By Charles Cooper

As a consultant to a bioscience startup last semester, Evening & Weekend MBA student Anita Lal developed a roadmap that outlined the different possible business paths the company could take.

In her role, Lal, EWMBA 17, (pictured) is one of seven MBA students who participated in the newly launched Startup Marketplace, a pilot program that provides Berkeley MBA students with experience working with early-stage science startups.

The Marketplace grew out of a conversation last year between Dean Rich Lyons and Joseph Guglielmo, the dean of University of California San Francisco’s School of Pharmacy, about bringing business talent to companies that are started by UCSF scientists and faculty members.

After the two talked, Abby Scott, associate director of Emerging Initiatives at Haas, was brought in to develop and oversee the new Marketplace program, which launched in September 2015.

Here’s how the Startup Marketplace works: qualified students express interest in the program and participate in a live online session—essentially a speed date—with UCSF faculty and scientists. Each side delivers brief elevator pitches.

The MBA students and scientists then rank their top choices and are matched according to their expressed interests. Students are asked to spend 10 to 20 hours during the semester on the project; Berkeley-Haas provides them with mentors, including startup advisor Deepak Gupta of the Berkeley-Haas Career Management Group (CMG) and Rhonda Shrader, the director of the Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship Program (BHEP).

“Haas students are particularly suited for this kind of collaborative, experiential learning that we are emphasizing every day in the classroom," Shrader says. "Engaging with other Bay Area schools builds meaningful relationships that serve to strengthen our entire ecosystem.”

Scott says there’s a clear demand among MBA students and scientists to work together.

“We realized that here was an opportunity to bring the sides together,” she said. “On the scientists’ side, they have had a breakthrough in their research, and they now need someone who can do something more business-related, which is where our MBAs come in.”

Most of the students who participated in the program’s launch are enrolled in the Evening & Weekend MBA program, including Lal, Andy Chen, Orian Williams, Pamela Morris, Chadwick Strange, Sydnie Reed, and Jason Chiu.

Lal, who holds a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology, served as a consultant to Alaunus Biosciences, a startup co-founded by UCSF pharmaceutical chemistry professor Charles Craik. The company has developed a profiling technology that can identify new drug targets and biomarkers for diagnostics.

Craik said that Lal’s work experience as a program manager at Siemens Healthcare and the knowledge she’s gained as an MBA student have proven valuable to the team.

Lal said the experience has been worthwhile as well. "For me, it’s just exciting to see how a startup evolves and the hurdles that it faces," she said.

Based on positive feedback from students and startups participating in the program, Haas is extending the pilot this year with a new crop of participants.
   
“We’d like to see where we can take this next,” said Scott. “In the future, we can bring together students with partners developing all kinds of different technologies. I can imagine us going to other departments, perhaps even working with incubators directly, or even moving it beyond just Berkeley.”
 

By Krysten Crawford

Of the 54,000 people who packed the Oakland Coliseum Dec. 6 to watch the Raiders play the Kansas City Chiefs, eight had an experience unlike any other.

Sitting in a suite and surrounded by a coterie of researchers— including Berkeley-Haas professors Ming Hsu and Leif Nelson, and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management's Moran Cerf and Samuel Barnett—the eight volunteers donned white skullcaps sprouting small electrodes that monitored their brain activity as they watched the football game.

The EEG tests, as they're known, were a field trial of sorts that is pushing the boundaries of a new field of neuromarketing.

Hsu, an assistant professor of marketing, and Nelson, the Ewald T. Grether Professor in Business Administration & Marketing, are pioneering the application of neuroscience to understand how consumers think and feel about companies and their product offerings.

This study originated last summer, when Brandon Doll, MBA 14, the director of strategic projects for the Oakland Raiders, read about Hsu and Nelson's groundbreaking research.

Bri Treece, MBA 14, dons a skullcap which will monitor her brain activity during the Raider's game.

A good chunk of Doll’s job involves figuring out how to make the experience of attending a football game so enjoyable that existing ticket holders stay happy and novices are converted into loyal fans.

The team often relies on marketing research tools like focus groups and social media monitoring, but a lot happens during a three-hour course of a football game. The research results can sometimes be inconsistent and statistically insignificant.

“We do a lot of surveying of our season ticket members,” says Doll, “and yet, people can have such varying degrees of experiences and can struggle to describe those experiences. It can be frustrating.”

Doll reached out to Hsu and Nelson— who had been his professor at Haas—to see if their research might be able to help delve into the minds of football fans. The professors immediately recognized a whole new avenue for their research and began planning the experiment.

Of the volunteers who agreed to suit up with the skullcaps at the Raiders game, (several who happened to be Berkeley-Haas alumni), four described themselves as diehard Raiders fans, while the other four had either never been to a live NFL game or had not attended one in at least five years.

“We wanted to create a benchmark of brain activity for loyal fans and then see if we could get casual fans’ brain activity to move closer to that of the loyal fans during the game,” Doll explained. The subjects also watched a handful of videos before the game that tested various Raiders marketing messages.

Ton Chookhare, MBA 14, suits up for the experiment.

Hsu and Doll agree that the study is just a first step in exploring the vast potential of these new methods.

For example, even seemingly minor issues, such as the inevitable waving or jumping up and down in excitement by fans, can stretch the limitations of existing recording equipment. But as these technological challenges get resolved, neuromarketing might one day help sports marketers understand the experiences that can turn a casual fan into a loyal one.

“This could one day allow us to reverse-engineer customer loyalty,” says Doll.

Hsu says that sporting events provide a great window into how experiences shape our preferences and behavior. "We see from our data that for casual fans, attendance resulted in long-lasting positive memories— not only of the event but also of the Raiders brand," he said. Traditionally marketers have had very few ways to track and measure these experiences, he adds.

"We are hoping to change that with these new neuroscientific tools.”

By Sam Zuckerman

Photo: Ori Brafman (left) and Cort Worthington (right) working with MBA students

At first glance, it might seem incongruous to find senior U.S. military officers collaborating with a couple of former-peace-activists-turned-Haas-lecturers who use "touchy-feely" exercises to teach emotional intelligence.

Yet over the past few years, as the armed forces have been wrestling with complex challenges like rooting out decentralized terror networks and running humanitarian missions, lecturers Ori Brafman, BA 93 (peace & conflct studies) and Cort Worthington, BCEMBA 08, have been traveling the country to teach nontraditional leadership techniques to some of the military's elite.

The relationship took a big step forward recently with the inauguration of the Adaptive and Agile Leadership Network Initiative, a formal partnership between Berkeley-Haas and the Washington D.C.-based National Defense University. It will begin this month, when 33 senior officers from the NDU's Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy's adaptive leadership program will be at Berkeley-Haas for the first of three seminars taught by Brafman and Worthington.

