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FROM Kellogg MBA Blog: A Tweeting priest, and what he’s learning at Kellogg |
Photo by Victor Sokolowicz From Northwestern Magazine — By Sean Hargadon The chants rose to the roof of the Owen L. Coon Forum: “Manny! Manny! Manny!” The Cash Cows had just won the Kellogg School of Management’s new student Olympics, and soon Manny — who had emerged as a leader during the weeklong orientation program that pits teams of first-year MBA students against each other in collaboration-inducing competitions — was being tossed in the air. “It was like a high school football game for me,” says Manuel Dorantes, who is also known as “Father Manny.” “It was phenomenal. “They had no idea who I was,” adds Dorantes, a Chicago diocesan priest who had ditched the collar for his Cash Cows team T-shirt throughout Kellogg’s Complete Immersion in Management Week. “So on Monday, the first day of class, I show up with my collar on, and you should have seen the jaws drop. My classmates [who knew there was a clergyman in the class] were like, ‘You’re the Catholic priest? Are you serious?’ “I think they were disappointed,” he says with a laugh. Dorantes is now a second-year MBA student who splits his time between Chicago and the Vatican, where he occasionally works as a liaison to the Spanish-speaking media for the press office of the Holy See, the central government of the Roman Catholic Church. Dorantes’ first major assignment was the canonization of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II last April. It was an unforgettable experience, he says. In the fall Dorantes studied change management and global economics through Kellogg’s International Exchange Program at the London Business School — a convenient two-hour flight from Rome — after a paid summer internship with PricewaterhouseCoopers as a financial services consultant in the fraud and money laundering department for a Chicago client. (Unlike priests in a religious order — Jesuits or Franciscans, for example — diocesan priests do not take a vow of poverty. Dorantes manages his own finances and is paying his own way at Kellogg with help from an F.C. Austin Scholarship.) Dorantes has come a long way from his roots in Ixtapan de la Sal, a town in the State of Mexico near Mexico City. Read more about Dorantes and his Kellogg experience Filed under: Academics, Student Life Tagged: Austin Scholarship, cim, Mexico, Northwestern Magazine, Two-Year MBA Program |
FROM Kellogg MBA Blog: Kellogg announces 2015 Youn Impact Scholars |
Tree farms that bring green space, jobs, and new hope to American towns in the grip of post-industrial decay; investments that help small businesses thrive in the face of withering conditions: these are just a few of several forward-thinking projects being implemented by this year’s cohort of Youn Impact Scholars. The program, in its second year, honors students and alumni who have demonstrated a commitment to becoming leaders in social impact in any chosen field, says Elizabeth Coston, Kellogg’s manager of social innovation. “We’re agnostic about whether they’re going into nonprofit, corporate, government, education — they are committed to somehow having a positive impact on society or within their organization,” Coston says. This year’s five student and five alumni honorees will meet with last year’s class of nine scholars later this year, at the first biennial Youn Impact Scholars meeting. Having the opportunity to connect with a growing network of like-minded peers is the most coveted aspect of winning, say student and alumni winners alike. Nicole Chavas ’15, who developed the tree farms idea along with fellow scholar Laura Kimes ’15 and is launching two pilot farms in May, pointed to “the chance to maintain that link with Kellogg, and with others who share the same passion and ideals I do from a business perspective,” as the greatest reward. Read more about the Youn Scholars program and this year’s recipients Filed under: Academics, Career, Student Life Tagged: alumni, social impact, social innovation, Youn Impact Scholars |
FROM Kellogg MBA Blog: An intro to Kellogg’s Career Management Center |
What is DAK? That was my first question as I began my role as Managing Director of the Career Management Center (CMC) just over a year ago. DAK stands for “Day at Kellogg” and we held our first DAK of 2015 this past February. DAK is an extended weekend where admitted students and their spouse, significant other, partner, etc. come to get a feel for the real Kellogg. It is a peek behind the curtain and a glimpse into what a life at Kellogg would feel like, from the social experience and academic life to my personal favorite – navigating your career life! I spoke with a few hundred admitted students about the high-quality student and alumni career support they could expect to receive as a member of the Kellogg community. I also reassured them that there is nothing quite like springtime in Chicago and that winters are short-lived. Next, the students split into groups based on different industries. These breakout sessions helped them relate to the kinds of interests, motivations and values held by current students and alumni across the major industries pursued by Kellogg students. A CMC career coach moderated these sessions. Current students and alumni discussed utilizing clubs to learn about different fields, breaking into a new field, personal anecdotes about internships and securing jobs, and the best ways to take advantage of the resources offered by the CMC. At the CMC, we are able to help students by offering:
Consulting Strategy & Business Development High Tech Private Equity/Real Estate Social Impact/Sustainability/Agribusiness Entertainment/Media/Sports Marketing/Brand Management/Retail/Luxury Goods Entrepreneurship/Startup/Venture Capital Energy/Clean Tech Investment Banking/Investment Management General Management/Operations Healthcare/Biotech/Pharma/Med Devices On behalf of the entire CMC team, we were pleased to meet everyone at DAK I and look forward to getting to know our Round 2 admits at DAK II. For everyone else, we can’t wait to show you all that Kellogg and the CMC have to offer. Best wishes, Mark Gasche Managing Director Career Management Center Learn more about Mark Gasche Filed under: Academics, Admissions, Career, Student Life Tagged: Career Management Center, CMC, dak, day at kellogg, Mark Gasche |
FROM Kellogg MBA Blog: The Polar Plunge with Lady Gaga and Vince Vaughn |
On Sunday, more than 4,500 people braved the frigid waters of Lake Michigan to take the 2015 Chicago Polar Plunge and raise more than $1.1 million for Special Olympics. Along with celebrities who took the dip — like Vince Vaughn and Lady Gaga — were nine Kellogg students, including four Kellogg Board Fellows. The team of Board Fellows raised nearly $4,000 for the cause. Special Olympics Chicago Executive Director Susan Nicholl first met with students in the Kellogg Board Fellows Program this past fall, and it was that talk that inspired several of the students to form a team for the Polar Plunge. “We felt that partnering with Special Olympics Chicago would be a tangible and useful demonstration of the impact our organization and the Kellogg community strives for with nonprofits in the Chicago area,” said Noah Buntman, president of the Kellogg Board Fellows. “We hope that this year’s Plunge with Special Olympics Chicago is the first of many and the start of a lasting friendship and partnership between our communities.” Will Connor (pictured above), one of the Board Fellows team members, has a relative who has been a lifelong participant in the Special Olympics. Because of that, he wanted to give back to an organization that’s done so much for someone he cares about. “We could not have had more fun at the Polar Plunge this year,” Connor said, “and are grateful for Special Olympics for inspiring our participation.” The Kellogg Board Fellows Program is a student initiated and student-led experiential learning program. Approximately 50 fellows are selected each year, and they come to the program with work experience and an abiding interest in nonprofit board governance work. Each fellow is matched with a Chicago-area nonprofit board of directors for 14 months, beginning at the end of the fellow’s first year at Kellogg and continuing through May of their second year. The fellow serves as a non-voting member of the nonprofit board, actively contributing to the board’s work in a mutually agreed upon way that advances the work of the board. Each fellow is assigned a mentor from the organization’s board of directors; the mentor helps with the onboarding process and provides ongoing guidance and insight into the workings of the board. In addition to gaining real-world experience on a board of directors, the fellow also studies nonprofit board governance through two courses taught by Kellogg faculty: Nonprofit Board Governance and Advanced Board Governance. These courses offer the fellow an opportunity to study best practices, examine trends in nonprofit governance, exchange insights with other fellows and learn how to become an effective board member. The program’s unique combination of academic study and real world experience helps fellows gain a deep understanding of the challenges and rewards of board service. To learn more about the Kellogg Board Fellows Program, take a look at this story from the latest issue of Kellogg Magazine. Filed under: Academics, Student Life Tagged: board of directors, Chicago Polar Plunge, experiential learning, kellogg board fellows, nonprofit, Polar Plunge, special olympics |
FROM Kellogg MBA Blog: Students develop forecasting tool for Chicago Bulls |
The Chicago Bulls and Kellogg’s Analytical Consulting Lab have had a partnership that extends back to the spring quarter of 2012. In the fall quarter of 2014, a team of second year students (Gavin Driskill, Andres Oksenberg, Pankaj Tanwar and Bruno Valle) completed the most recent project with the Chicago Bulls as part of the course, led by Professor Russell Walker. Since the team’s first season in 1966-67, the Chicago Bulls have evolved into one of the most iconic teams in all of sports and developed a brand recognized around the world. The Bulls organization won six NBA championships in 1991-1993 and 1996-98, and in recent years has reached the playoffs six consecutive times and made nine appearances in 10 seasons. In addition, through community relations efforts and support from Chicago Bulls Charities, the organization has made an impact on Chicago by contributing time, materials, resources and financial donations with an emphasis on youth education, youth health and wellness, and violence prevention. Through the efforts of everyone associated with the team, the Chicago Bulls have established a tradition of excellence on and off