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Christopher Leinberger, Charles Bendit Distinguished Scholar and Research Professor of Urban Real Estate, commented in a story (6/9) in the Washington Examiner on how Capital Bikeshare is becoming an economic development tool.
Posted by gwsb on June 18, 2013 | Filed under: Getting Ink,GWSB News.
A study by Annamaria Lusardi, Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar in Economics and Accountancy and academic director of the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center is referenced in a story (6/8), “10 Things Economists Won’t Tell You,” by MarketWatch.
Posted by gwsb on June 18, 2013 | Filed under: Getting Ink,GWSB News.
Bradley Shear, adjunct professor, lawyer and social media expert, commented for Forbes (6/11) on the legal value of Twitter disclaimers.
Posted by gwsb on June 18, 2013 | Filed under: Getting Ink,GWSB News.
Scheherazade Rehman, Steve Ross Professorial Fellow of International Business, professor of international business/finance and international affairs, and director of the European Union Research Center, was quoted by the Voice of America (6/14) in a story on the issues facing President Obama as he heads to the Group of Eight summit, especially Syria and U.S. surveillance policies.
Recent blogs by Rehman for U.S. News & World Report have focused on the unrest in Turkey:
Posted by gwsb on June 18, 2013 | Filed under: Getting Ink,GWSB News.
Jennifer Windus
Job Title: Graduate Career Consultant at the F. David Fowler Career Center.
Job Duties: Providing career guidance and coaching to graduate students seeking careers in finance, energy or international development.
How long have you worked at GW: 16 months
What’s best, so far, about working here: The collaborative environment and top-notch staff at the career center. It is a pleasure to work with the students, each of whom has a unique and noteworthy background. As a GWSB alum (MBA, `90), it is a pleasure to be back on campus.
What’s something your co-workers do not know about you: I ski raced competitively while in undergraduate school.
Where did you grow up: Washington, D.C., in Georgetown.
Family: My husband, Robert, and three children, ages 15, 13 and 10.
Any hobbies? Tennis, skiing and horseback riding.
What do you enjoy doing on the weekend: Spending time with family and friends.
Favorite vacation spots: Lugano, Switzerland.
A favorite book: A Fine Balance by Rohintron Mistry, and The Great Game: The Struggles For Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk.
A favorite movie: Trading Places
A favorite food: Anything Tex Mex.
E-mail: jwindus@gwu.edu
Phone: 202-994-6704
Posted by gwsb on June 18, 2013 | Filed under: Getting to Know,GWSB News.
GWSB is launching a first-of-its-kind bachelor of science in finance degree program beginning in the fall of 2013.
The program, which targets incoming freshmen and sophomores, will require students to double major in finance and an academic discipline outside of business. The requirement is designed to provide an interdisciplinary education so students are better equipped to work in the global marketplace with business know-how and the skills that come from a liberal arts education.
“Students will be career ready, but they will also have the training of deep critical thinking about other topics outside of business,” said Dean Doug Guthrie.
Similar degree programs that combine business with other academic disciplines are planned in marketing and international business. The School already offers bachelor’s degrees in business administration (BBA) and accountancy.
“Students graduating with this degree will have mastered practical reasoning as well as analytical and critical thinking skills that will allow them to address the issues of the modern world,” said GWSB Dean for Undergraduate Programs Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou.
Posted by gwsb on June 18, 2013 | Filed under: GWSB News.
Participants in CIBER’s faculty development workshop in international business visited the IMF, among other Washington, D.C.,-based financial institutions.
Speaking to international business educators, Dean Doug Guthrie made a case for China as an innovative country where local governments compete with one another for business development.
Guthrie spoke at the GW Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER) fourth Faculty Development in International Business (FDIB) workshop, “Succeeding in Emerging and Developing Markets: Understanding How Institutions Impact Firms and Managers.”
The June 11-14 workshop, led by Associate Dean for Graduate Programs Liesl Riddle and Yohannes Assefa, director at Stalwart Management Consulting PL, a Dubai-based management consulting firm, attracted 31 faculty and doctoral students from U.S. and overseas institutions. The event was aimed at giving the participants an in-depth understanding of how institutions shape firms’ strategies and managers’ actions in developing and emerging markets.
The workshop’s keynote dinner address was given by Jianhai Lin, DBA, `86, secretary of the IMF and its International Monetary and Financial Committee.