The initiative has enormous symbolic as well as practical potential, Worthington believes. "Because Berkeley and the military have historically often been viewed as seeing the world very differently, this collaboration has the potential to challenge outdated, divisive mindsets in all parts of America. It starts with connecting individuals across this artificial divide, where they discover a genuine common humanity and a shared desire for better leadership in our country.”

Worthington is a former improvisational theater instructor and parachuting US Forest Service Smokejumper who learned the value of instant collaboration, open communication, and inventiveness while on the fire line. He has been teaching leadership courses at Berkeley-Haas for eight years.

The Israeli-born Brafman is the author of several influential books, including The Starfish and the Spider, which examines why flat, decentralized groups are often more nimble and effective than top-down organizations: Like a starfish, if you cut off an arm, a new one grows in its place. Terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda have used this to great advantage.

This concept caught the attention of one the Army’s top brass, Gen. Martin Dempsey, who reached out to Brafman in 2009 and proposed that he design a program to train senior officers in network leadership principles. Brafman recalls that Dempsey, then in charge of the Army Training and Doctrine Command and later promoted to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told him, "In order to fight networks, we need to be more network-like ourselves." In response, Brafman set up The Starfish Seminar—an interactive small-group seminar—and asked Worthington to join him.

At their first session with army officers in 2010 at Fort Gordon in Georgia, Worthington says he was a bit nervous about how the group would react to their style of teaching. “We had them do touchy-feely stuff right away—improvisation exercises, talking about their feelings. They really took to it, much better than we expected. It took courage for them to do that," he recalls. Since then, they've led immersion-training sessions at military facilities around the country.

The experience has led to some interesting moments. Neither Worthington nor Brafman have family or friends in the U.S. armed services, and both have experience with peace activism—Brafman co-founded Global Peace Networks, a network of 1,000 CEOS working on conflict resolution and economic development worldwide. During a seminar in Kansas, Brafman, a vegan, once found himself at a hunting lodge sharing beers with a group of bow hunters.

This fish-out-of-water sensation was similar for the military visitors to Berkeley, who have lectured in Worthington’s Leadership and Personal Development class decked out in battle fatigues. “People on our side haven’t worked with NGOs and Berkeley people before,” says Col. Kenneth Brownell, Director for Eisenhower School’s Adaptive and Agile Leaders Network initiative.

As they've exchanged visits, they found they have more in common than they thought. Brafman and Worthington say they admire the idealism and strength of character of their military partners. And the NDU students are finding that Worthington and Brafman’s brand of improvisation exercises and emotional intelligence training has real value, Brownell says. “We do see a need to be more starfish-like. We’re looking at very complex problems and using some of Ori and Cort’s ideas. We’re learning from each other.”

The group of students studying at Haas this spring includes colonels or lieutenant colonels and their Navy equivalents, plus leaders from civilian departments such as Homeland Security. They will be joined in the seminars by an equal number of Berkeley MBA students. In addition to their coursework and exercises aimed at building adaptive leadership skills, they'll be meeting with professionals from Bay Area philanthropic, humanitarian, and environmental groups, and examining issues like veteran re-integration. As part of the partnership, Berkeley-Haas will also serve as a hub for involvement from other academic institutions and the Silicon Valley community in the study of adaptive leadership.

The partnership, which is housed within the Institute for Business and Social Impact, will also "encourage research to better understand how to build a distributed network of military leaders, business leaders, academics, and non-governmental organizations," according to the memorandum of understanding. 

Mike Christman, MBA 16, a former Marine Corps attack helicopter pilot and Afghanistan war veteran, worked as Worthington and Brafman’s graduate student instructor this year and helped bridge the cultural gap between Haas and its military partners. It has been a gratifying experience, he says. “Getting those two bubbles to mix is really important,” he says. “A lot of stereotypes on both sides break down. Everybody has the goals of solving big problems and making the world better.”

By Krysten Crawford

Nobel Prize Laureate and Berkeley-Haas Prof. Emeritus Oliver Williamson received the Global Economy Prize Feb. 2 from the Kiel Institute for World Affairs in Germany.

The Kiel Institute, one of Europe’s top think tanks devoted to economics, recognized Williamson for his lifelong work in economics.

The institute noted that Williamson opted out of a secure career as an engineer to study economics.

His groundbreaking work in the field led to a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009.

“With his insights into transaction costs and business mergers, [Williamson] made a significant contribution to the emergence of new competition policy,” said Dennis Snower, president of the Kiel Institute, in a statement. “Thanks to him, we now have much more effective regulation, which benefits society as a whole.”

“Oliver Williamson's work is both pioneering and profound," Dean Rich Lyons said. “He’s created a lifelong body of work that continues to carry influence in economics, law, and government. And as if that weren't enough, he's one of the best all-around people I know. We're lucky to have him as a colleague and a friend."

Since 2005, the Kiel Institute has hailed three global leaders annually in the categories of business, politics, and science for their creativity and daring in coming up with solutions to many of the world’s biggest problems. The two other honorees this year were Italy’s former Prime Minister Mario Monti for politics and German publisher Friede Springer for business.

Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, and Harvard President Emeritus Lawrence Summers are among past honorees.

"I am very honored to receive this prize in global economics. It was unexpected," Williamson said. "I am especially pleased that my students and other researchers have found so many empirical applications of my framework of transaction cost economics."

Williamson, 83, is credited with coining the term “new institutional economics” in 1975, when he was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He later taught at Yale University before moving in 1988 to Berkeley, where he has held professorships in business administration, economics, and law. Williamson, who earned his MBA from Stanford University in 1960 and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 1963, is now the Edgar F. Kaiser Professor Emeritus at Haas.

The Global Economy Prize is just the latest in a long string of accolades for Williamson.

On top of his Nobel Prize, Williamson has been awarded 13 honorary degrees. He’s served as a Fulbright Professor, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Distinguished Senior U.S. Scientist, among other notable positions. He’s also received numerous prizes and written six books, including “The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting.”

A ceremony honoring the Global Economy Prize winners will be held in June in Kiel, Germany.

Joyful tears, student and faculty awards, an Air Force Major participating remotely from Africa, and a "love letter" played key roles in the graduation last Saturday of a class of 69 students in the Berkeley MBA for Executives Program.

About 450 people gathered at Zellerbach Hall for the graduation ceremonies, which included opening remarks from Dean Rich Lyons and a special honor for Distinguished Teaching Fellow, Maura O’Neill, BCMBA 04, who received the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching.

O’Neill, a serial entrepreneur and investor, worked as President Obama’s Chief Innovation Officer in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has started four companies, and guided innumerable others.  She is also a graduate of the BCEMBA program, and increasingly committed to teaching at Haas, where she taught New Venture Finance and Advanced New Venture Finance to the graduating EMBA class.

