Coming Full Circle as a Community Back to business.* The asterisk seems necessary because at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, we never actually stopped our commit ment to providing world-class business education, of course. It’s just that after a year and a half of adjusting to a “new normal” of Zoom calls and remote learning, the 2021-2022 Academic Year marked the beginning of a return to the “old normal” at Michigan Ross. Here, that normal means business education that strives to make positive changes on scales both large and small. So while the school’s commitment to providing an impactful business education never lessened throughout the pandemic, it was truly invigorating to come full circle in a sense, reuniting together in the same physical spaces in 2021-2022. Our students, faculty, alumni, and staff remained committed to their respective roles in ensuring that a Ross education remains a world-class learning experience with the resources, support, and tools to inspire change and innovation. We thank you for being an integral part of what makes Michigan Ross so special.
2021SUMMER
• First Ross Online MBA Graduate Named to ‘Best & Brightest’ List • First Ross Summer Academy Makes Pivot to Online Format • Five Ross Professors Earn Promotions for Expertise in Their Fields • Ross Students Make Their Mark in Summer Olympics in Tokyo • Ross Launches New Healthcare Accelerator For Student Entrepreneurs • Ross’ Joel Slemrod Honored as Distinguished University Professor • Ross Alum Gets a Charge Out of Leading the Electric Revolution at Ford Motor Co. • Contest Produces DEI Case Studies for Use in Business Schools • Ross Professor Eyes Viral Career with TikTok Spud Videos • MSCM Students Use Supply Chain Studio to Work With Multinational Corporations • Ross Summer Connection Helps First-Year BBAs Build Relationships With Peers • Zell Founders Fund Invests $100K in Ross Alumni’s Startup Just Enough Wines • Ross Boosts Opportunities for MBA Women with Forté Foundation Partnership Expansion
First Ross Online MBA Graduate Named to ‘Best & Brightest’ List
There’s something to be said for being the first to have done something. There’s even more to be said about being the best and brightest. Such is the case for Lindsay Case, MBA ’21, who was not only the first graduate from the Online MBA Program at Michigan Ross, but also earned a spot on Poets&Quants’ 2021 ‘Best & Brightest’ Online MBAs list. The Nashville, Tennessee resident said she was impressed with the online program’s ability to connect professionals from around the world. “The state-of-the-art studio used for live lectures created an incredibly engaging, virtual learning environment, which set the foundation for building relationships with classmates,” Case said. “Throughout the program, continuous discussions and project work with peers in completely different industries and company contexts prepared me to more flexibly apply course content in the future. The degree to which these connections enhanced my learning and established a strong network exceeded my expectations.”
As part of the Michigan Ross Online MBA Program’s first Innovation Residency, dozens of students quickly took product ideations and transformed them into functional prototypes ready to pitch to investors – streamlining a process that can take years into a matter of days. As the three-day residency began, teams of students took their ideas, transformed them into prototypes, and tested them with fellow students. Winning teams were selected after making their pitches to a judging panel of venture capitalists, including several Ross alumni. Along the way, teams received guidance from faculty members from the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies. The winning teams were EventGen, an app that would enable employees to easily organize social events with co-workers, and TidySite, an app that leverages existing infrastructure in airports, like cameras, and machine learning to forecast and track restroom maintenance. Members of EventGen were Marissa Bialecki, MBA ’22; Brahmananda Reddy Boggula, MBA ‘22; William Foote, MBA ‘22; Sri Gulukota, MBA ‘21; Madeline Nykaza, MBA ’21; and Ben Swiderski, MBA ‘22. TidySite teammates were Chad Teven, MBA ’23; Liza Kameen, MBA ’22; Nicole Saucedo, MBA ’23; Mike Mayberger, MBA ’22; Zachary Batcho, MBA ’23.
First Ross Summer Academy Makes Pivot to Online Format
Five Ross Professors Earn Promotions for Expertise in Their Fields
Five faculty members at Michigan Ross received promotions during Summer 2021 that were approved by the University of Michigan Board of Regents, recognizing their expertise in their respective fields.
• Julia Lee Cunningham was promoted to associate professor of management and organizations, with tenure. Lee Cunningham teaches BBA, MBA, and executive education courses on organizational behavior, global leadership and teams, and negotiation. Her research focuses on the psychology of narratives, lay theories, and behavioral ethics.
• John Branch was promoted to clinical associate professor of business administration. Branch teaches a variety of marketing and international business courses at the undergraduate, MBA, and executive levels. He is co-director of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and a research fellow at the William Davidson Institute.
• Maxim Sytch was promoted to professor of management and organizations, with tenure. Sytch teaches Leading People and Organizations in the MBA core, Human Behavior and Organization in the Online MBA core, and several Michigan Ross executive education programs. His research explores how networks of relationships among individuals and organizations emerge and shape behaviors and •outcomes.Christopher Williams was promoted to professor of accounting, with tenure. Williams has taught Accounting Principles and Financial Statement Analysis to MBAs and undergrads, as well as Intermediate Accounting to undergrads. He has also taught executive education courses on value creation and risk management. Williams is the Clyne Crawford Teaching Fellow and the Michael and Joan Sakkinen Faculty Fellow at Michigan Ross.
• Brian Wu was promoted to professor of strategy, with tenure. He teaches Strategic Thinking and Competitive Analysis in the Executive MBA Program; and Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Development in the Full-Time, Weekend, and Evening MBA programs. Wu’s research examines the dynamics of corporate scope and the evolution of industries. He is a Michael R. and Mary Kay Hallman Fellow and faculty director of China Initiatives at Michigan Ross.
Ross Students Make Their Mark in Summer Olympics in Tokyo Ross students Michael Hixon, MBA ’22, and Patrick Callan, BBA ’22, competed on Team USA in the 2020 Olympics (conducted in 2021 due to the pandemic) in Tokyo in July and August 2021. Hixon, U-M’s assistant diving coach, and his diving partner Andrew Capobianco won a silver medal in the three-meter springboard competition. It was Hixon’s second silver medal, as he also won one at the 2016 Rio Olympics with Sam Dorman. Callan, a freestyle swimmer, was part of Team USA’s 4x200-meter freestyle relay team that took fourth place. Both Ross students said the school was a big support to them as they prepared to compete on the global stage. Hixon said: “The community at Ross is incredible. My classmates, professors, and administrators have all shown so much competence and passion in their fields as well as a willingness to help others. Especially coming from elite athletics, where only so many people can qualify for an Olympic Team or win a meet, the sense of community and sharing of resources is not extensive. At Ross, even people competing for the same positions are helping each other to be better, and that is a culture worth being a part of.” Callan concurred, saying, “The Ross community has been so unbelievably supportive throughout my athletic journey. My friends and professors regularly ask how it is all going.”
Ross Launches New Healthcare Accelerator For Student Entrepreneurs
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need many times over for impactful innovations in the healthcare industry. The Pinkert Healthcare Accelerator was established to support that need by helping students develop and launch their creative ideas for addressing major challenges in healthcare. Managed by the Zell Lurie Institute at Michigan Ross, the accelerator provides student teams with grant seed funding; expert mentorship from U-M faculty, staff, and alumni; and advising from a board of leaders in healthcare entrepreneurship and investing. The accelerator was created thanks to a dedicated fund included in a $5.4 million gift from Eleanor and Michael Pinkert, MBA ’65/BSE ’64. That gift also established the Pinkert Scholars Program, which provides fullride scholarships for Michigan Ross Full-Time MBA students focused on healthcare. The accelerator is led by Faculty Director Mike Johnson, MD/MBA ’11, and Program Director Anne Perigo, BBA ’91.
Ross’ Joel Slemrod Honored as Distinguished University Professor
Michigan Ross professor Joel Slemrod received one of the University of Michigan’s highest honors in July 2021 when he was named a Distinguished University Professor. The Board of Regents approved the appointment July 15 for Slemrod and four other university professors. The Distinguished University Professorships were established in 1947 to recognize senior faculty with exceptional scholarly or creative achievements; national and international reputations for academic excellence; and superior records of teaching, mentoring, and service. Slemrod was appointed the David Bradford Distinguished University Professor of Economics. He is also the Paul W. McCracken Professor of Business Economics and professor of business economics and public policy in the Ross School of Business; and professor of economics in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. In their recommendation letter, Susan M. Collins, U-M provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, and Michael Solomon, Rackham Graduate School dean and vice provost for academic affairs, wrote, “Professor Slemrod is a leading global authority on the design and effects of tax policies. He has made numerous path-breaking contributions to almost every area of inquiry related to taxation. He has demonstrated how tax policies affect the behavior of households and firms, and his insights have both shaped academic understanding of taxation and contributed to the structure of government tax practices worldwide.”
