are Michael Greenstone of the University of Chicago, and Christopher Knittel of MIT. Other partners include CDA Systems, Ecos Research, LLC, and EcoVox, Inc.

Read more on the research project here.

At home in South Korea, Gunso Kim is secretary general of the World eGovernment Organization of Cities and Local Governments, an international group pursuing sustainable urban development.

This year, he’s added the role of Garwood Innovation Fellow to his resume, commuting to Berkeley, where he worked with three Berkeley MBA candidates during the spring semester. Their project: to investigate how a ride-sharing app like Uber might function in Seoul.

Kim (pictured) is one of five Innovation Fellows appointed by the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, a Berkeley-Haas institute that focuses on corporate innovation. The Garwood Innovation Fellow/Distinguished Executive-In-Residence Program reflects the open innovation idea that organizations should look externally, as well as internally, to optimize innovation.

“By inviting external professionals into our process of academic inquiry, we’re demonstrating the value of looking outside traditional models of education,” says Henry Chesbrough, PhD 97, the faculty director of the Garwood Center, who coined the term open innovation in his first book on the topic. “We’re marrying theory and reality to discover true innovation.”

Kim believes that an Uber-like startup will be a challenge to sell in older Asian cities, which support a traditional taxi driver economy. But he says he's excited to soon introduce the idea to Seoul’s mayor and present their proposal.

“This has been such a valuable learning experience, so fruitful to my own business and career development,” he says. “The past three months have really changed me.”

The five Fellows selected from an international pool of applicants, including Kim, are Dr. Mohi Ahmed, senior director of the Open Innovation program at Fujitsu; Todd Schofield, managing director of SC Studios, for Standard Chartered Bank; Ram Shanmugan, founder and CEO of Gemini Systems; and Philipp Skogstad, senior director of products and innovation at SAP Labs.

The Garwood Center paired Berkeley MBA students with the Fellows, who mentored one to three students at a time. By the end of spring term, each team had provided a deliverable that Chesbrough will be able to use in the classroom: a case study, video, research paper, or other finding.

In this way, Haas students benefit by supporting their academic curriculum with real-world experience. The participating fellows had access to current innovation and management theory, exposure to Berkeley research, and were introduced to the Bay Area start-up culture.

SAP's Skogstad worked with two MBA students on a research paper exploring how innovation occurs within large companies. The results will be shared within both SAP Labs and Intel Corp. “I’ve really enjoyed exercising a mental muscle that I don’t usually get to use in my daily work,” Skogstad says. “The academic experience allows the opportunity for more abstract thinking, digging two or three levels deeper.”

He said he also appreciated making connections with future business leaders and raising awareness of his own company.

By Kirsten Mickelwait

If there ever was a dynamic duo, recent Haas grad Stanford Stickney and his younger brother, Daniel, are it. Together, they collaborated with the team that won the Big Ideas@Berkeley prize this past May in the Information Technology for Society category.

Led by UC Berkeley undergraduate students Tomás Vega and Pierre Karashchuk, with Stephen Frey, Kelly Peng, and John Naulty, the team won first place for creating a Brain Computer Interface (BCAPI).  Stanford, BS 15, lent his business development skills as a team member, and Daniel, 21, who has cerebral palsy and is visually impaired, tested the technology and provided feedback.

“Growing up, both Daniel and I had a belief that you can do anything,” says Stanford, a Los Gatos native, one of four children raised by a single dad. “Technology is one platform that’s enabling us to do that together. My mission in life is to help my brother and I am with him every step of the way.”

For their project, the Big Ideas team - whose members have backgrounds in software engineering, cognitive neuroscience, signal processing, and machine learning - equipped a helmet with electrodes that combine electroencephalography and computer algorithms. The device, which connects to a laptop in Daniel’s backpack, enables his thoughts to interact with a computer to move his wheelchair to the left or right.