Guthrie, in his luncheon speech on the workshop’s last day, said there were half a dozen keys to understanding economic reform in China, which is on pace to overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy.
Among them: gradualism, which in China has meant adopting new, far-reaching laws and regulations only after they are tried and tested locally and receive years of feedback. This “bottom up” method allows for greater stability during periods of change, versus the “shock therapy” economic reform approach used in the former Soviet Union, Guthrie said.
Gradualism “is a lot messier, but it actually gets you the right institutions,” he said.
Another key to reform has been decentralization, which has allowed local governments to compete with one another for business development. Sometimes, competition is so intense that it’s impossible to get a flight from one city to another, as Guthrie discovered on one trip to China, because “entrepreneurial governments” want to make it as difficult as possible for business executives to visit their competitors.
“In the U.S. we still largely have a `doom and gloom’ view of China,” he said, adding that instead of accusing China of stealing jobs, for instance, the United States could adopt a competitive mindset by subsidizing industries such as renewable energy that require a long incubation period and that China has been able to attract. “I actually think China is a place of radical institutional innovation.”
For more on the CIBER program, go here.
Posted by gwsb on June 18, 2013 | Filed under: GWSB News.
A street near Taksim Square in central Istanbul is quiet right before a police crackdown on public demonstrators. GWSB executive MBA students were near the end of a residency on emerging markets in Istanbul during the crackdown. (Photo by Maria Lourdes Tiglao)
For 38-year-old Maria Lourdes Tiglao – a U.S. Air Force veteran who’s done two tours in Afghanistan – assessing a fast-changing foreign landscape is nothing new. Even so, the student in GWSB’s World Executive MBA (WEMBA) program came away with valuable, hard-won lessons when she found herself in the midst of public protests and a police crackdown during her recent emerging-market residency in Istanbul.
“This experience will definitely help to shape my perspective as I look at other market economies,” said Tiglao, who is scheduled to get her degree in December 2013. Specifically, weighing economic factors isn’t enough when you want to work in a developing market.
“It’s unstable terrain,” said Tiglao, a pulmonary lab manager in northern Virginia who hopes to put her business skills to work for Team Rubicon, a nonprofit that uses veteran volunteers for domestic and international disaster relief work. She learned in Turkey that, “Bringing historical, cultural, social and political contexts into consideration in whatever endeavor I undertake can steer me toward better decisions.”
Other WEMBA candidates on the Istanbul trip agree.
“An experience like this shows how some emerging and developing countries are limited in their growth capabilities as a result of unrest,” said Rena Jabbour. ”This lack of predictability could make many investors and business-oriented individuals very cautious. Despite the massive growth opportunity, it is critical to place importance on the societal and political state of the market.”
For Darrell Darnell, GW’s senior associate vice president for safety and security, the entire trip – especially the opportunity to speak with small restaurant and shop owners – provided insight into business in a developing market that can’t be had by reading or talking with others who’ve been there.
The experience “really demonstrated the need to fully understand the marketplace from a holistic perspective in order to be successful in competing,” said Darnell, a student in the WEMBA cyber-security program.
Twenty-nine GWSB students had already been in Turkey for five days when protests began on May 28 against plans to develop Gezi Park on Taksim Square in central Istanbul. When police harshly cracked down, employing tear gas and water cannons against demonstrators, anti-government protests erupted, resulting in hundreds of arrests and thousands of injuries thus far.
In one way, the GWSB students were lucky. Their instructor on the trip and for the class, “Assessing the Global Risk Landscape for International Management in Emerging Markets,” was Scheherazade Rehman, Steve Ross Professorial Fellow of International Finance, professor of international business/finance and international affair, and faculty director of the executive MBA programs, who has lived in Turkey, knows some Turkish, and is familiar with Istanbul’s ins-and-outs. Rehman is also director of GWSB’s European Union Research Center.
On May 31, just a day before many of the GWSB students were scheduled to fly out, several in the group were strolling and shopping after a day of meetings with Turkish bankers when the situation on the ground suddenly changed. Three days of protests hadn’t disrupted their trip but now tear gas was filling streets, people were yelling and running, and shopkeepers barricaded entrances with crates of bottled water.
Tiglao was fishing for change to buy pomegranate juice when she looked up to see a mass of people running toward her. After briefly ducking into a shop, she took refuge in the flat of a Kurdish sound engineer who was in Istanbul working on a documentary. When things quieted down, he helped her get back to her hotel.