Ross Alum Gets a Charge Out of Leading the Electric Revolution at Ford Motor Co.
Linda Zhang, MBA ’11, is electrifying the future of transportation as the chief program engineer of Ford Motor Co.’s new F-150 Lightning electric truck. Zhang oversees every element of the F-150 Lightning, from conception to manufacturing. She leads a team of more than 1,000 researchers, marketers, engineers, designers, and others to create an electric version of the world’s best-selling pickup. The F-150 Lightning, which debuted in May 2021, is part of the F-Series product line. In 2019, the F-Series generated more than $42 billion in revenue for Ford, making it larger than Nike, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks. After starting her career with Ford in 1996 upon graduating from the University of Michigan with an electrical engineering undergraduate degree, Zhang’s interest in Ford’s overall business strategy inspired her to pursue an Evening MBA at Ross, as well as a master’s degree in computer science engineering, at U-M. Zhang said her Ross experience was critical to possessing the business acumen needed for her role at Ford. “Ross is one of the best (MBA) programs out there. The program is set up with a great balance between gaining core business acumen and flexibility to explore diverse and deeper areas.”
Contest Produces DEI Case Studies for Use in Business Schools
Michigan Ross and its Sanger Leadership Center partnered with WDI Publishing to launch the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Global Case Writing Competition, a challenge designed to elicit and share case studies encouraging critical thinking around DEI measures in business. The DEI Global Case Writing Competition fea tured two tracks: one focused on traditional business case studies with accompany ing teaching notes, and the other focused on the submission of a case designed for a real-time, role-playing event for action-based learning. The top three cases for track one have been published by WDI Publishing, part of the William Davidson Institute at U-M, while the track two winners will be used by Sanger for its Leadership Crisis Challenge program. First place went to Michigan Ross Professor Christopher Rider, DEI expert Eileen Lopez Rider, and research associate Shonita Black, who wrote a timely case concerning the National Football League’s Rooney Rule, a guideline requiring a slate of diverse candidates during hiring processes. They worked closely with Civil Rights Attorney Cyrus Mehri to tell the story of how Mehri and others developed the rule to advocate for football coaches of color — and business leaders of color elsewhere. In track two, first-place winners were Stephanie Simpson, MBA/MSI ’21; Scott Schenkelberg, MBA ’22; Chris Schweiger, MBA ’22, and Brian Lui, MBA ;22. They received a $10,000 prize for their case about a fictional software-as-a-service company called Aethos.
You say potato, we say ... viral TikTok video? A creative online class experiment turned Ross Professor Ryan Ball into the star of two viral videos on the TikTok platform in August 2021. To help combat the “Zoom fatigue” that can arise during virtual classes, Ball decided to liven things up — by appearing on screen as a potato, thanks to a digital filter. The starchy performance occurred during a review session for his accounting course in the Master of Management Program. A student posted two clips from the class to the video sharing platform TikTok, and they quickly went viral, drawing more than 18.2 million views/4.3 million likes and 24.5 million views/5.6 million likes in only a few days. “I first executed the idea on April 1, 2020, as we transitioned to virtual teaching, as a way of lifting the mood of students during that tough time,” Ball said. “I use it as a way to capture students’ attention when I detect their energy is draining.”
Ross Professor Eyes Viral Career with TikTok Spud Videos
MSCM Students Use Supply Chain Studio to Work With Multinational Corporations
From improving online customer experience to recommending a global trade data strategy, students in the Master of Supply Chain Management Program at Michigan Ross applied their classroom learning to take on seven challenging projects during the Supply Chain Consulting Studio course this year. Divided into small teams, the Ross MSCM students worked on a diverse set of supply chain issues facing global companies, spanning a range of sizes and industries — from beauty to automotive and medical technologies.
“I think the consulting studio is a great culmination for the MSCM pro gram,” said Konrad Jeppesen, MSCM ’21, who worked on a project with Radial Inc. “I was able to apply what I learned during the previous eight months in a way that benefitted a real company. It was a perfect way to get more experience in the industry I want to have a career in.” The studio’s projects were with the following companies: Dow Chemical Co.; Federal Signal Corp.; Kelly Services; Radial/The Estee Lauder Compa nies; Radial; Stryker Corp.; and Toyota Manufacturing of Mississippi.
The summer of 2021 saw the largest cohort of incoming undergraduate students participate in the Ross Summer Connection (RSC) program. Through the virtual three-week program, 45 first-year BBA students were introduced to the academic and social experience at Michigan Ross to help make their transition from high school to business school easier. This includes the rigorous coursework, action-based learning experiences, professional development workshops, and the opportunity to form relationships with fellow participants and mentors. During the 2021 Academic Year, eight RSC alumni, who are all current BBA students, served as mentors to the participants, allowing them to share insights from their experiences and provide guidance to incoming students. “The Michigan Ross Summer Connection program made the transition to college easier by introducing me to an amazingly talented and handwork ing group of fellow first-year BBAs,” said Jaden Douglas, BBA ’25, an RSC participant. “It is so comforting knowing that I already have a group of friends I can count on. During my first week on campus, it has been especially nice seeing my peers around the dinning hall and at bus stops. It reminds me that I am never alone here.”
Ross Summer Connection Helps First-Year BBAs Build Relationships With Peers
Alumni’s Startup Just Enough Wines
Zell Founders Fund Invests $100K in Ross
A premium quality canned wine company founded by Michigan Ross alumni received an impactful investment during the summer of 2021 from a Ross student-led fund. The Zell Founders Fund, managed by the Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at Ross, has contributed $100,000 to a recent funding round for Just Enough Wines, a premium quality canned wine company founded by Ross alumni Kaitlyn Lo, MBA ‘21, and her friend, Jessica Hershfield. “People are gravitating toward canned beverages that are more portable, convenient, and sustainable,” said Lo, co-founder and chief operating officer of Just Enough Wines. “Our goal is to be the nation’s No. 1 selling premium canned wine. The Zell Founders Fund’s $100,000 investment in Just Enough Wines is helping us at a critical point in time as we approach our company’s one-year anniversary from when we first started selling our wines and begin to expand into new geographical markets.”
Months later, Poets&Quants named Just Enough Wines one of 2021’s Most Disruptive MBA Startups. During her time at Ross, Lo was awarded the Dean’s Fellow full-tuition scholarship and named to the Zell Entrepreneurs 2020 cohort through the Zell Lurie Institute.
Ross Boosts Opportunities for MBA Women with Forté Foundation Partnership Expansion
The longtime partnership between the Michigan Ross Full-Time MBA Program and the Forté Foundation expanded in 2021 to include the school’s Weekend, Online, and Executive MBA programs. The Forté Foundation aims to launch women into fulfilling careers through access to business education, professional development, and a community of successful women. This partnership expansion allows all of these women MBA students to be eligible for Forte Fellowships as well as additional networking and career advancement opportunities. The 2021 cohort of Michigan Ross Forté Fellows were: Alexa Doerr, WMBA ’23; Angela Hresko, WMBA ’23; Autumn Tansky, EMBA ’23; Catherine Chin, EMBA ’23; Macresia Alibaruho, EMBA ’23; Rachel Feinberg; OMBA ’24; Rebecca Scicluna, EMBA ’23; Robbin Lee, OMBA ’24; and Shaylyn Stanley, WMBA ’23. As Lee said, “Having been shaped by the women leaders in my life — from coaches to teammates, from teachers to professors, from supervisors to mentors — I am most excited about the opportunity to spark new relationships with a community of smart, inspiring women nationally.”
