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| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Women in leadership: Two impactful Haas alumnae you'll want to meet |
This is the first post in an occasional series featuring women who are leading innovation, growth, and success across multiple industries. We start with two Haas alumnae making an impact in the food industry and how the Berkeley MBA helped them get where they are today. As Managing Director at Cowgirl Creamery, Amanda Parker, MBA 18, leads the business’ strategic growth, providing vision and leadership to the company’s production, distribution, retail and direct-to-consumer teams. Founded in 1997 in Point Reyes Station, California, Cowgirl Creamery now sells its cheeses and dairy products to more than 500 stores, farmers markets, and restaurants nationwide.  Anita Ratnathicam, EMBA 16, Food Program manager at Google, oversees the food spaces in Sunnyvale, including cafés, micro kitchens, and hubs. She also helps set the strategy for continuing to nourish the company’s employees as Google grows worldwide. What is it about the food industry that is so compelling to you? Anita (Google): Food touches everyone. We all eat and have emotional connections to food. In addition, the food system is far-reaching, providing jobs for many and having integral links to the environment. Amanda (Cowgirl Creamery): Food is part of how we show love and how we show up in the world whenever we break bread. The food business is universal, global. For me, it is both a personal and a professional passion. How well are women represented in the food industry and in which capacities? Amanda: The cheese industry specifically has long had good female representation. Historically, many women—especially those who helped kick-start the American artisan cheese revolution in the 1970s and 1980s—started making artisan cheese to feed their families. For example, in the cheese industry, a group we affectionately call the “goat ladies” started making cheese to provide their families with alternatives to cow’s milk cheeses, and at a higher quality level than they could find in the supermarket. Anita: Like many industries, there is a lot of representation at the ground level and a drop off in leadership roles. Approximately 42% of line-level employees in food service are women, yet 71% of leadership roles are held by men. Lately, the issue of sexual harassment and inequality in the food system as a whole has gained attention, which is hopefully the beginning of a better environment for women to continue careers in this area. Amanda: As in many industries, building a pipeline for women to be able to move into management positions is a challenge. Cowgirl Creamery was founded by two women, and our leadership team is predominately women. However, we recently became part of the Emmi Group, a global, publicly traded Swiss dairy company, where management is mostly male. I feel proud to be one of the few female managing directors among my executive peers across 14 countries. Haas puts a stake in the ground that says you are here to learn about yourself as a leader, not to fit into a mold.” You’ve both moved from smaller organizations to very large ones. How has that affected your responsibilities? Anita: One of the advantages of being director of operations at Good Food Guys—which many will recognize as the people behind Mixt and Split—was that we could be nimble and scrappy. Larger companies move more slowly because you need time to create alignment with stakeholders. The flip side, of course, is that you have a lot more resources. The most fun part of my job is looking at ways to have a large-scale impact on the food system, as a whole. Amanda: I describe my role as being the shepherd of the changes that come with being part of a global company. A degree of tension is inherent to growth. We are in the midst of finding a way to bridge and maintain the culture at Cowgirl while still growing our scale. The opportunities and challenges are melded together. And Anita is right, more access to resources is one of the positive changes. What prepared you for the job you have now? Who were your mentors? Anita: During my 10 years as regional restaurant manager at Nordstrom, I benefited from many great role models. I learned from observing them and being thoughtful about their actions, making note of what works and what doesn’t. By and large, we learn when we stumble; you acknowledge that and push forward. Amanda: I agree with that. It’s a day-by-day experience, and we’re all still learning. If I make 10 mistakes a day and learn 10 new things, that is a good day. There is a constant need for humility and curiosity, to be a Student Always, really. As to mentors, strong women—my mother, for a start! Certainly Sue Conley and Peggy Smith, the original Cowgirls. I look for advice from a range of friends, classmates—whoever will be the most helpful in a given situation and offer a broad array of perspectives. Anita: Former bosses, my peers, and classmates have all shared their secret sauce at one point or another. You both mentioned classmates. How strong is the Berkeley Haas network? Anita: My classmates are my personal board of directors. We’re still very close and connected. Amanda: I often use my commute time to get in touch with classmates, to give a shout-out or ask a question. This provides me with both trusted sounding boards and opportunities to positively impact Cowgirl Creamery and Tomales Bay Foods, my own business through my network. For example, I have a classmate who is working in regenerative organic agriculture right now, and it’s an area my company is continuing to develop further. Being able to not only have thought partners but actual industry experts is one of the best parts of what Haas gave to me in friends and colleagues. What advice would you give people aspiring to