Cheit Award recipient for excellence in teaching Maura O'Neill (center) with Dean Lyons and Jay Stowsky, senior assistant dean of instruction

"We are lucky to have her"

Mike Rielly, assistant dean and executive director of the Berkeley MBA for Executives Program, said O’Neill’s contributions in and out of the classroom are remarkable.

“Maura brings a special blend of academic theory and real-world credibility, teaches from a place of encouragement and empowerment, and has been so incredibly helpful to our students on matters ranging from personal and professional advice to negotiating new venture terms,” he said. “We are lucky to have her at Berkeley-Haas and teaching so regularly in the EMBA program.”

Accounting Lecturer Suneel Udpa received the first Berkeley-Haas Lifetime Achievement Award, a new honor championed by the graduating EMBA class.

“His love of teaching is infectious and his love for students is deeply felt,” said Jay Stowsky, senior assistant dean of instruction. “He has transformed the way students think and made them better, more well-rounded individuals.” In a touching slideshow, Udpa, who is currently not able to speak due to recent surgery, shared a few humorous life lessons with the students.

In his commencement speech, entrepreneur Jon Sebastiani, BCEMBA 11, noted that Berkeley-Haas business leaders leave the school with a sense of shared responsibility.

Commencement speaker Jon Sebastiani

“It was at Berkeley-Haas that my main focus and concern shifted from one of helping 'me, me' to one of contributing to the 'us, us,''' said Sebastiani, who recently launched Sonoma Brands, an incubator that will develop new consumer packaged foods brands. Sebastiani founded Krave Jerky while at Haas, and last year sold it to Hershey.

Questioning the status quo

Student speaker Karin Lion, EMBA 15, read a “love letter,” thanking classmates for helping her to question her own status quo. “It was in this challenging of myself and opening up to you where I discovered my self-confidence, to appreciate my authentic self in all its flaws, to view my mistakes as humbling lessons, to take risks, to hone and own my vision.”

Class president and valedictorian Richard Wilson shared the personal sacrifices and the endurance required to successfully complete and thrive in the EMBA program.

Karin Lion, student commencement speaker, with Richard Wilson, class president and valedictorian

While noting the importance of pushing perceived personal limits, he acknowledged the key role that families, fellow students, and work colleagues played in this transformational experience.

Richard concluded: "This is a time to remind ourselves of what’s important...remember who we are and be glad for who we have become. Let’s reconnect and get ready for our next journey."

Students Honored

Rielly and Jamie Breen, EMBA’s director of strategic planning and operations, presented the annual Berkeley-Haas Defining Principles Awards:

Question The Status Quo: Karin Lion
Confidence Without Attitude: Robert Ford and Matthew Estes
Students Always: Min Xiao
Beyond Yourself: Lucky Sandhu
The Fifth Principle, an award unique to EMBA, for students who embody all four defining principles and choose graciousness in every area of their lives: Sean Campbell and Julia Felts

At the ceremony’s end came a touching surprise.

Major Eric Shanley joins graduates by Skype

US Air Force Major Eric Shanley, who was deployed to Africa last November, appeared on a large screen, joining the group by Skype to receive his degree from Dean Lyons.

Shanley, who received a standing ovation, congratulated and thanked the Class of 2015.

Carrie Dolan, an influential financial leader and advocate for women in finance who managed Lending Club’s record $1 billion public offering, will give the commencement address at the combined Full-time and Evening and Weekend MBA Program graduation.

Commencement will be held May 20 at the Greek Theatre.

Dolan, BS 87 and MBA 97, joined Lending Club in 2010 as its first CFO and helped build the company into the world’s largest online marketplace connecting borrowers and investors.

In an interview with industry publication American Banker, Dolan recalled that when a recruiter first called her about the position, she wasn't entirely sure what peer-to-peer lending was. But she did her research, met with company CEO Renaud Laplanche, and ended up convinced. "My gut feeling was that this business model would change financial services,"she said. "So I decided to take a risk.”

That risk paid off. Dolan has received a growing number of accolades in recent years from leading financial organizations.

In 2013 and 2014, she was named the Bay Area CFO of the Year for Emerging Companies by the San Francisco Business Times, which honored her as a leader who advises women seeking to advance their careers.

In 2015, the Financial Woman of San Francisco named Dolan Financial Woman of the Year, for demonstrating remarkable commitment to her profession, service to her community, and support for the advancement of women.

And last September, American Banker named her one of  "The Most Powerful Women in Finance.” The list recognizes women who have been the most impactful across the financial industry.

"At Haas we have a tradition of inviting our most distinguished alumni to speak at commencement, and Carrie Dolan certainly fits that bill,” said Dean Rich Lyons. “In her willingness to take a risk, break into an emerging industry, and support the advancement of women in finance, she has truly embodied our Defining Principles.”

Over the past five years, Dolan has shepherded Lending Club’s revenue growth from $2 million in 2010 to $81 million by 2015. In December 2014, she managed Lending Club’s IPO, one of the top 10 U.S.-based Internet public offerings of all time. The company raised $1 billion, a first for a peer-to-peer lender.

Prior to Lending Club, Dolan was senior vice president and treasurer for the Charles Schwab and CFO for the Schwab Bank, which she helped launch in 2003. Earlier in her career, she held various financial positions at Chevron, where she launched the Chevron Credit Bank to simplify Chevron’s credit card business.

Dolan is a member of Financial Executives International (FEI), CNBC's CFO Council, and Watermark's CFO network.

Pop culture assets like Star Wars, Taylor Swift, and the NBA not only contribute to ramping up American appeal, they also increase demand for American goods abroad.

Economists call this “soft power,” the ability to attract and positively influence others. Even though countries tend to wield “hard power” by flexing their economic or military strength, a new study found that countries admired for their soft power tend to sell more exports in the global marketplace.

“Countries are always concerned about their image, but the soft power effect has a very tangible commercial payoff.  Germany is a much-admired country and an export powerhouse; North Korea and Iran are pariah states and both find it difficult to export goods,” says Andrew Rose, the study’s author and a professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Rose holds the Bernard T. Rocca, Jr. Chair in International Business & Trade.

In his working paper, “Like me, buy me: The effect of soft power on exports,” Rose studied the period between 2006 and 2013 and found that a 1% net increase in soft power raises exports by about 0.8%.  Rose says this responsiveness means that the monetary return to soft power can be immense.  

The study tracks trade data for over 200 countries using the International Monetary Fund’s Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS). The data set includes flows between pairs of countries for both exports and imports. Rose also factored in regional trade agreements from the World Trade Organization.