2021FALL
• Full-Time MBA Program Makes Justice and Equality Part of the Ross Experience • Ross Full-Time MBA Class of 2023 is One for the Record Books • New Research, Teaching Awards Highlight School’s Commitment to Diversity • Two Ross EMBAs Recognized Among the ‘Best & Brightest’ of 2021 • Ross MBAs Win $10K Prize, More from National Black MBA Case Competition • Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Talks Positive Impacts at Handleman Lecture • Ross Community Members Open Up About Coming Out at OUTx • Ross Students Get in the Sport Business Game With Launch of Alliance • Book by Ross Professor Explores the Power of ‘Flexing’ to Develop New Skills • Business+Tech Initiative to Prepare Students for Leadership in the Digital Economy • MBAs Organize Health Equity Case Competition for Students Around the World • Weiser Center’s First Event Asks Students to Think About Impact, Future of Real Estate • Erb Institute Celebrates 25 Years of Advancing Business Sustainability • Faculty and Students Help Launch New Michigan Climate Venture Fund • Commitment to Impact Earns MBAs Skip and Carrie Gordon Scholarships • Ross Launches Foundations for Success Initiative to Support Students • Why Ross? Here’s Our “Why”
Full-Time MBA Program Makes Justice and Equality Part of the Ross Experience
Michigan Ross added engaging and informative sessions focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion to its weeklong orientation for Full-Time MBA Program students at the beginning of the 2021-2022 Academic Year. Sessions explored topics such as why business students should care about DEI, how to be an ally, and how to build an anti-racist framework. The sessions were intended to provide a platform for incoming students to build on their DEI awareness, regardless of where they are on their individual DEI journey. Students found great value in the programming. As Soha Khedkar, MBA ’23, said, “I valued the intentional safe space in which we were encouraged to connect with each other and share vulnerable stories amongst peers who are empathetic and kind,” explained Khedkar. “I look forward to having more of these spaces and opportunities to continue these conversations.”
Ross Full-Time MBA Class of 2023 is One for the Record Books
We’ll take “Strongest MBA Class Around” for $1,000, Alex. Michigan Ross welcomed one of its most diverse and academically strong Full-Time MBA classes with the arrival of 398 members of the Class of 2023. The historic class featured the following records: highest percentage of women (46%); largest class of students in the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management (66); highest average GMAT score (722); and average GPA (3.53). In addition, 36% are U.S. students of color (tying the previous year’s record), while 11% are first-generation students and 5% are veterans. These MBA students hailed from 43 countries around the globe, having attended more than 200 universities, where they studied more than 100 majors. Further, 48 students had already earned graduate degrees, with another 65 starting the pursuit of dual degrees at U-M.
New Research, Teaching Awards Highlight
• BBA Senior Thesis: Karthik Nagappan — “Assessing the Effect of Racial Bias on Approval of Healthcare Reform Proposals: A Survey of Attitudes for Politicians and Their Policies”
• Faculty Research: Mohamed Mostagir, Assistant Professor of Technology and Operations — “Social Inequality and the Spread of Misinformation”
School’s Commitment to Diversity
Michigan Ross recognized the winners of the school’s inaugural DEI Research and Teaching Awards at a ceremony in November 2021. The award celebrated and honored research related to diversity, equity, and inclusion at the school, from undergraduate to faculty. In her opening remarks at the ceremony, Interim Dean Francine Lafontaine noted that teaching and learning are a major focus of the school’s ongoing DEI efforts. “We are here to congratulate these awardees on their contributions, and more importantly, to hear from each of them as to how they’ve been doing this work and why and what it represents,” Lafontaine said. The 2021 award winners were:
• Faculty Research: Sarah Miller, Assistant Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy — “Estimated Mortality Increases During the COVID-19 Pandemic by Socioeconomic Status, Race, and Ethnicity”
• PhD Research: Virginia Traweek — “Societal Trusted Financial Market Participation: Evidence from the Freedman’s Savings Bank”
• J. Frank Yates Diversity and Inclusion Teaching Excellence Award: Marcus Collins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Marketing
Two Ross EMBAs Recognized Among the ‘Best & Brightest’ of 2021 Michigan Ross graduates Chiquita Berg, EMBA ’21, and Shakira Kelly, EMBA ’21, were named among the Best and Brightest Executive MBAs of 2021 by Poets&Quants. The publication looked to honor those graduates who “personify excellence” through “their contributions to the class, academic performance, extracurricular involvement, professional achievement, and personal intangibles.” The publication asked 49 top-ranked executive MBA programs, including Michigan Ross, for recommendations of outstanding individuals for their eighth annual Best & Brightest list. Berg is an IHA obstetrics and gynecology physician at St. Mary Mercy Hospital in Livonia, Michigan. She chose to pursue an executive MBA to advance her leadership and teamwork skills, a main focus of the Michigan Ross program.With a background in computer science, Kelly had long considered pursuing an MBA to advance her career. After attending a professional leadership program at Ross in 2018, she was inspired by the focus on leadership and positive culture and knew that Ross was the perfect fit for her.
Ross MBAs Win $10K Prize, More from National Black MBA Case Competition
A team of four Full-Time MBA students at Michigan Ross received a $10,000 check for placing third in the 2021 National Black MBA Case Competition in September 2021. Each year, the graduate chapter of the Michigan Ross Black Business Student Association sponsors a team to compete in the competition, which challenges students to act as consult ing teams to analyze a complex business case and present their findings before a panel of Fortune 500 executives. During the 2021-2022 Academic Year, the Michigan Ross team — Yasmin Abdulhadi, MBA ’23; Sam Bakare Korodo, MBA ’23; Evan Hollins, MBA ’22; and Markyth Smith, MBA ’22 — were challenged to create a marketing strategy for two new luxury vehicle brands: the Jeep Wagoneer and Jeep Grand Wagoneer. The prompt asked the MBAs to create a customer segmentation strategy, advertising strategy, and customer engagement strategy to help the Wagoneer brand best pen etrate the market. Beyond their award, all of the MBA students said they were able to take away valuable insights and further develop their skills as marketers and presenters through participating in the competition. “What I learned is the power of teamwork and that through collaboration you can do more as a team than by yourself,” said Bakare Korodo.
Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Talks
Michigan Ross welcomed Nobel Prize-winner and development economics expert Esther Duflo as the speaker for the 2021 Joseph and Sally Handleman Lecture Series on September 20. Duflo joined more than 1,000 Michigan Ross undergraduate students, faculty, staff, and other members of the University of Michigan community at Hill Auditorium for an insightful discussion on ways to think beyond profit to the impact businesses have on society. From her knowledge and experience, Duflo said business students and employers should think about the role big and small businesses have in making a positive difference. “The business practices that you decide to use, the environmental practices that you adhere to, the technology that you will bring in, the standards that you might set on the people who you are doing business with, in terms of how they deal with their own employees, in terms of the quality that they provide, and so on, are going to have ripple effect in society well beyond your own activities,” she explained. “In finding out how to attract, train, and retain workers and give them good jobs, I think that is a way in which businesses big and small are key influences in the community as employers,” she said.
Positive Impacts at Handleman Lecture
Ross students joined residents from Ann Arbor and beyond in celebrating the LGBTQ+ community in October 2021 by sharing their coming-out stories during OUTx. OUTx is an annual event organized by MBA students in Out for Business at Michigan Ross. This year, the event was themed “We Find a Way,” and each storyteller examined aspects that scared them and how they found a way to creatively and authentically express themselves in their coming-out stories. Michael W. O’Gorman Jr., MBA ’23, was among those who shared coming out stories during the event. He was a teacher in Washington, D.C. at the time of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people were killed inside the gay establishment. O’Gorman Jr. described his reasons for coming out to his students: “I chose to come out because my students were all internalizing messages, directly and indirectly from family, church, and society at large that hate is OK, being different is wrong — just as I did growing up. I chose to come out because I wanted to be the teacher I didn’t have growing up. And I chose to come out, because I want each of you to be the person you didn’t have growing up.”
Ross Community Members Open Up About Coming Out at OUTx
MBA SBA addresses this need by acting as a more formalized conduit for the two groups,” said Abrams, president of MBA SBA. “This will result in a powerful network for our members to tap into, educational resources that will build industry knowledge, and, ultimately, a collaborative environment that will enable members to get the jobs in sports they are passionate about and make an immediate impact,” he said.