A Perfect Match

Stanford met Vega, now a senior studying computer and cognitive science, last semester in a New Media graduate level class taught by electrical engineering and computer science Professor Eric Paulos. The class focused on rapid prototyping at the CITRIS Invention Lab at UC Berkeley.

The two became friends and Stanford shared background on the work he and his brother were doing to help Silicon Valley companies improve technology for people with disabilities. Vega, who was on the team that won Cal Hacks last year for building a MindDrone, a flying drone maneuvered by neurological signals, described his BCAPI project to Stanford and his interest in human-computer interfaces. Suddenly, everything clicked. “It was very exciting,” Stanford says. “I said ‘This is a perfect match’ and we were able to put the two together.”

They set up a meeting at Karashcuk’s apartment, where Daniel tried on the helmet for the first time (photo below). Trouble was, the program was designed for someone in a wheelchair who could see a computer screen. Stanford instead touched Daniel’s right or left arm to trigger him to think “left” or “right."

Observing Daniel, the team decided to change the design of its prototype and, in its next upgrade, will add arm vibrations to let a visually impaired person feel which side to think about moving the wheelchair.

The $13,000 Big Ideas grant the team won will be used to improve the BCAPI technology and to conduct a long-term study of its effectiveness.

Daniel currently measures 40 percent accuracy with the brain-computer interface in controlling the functions of his chair.  As he continues his work with the device, the neuroplasticity — or the pathways to his brain — is expected to strengthen. "Learning to use the device is like learning a new language, and as Daniel gets more proficient, it gets easier," Stanford says.

The team’s vision is to provide an open-source platform that enablesthe creation of a community of technology software and product developers who contribute to the independence of millions of disabled technology users.

"It's been so exciting to be one of Daniel’s advocates in this journey,” Stanford said. “I hope that we’ll be questioning the status quo for a long time to come.”

By Kate Madden Yee and Kim Girard

The Full-time Berkeley MBA program placed second in the world, behind Harvard Business School, in the MBA Global 2015 rankings by América Economia, a Latin American business magazine. The annual ranking includes the best Latin American and worldwide business schools for Latin American students. 

In comparison, Haas ranked #3 in 2014, and #7 in 2013.

Among the top 10 in this year’s rankings, four MBA programs are American (Harvard, Haas, Duke, and Yale).

América Economia ranked the MBA programs based on performance in four areas: academic strength was given a 40% weight, knowledge production was given a 15% weight; internationalization was given a 20% weight; and networking power was given a 25% weight.

For more information on the Spanish-language ranking, visit http://www.americaeconomia.com.

The Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership is ushering in the next academic year with a new name: The Center for Social Sector Leadership.

The new name and accompanying logo signify the center’s broader mission of defining the social sector for the next century. The center will groom a new generation of business leaders to foster social impact across sectors, through research, a fellows program, and experiential courses that allow students to complete consulting projects.

“The biggest challenges we face as a society cannot be addressed by only government, only the private sector, or only nonprofits,” says Ben Mangan, executive director of the Center for Social Sector Leadership. “The future requires collaboration between these sectors, and Berkeley-Haas is arguably the best place to define how this next generation of problem solving works.”


The center, which ranked #3 among nonprofit management programs in this year’s U.S. News & World Report's graduate business school rankings, is training MBA students to become multi-sector leaders with the skills to move effectively between the worlds of corporate leaders, public advisors, as well as nonprofit and social enterprise boards.

Along with the name change, the center is adding several new initiatives to its flagship Berkeley Board Fellows Program and Social Sector Solutions applied innovation course.

Faculty Director Nora Silver says Haas is the first business school to study and identify the specific skills that make an effective multi-sector leader. Working with Haas Adjunct Professor Paul Jansen, a director emeritus at McKinsey & Co., and graduate students, Silver plans to release the study in late 2015. She and Jansen then plan to roll what the team has learned during its research into a new course at Haas that will teach these specific multi-sector leadership skills.