“We had the right residency at the right time in the right location for the subject of global risk assessment in emerging markets,” said Rehman. What is her advice for students who want work in developing markets, where significant risk offsets the potential for big gains?
“Don’t wing it,” Rehman said. “But, no matter how much good planning you do, things can go awry. You need to have the mentality to be flexible and adapt. And do your homework. Understand what risk is.
“Risk has many meanings in emerging markets,” she said. “Sometimes logistical support just stops: there’s no way to get to the airport, they’ve shut down all the bridges.”
It is a lesson that’s not been lost on the GWSB students on the trip, many of who caught their regularly scheduled flights out of Istanbul on June 1 after Rehman; GW’s local partner on the trip, Abdullah Akyuz, a GWSB adjunct faculty member who lives part-time in Istanbul; and Bryan Andriano, GWSB’s director of international education and programs, who was also on the trip; arranged for their chartered bus to come early in the morning on a quiet street to take the students to the airport, thereby avoiding the roadblocks that were in place by mid-day. Those students who remained moved to a hotel in a quieter part of the city before flying out.
“At the end of the day, these kinds of situations represent significant challenges for a university in ensuring the health and safety of their students but – also – opportunities for students to fully understand the social and political events that are taking place in their countries of study,” said Andriano.
Brian Fricke, a WEMBA candidate, added, “Any cultural immersion into an emerging market that allows you to feel out of your comfort zone will help you grow as an individual and as a leader.”
Some students said the School’s track record on international study, especially in emerging markets, meant that those on the trip were as prepared as possible to handle unexpected situations.
“There is always a need and responsibility to have an understanding of where one travels from the social, cultural and political, as well as economic, point of view,” said Errol B. Williamson, Jr., a WEMBA candidate. “Having said that, the GW School of Business goes above and beyond the call of duty to be responsible regarding these issues.”
Tiglao argued that the skill of quickly and accurately assessing a situation, which helped her find a way off the riotous street, is just as useful in business.
“Picking up on subtle cues from social, cultural, political or environmental changes can mean the difference between starting a relationship with another party or permanently burning a bridge,” she said.
Rehman, for her part, thinks the message of Istanbul won’t soon fade.
“I do believe that the lessons learned on this residency will probably stay with them for the rest of their lives,” she said.
Posted by gwsb on June 18, 2013 | Filed under: GWSB News.
Daniel N. Bernstein, BA ’09; MBA ’11, has joined Balance Point Capital Partners, a mezzanine debt and private equity firm focused on investing in middle market companies, as an associate. The firm is based in Westport, CT. Previously, Daniel was a senior analyst at TD Bank, N.A. in their Corporate Banking group based in New York City.
Posted by gwsb on June 17, 2013 | Filed under: Alumni News,Classnotes.
What: A Washington Post breakfast forum, “Privacy in a Digital World,” sponsored by GWSB’s Department of Information Systems and Technology Management and Masters of Science in Information Systems Technology program focusing on how consumers should protect themselves in a world where new technologies make it increasingly easier to collect personal information.
When: 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m., June 11. (The event will be broadcast live at 8:30 a.m. (EST) at washingtonpostlive.com.
Where
: The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW,
Washington, D.C. 20071
Speakers will include U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga.; Julie Brill, a commissioner with the Federal Trade Commission; Peter Swire, chair of the World Wide Web Consortium; Jules Polonetsky, director, the Future of Privacy Forum ; Marc Rotenberg, executive director, Electronic Privacy Information Center; and more. For more information and to register, go here.
Posted by gwsb on June 5, 2013 | Filed under: Events,GWSB News.
Dr. Doug Guthrie, Dean, Professor of International Business and Professor of Management at The George Washington University School of Business is an expert in the fields of economic reform in China, leadership and corporate governance, and corporate social responsibility.
James Bailey is the Ave Tucker Professorial Fellow of Leadership and director of the World Executive EMBA at the George Washington University School of Business.
The members of the MBA Admissions team contribute to the blog with postings about recruitment tours, events, interviews with current students, and insights about the admissions process. The team is composed of:
Christopher Storer, Executive Director
Jason Garner, Associate Director
Patsy Torres, Assistant Director
Jason Smith, Assistant Director
Shelly Heinrich, Admissions Consultant
Jessica Page, Coordinator