Ross Students Get in the Sport Business Game With Launch of Alliance In case you hadn’t heard, sports are kind of a thing at the University of Michigan. Knowing this, a group of students in the Full-Time MBA program at Michigan Ross decided to improve the recruiting path opportunities for fellow students interested in sports business careers. Classmates Jordan Enos, MBA ’22, and Alex Abrams, MBA ’22, partnered with MBA students at three other business schools – UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, and Texas’ McCombs School of Business – to launch the MBA Sports Business Alliance. The group aims to address the recruiting challenges head-on and develop an extensive pipeline of MBA talent into sports and entertainment organizations. “We know that there is demand from both sports organizations and students at top-tier business schools for a more defined pipeline of MBA talent into sports, but neither side knows where to begin.
Book by Ross Professor Explores the Power of ‘Flexing’ to Develop New Skills
In her book, The Power of Flexing, professor Sue Ashford reveals how small behavioral experiments can be used to create life-changing growth. Her book released in 2021 describes a system useful for anyone wanting to gain skills or overcome challenges. After setting a personal growth goal, you devise experiments to test out different strategies for making progress on the goal; then you seek feedback, and then reflect. The system can make you a more effective leader or help you grow as a person in other ways, said Ashford, explaining she has taught this framework for a number of years. She said that flexing “starts from the idea that you own your own growth and lays out a set of practices tied to learning from your experiences that you can use flexibly in your life to grow when and how you most want. One of the core practices in this system is trying something new — trying a set of experiments with your behavior to see if you can improve things with one approach or another. That’s flexing.”
Michigan Ross announced in October 2021 the Business+Tech Initiative to prepare students for thriving careers at the intersection of business and technology. This initiative provides both undergraduate and graduate students with innovative action-based learning and co-curricular experiences to equip them with tech knowledge and skills. For years, Michigan Ross and several of its centers and institutes have invested in developing a robust portfolio of opportunities exploring the intersection of business and technology. These include forums with industry executives, action based projects, and learning engagements for students on topics such as data analytics, digital marketing, fintech, and digital operations. The new Business+Tech initiative brings these offerings together and creates new opportunities for student engagement as well as direct connections to industry leaders and innovators.
“Technology is playing an increasingly significant role in transforming business models and every aspect of value creation, including how products and services are developed and offered, and how customers interact with companies and organizations. We recognize that our graduates need to be literate, competent, and ultimately masters of the ways in which tech is transforming business,” said M.S. Krishnan, Accenture Professor of Computer Information Systems and professor of technology and operations at Michigan Ross, who is serving as the faculty director of the Business+Tech initiative.
Business+Tech Initiative to Prepare Students for Leadership in the Digital Economy
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic illustrating disparities and inequities in the U.S. healthcare system, Full-Time MBA students in the Health and Life Sciences Club at Michigan Ross organized a case competition focused on health disparity for graduate students from universities around the world. The inaugural Henrietta Lacks Health Equity Case Competition on October 2 included 49 teams from 27 universities from three continents. The HeLa Health Equity Case Competition was inspired by the life of Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer cells – code named HeLa – were taken without her knowledge in 1951. Those cells became one of the most important tools in medicine (still being used without approval today) — with damaging consequences for her family, many of whom often struggled to get access to the very health care advances their mother’s cells helped make possible. “One of my goals entering Michigan Ross was to expand the exposure of health equity issues. The relationship between Black people and the medical community has been tainted as a result of the racism within healthcare institutions,” said Brittani Banks, MBA ’22, who conceived the idea for the competition. “Unfortunately, many other underrepresented communities share similar stories.”
MBAs Organize Health Equity Case Competition for Students Around the World
The newly launched Weiser Center for Real Estate hosted its inaugural event, the Future of Real Estate Competition to challenge students to showcase their perspectives on a complex issue and envision the future of real estate. Fifteen teams of students from Michigan Ross and other U-M programs participated in the program. Students were tasked with developing engaging posters and abstracts illustrating their ideas for the future of real estate. Their work was reviewed by an interdisciplinary panel, with judges rating students based on clarity of information, graphic design, multidisciplinary approach, demonstration of knowledge, and innovation. The winning teams were announced Sept. 24, 2021 at the 35th Annual Michigan Real Estate Convention at U-M. First place went to a team of Michigan Ross Full-Time MBA students — Alexandra “Lexx” Mills, MBA/ MURP ’22; Caroline Lehman, MBA ’23; and Evalynn Rosado, MBA ’23 — for their idea “The Future of Real Estate is Equitable.”
Weiser Center’s First Event Asks Students to Think About Impact, Future of Real Estate
Erb Institute Celebrates 25 Years of Advancing Business Sustainability
The Erb Institute has been at the forefront of broadening the scope of sustainability beyond the environment to include social issues, such as community investment, employee engagement, human rights, and diversity and justice. “In the recent decade, the focus on social issues, environment and business has grown,” said Associate Professor Sara Soderstrom, an Erb faculty member. “Currently, a specific consideration of justice is gaining more — and needed — attention, especially as we consider the inequitable impacts of climate change and the potential for business to amplify or address these impacts.” More businesses now have sustainability embedded within their core business models, long-term strategies, and daily operations. Leaders recognize it as essential to the business, rather than a separate division or a side project.
For the past 25 years, the Erb Institute has been at the forefront of redefining sustainability, and it looks forward to continuing to do so for the next 25.
In 1996, the Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb Environmental Management Institute was founded as a joint venture between Michigan Ross and the then-School of Natural Resources and Environment (now the School for Environment and Sustainability). The Erb Institute had seven graduates in 1996, and now, more than 500 have graduated with dual MBA and MS degrees from Ross and SEAS, respectively.
The institute continues to transform the way sustainability and business education intersect. Last year, the Erb Institute launched the undergraduate Erb Fellows program to deliver business and sustainability education, community, and co-curricular learning to Ross BBA and Program in the Environment students. This program is the first of its kind at U-M, and 73 fellows were enrolled at the beginning of the 2021-2022 Academic Year.
In partnership with the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability and Erb Institute, faculty and MBA students from Michigan Ross have led the development of a new student-run investment fund targeting early-stage climate tech companies that have potential to make a real difference on climate change. The fund is the centerpiece of the Michigan Climate Venture, a first-of-its-kind, multidisciplinary program at the intersection of climate technology and venture capital at U-M. The program is designed to provide a hands-on, transformational learning experience that will prepare students for impactful careers addressing climate change. “MCV seeks to be a signature educational experience at a top public research university: issue- and action-based, rigorous and data driven, multidisciplinary, technology-enhanced, and co-created and managed by students,” said Gautam Kaul, MCV’s faculty director and professor of finance and Robert G. Rodkey Collegiate Professor of Business Administration at Michigan Ross. “MCV is based on the success of the Social Venture and the International Investment funds, which I also oversee at Michigan Ross, and is in partnership with the Erb Institute and SEAS, and focused on the most pressing and challenging global societal issue we face — climate change.”
Faculty and Students Help Launch New Michigan Climate Venture Fund
Three Full-Time MBA students from Michigan Ross received Skip and Carrie Gordon Scholarships for the 2021-2022 Academic Year: Nathan Alston, MBA ’22; J’Taime Lyons, MBA/MPP ’22; and Elizabeth Wallace, MBA/MS ’22. These students were chosen based on their outstanding commitment to addressing complex social challenges through their studies. Alston leveraged his time at Michigan Ross through leadership positions, the development of his own entrepreneurial venture, and building relationships through a variety of professional organizations. He served as the director of marketing for both the Entertainment and Digital Media Club and Out for Business. He was selected to join both the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management and Management Leadership for Tomorrow, professional organizations dedicated to supporting people of color who are interested in business school.
Skip and Carrie Gordon Scholarships
Commitment to Impact Earns MBAs
Wallace has leveraged many action-based learning opportunities to equip herself to deliver impact in Detroit upon graduation. This includes a year-long project through the Dow Sustainability Fellows program in partnership with EcoWorks in Detroit. Under the guidance of Erb Institute Professor Sara Soderstrom, Wallace built a financial viability model and wrote several grant applications for the Intertwined Family Foundation on the east side of Detroit. She also executed a consultative project for the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network’s planned Detroit People’s Food Co-op.