Additionally, this fall, Mangan will for the first time co-teach the Social Lean LaunchPad course with Haas Lecturer Jorge Calderon. The course applies the Lean LaunchPad methods and tools used to start a company to the social sector. 

In March 2016, the Center for Social Sector Leadership will roll out a new educational program for families and individuals interested in increasing their impact through philanthropy and impact investing. Open to the public, the two-day educational event will be held off campus, followed by six weeks of online work and ongoing events and educational opportunities.

The center will continue to be part of the Haas School's Institute for Business and Social Impact, led by Professor Laura Tyson.

Professor David J. Teece has received an honorary degree from the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business in Alberta, Canada, in recognition of his work as “a great management thinker and a role model for research and leadership.”

In an acceptance speech at the June 12 commencement ceremony, Teece, the Thomas W. Tusher Professor in Global Business, urged Haskayne graduates to question the status quo, citing the accomplishments of leaders as diverse as Alexander Graham Bell to Apple’s Steve Jobs.

“The beaten path in business and in life is comfortable but is fraught with mediocrity,” said Teece, who holds the Tusher Chair in Global Business at Haas. “If you stay on the well-traveled road, you will work hard to stand still. You will earn a good living because you are a University of Calgary graduate, but it will be a hard fought career, and you won’t contribute as much to society and yourself and your family as otherwise might be the case.”

This was the sixth honorary doctorate for Teece, who is also director of the recently launched Tusher Center for the Management of Intellectual Capital at Haas, and chairman and cofounder in 2010 of the Emeryville, Ca.-based Berkeley Research Group.

The June convocation ceremony adhered to the Scottish tradition, featuring bagpipes and an orator, who read aloud dramatically while introducing dignitaries throughout the ceremony.

The orator said, “in developing single-handedly the ‘dynamic capabilities’ model in strategic management, David Teece transformed the conceptual landscape of this field of inquiry, and opened vistas of illuminating possibility in strategic management studies. His breakthrough reconceptualization of innovation and technological change, and of strategic foresight and agility in the management of organizations, have engaged impressive numbers of colleagues and followers, and accrued citations and other indices of academic merit on an extraordinary scale.”

Teece’s approach to research is unconventional and multidisciplinary — melding strategy, organizational theory, and cognitive psychology. His research spans from the theory of the firm and strategic management to the economics of technological change to knowledge management, technology transfer, and antitrust economics and innovation.

“I tend to choose the most enigmatic of subject matter,” says Teece, who has been named one of the 10 most cited scholars worldwide in economics and business. “I draw on everything that my colleagues  at Haas cover and I try to make sense of it. I try to find the most challenging problems I can think of and pull the pieces together to answer fundamental questions.”

Teece holds a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, where one of his mentors was Nobel Laureate Prof. Emeritus Oliver Williamson, whom Teece was instrumental in attracting to Haas. Teece joined Haas in 1982 and teaches MBA and PhD-level courses on competitive strategy and the management of technology.

Debby Hopkins, Citi’s chief innovation officer and CEO of Citi Ventures, has been named a new Berkeley-Haas Executive Fellow.

The Berkeley-Haas executive fellow is a part-time, professional faculty position. It was created in 2007 for respected executives and thought leaders to serve as advisers to the dean, faculty, and staff, and to expose Berkeley-Haas students to executive fellows’ expertise and trailblazing ideas.

“Debby is a trailblazer, continuing to question the status quo in her industry,” says Haas School Dean Rich Lyons. “Her views on innovative leadership and social enterprise deeply resonate with our school's identity -- we're thrilled to welcome her back.”

Hopkins, who spoke at Haas as part of the Dean’s Speaker Series in 2012, said that she’s looking forward to spending time at Haas.

“I look forward to building strong ties with the Haas community and thinking together about the evolving nature of innovation and entrepreneurship in this time of incredible disruption and speed, when business as we know it is being reimagined in dramatically new ways,” says Hopkins, who started her career in Ford Finance.