the basketball court. The Bulls, led by Director of Analytics Matt Kobe ’11, presented the ACL team with a merchandise and concession forecasting challenge. The team wanted to improve the forecasting of these revenue streams to help the team better plan and promote throughout the season. Using historical data, the Kellogg team was able to develop an initial forecasting tool for the Bulls. From there, the team added other elements that impact the forecast, including weather, day of the week and the Bulls opponent. Under the guidance of Professor Walker, the Kellogg team developed a powerful, yet simple tool the Bulls could implement. The Bulls will use this forecasting tool to inform the merchandise planning and promotional calendar and also evaluate performance throughout the year. “The Bulls partnership with the Analytical Consulting Lab has been great,” Kobe said. “This last quarter, the Kellogg students used data and analytics to address a key forecasting challenge for us and delivered executable recommendations that made an immediate impact to the business.” The key findings were presented to the Bulls during a December 9 visit to the United Center. The ACL team was thrilled to have had the opportunity to work with the Bulls and hopes that our project helps the Bulls continue to improve their business going forward. Gavin Driskill is a second-year MBA student at Kellogg. His interests include market research and segmentation, strategy and sports business. Filed under: Academics, Business Insight, Student Life Tagged: analytical consulting lab, analytics, Chicago Bulls, sports |
FROM Kellogg MBA Blog: Dropbox peace of mind |
First-year student Rohan Rajiv is blogging once a week about important lessons he is learning at Kellogg. Read more of his posts here. If I had to summarize my learning on pricing from my Microeconomics classes, it would be: avoid price competition like the plague. And to do that – differentiate, differentiate, differentiate. We discussed Dropbox’s move last year to lower prices to compete with Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. The big question was whether this was going to be a race to the bottom in a future where storage would inevitably be free. Now, Dropbox is one of my favorite products. I have been a user since the early days when they used to be hosted on “getdropbox.com” and their brand had nothing but positive associations. All my working files sit on Dropbox, and ever since I did that three years ago, I’ve never had to fret about whether my working files will ever be lost. So I thought I’d put together two recommendations for Dropbox based on what I’ve learned in Marketing and Microeconomics in the past few months. These recommendations are based on the principal that differentiation matters. If we make the argument (and we can) that most storage providers inherently offer a similar product, the game-changer will be Dropbox’s ability to horizontally differentiate, i.e., inspire great brand loyalty among its users. That then leads us to a marketing question: how can they do that? My line of thinking is to think around the traditional four P’s – product, price, promotion and place. My two recommendations are going to be based on promotion and price: 1. TARGET THE PEACE-OF-MIND BUSINESS. What can Dropbox do to differentiate? That leads me to ask this question: what is the market? The first answer seems to be storage. But is it really storage? Or, put differently, do we want it to be storage? When I look at why customers use Dropbox, collaboration is obviously a massive reason and is at the core of why they do what they do. Dropbox has understandably worked really hard at making collaboration easy. My recommendation would be to also target the peace-of-mind business. Every user who collaborates via Dropbox likely has many important files on it. Why not just move them all onto Dropbox and make it a full set? I pay Crashplan a yearly fee to back up my photos. That could easily be Dropbox. I think Crashplan works fine but I don’t love Crashplan the same way and would be more than happy to pay a bit of a premium for that love and trust of Dropbox. In short, I think the customer problem that Dropbox could look to solve is to remove the worry about files not being backed up. This needs an investment into customer education and a few tweaks into the way it is marketed. But, if done well, I think this could be a huge win. 2. GET CREATIVE WITH PRICING. The current “band” approach to pricing from the storage providers is staid. The problem with bands is that it only feels like a good deal if you are near the edge of the next band. Why pay $10 for 1 terabyte if all you have is a 100 GB worth of content to store? An approach that could be really impactful is Amazon Web Service’s “you-pay-for-what-you-use” style. This could work well for two reasons:
It’ll be interesting to see how the storage wars play out. Good luck, Dropbox! Rohan Rajiv is a first-year student in Kellogg’s Full-Time Two-Year Program. Prior to Kellogg he worked at a-connect serving clients on consulting projects across 14 countries in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. He blogs a learning every day, including his MBA Learnings series, on www.ALearningaDay.com. Filed under: Academics, Business Insight, Student Life Tagged: Dropbox, marketing, MBA Learnings, microeconomics |
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