Lyons took courses such as Public Management, Business in Society, and Tax Policy, which allowed her to learn more about the challenges of solving wicked problems. Outside of her academic experiences, she has used her Poverty Solutions graduate research assistantship, B+I’s Board Fellowship program, and participation in the Zell Lurie Institute’s Dare to Dream Venture Shaping program to provide her with experiential learning experiences to build her skills. Lyons went on to work on a nonprofit and local government strategy internship and applied her learnings directly to the social impact space. In her second year, she continued to work with her internship and also was able to work with a social impact startup, The William Julius Wilson Institute.
Michigan Ross MBA Grads See Record Salary Packages and Acceptance Rates
Another year, another set of records set by Michigan Ross MBA students. For the class of 2021, statistics show 97.5% of Michigan Ross Full-Time MBA grads received offers within three months of graduation, and 96.1% accepted offers in that timespan, which was a 10-year-high. McKinsey and Amazon led the list of the most sought-after employers that hired the members of the class; as such, the highest percentage of Class of 2021 members went into positions in consulting and tech. McKinsey, Bain, and BCG represented more than 50 hires, while half of the tech hires went to the ever-popular post-grad MBA destinations: Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple. There was also a 3.5% increase in finance, with 15.5% of grads going into that industry, and many others went into healthcare and consumer packaged goods as well. In keeping with previous years, the majority (74%) of Michigan Ross MBA graduates landed jobs on the East Coast, West Coast, or Chicago, while 94% of graduates were career switchers. One area that showed significant interest versus previous years was graduates pursuing impact-related careers. More than 10% of the class reported going into careers with a social impact or sustainability component, up more than 6 percentage points from last year and 3 percentage points from a previous high of nearly 7% in 2018.
was launched with three significant gifts. One of the new gifts to the initiative was in the amount of $2.5 million from Ross School Advisory Board member Bill Stein, BBA ’84, to create the Stein Scholarship Cohort Fund. The Stein fund will be used to provide scholarships and programming for Ross students with a demonstrated financial need in the Bachelor of Business Administration Program. Fellow board member Jane Okun Bomba, MBA ’89, with her husband Gary Bomba, also committed $2 million in need-based scholarship support for students affiliated with the Michigan Ross Business+Impact initiative and/or who are involved in social impact or sustainability. The third gift is a $4 million endowed estate gift from anonymous donors that was added to an established scholarship fund.
Ross Launches Foundations for Success Initiative to Support Students
In November 2021, Michigan Ross launched a new fundraising initiative called Foundations for Success, with the goal of raising $200 million to increase access to its top-ranked business programs and support students at the school. The Foundations for Success Initiative aims to boost the business school’s ability to recruit exceptional students through scholarships and provide funding for educational and experiential opportunities at Michigan Ross and Thebeyond.initiative
“I have been a professor at Ross for more than 30 years and am passionate about our mission of building a better world through business,” said Francine Lafontaine, interim dean of Michigan Ross and William Davidson Professor of Business Administration. “I believe the most effective way to make real progress toward our mission is to keep opening our doors to promising and ambitious students through the power of scholarships — and to provide them with as many enriching learning experiences as possible while they are here. Among our foremost priorities is mobilizing financial support for students.”
In October, Poets&Quants featured 12 members of the Full-Time MBA Class of 2023 from Michigan Ross, highlighting their respective journeys and why they selected the school as the institution of choice. The publication described Ross as having “something for everyone,” and featured a diverse selection of students, including a Mexican DJ, a former Major League Soccer player, a Navy veteran turned nonprofit founder, and a financial literacy instructor committed to advancing economic and education equity. It turns out there are as many reasons to attend Ross as there are students. Here are a few of the reasons provided:
Eden Berdugo: “I want to use my MBA to consult companies on how they can funnel more private sector dollars to small- to mid-sized, minority- and women-owned businesses. Ultimately, I want to design and implement end-to-end strategic processes for private and public entities that create pipelines of diverse and sustainable suppliers and drive inclusive growth. I felt that the best way to pursue these goals was by going to business school, specifically to gain the academic foundation, industry experience, and an amazing network that will support me along the way.”
Why Ross? Here’s Our “Why”
Yasmin Abdulhadi: “I recently learned that Ann Arbor, where Michigan Ross is located, is the most educated and smartest city in America. With so many people gathering from different backgrounds and areas of expertise at Ross and across the university, there are many opportunities to cross paths with people and create/do something impactful in different fields.”
Juan Rogelio Lemarroy Montanaro: “As a self-employed entrepreneur and leader, I am eager to be a part of the Sanger Leadership Center, working on projects that could nurture my leadership skills further. Also, I look forward to becoming an active member of the Latin community at Ross to proudly represent my cultural background.”
Karnica Gupta: “The emphasis on learning by doing was key in my decision to attend Ross. Having spent the bulk of my career in finance, the opportunity to learn about different functions and industries in a way that’s hands-on, collaborative, and permits experimentation was an incredible way for me to maximize my professional growth over the next two years. Michigan Ross has a number of such opportunities including the Multidisciplinary Action Projects, student investment funds, the Integrated Product Development elective, and Leadership Crisis Challenge to name a few — all of which I look forward to participating in!”
Christopher Meyer: “I joined the Sunrise Movement, a national climate justice organization, in 2018 about the same time as when I started my job at Wealth Insight Partners. I loved the passion and energy I felt at Sunrise meetings as we pushed for government responses to climate change. At work, I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of constructing portfolios and analyzing different investments. I wanted to find a career that would allow me to continue to use my quantitative finance skills in a role focused on impact; I decided that an MBA would offer me a chance to pivot into impact investing. I plan to recruit for climate tech VC. I’m excited to meet with different companies that share my passion for sustainability and help them grow to maximize their impact!”
2022WINTER
• Ross Jumps to 4th in Annual Ranking of Graduate Schools for Entrepreneurship Studies • Executive MBAs’ MAP Projects Tackle Issues from Climate Change to Sports • MBAs Earn Awards, Scholarships for Work on Tauber Institute Projects • Professor Westphal Study: Companies Look Better When Workers Have Input • Ross Students Among Winners of Inaugural +Tech Innovation Jam • Ross Professor Launches New Course Addressing the ‘E’ in DEI • Ross Full-Time MBA Program Named ‘MBA Program of the Year’ By Poets&Quants • Ross BBAs Go to Work All Over the Globe • Ross BBA’s Venture Named to P&Q’s Most Disruptive Business School Startups List • Student Innovators Use U-M Research to Enhance Mental Health on College Campuses • Ross Recognizes Accounting Professionals for Significant Contributions • Three Alumni Awarded For Their Outstanding Contributions to Michigan Ross • SEC Cites Michigan Ross Research in Proposed ‘Insider Giving’ Tax Rule • Journalists Deliver MLK Symposium Keynote Lecture: This is America • Women Who Launch Symposium Aims for More Gender-Equal Entrepreneurial Community • Ross Alum Leads Black Business Alumni Association to Make Connections, Give Back • MBAs Set Sights on Improving Senior Citizens’ Lives at Tauber Institute’s Trade Show • CPO Consortium Speaker: ‘Vulnerability is Scary’ • ‘Great Resignation’ a Misnomer for Tight Labor Market, Faculty Experts Say • Students Navigate a Prejudice and Unconscious Bias Simulation During this Year’s Leadership Crisis Challenge • Ross MBA Graduates Sink Their Teeth into FAANG Companies • One-Year Master’s Grads See High Employment Rates, Range of Career Opportunities at Top Companies • ALE Conference Celebrates Black Business Excellence in Many Forms
Michigan Ross edged up further into the Top 5 of Princeton Review’s annual ranking of graduate schools for entrepreneurship studies, landing at the No. 4 spot in the 2022 list. The rankings considered more than 40 data points about nearly 300 schools, according to the November announcement released by the Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine. Michigan Ross is home to the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, which offers a wide range of entrepreneurshipfocused courses, programs, and resources, and is located in Ann Arbor — both hotbeds for student innovators and professional entrepreneurs alike.
“The entrepreneurial ecosystem changes rapidly, especially as disruptive technologies continue to emerge at lightning speed. In turn, entrepreneurial offerings within the university must evolve and pivot to better prepare our graduate students,” said Stewart Thornhill, executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute and Eugene Applebaum Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Michigan Ross. “The Zell Lurie Institute continues to introduce new programs and opportunities to further develop innovative leaders and future founders — delivering actionbased learning experiences inside and outside the classroom with the opportunity to start, invest, and lead real ventures.”