leadership in the food industry? Anita: My rule of thumb applies in any industry: Be the best at the job you have; show people what you are capable of and good things will come. Amanda: Lead with authenticity. When I started my MBA studies, I thought leaders had to be strong and unflappable. At Haas, I was able to challenge those expectations and rebuild how I wanted to shape my own leadership style. I’m now better prepared to balance the quantitative, qualitative, and emotional aspects of leadership in my own way. Or, put another way, the strong, goofy, and vulnerable parts of my personality. I’m not afraid to be firm, and I’m not afraid to sing showtunes to my sales team to make them laugh. Anita: I agree. Haas puts a stake in the ground that says you are here to learn about yourself as a leader, not to fit into a mold. I pushed past the impostor syndrome hesitation to understand my place as a leader. Having the space and support to explore yourself in a place of psychological safety is the real return on investment. What gives you the most satisfaction in your role? Anita: Being surrounded by a group of smart, passionate, driven individuals and collaboratively solving wicked problems. Google is an incredible organization as far as the things they are doing for good in the world. I’m looking forward to contributing to that effort. Amanda: What’s most exciting to me right now is developing our people. Cowgirl Creamery is in a new phase of growth. I get fired up thinking about what that means from a representation perspective and being able to educate, teach new skills, give new opportunities, and expand the commitment that we have to our people. 
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02 Jan 2020, 08:00
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| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Take 5 with Clark Kellogg |
A founding partner of The Berkeley Innovation Group, Clark Kellogg has been a pioneer in design thinking. Here the Berkeley MBA lecturer talks about what he teaches: the relevance of creativity and innovation in today’s more complex world. Why is creativity important for business leaders? Coming out of WWII, corporate culture was a mirror of military culture. It was hierarchical. It was a command-and-control model. You keep your head down and don’t question the executive. That was the paradigm, and it wasn’t the tradition for business culture to value creativity. Today the world is in dire straits, and if we keep doing what we’re doing—I’m thinking climate change—we’ll perish. We need to have the capacity to think creatively, to reframe problems, and to be more comfortable with the ambiguous nature of these wicked problems. Design thinking is the Trojan horse that allows us to approach and get inside these problems. It’s a tool kit that helps us confront complex problems that can’t be solved by traditional methods like Six Sigma. So, what is design thinking? Design thinking, we often joke, is a bad name for good idea. It came from the design professions and the training we (as designers) received to solve problems by first understanding the users and clients, and to think more creatively about problems—to be open to things that are new. An easy way to stereotype it is to first think about the traditional process of management consulting. It’s often a hypothesis model. Likely the consultant has an answer in the drawer already that they’ve developed from experience. And it works for well-known problems like improving a supply chain. But it doesn’t work well if you’ve got problems that are very complex or completely new. There you need a process model, not a solutions model. Discovery and understanding are the first steps. Then you need to immerse yourself in the ecology of the issue so you can define the real problem. Then there is the ideation phrase: ideas without judgment. You sort those out and move on to experimenting and prototyping, and finally arrive at a solution. The interesting thing is, most of the time you end up solving a problem that was different from the one you thought you had initially. I think Haas has been admitting a different kind of person." How do you teach something as ephemeral as creativity and innovation to a room full of quants? The way I do it is to focus on a series of daily practices that make it non-weird to think differently—a series of repeatable personal practices. Draw every day, or write a poem, or create a piece of art, or keep a journal, or do photography. Every day. These daily practices combine together to create the Practice of Curiosity. This is important because curiosity is always better than judgment. And it’s not all above the shoulders. We have a life of the mind, the body, and the spirit. In the Creativity Lab course we use physical movement to move creativity around the body. We do some sort of tai chi or meditation, or mindless wandering. All these things are creatively based, so it’s non-weird to slow down, to see things differently, so that it’s not strange to walk into a room and organize yourself around non-linear thinking.  