While soft power can be a driving force in international trade, so are other ubiquitous influences such as population, GDP, and political elections. In order to control for them, Rose incorporated these so-called “fixed effects” in his econometric model.

“Any influence, whether it is economic, social, political or cultural, that affects a country’s ability to export in a given year is swept away by these fixed effects, as are all effects on a country’s desire to import,” Rose explains. 

But how do economists measure soft power?

In 2006, a BBC World Service/GlobeScan poll asked people in 33 countries what they thought about different countries—China, Britain, Russia, the United States, India, Japan, and Iran, France, and other countries in Europe—and whether these countries had a “mainly positive or mainly negative” influence in the world. The survey continues to be conducted annually. Today, the survey covers 17 countries and engages participants from 46 countries. The result: a quantitative measure of soft power.  

Among nations, the United States is typically viewed as possessing the most soft power, though perceptions vary greatly from country to country. In 2013, only 17% of Russians considered American influence mainly positive, compared to 82% of Ghanaians.

The analysis also found that soft power changes vary over time. For example, Mexican positive perception of the U.S. rose from 10% in 2006 to 41% in 2013. Over the same period, French positive perception increased from 25% to 52%, while Brazilians’ increased from 33% to 59%.

Similarly, over the same seven years, positive views of China decreased substantially in Spain and Germany while remaining rather constant in Indonesia and Kenya.  Negative views toward China increased the most in Russia and Brazil.

U.S. and Chinese trade were but two examples in which exports correlated with their respective degrees of soft power.

Furthermore, the most negatively viewed countries—Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, and Israel—also saw fewer exports than they would if they had more positive influence in the world, according to Rose’s analysis.

—By Pamela Tom

Muscular men perceived to be better leaders than physically weak ones

Forget intelligence or wisdom. A muscular physique might just be a more important attribute when it comes to judging a person’s leadership potential.

Take Arnold Schwarzenegger whose past popularity was a result of his physical prowess as a “Mr. Universe” bodybuilder. In the 2003’s historic recall election, the physically imposing Schwarzenegger easily defeated California Governor Gray Davis who is arguably weaker looking than “The Terminator.”

Coincidence? Maybe. But now there is also real evidence that physical strength matters.

Study participants in a series of experiments conducted by Cameron Anderson, a professor of management at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and Aaron Lukaszewski, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University, overwhelmingly equated physical strength with higher status and leadership qualities. The paper, “The role of physical formidability in human social status allocation,” is forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The experiments first measured the strength of various men using a handheld, hydraulic Dynamometer that measures chest and arm strength in kilograms or pounds.  After being rated on strength, each man was photographed from the knees up in a white tank shirt to reveal his shoulder, chest, and arm muscles. This way, researchers were able to control for reactions to height and attire rather than strength.

In one experiment, groups of men and women—about 50-50—were shown photographs of the different men on a computer screen. Before the participants saw the photos, they were told that they would be rating people who had been recently hired by a new consulting firm. The participants were asked to rate each subject on how much they admired him, held him in esteem, and believed he would rise in status. They were also asked questions such as, “Do you think this person would be a good leader?” and “How effective is this person dealing with other in a group?”

“The physically strong men in the pictures were given higher status because they are perceived as leaders,” says Anderson. “Our findings are consistent with a lot of real examples of strong men in positions of power.”

But how did the researchers know that participants weren’t simply equating strength with physical attractiveness, also known as a predictor of high social status? The researchers distinguished between the two by asking participants to also rate the photos on “overall physical attractiveness.”  

In another experiment, to further test their results, the researchers used Photoshop to switch the bodies of the strong and weak subjects. For example, a weak man’s head was depicted on a strong man’s body, and vice versa.  The result: participants rated the weak men with stronger, superimposed bodies higher in status and leadership qualities.

The final experiment focused on the height factor. Using Photoshop again, the researchers photographed the men in three different lineups. From right to left: 1) two tall men and two short men; 2) two short men and two tall men; and 3) four men of equal height. In all, each subject was manipulated so he appeared short, tall, and of equal height to the other men in the lineup. The participants’ responses indicated that men of taller stature were perceived to have more strength; as in the other experiments, stronger subjects were rated higher in leadership and status.

The researchers say their findings also dispel the popular explanation that the strong succeed by aggressively intimidating their rivals into submission. 

"Strong men who were perceived as being likely to behave aggressively toward other group members were actually granted less status than their apparently gentler counterparts,” says Prof. Lukaszewski. “Together, the results suggest that the conferral of status upon formidable men, perhaps counter-intuitively, serves a fundamentally pro-social function -- to enhance the effectiveness of cooperation within the group."

This phenomenon apparently applies to men only. There was little effect on participants’ perception of leadership skills when they were shown physically strong vs. weak women.

So, do smaller, shorter, or less formidable men have to work harder to gain status? Not necessarily.

“Perceived strength does give people an advantage but it’s not make or break,” says Prof. Anderson. “If you’re behaving in ways that demonstrate you are a leader or are not a leader, strength doesn’t matter.”

Cameron Anderson is the Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Chair in Leadership and Communication II and a member of the Haas Management of Organizations Group.

—By Pamela Tom

After a year of internships, research projects, teamwork, and collaboration, the class of 68 students in the Berkeley Master of Financial Engineering Program will graduate March 18.

David Booth, (pictured) co-founder, chairman, and co-CEO of Dimensional Fund Advisors, will deliver the commencement address. The program begins at 10 a.m. in Andersen Auditorium.

Booth, who serves on the Investment Company Institute’s Board of Governors, is known for his pioneering work in applying financial theory to the practical world of asset management. The winner of numerous awards, he ranks seventh on MutualFundWire’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in mutual funds. In 2010, InvestmentNews named him among "The Power 20" in the financial services industry.

Honors to be presented to the students, alumni, and faculty at commencement include the Defining Principles Awards; the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, presented to an MFE faculty member; and the $5,000 Morgan Stanley Applied Finance Project Award, given to the group of students that complete the best applied finance project, a key component of the MFE program.

Students from the Class of 2016, who hail from 16 countries, have been placed in internships around the world, working in industries including hedge funds, investment and commercial banking, asset management, and financial services. Employers included Barclay's, Citadel, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Sun Trading, and BlackRock.

 “Our students excel not only throughout the MFE program but also in their post-graduation careers,” said Linda Kreitzman, assistant dean and executive director of the MFE program. “Top-flight internships and our full-time placement record are critical to our program and we work to place one student at a time. We take that responsibility very seriously.”

Craig Dana, who also received a PhD in chemical engineering from Berkeley in 2013, will join Barclays’ quantitative analytics group in New York, where he completed his MFE internship. The Empirical Methods in Finance course taught by Prof. Martin Lettau proved particularly useful during his internship, he says.