Ross Jumps to 4th in Ranking of Graduate Schools for Entrepreneurship Studies
PK Coleman, MBA ’22; Jared Herschberger, MBA ’22; Therese Komar, MBA ’22; and Peter Pacult, MBA ’22, worked on a project sponsored by Carbon Group Solutions, an international agro-climatic consulting firm. Their project focused on efforts to incentivize farmers to adopt practices that sequester carbon in soil and increase regenerative agriculture. While lowering global carbon emissions can seem like a daunting task, the students expressed how undertaking this ExecMAP project has provided insights into the work being done by businesses on climate change. The students were able to gain an insider perspective after speaking directly to farmers and experts in the agricultural industry. “We have an amazing support group of advisors and librarians who are going above and beyond to help us succeed,” said Coleman. “Between the collective group, we’re constantly sharing ideas and our librarian always provides us with the latest information on relevant topics and data points. I’m very fortunate to be in a group of people who are so passionate about climate change.”
Executive MBAs’ MAP Projects Tackle Issues from Climate Change to Sports
In December 2021, EMBA students conducted 19 ExecMAP projects on a variety of topics, including biosciences, tourism, sport, and food and beverage. The projects concluded with final presentations of the strategic recommendations to the sponsoring companies’ leadership teams.
MBAs Earn Awards, Scholarships for Work on Tauber Institute Projects
Full-Time MBA students from Ross were among the award and scholarship recipients named at the Tauber Institute for Global Operations’ 2021 Spotlight! Team Project Showcase and Scholarship Competition in November. The Tauber Institute’s Spotlight! event is an annual competitive presentation of operations solutions developed by business and engineering student teams at the University of Michigan during their team projects at top global companies. The 14-week operations-based projects are centered on creating innovative solutions that provide significant financial savings, as well as improvements in areas such as CO2 emissions, energy consumption, throughput time, and supply chain risk. The 2021 Tauber team projects returned a record-setting savings of over $989 million, an average of $43 million in savings per project over three years. Ross project winners were: Lyndy Burnett, MBA ’22; Gilbert Pasquale, MBA ’22; and Matthew Rosales, MBA ’22. Students receiving Tauber Alumni Scholarships included: Bryce Garver, MBA ’22; and Margaret Kirk, MBA ’22. Meanwhile, the Tauber Institute presented the Tauber Trailblazer faculty award to Michigan Ross Lecturer Eric Svaan, who has served as business faculty advisor for 45 team projects over 24 years.
Professor Westphal Study: Companies Look Better When Workers Have Input
Sometimes it’s more about optics than actually taking employees’ input into account when it comes to major company decisions. A 2021 study led by Ross School of Business Professor James Westphal surveyed CEOs and top managers at 181 companies that disclosed participative strategic decision-making programs and the use of crowdsourcing technology to solicit input on strategy. A large majority — roughly 90% — landed on a strategic option before seeking any lower-level input — revealing a widespread “decoupling” of such programs from actual decision-making. What’s more, the performative operation can enhance the company’s reputation: Disclosures of these efforts to security analysts was linked to more positive appraisals, particularly when the use of technology was highlighted. “I was struck by the strong tendency for rhetoric about the use of crowdsourcing technology to reduce questioning from analysts about strategic decision-making,” said Westphal, professor of strategy at Michigan Ross, as well as co-director of U-M’s Interdisciplinary Committee on Organizational Studies.
More than 200 students from Michigan Ross and other U-M schools and colleges participated in the first +Tech Innovation Jam competition in October and November 2021, which challenged 40 interdisciplinary teams to go from idea to working prototype ready to pitch in just five weeks. Organized by Business+Tech at Michigan Ross, with support from U-M’s School of Information and Center for Entrepreneurship, the competition brought U-M students of diverse backgrounds and experiences into teams to tackle a timely prompt. Students are encouraged to leverage their individual expertise to develop a functional and innovative digital prototype that addresses the prompt. This year’s prompt was to create an innovative digital product to help bring more connectivity into the world after a year of increased isolation due to the pandemic. In addition to a cash prize, the winning teams earned possible entry for their company into the Living Business Leadership Experience (LBLE) course at Ross. After pitching to an expert panel of judges, the team behind Oudio, an innovative social media platform that allows its users to share the “not so perfect” aspects of their lives via audio (micro-podcast) and anonymity options, was declared the winner. Members of Oudio — Didsayachai Prirungruang, MBA ’23; Jihee Yoon, MS ’23; Akhila Kosaraju, MA ’23; and Zelda Hu, MS ’23 — received a $5,000 check, along with the chance to participate in LBLE.
Ross Students Among Winners of Inaugural +Tech Innovation Jam
As companies realize they need to take action to become more diverse, equitable, and inclusive, analytics play an important role. Managers may wonder if their business practices unintentionally create unfair situations for their employees and other stakeholders, but they may lack the analytical skills to effectively address the issue. Ross School of Business Professor Chris Rider saw a critical need for these skills — so much so that he created a groundbreaking new course at Michigan Ross to teach those skills and ultimately, enable companies to act. In Rider’s course — called Equity Analytics, offered in both graduate and undergraduate versions during the 2022 Winter Semester — students learned how to analyze equity issues in real-world situations, augmented by new case studies and visits from industry experts and executives with relevant experience.
Rider hopes companies will start establishing a new role of equity analyst. “Our students need to learn analytic techniques and they need to work with data. … I think that most companies realize that disparities of many kinds — racial, gender, immigrant status, and so on — are prevalent, and they can and should be addressed. I think there’s a lot of variation, however, in organizational commitment to addressing these disparities. Some of that is due to motivation, but we can address the part that is due to knowledge.”
Ross Professor Launches New Course Addressing the ‘E’ in DEI
Ross Full-Time MBA Program Named ‘MBA Program of the Year’ By Poets&Quants
Talk about Leaders & Best. In December 2021, Poets&Quants selected the Full-Time MBA Program at Michigan Ross as its MBA Program of Year for 2021. Poets&Quants describes Ross as having “a continually innovating MBA program that puts experiential learning at its core and students at the center of the experience.” The publication emphasizes that the “ever-evolving nature” of the Ross Full-Time MBA Program makes it stand out from competitors. “Time and time again, Ross continues to roll out one innovation after another,” the publication said.
The Michigan Ross 2021 innovations cited by P&Q include the Michigan Climate Venture, a first-of-its-kind, multidisciplinary program at the intersection of climate technology and venture capital that was recently launched by Ross faculty and MBA students in the Erb Institute; the new
Business + Tech initiative, which aims to prepare students for careers at the intersection of business and technology; the new Pinkert Healthcare Accelerator, which provides student teams with grant seed funding and mentorship for U-M student entrepreneurs in the health sector; and Business+Impact’s new Founders Program, which welcomed a half-dozen student-led ventures this summer. Beyond innovation, Poets&Quants cited the leadership by Michigan Ross in experiential learning as another reason why it named the school its MBA Program of the Year: “While many schools have only recently tacked on required consulting engagements with companies and nonprofits, Ross is now celebrating the 30th anniversary of its learning-by-doing experience, the so-called MAP (Multidisciplinary Action Projects).” In addition to MAP, Poets&Quants highlights the great number of student-run funds at Michigan Ross. Further fueling Ross’ rise to the top is its diversity. Poets&Quants highlights the diversity of the Michigan Ross Full-Time MBA Class of 2023, which has the program’s highest percentage of women ever (46%) and the largest group of students in the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management (66) after receiving the most Consortium applications ever. Additionally, the article describes how women at Ross represent 68% of club leadership, and that the last 10 student body presidents have all been Consortium members and the last four were women. Eight of 10 section presidents also are women.