Prior to joining Citi in 2003 as head of strategy, Hopkins held senior positions at Boeing, Lucent, and General Motors. She became Citi’s first chief innovation officer in 2008.

Based in Palo Alto, Hopkins says she and her team are focused on accelerating innovation at scale by leveraging the best entrepreneurial approach to drive growth at Citi and transform the future of financial services. “We are deeply invested in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, so we’re able to see critical innovation patterns in markets early,” she says. “The speed of technological change demands a different operating model, and connections to the startup world are critical to bringing that speed to Citi.”

Hopkins says she is happy she has two Haas alumni on her team: Ian Lee, MBA 05, a senior vice president, and Tanya Shadoan, MBA 95, director of marketing and communications.

Twice named by Fortune magazine as one of the most powerful women in American business, Hopkins has been named toInstitutional Investor’s Tech 50 list every year since 2011.

As an executive fellow, Hopkins joins an elite group, including Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter; John Hanke, co-founder of the product now known as Google Earth and vice president of product at Niantic Labs at Google; Guy Kawasaki, chief evangelist at Canva and formerly of Apple; Tom Kelley, general manager at IDEO in Palo Alto; and Paul Rice, founder, president and CEO at Fair Trade USA.

The University of California, Berkeley, was ranked #3 among the most Entrepreneurial Research Universities in 2015, according to a list published this month in Forbes.

In the article, which appears in the August 17 issue, Forbes noted that Berkeley-Haas has three startup incubators on campus, including SkyDeck, a joint effort of the university’s research office and its business and engineering schools. The Haas School’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship startup competition, called LAUNCH, awarded $50,000 in prizes to budding companies this year. (The 2015 LAUNCH winners included Transcense (Grand Prize); Haas student startup Xendit (runner up), DeviceFarm (Faculty Choice); and Haas student startup Optucourse (Audience Choice).

Forbes ranked the country’s most entrepreneurial schools based on the numbers of alumni and students who have identified themselves as founders and business owners on LinkedIn (adjusted to total student body size).

The magazine ranked both research universities and smaller colleges separately.

Stanford University topped the 2015 list, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at #2.

Marketers would love to get inside the consumer’s brain. And now they can. Researchers at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see if what people say about brands matches what they are actually thinking.

In their paper, “From ‘Where’ to ‘What’: Distributed Representations of Brand Associations in the Human Brain (Journal of Marketing Research: August 2015, Vol. 52, No. 4), co-authors Ming Hsu and Leif Nelson, Berkeley-Haas marketing professors, and Yu-Ping Chen, Berkeley-Haas Ph.D., used fMRI to test a classic marketing proposition that consumers associate human-like characteristics to brands. The authors say the results provide marketers with a rigorous method that they can potentially use to verify core customer insights.

“Surveys and focus groups are the work-horses for generating customer insights. They are fast, inexpensive, and offer tremendous value for marketers,” explains Hsu, who served as senior author of the study, “However, the inherent subjectivity of these measures can sometimes generate skepticism and confusion within companies, often leading to difficult conversations between managers within marketing and those outside.”

The researchers scanned the study’s participants in an fMRI machine while they viewed logos of well-known brands such as Apple, Disney, Ikea, BMW, and Nestle. After they finished the scan, the participants then took a survey that asked about the characteristics that they associated with each brand. Next, using a set of data mining algorithms, the researchers used the participants’ brain activity to predict the survey responses.

“We were able to predict participants’ survey responses solely from their brain activity,” says Chen. “That is, rather than taking participants’ word at face value, we can look to their neural signatures for validation.”

Although conducting fMRI studies on a routine basis is still likely to be cost prohibitive for most companies, the current findings point to a future where marketers can directly validate customer insights in ways that were not possible before.

“In the past, neuroscience has been providing answers to questions that marketers weren’t quite asking, and marketers were asking questions that neuroscientists didn’t have answers for,” says Prof. Nelson.

“Our research aims to close some of that gap,” adds Hsu.

See Abstract.

See full study.