“I generated quantitative models for the bank and was able to apply concepts from this class directly to my internship work,” Dana said. The model was presented to Barclays’ chief risk officer and may become part of the bank’s suite of risk models, he said.

The MFE Program graduates about 70 students each year. For the Class of 2015, 98 percent of students received offers, and 95 percent accepted offers. The class had average starting salaries of $155,288, with $25,000 average sign-ons and $48,603 average year-end bonuses and other compensation.

Last year, the program ranked #2 in both the TFE Times' 2016 Master of Financial Engineering Programs Rankings and the 2015 QuantNet Rankings.

Berkleley-Haas and the Center for Financial Reporting & Management (CFRM) are rolling out a new summer accounting program to the public that makes meeting the state Certified Public Accounting exam requirements a little easier.

The Berkeley Charter of Professional Accountancy (BCPA) will be offered starting this May. Through the evening program, students will earn 30 units in accounting-related coursework, a requirement for taking the CPA exam.

The program is open to UC Berkeley students, staff, alumni, and anyone who is interested in pursuing a career in accounting, finance, or consulting, said program director Jose Plehn-Dujowich, (pictured) who designed the BCPA with other UC Berkeley and Haas accounting professors. April 1, 2016, is the deadline to apply.

A total of 60 students will be admitted; the classes will be taught by award-winning Berkeley-Haas accounting professors and will be held on the Haas campus.  

The evening program may be particularly attractive to undergraduates, who typically earn only 120 units of the 150 units required by the State of California to qualify for the CPA exam. The BCPA summer courses are an alternative way to earn the extra 30 units—other than enrolling in a master’s degree in accounting, Plehn-Dujowich said.

“We’ve come up with a program that’s a fraction of the price of a master’s degree that students can complete during summers,” said Plehn-Dujowich, who serves as director of the Center for Financial Reporting and Management. “This program is just a great fit if a student is interested in accounting, finance, or consulting as a profession.”

Some of the program benefits include one-on-one career advising, early access to recruiters, networking events, visits to Bay Area accounting firms, and an evening class schedule.

The cost for each summer session will be $11,000, or $20,000 for both summers. Students may apply financial aid or merit-based scholarships (for students with a GPA of 3.5 or higher). Students who have already taken some of the BCPA courses at Haas will receive a discount on the cost of the program.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, and Grant Thornton are among the accounting companies providing scholarships. As the program moves forward, directors will work closely with recruiters from the big accounting firms, who start considering students for internships during their freshman and sophomore years, Plehn-Dujowich said.

Classes offered during the first summer session include Intro to Financial Accounting, Intro to Managerial Accounting, Intermediate Financial Accounting, and Financial Reporting and Valuation. The second summer session will include Intermediate Financial Accounting II, Advanced Financial Accounting, Federal Income Tax, and Auditing..

For more information contact bcpa@berkeley.edu.

By Krysten Crawford

The second session of Philanthropy University kicks off today, building on last year’s strong debut of the free, online course program designed for those working in the social sector.

After launching six months ago, more than 200,000 people worldwide have enrolled in free online courses offered through Philanthropy University.

“Everybody was floored by the overwhelming response,” says Ben Mangan, executive director of the Center for Social Sector Leadership, which oversees the Berkeley-Haas partnership with Philanthropy University.  “There is an unbelievable unmet demand for this kind of resource in the social sector.”

Over the next eight weeks, enrollees can choose from seven classes that together provide top-notch professional training in leadership skills, organizational management, financing, and the scaling up of social impact organizations. Students who complete all seven courses earn a certificate in social sector leadership from Berkeley-Haas.

Philanthropy University classes, known as massive open online courses or MOOCs, are taught by renowned experts in the field of social impact, among them Paul Brest, former president of the Hewlett Foundation; Jessica Jackley, co-founder of peer-to-peer micro-lending site Kiva; and Shashi Buluswar, (pictured) an international consultant and instructor at Berkeley-Haas.

The Philanthropy University initiative was envisioned by His Excellency Amr Al-Dabbagh, chairman and CEO of Al-Dabbagh Group, a global business based in Saudi Arabia.  He founded  Philanthropy U as part of the company’s giving activities. Prof. Laura Tyson, director of the Haas Institute for Business & Social Impact, is a member of Philanthropy University’s advisory board.

Philanthropy University is a non-degree, diploma, or credit granting non-profit initiative sponsored by Philanthropy U, Inc. Learners do not receive college or other academic credit.
 

By Charles Cooper
 
As Chris Hulls, BS 06, watched the chaos that unfolded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, an idea for a new kind of business emerged.

Hulls’ idea—which was the kernel for startup Life360—was to create some sort of location sharing application so people could locate each other in the thick of an emergency.

“I thought that mobile could be a real use of technology to help families stay connected,” he said.

In an entrepreneurship class at Berkeley-Haas, Hulls wrote his business plan for a web-based system to allow families to prepare for emergencies. He developed and tested the idea at the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation's entrepreneurship lab, a business incubator for startups.

More than 80 million families registered

Seven years later, Life360 is a growing startup tucked away in 55,000-square-foot building in the the tech corridor on Market Street, which also happens to be Twitter’s first San Francisco headquarters.

The company makes a free location-sharing mobile phone app that helps families and friends keep track of one another through private “circles” that display each member’s whereabouts on a smartphone map. In 2014, the company got a big boost, through a partnership and $25 million investment from home security giant ADT.

Life360's CEO Chris Hulls (left) and Chief Business Officer Itamar Novick 

While it’s still considered an early-growth-stage company, over 80 million families have registered with the service since its founding in 2008. The venture capital community has also taken notice, pouring slightly more than $76 million into the company.

Hulls, who grew up in Marin, joined the air force after high school and also served a tour of duty in Afghanistan as a member of a C-130 team. But he was always interested in starting a business. After finishing his stint in the service, Hulls returned to the Bay Area with the intention of getting a degree at Berkeley and eventually becoming an entrepreneur.

“This is in my blood,” Hulls said. “I’m a business-y guy.”

"A real impact on peoples' lives"

While growing the business, CEO Hulls tapped his Haas network to strengthen management ranks, connecting with Itamar Novick, MBA 12, now the company’s chief business officer. A native of Israel, Novick was working as a senior associate at Morgenthaler Ventures while he was finishing his MBA at Haas. Mark Goines, MBA 76, an angel investor in Life360, introduced Novick to Hulls. Novick said he was intrigued by the company and wanted to wait for the right opening.

“I love that Life360 makes a real impact on people's lives, keeping families safe and connected when they are apart,” said Novick.

After graduating from Haas, Novick helped put together a group of investors to buy out a co-founder who was leaving the company. He joined in 2012 as an employee and stakeholder.