Ross BBAs Go to Work All Over the Globe
Where in the world are Michigan Ross BBAs working? More like, ‘Where aren’t they working?’ The BBA employment report released in December 2021 by Michigan Ross is further proof of the strength and versatility of an undergraduate degree from Michigan Ross. Michigan Ross BBA graduates from the Class of 2021 went to work for 234 global companies and organizations, up from 185 the previous year, and including many of the most sought-after employers. The top hiring companies were PwC, Bank of America, EY/Parthenon, Deloitte, Citi, Morgan Stanley, and KPMG International. As represented by the top employers, the largest percentage of 2021 BBA grads went into financial services. Offers to the Class of 2021 remained consistently strong as with previous years, with 94% of the class receiving offers by September 30, and 93.3% accepting their offer by that time. The mean salary package was $84,000, and the mean salary was $76,295, up from the Class of 2020 ($75,575), and driven in part by the diversity of employers and job functions. Around 70% of the hires were facilitated by the Career Development Office at Michigan Ross. “As with previous years, we are proud to have helped our 2021 graduates leverage their skills and experience to land the jobs they wanted — with strong offers attached — at top companies and organizations around the world,” said Heather Byrne, managing director of the Career Development Office.
Ross BBA’s Venture Named to P&Q’s Most Disruptive Business School Startups List
LeaseMagnets has partnered with over 200 real estate clients and conducts over 20,000 virtual tours daily. Parmar’s venture also beat out 250 other startups to win the 2021 Michigan Business Challenge.
As a sophomore at Michigan Ross, Parmar told P&Q he found out how stressful, uncertain, and inconvenient the rental and apartment housing process could be. In addition, he learned that many property managers lose 98% of interested leads on their website before they even take a tour. “It was here that I realized how inconvenient the shopping experience was for an apartment: 1) you need schedule/book a tour for every apartment, and 2) take the in-person tour (usually only offered during business hours), confirm pricing on-site (sometimes re-invite all relevant parties to another tour), and then sign a lease.” This inspired him to seek a solution, which led him to create LeaseMagnets. Parmar utilizes the Tour.video digital platform to enable managers to create “personalized video tours” of their properties, which he says results in 60% higher lead generation and conversion of clients’ websites.
Poets&Quants named LeaseMagnets — founded by Amulya Parmar, BBA ’24 — as one of 2021’s Most Disruptive Business School Startups. Parmar’s LeaseMagnets was highlighted in the lead of Poets&Quants story as one of 14 student ventures honored on its inaugural list.
Student Innovators Use U-M Research to Enhance Mental Health on College Campuses
On any campus, students across all degree levels are facing mental health challenges. According to the University of Michigan’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), COVID-19 had a negative impact on students’ “feelings of isolation, motivational deficits, and overall mental health.” Graduate students have largely been impacted, making up 32% of those seeking out CAPS’s services in Fall 2021. For entrepreneurs, where the heart of innovation is inspiration and community, the COVID-19 pandemic, among other factors, has made both of these things more difficult to find. During the Winter 2021 semester, students in the +Impact Studio Course “Translating Research to Impact” (BA670) at Michigan Ross interviewed local small business owners, finding a strong theme of mental health and well-being challenges in their community. One student team engaged U-M faculty members Dr. Ethan Kross and Dr. Sue Ashford to learn about their research and home in on a solution — journaling emerged as a powerful, researchbased tool for enhancing well-being and performance as a leader. In the summer of 2021, Applebaum Impact Design Fellow Jess Halter, MBA/MS ’23, was brought on to lead further development, prototyping, and testing of the journal concept, and Venture Field Guide was born. Venture Field Guide is a journal aimed at fostering greater well-being, clarity, and intentionality in both the personal and professional lives of entrepreneurs and small business owners. Currently it is focusing on supporting student entrepreneurs. The journal prototype puts into practice research on journaling, reflection, gratitude, and self-distancing.
Michigan Ross announced in January 2022 the latest recipients of its Honorary Paton Fellow Award: Karen Bird and James Leisenring. Bird and Leisenring were recognized during the Paton Fellow Induction Ceremony in March 2022. Founded in 2016, the Honorary Paton Fellow Award recognizes individuals each year who have made significant contributions to the accounting industry. Bird combined her passion for both accounting and teaching, starting her 30-year career as a lecturer at Michigan Ross. She focused on teaching undergraduate financial and managerial accounting courses for many years, and co-authored a textbook specifically designed for Ross BBA students titled Financial Accounting. In later years, Bird served as the associate director of instructional development, a program for Michigan Ross doctoral students that provides support and resources to develop teaching and research Leisenringskills.joined the staff of the Financial Accounting Standards Board in 1982 as a director of research and technical activities. In the years following, he was appointed as a member of the FASB before being appointed as the vice chairman. He also served as the chairman of the Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of CPAs, and was appointed a member of the International Accounting Standards Board. In 2003, he was inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame and was given AICPA’s Gold Medal Award of Distinction in 2019.
Ross Recognizes Accounting Professionals
Three Alumni Awarded For Their Outstanding Contributions to Ross
Michigan Ross announced in January 2022 the winners of the 2021 Michigan Ross Alumni Awards. Alumni awards recognize the service and impact of extraordinary Michigan Ross alumni, and are chosen based on a vote by their peers each fall. The latest winners were: • John Tozzi, MBA ’67, received the David D. Alger Alumni Achievement Award, which recognizes an alumnus or alumna whose attainments in their professional field have brought distinction to themselves, credit to the school, and benefit to their fellow citizens. Tozzi received his MBA from Michigan Ross, became a Rodney Fellow, and chaired the business school’s finance and investment associations. He currently serves as a Ross board member. Among Tozzi’s most notable achievements are founding Cambridge Investments LLC, and founding and serving as president, CEO, and chief information officer for Cambridge Investments Limited from 1982 to 2010.
• Edward Hightower, MBA ’95, received the Bert F. Wertman Alumni Service Award to acknowledge his outstanding service to the school and celebrate how he has contributed to the school through many different outlets. Hightower is the president of Lordstown Motors Corp., a designer and manufacturer of electric vehicles for the commercial vehicle market. Since becoming an alum, Hightower has had an extensive and distinguished record of service to Michigan Ross. His notable contributions include diverse volunteer experience as a guest lecturer, mentor, MBA admission ambassador, and participant in a leadership course which culminated with hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro with Ross students, alumni, and the former dean in 2018. Hightower has also been honored with the Alumnus of the Year Award from the Michigan Ross Black Business Students Association in 2006 and 2012.
• Jack Griffin, BBA ’19, received the Young Alumni Award, an award created in 2020 to recognize exceptional young alumni who have enhanced the reputation of Ross by their outstanding professional achievements and/or continued engagement and service to the school/university or community. Griffin is the founder of FoodFinder, a national nonprofit organization whose website and app help families in need find and get help from their closest food pantry. Throughout his four years at Ross, he helped lead the collection of information on 45,000 food pantries across all 50 U.S. states. Since graduating in 2019, FoodFinder’s food pantry locator has been used by more than one million people nationwide (including nearly 900,000 people served during the pandemic alone). Griffin has also been honored with other awards from U-M such as the TEDxUofM 2017 Award for Innovation, the 2018 University of Michigan MLK Spirit Award, and the Ross 2019 BBA Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Federal regulators recommended in January new rule changes to address the troubling practice of “insider giving” that two Michigan Ross School of Business professors highlighted in a research paper. The Securities and Exchange Commission recently proposed additional rules to improve transparency for stock deals by company insiders. One of the changes specifically targets “insider giving” — a common yet largely unrecognized practice in which insiders gain a tax advantage by donating stock to charity shortly before its value drops. Michigan Ross Professors Cindy Schipani and Nejat Seyhun shined a light on the phenomenon in a paper coauthored with Andrew Verstein of UCLA and Burcu Avci of Sabanci University in Turkey and published in the Duke Law Journal. The SEC proposal specifically cites the Michigan Ross professors’ “insider giving” paper as a source for its Inrecommendations.aHarvardLawSchool blog post, Seyhun explained the problem of insider giving: “Specifically, corporate executives tend to make charitable gifts of their firms’ common stock just prior to a decline in the company’s share prices. If insiders win, who loses? The timing of these gifts is troublesome since the evidence suggests that corporate executives may be defrauding not only their shareholders but also the charities that receive the stock and possibly the taxpayers.”