What is your favorite classroom activity or assignment? One is I have people draw a self-portrait, an 11x17 with a Sharpie. At first, everyone freaks out, so, I tease them: “How many of you graduated from kindergarten?” I ask. Some of the portraits are stick figures, while others are more complex. Then I have them annotate the portrait by answering four questions: What is the knowledge you use the most? This forces people to define how they think, the lens through which they see the world. And it forces them to recognize that people have different ways of thinking. The next question is: What are you most passionate about? The third is: What are your deepest fears? And, yes, I absolutely expect people to be honest with their classmates. It’s a strange level of disclosure. But since many feel they’ve already made fools of themselves with their drawing, it’s always surprising how honest people can be. Finally: What do you do to ground yourself? I call my mom, I run, I ride my motorcycle. Then you reintroduce yourself to your teammates. You’re in a different world. You know a lot about your teammates, and you need to use that with respect. But a rising level of communication and trust leads to a high level of performance. Communication, trust, and performance lead to a good outcome. What do you hope your students will take away from your class? To be competent design thinkers. To develop confidence in their own skills. To not feel ill at ease when they are out of their comfort zone. To become creative leaders and embody the four Haas Defining Leadership Principles. I think things have changed over the years. My experience is that students at Berkeley Haas have moved from a spot of deep resistance to having a higher tolerance for creative thinking, even embracing it. I think the reason is that Haas has been admitting a different kind of person. Berkeley is known for greater social awareness. It’s not a place for those who are just looking for a straight line to the corner office. It’s a place where people believe there is a higher probability that we’ll come up with different solutions, and have a better chance of surviving, than if we simply embrace unbridled capitalism. The expertise and insight your professors bring helps deepen and enhance your MBA journey. By selecting a top school with top-notch professors, you maximize your experience. Read more from the Take 5 with a Professor series:
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09 Jan 2020, 08:00
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| FROM Haas Admissions Blog: EMBA student finds leadership inspiration among Haas women |
Megan Zweig, EMBA 19, enrolled at Haas because she wanted to see more women leaders in the business world. “I was in San Francisco at the women's march in January 2017, and I recognized that if I wanted to see more women in leadership at the highest levels, I had to be willing to be one of them,” she says. “And if I wanted others to see me as a leader, I needed to first see myself as one. For that, I needed to get out of my comfort zone in my career and develop skills that could help me lead across a variety of disciplines.” It takes support from others to accomplish anything of importance, which is where the community of women at Haas came in for Megan. In the Berkeley MBA for Executives program, she's meeting other women aspiring to their full leadership potential. “I've found the network of women at Haas to be particularly powerful for expanding my aspirations and boosting my confidence,” she says. “These are accomplished, caring, amazing women who are rooting for me and will be there on my good days as well as the bad days–just like I'll be there for them.” At Haas, I've learned that not having a traditional background for a role is no reason not to pursue it." At a recent healthcare conference hosted in San Francisco by Megan's company, Rock Health, two of her classmates, Malini Singh and Linda Liu, attended to support her as she presented to hundreds of attendees about her team's market research. Malini and Linda posted updates on the conference to the EMBA Slack channel–which triggered a flurry of support and other posts about Haas students' accomplishments that week: one classmate had landed a new job and another had launched an employee resource group at his organization. “That day felt really special,” Megan says. “I had a whole crew of people rooting for me. The power of that support network will be the most important thing I carry with me beyond graduation.” Megan is equally generous in encouraging her peers. During her time at Haas, she's served as co-Vice President of Careers for her cohort, and has helped to host a variety of events that support the career advancement of her classmates. One of the most memorable happened in September, when she, fellow classmate Suprita Makh, and Janelle Hofeditz, Director of Strategic Initiatives for Haas, collaborated on an event for EMBA women to bolster their compensation negotiation skills. “We hosted a dinner with small group discussions,” Megan says. “We invited our classmates to share their experience negotiating compensation–what has worked, what hasn't, what holds us back–and brainstormed ways to ask for what we want and deserve. It was an evening to tap into the collective wisdom and experience of all the women leaders in our class.” Megan cites Professor Maura O'Neill's New Venture Finance course as a key part of expanding her perspective on new ways to advance her career. “Maura is so generous and gives us the inside scoop on her experience as an entrepreneur and investor,” she says. “One of my favorite assignments was being part of a team that interviewed 14 venture capitalists, more than half of whom were women–despite the fact that fewer than 20% of all venture partners are women. I realized that these were relationships I wanted to be cultivating anyway, and the assignment gave me the opportunity to connect with investors I admire.” The Berkeley EMBA has given Megan a broader skill set and newfound confidence that she's using to grow in her current work. At Rock Health she's expanded her role beyond market research into marketing, and is applying the Haas curriculum and network to open the door to a career in venture capital. “At Haas, I've learned that not having a traditional background for a role is no reason not to pursue it,” she says. “I now have a foundation of business knowledge, but ultimately what matters is my commitment to others and willingness to keep learning. I see these qualities in my classmates. It's these intangibles that make a great leader stand out.” 
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