Hulls says they make an effective team. “If you have him take on a project he will grind it down in a piece by piece like a woodpecker until he wins," he said. "I'm probably a bit more creative but also a lot more erratic. So we are a good combo.”

Novick said he draws on his education often while helping to run Life360.

“I don’t think that I could have been effective in my job without going through the Haas experience,” he added. "Haas helped me to really think about innovation and new business opportunities and quantify them. All those tools that I learned were invaluable in helping me reach where I am today."

With Haas partnership, Colombian multinational takes the lead on building an inclusive, sustainable culture

Colombia-based industrial conglomerate Grupo Argos broke new ground as the first company in Latin America to name a woman as board chairman. The $4 billion multinational also extended the length of maternity leaves, adopted flexible policies to accommodate work-family balance, and hired more women into traditionally male-dominated roles—from managing IT to driving cement mixers.

Now the cement, real estate, and energy conglomerate has embarked on a top-to-bottom culture overhaul, and has partnered with Berkeley-Haas to bring science and practice into their vision. The multi-year partnership includes training, sharing of leadership expertise, and mentorship through the UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education (CEE) and Berkeley-Haas.

The partnership is one of many custom and open-enrollment programs CEE offers around the globe, but the program is unique because of the sweeping vision of Grupo Argos' CEO: to not only make the company a leader in inclusivity, but to influence the region's broader business culture.

"We hope to develop a model of leadership that encourages equal opportunities for promotion and development," says CEO José Alberto Vélez. "Additionally, this program supports the creation of a collective consciousness about the respect for differences, a principle that is consistent with our corporate culture."

Last August, Grupo Argos flew in 55 female managers from its holding company and subsidiaries throughout the Americas and abroad to Berkeley for an immersive course on equitable leadership with Prof. Laura Kray and Assoc. Prof. Dana Carney.

On April 4, Kray and Carney will travel to Grupo Argos headquarters in Medellin to teach a week-long follow-up course to the same group of women. It's an unusual opportunity, Kray says: she's taught variations of the equitable leadership course many times, but never to such a large group of women from the same organization.

Assoc. Prof. Dana Carney & Prof. Laura Kray

"They were sent here together and given this time to do this work. That was part of the magic," she says of the Berkeley course. "There were a lot of women who said they came in with doubts about the work-life tradeoff and doubts about themselves as leaders. They came out saying they are equal to men as leaders, they bring unique skills to the workplace, and it's worth the sacrifice to stay in the game."

In addition to the focus on gender equity, the Berkeley-Haas/Grupo Argos partnership also emphasizes innovation and sustainability. The company's full board convened in Berkeley last October for courses on innovation with Prof. Toby Stuart and adaptive leadership—which emphasizes techniques to lead in fluid, uncertain situations—with Sr. Lecturer Homa Bahrami. 

Latin American women have moved into the workforce in record numbers, yet they are still largely shut out of leadership roles: women occupy 5.6 percent of board seats in the region's 100 largest companies—the lowest of any world region except the Middle East—and serve as CEOs of less than 2 percent of the 500 biggest companies, according to an analysis by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas.

Colombia is the leader among Latin American companies in terms of women moving into leadership roles, and the Grupo Argos subsidiary Cementos Argos stands out as the country's equal opportunity trailblazer, becoming the first firm in the country to receive a gender equality certification from the United Nations Development Program.

The recognition is especially notable since the conglomerate grew out of the solidly male-dominated cement industry before diversifying into four other sectors in 17 countries, including the US. Although 63% of the 100 employees in the Grupo Argos holding company are women, just 13 percent of the 9,000 Cementos Argos workers are women. 

Jorge Perez, senior director of talent and culture at Cementos Argos says the company has set a goal to reach 30 percent women by 2025.

"This isn't a topic that is only interesting for women, but for everyone," says Perez, who also attended part of the Berkeley course with Kray and Carney. "We hope to plan a similar course for men soon."

The next reality TV celebrity may not be a desperate housewife or a wannabe chef, but an aspiring entrepreneur with an idea that could be the next big thing in Internet-enabled gadgetry—thanks to a little help from Haas mentors.

The new series “America’s Greatest Makers," from the creator of “Survivor,” “The Voice,” and “Shark Tank” in conjunction with Intel, debuts on Tuesday, April 5 on the TBS cable channel and online. It pits 24 teams of inventors against each other in a $1 million competition to develop a wearable or smart device using the Intel Curie—a button-sized computer designed for wearable tech.

The contestants got a crash course in business fundamentals from Andre Marquis, Executive Director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, along with Lester Center Senior Fellow Mark Searle. “We taught the makers the same principles we teach at Haas—how to run a lean startup and solve real problems for real customers,” Marquis says.

Marquis and Searle, along with Elizabeth Saunders, a program manager at the UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education, spent time with the teams in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where the show was filmed from November through late February.

Marquis says they taught contestants to build on the frameworks pioneered by Lecturer Steve Blank in his Lean LaunchPad course at Berkeley-Haas. Those principles are now used in programs with the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Innovation Corps, and have been embraced not only by by startup entrepreneurs but also corporate innovators.

Berkeley-Haas has a deep history of working with Intel to cultivate entrepreneurs, partnering on both the Intel Global Challenge, an annual competition that ran from 2005 to 2014, and the Intel Make It Wearable competition. Marquis says their work on the show also "helps Intel build the pipeline of innovation for the Curie Module."

“America’s Greatest Makers” contestants range in age from 15 to 59 years. A panel of celebrity judges, including NBA star Shaquille O’Neal and “The Big Bang Theory” actress and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik, will winnow down the teams each week and pick the $1 million winner.

Among the products that will be featured are a collar that stops dogs from running away, a wearable device that helps with stroke rehabilitation, and a device to create a new bike-sharing economy.

“It's going to be a mesmerizing show. I hope all our aspiring Berkeley-Haas innovators and entrepreneurs get a chance to watch it,” Marquis says.

This article is part of a series called Classified, in which we spotlight some of the more powerful lessons faculty are teaching in Haas classrooms.

Peter Goodson entered Cheit 110 on a recent drizzly Wednesday morning, ready to teach students the good, the bad, and the ugly of how mergers and acquisitions really get done. More importantly, he offered lessons in creating value, instead of destroying it, as many deals do.  

“Any fool with money can buy a business,” says Goodson, a mergers & acquisitions veteran and Berkeley-Haas finance lecturer for over a decade. “This course is more about enhancing strategy and executing operational improvements to create value than teaching lessons in how to squander your own capital.”

The two topics that day included “Takeover Tussle,” which involved a hypothetical hostile bid by Oracle for Salesforce, and a case on buyer due diligence, which forced students to dig behind the scenes, questioning former disgruntled employees to find the truth about a seller.

The takeover scene is a meeting of Oracle directors, with some students taking on the role of company advisers presenting their case to the board. The rest of the class acted as directors. The first student to address the fictitious board didn’t get very far into his presentation before Goodson jumped in with a critique.

“Never go into a board meeting where you don’t intelligently compliment your audience in some way at the opening,” he said. “Realize that you have already met each director and have the total vote count in your pocket. Don’t read the (PowerPoint) slides. Synthesize what is important to the decision at hand. You must kindle an interchange with the audience that forces you to think on your feet.”  

One presenter after another was challenged. “You’re role-playing as the board of directors— you don’t raise your hand. It’s demeaning,” Goodson insisted when the opportunity came to ask audience questions. Get to your point faster, he urged another student. “Insightful economy of words matters in leadership.”

Goodson’s bona fides run deep. He founded the M&A group at Kidder, Peabody at age 26 and later negotiated the investment bank’s $600 million sale to General Electric. Goodson’s perspective is shaped from his experience as lead advisor to hundreds of big M&A deals, but also as an owner/acquirer of many companies.  He was an early-stage partner at the influential private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, which acquired more than 65 companies valued at a combined $100 billion over 40 years. The firm is most noted for value creation, with famous CEO partners including GE’s Jack Welch.

Goodson, now retired, teaches an elective M&A value creation course for Full-Time MBA’s and Evening & Weekend MBAs and a summer block turnaround leadership course for EWMBA and EMBA students aimed to show aspiring management consultants, investment bankers, top executive candidates, and CEOs the art of “change agency.”

He also co-teaches a course in private equity centered on investing, ownership, and value creation.

An insider’s approach

Few students show up to Goodson’s classes short on caffeine. Nor do they arrive expecting to dissect spreadsheets or textbook theories.  

They come instead to get a glimpse of the real world—no matter how uncomfortable the view or how challenging the required deliverable may be. “Peter’s not one for a lot of unnecessary fluff,” says Aleksey Lakhchakov, MBA 16, and the class graduate school instructor. “He tells it like it is.”

This approach is just one reason why Goodson is so highly valued by Berkeley-Haas and its students, who have awarded him the Cheit Outstanding Teaching award multiple times. “There’s this idea that most business classes are management by spreadsheets,” says Travis Dziubla, MBA 16. “Peter’s class is a refreshing example of managing by working with people.”

William Rindfuss, executive director of strategic programs in the Haas Finance Group, calls Goodson “institutionally important” to the school. “Peter is a walking M&A history.”

Berkeley-Haas Dean Rich Lyons has introduced Goodson as “the master of tough love and real-world decision-making.” “What students soon realize is that he has a passion for their improvement. Somehow he seems to reach each student, every term, providing inspiration and an invaluable tool kit for their career advancement.”

Asking the right questions

Goodson's tone, at times sharp, will quickly turn supportive. Highly animated, he gleefully fist-bumps students and peppers his lesson with anecdotes from his own experiences.

His lectures include references to “The Big Short” and other Hollywood movies that eviscerate Wall Street—and he pleads with students to challenge him. “He loves that level of engagement,” says Jen Fischer, MBA 16, who openly questioned a strategy Goodson suggested during the “Takeover Tussle” class.

Fischer (pictured) and another classmate, Zara Khan, MBA 16, decided at the start of the course that they would work together to challenge Goodson whenever they felt the urge. He worships push-back and often says “don’t come to class unless you have a solution or a decision viewpoint. We all read the case and don’t agree with me out of pity if I am wrong.”

Says Khan: “You don’t take Goodson’s class if you want to find answers. You take it if you want to learn how to identify and ask the right questions.”

The Oracle/Salesforce "Takeover Tussle" exercise was a case in point: on the topic of gathering information on what any other potential bidders might do and whether top Salesforce performers were likely to bolt after a takeover, Goodson was unequivocal: covert intelligence- gathering is a must, even if it means pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable by hanging out at coffee shops near Salesforce or the headquarters of other potential bidders.

And so it went for three hours. Goodson made clear his disdain for today’s acquisition prices (“We live in a bubble.”), key players (“Sellers lie. Their advisers lie.”), and the buzzwords used to justify deals (“What does ‘synergy’ mean, anyway?”). Then he urged students to find value anomalies using judgment, leadership, operating improvement understanding, and creative negotiating skills to seek out deals where "you see potential others cannot envision."

“Doing deals is easy, but it is a fool’s game,” he said. “Your job is to get to the truth.  Discover, if you can, how to strategically and operationally make a business you acquire substantially better and more valuable before you blow a fortune buying it.  Otherwise you are the definition of the 'winner’s curse.'"

Less can be more when it comes to manufacturers and the number of business-to-business relationships they maintain.

Doing business with a limited number of major customers allows manufacturers to hold fewer inventories for a shorter time, according to new research by Panos N. Patatoukas, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Patatoukas says inventories comprise a significant part of a firm’s assets — as much as 25 percent for the average manufacturer — and can be costly and risky to hold as inventories can become obsolete. 

“The matching between suppliers and customers is a bit like dating. When a supplier firm in the manufacturing sector develops a focused, long-term relationship with a major customer, both parties tend to benefit by choosing each other,” says Patatoukas.

The study, “Customer-Base Concentration and Inventory Efficiencies: Evidence from the Manufacturing Sector,” co-authored by Patatoukas and B. Korcan Ak, a Berkeley-Haas PhD candidate, was published in the February issue of Production and Operations Management.

Manufacturing firms typically record three types of inventories: raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished goods. The supplier-customer relationship is centered on the transfer of ownership of finished goods.

In order to examine the link between customer-base concentration and inventory efficiencies, Patatoukas and Ak analyzed more than 15,000 annual reports of U.S. manufacturers over a 30-year period obtained from filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Using text-mining algorithms, the researchers were able to get insights about the drivers of inventory efficiencies.

Suppliers with fewer customers also enjoy better collaboration with their major customers, the study finds. In essence, their co-dependency fosters more information sharing that facilitates better demand forecasting and more efficient production planning.

The findings also build upon Patatoukas’ previous research that found a concentrated customer base benefits the manufacturer’s value to stock market investors.

“Investors appear to consider relationships with a limited number of major customers as a plus for firm valuation and are willing to pay a higher premium for manufacturers with more concentrated customer bases,” says Patatoukas.

The case of Walmart and its relationships with its dependent suppliers exemplifies the study’s findings.

“You may think of Walmart as this big, evil behemoth that is more likely to squeeze its dependent suppliers,” says Patatoukas. “The study, however, illustrates how a dependent supplier doing business with a major customer like Walmart may actually do well in terms of inventory management through enhanced collaboration along the supply chain.”

Patatoukas hopes that by combining accounting and operations management research, the study will provide new managerial insights about inventory management and firm value creation.

See Abstract.

Finance Prof. Ulrike Malmendier has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the country’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers.

Malmendier, the Edward J. and Mollie Arnold Professor of Finance at the Haas School of Business and a UC Berkeley professor of economics, is known for her groundbreaking insights into how the personality traits of business leaders influence corporate strategies.

“It’s such an honor to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a wonderful career milestone,” Malmendier said. “I am proud to be in the company of such a prestigious group of scholars, musicians, writers, artists, and politicians."

Malmendier was one of nine UC Berkeley faculty members elected to the academy this year.

To date, Malmendier has received numerous honors as a pioneer in the field of behavioral economics, including the prestigious Fischer Black Prize for the Top Finance Scholar under 40 in 2013, and the 2015 Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in her native Germany.

She also receiveed the UC Berkeley 2015 Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest teaching honor the university bestows.

With her election to the academy this year she joins the novelist Colm Tóibín, La Opinión Publisher and CEO Monica Lozano, jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter, former Botswana President Festus Mogae, and author and spokesperson for autism Temple Grandin.

Berkeley scholars have long been pioneers in behavioral economics, starting with Nobel laureates George Akerlof and Daniel Kahneman and carrying on with Haas professors incuding Terrance Odean and Malmendier, who joined the Berkeley-Haas faculty in 2010.

“This is the birthplace of behavioral finance; Berkeley invented it,” Malmendier said.

Malmendier has produced a series of path-breaking papers with colleagues that identify the characteristics and pitfalls of hubris at all levels: the overconfidence and often subpar results of “superstar” CEOs; the overzealous bidders on e-Bay who pay more at auctions than they would in stores; and even the exercise enthusiasts whose optimism is exploited by fitness centers.

Five other Haas faculty members are members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences: Philip Tetlock, who holds the Haas School's Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Chair II in Leadership and Communications; Prof. Laura Tyson, director of the Institute for Business & Social Impact; Professor Hal Varian, chief economist at Google; Oliver Williamson, professor emeritus; and Janet Yellen, professor emeritus and current Federal Reserve Chair.

Kevin Chou, BS 02, founding CEO of social mobile gaming company Kabam, will be the 2016 undergraduate commencement speaker.

Chou co-founded San Francisco-based Kabam in 2006 with fellow Berkeley alumni Mike Li, a 2001 electrical engineering and computer science graduate, and Holly Liu, who earned a master's degree in information management and systems in 2003.

Today, Kabam has about 800 employees worldwide and annual revenues of about $400 million. Since its first blockbuster game “Kingdoms of Camelot” debuted in 2009, Kabam has followed up with hits based on franchises such as “Marvel: Contest of Champions,” and, most recently, “Star Wars: Uprising.”

In 2014, Chou was named to Fortune magazine’s annual“40 Under 40” list of the business world’s most influential young leaders.

Chou credits his alma mater with providing him with the skills and knowledge to develop into an entrepreneur and a global business leader. He and Kabam’s co-founder have been strong supporters of Cal: In 2014, Kabam signed an $18 million, 15-year sponsorship deal to name Kabam Field at California Memorial Stadium. The deal also includes scholarship and internship programs and speaking engagements.

It is a long-standing Berkeley-Haas tradition to invite distinguished alumni to speak at commencements.

Commencement will take place at 9:00 am on May 17 at the Greek Theatre.

By Karen Sorensen

Three Berkeley-Haas teams focused on social impact took top honors at the recent finals of LAUNCH—University of California, Berkeley's Startup Accelerator and competition.

Taking advantage of the program’s new social track, the teams, LiftEd, Butterfly Medical, and Dost, participated in LAUNCH’s intensive three-month accelerator before going on to win the grand prize, second place, and second place (social category) awards, respectively. The third-place winner, Players’ Lounge, has Berkeley-Haas connections.

Now in its 18^th year, the LAUNCH competition attracted close to 150 entries that were narrowed down to 19 teams, all of which participated in Demo Day on April 28.

The event, organized by Berkeley MBA students and sponsored by the Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship Program, included a startup showcase expo, keynote speeches from high-profile LAUNCH alumni, and fast-paced final pitches in front of judges, VCs, and an audience of more than 300 people. A total of five winners took home a total of $85,000 in cash and prizes.

The top three winners joined three other social impact startups in a new LAUNCH accelerator specially designed for social enterprises, which includes the Social Lean LaunchPad course taught by Jorge Calderon, a lecturer in the Haas Entrepreneurship Group. 

Last week’s LAUNCH Demo Day included keynotes from previous competition winners: Brett Wilson, cofounder and CEO of TubeMogul, and MBA 07, and Nick Sturiale, Managing Partner at Ignition Partners, founding CEO of Timbre Technology, and MBA00.

The Winners

Grand Prize ($30,000 plus $15,000 in legal services from WilmerHale): LiftEd, which makes an iPad application that helps education professionals accurately measure and reliably report the progress of special education students. There are nearly seven million pre-K to grade 12 students in the U.S. with legally diagnosed disabilities. LiftED enables educators to personalize student learning goals, analyze learning trends to make real-time adjustment to teaching methods, and share progress with school districts and parents. The team includes co-founder and CEO Andrew Hill and Amy Chou, both MBA 16. LiftEd also took first place in the "Information Technology for Society" category and second place in the "Campus & Community Impact" category on grand prize pitch day at the 2016 Big Ideas competition earlier this month.

Second Prize ($15,000): Butterfly Medical, which has developed an implantable device for the treatment of Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), the non-cancerous enlargement of the prostate, which the company says affects 50 percent of men over age 60. The team includes CEO Idan Geva, MBA 09.

Second Prize (Social) ($15,000):Dost, which built a mobile phone platform that helps break the cycle of illiteracy by delivering early education content and activities to low-income moms. Dost was also a finalist in the 2016 Global Social Venture Competition. The team  (in photo, left) includes Founder and CEO Sneha Sheth, MBA 16; Sindhuja Jeyabal, MIMS 16, I School; and Devanshi Unadkat, PhD candidate, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education. Dost was also a category winner at the 2016 Big Ideas competition. ("Mobiles for Reading" category).

Audience Choice ($5,000): Innovein, which provides a prosthetic valve for the veins that helps cure venous leg ulcers, a condition that affects roughly four million people in the United States.

Third Prize (six months of free work space at WeWork): Players’ Lounge, a social video gaming startup that provides gamers with a platform to play their favorite sports games for cash and prizes. The team includes co-founder and CFO Mark Murphy, MBA 17.