SEC Cites Michigan Ross Research in Proposed ‘Insider Giving’ Tax Rule
Journalists Deliver MLK Symposium
Richey is a university professor, lecturer, and media juggernaut who is routinely featured for his political analysis and commentary on MSNBC, BBC America, Black News Channel, Fox News, CNBC, CBS News, and other networks. He is also the host of the award-winning Rashad Richey Morning Show on News & Talk 1380-WAOK, based in Atlanta. A main focus of his career has been advocacy to ensure everyone has a voice and to improve the lives of those who are less fortunate.
Keynote Lecture: ‘This is America’
On Jan. 17, 2022, the University of Michigan welcomed two highly acclaimed journalists – Maria Hinojosa and Dr. Rashad Richey – to deliver the keynote address for the 36th Annual U-M Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium. Hinojosa and Richey addressed the symposium’s theme: “This is America.” Both speakers shared their experiences with discrimination and how it’s impacted how they view the United States as individuals and in their role as journalists. Moreover, they discussed how to combat misinformation and improve the visibility of underrepresented groups in the media. The conversation was moderated by Patricia Coleman-Burns, assistant professor emerita of nursing and affiliated faculty in the Department of Afro-American and African Studies. Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist who has reported for such outlets as PBS, CBS, WNBC, CNN, NPR, and the Emmy Award-winning talk show from WGBH – Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One. In 2010, Hinojoa created Futuro Media, an independent, nonprofit organization in Harlem, New York City, that aims to empower audiences to navigate the complexities of an increasingly diverse and connected world.
Women Who Launch Symposium Aims for More Gender-Equal Community
The fourth annual Women Who Launch Symposium at Michigan Ross on January 22, 2022 featured a diverse group of women entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and business leaders who are thriving in their industry and creating an enriching community in the process. The theme of this year’s WWL Symposium was “Visionary: Women, Community, Business,” and engaged women interested in entrepreneurship and investing through an impressive lineup of speakers, panelists, workshops, and networking opportunities. The keynote speaker was Kathryn Finney, CEO and founder of Genius Guild and general partner of the Greenhouse Fund, a $20 million venture fund that invests in Black founders, who has been called one of the most influential women in tech. Other speakers included Allison Myers, co-founder and general partner of Buoyant Ventures; Sarah Kearney, founder and executive director of Prime Coalition; Brooke Bartholomay Quinn, chief customer officer at Carrot Fertility; and Niani Tolbert, founder of the #HIREBLACK “Weinitiative.dove deeply into learning about and connecting with organizations that help create a more equitable and sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem. And I felt very fortunate to be able to turn to people in our community to learn more about topics like fem-tech, negotiations best practices, and climate-focused investing,” said symposium co-chair Amelia Brinkerhoff, MBA/MS ’22.
What happened next revealed the true power authenticity has. Jim opted to be his authentic self; he shared his diagnosis with the team, citing lots of emotion and tears along the way. Jim’s willingness to open up assuaged all his fears. Not one person at the table that day left Phire. Jim set out to create a set of new values for the team, thinking about how to go from, what he called, “the freight train churning ahead” model to growth through authenticity and vulnerability. Their new values directed employees to: Be bold, Be curious, Be determined, Be human, and Be real—with an emphasis on the latter two. Phire introduced cultural elements such as scheduling coffee chats or one-on-ones focusing on non-work-related material. Another element created to “keep the culture” was a “kudos” board, a place to house team accomplishments and celebrate new hire milestones.
Jim Hume, Founder and Principal of Phire Branding, shared that “Vulnerability is truly scary” at the Center for Positive Organization’s Consortium in February. While Jim was on campus to talk about his experience leading an organization positively, his personal story to why he transformed his leadership style was the catalyst to bringing more authenticity into his business. Jim has MS. He describes hiking with his family one day when he lost control of his legs. Jim’s diagnosis was grim: the doctors told him to avoid making long-term plan and to think about transitioning out of work in five years. Jim recalls returning to work following the bad news not knowing how to address employees. Would they leave with all the uncertainty?
CPO Consortium Speaker: ‘Vulnerability is Scary’
MBAs Set Sights on Improving Senior
Citizens’ Lives at Tauber Institute’s Trade Show
Jack Simmons, MBA/MSE ’22, said “My biggest takeaway from the course was learning that a successful product needs to directly address a need,” said Simmons. “That need can be small, like reading a restaurant menu, or big, like not being able to get out of a chair. Regardless of how cool your idea is, if it’s not needed, it won’t be successful.”
Full-Time MBA students from Michigan Ross, as well as graduate students from across U-M, gained hands-on experience in product development during the popular Integrated Product Development course. Their challenge: build creative products to help seniors age comfortably in their homes and better manage pandemic conditions. The IPD course brought U-M students from Ross, the College of Engineering, Stamps School of Art & Design, and School of Information to work together to design, build, and market new products, and then present their working products to consumers at the IPD Trade Show, hosted by the Tauber Institute for Global Operations. The course is taught jointly by faculty members Eric Svaan of Michigan Ross and Stephanie Tharp of the Stamps School and celebrated its 29th offering during the fall of 2021.
Ross MSCM Students Leverage Their Ross Learning to Take Second Place in National Supply Chain Case Competition
A team of Master of Supply Chain Management students at Michigan Ross earned an $8,000 check for placing second in the sixth annual 2022 Texas Christian University Neeley School of Business Graduate Supply Chain Case Competition, and they gained valuable industry experience in the process. For the Feb. 3-5, 2022 competition, students from the best business schools in the nation were challenged to use technology, coupled with their own experiences, to solve real-world supply chain problems companies face every day. Students have 24 hours to review a case, brainstorm ideas, and showcase their skills as they pitch their solutions to a judging panel of supply chain industry leaders from major global corporations. This year, the Michigan Ross team — Pranav Gala, MSCM ’22; Sun Kim, MSCM ’22; John Nixon Jr., MSCM ’22; and Amanda Tsai, MSCM ’22 — was tasked with developing an inventory policy of service part products for Boeing 787 aircraft for American Airlines. “One of the core concepts in supply chain management is inventory management. We have learned a lot about it, and have done a lot of assignments on it,” said Kim. “The competition was a good chance to leverage our learning and see how academic concepts work in the business world. We were thrilled to confirm that what we are learning can be applied immediately in real business settings.”
Rao’s comments came during “What to Expect During Pandemic Year Three: A Business and Economic Perspective,” a webinar hosted by Michigan Ross in conjunction with Michigan News. In addition to Rao, the webinar featured perspectives from Samantha Keppler, assistant professor of technology and operations at Michigan Ross; and Gabe Ehrlich, director of the Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics at U-M’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.
The so-called “Great Resignation” of people leaving jobs during the pandemic was widely misunderstood, according to faculty panelists at a Ross School of Business/University of Michigan webinar in February 2022. Data show that large numbers of resignations in the last couple of years aren’t really due to people giving up on long-term careers, but rather to entry-level workers finding better opportunities, said Nirupama Rao, assistant professor of business economics and public policy at Michigan Ross. “This term that’s really become very popular, ‘Great Resignation,’ is actually quite a misnomer,” Rao said, noting that one-third of recent job gains came in accommodations and food service. “This isn’t a story of widespread quitting of jobs. It’s much more a story of low-wage workers leaving jobs to move to better jobs … We hear a lot about white-collar burnout, but that’s really not the driver of this pattern.”
‘Great Resignation’ a Misnomer for Tight Labor Market, Faculty Experts Say
Leadership Crisis Challenge Helps Students Navigate a Prejudice, Bias Simulation
“Students learn best by living an experience firsthand, and the Crisis Challenge allows students to make complex decisions with incomplete information and a small amount of time to consider important tradeoffs,” said Jeff Domagala, managing director of the Sanger Leadership Center. “By challenging students in a fast-paced and high-stakes environment, they must demonstrate composure and poise. After experiencing this event, we know students will be able to apply many learned concepts to their future careers.” The winning team, Team Big Hero 6, was a mix of Online MBA and Full-Time MBA students. The two runner-up teams received a $1,000 prize. Members of the winning team were Shayne Adler, OMBA ‘23; Andres Casas, OMBA ‘23; Alicia Hernandez, FTMBA ’23; Allison Llanso, FTMBA ’22; Emma Jabour, MPP ‘23; and Amanda Uphold, OMBA ‘23.
Six months prior to product launch, a whistleblower reveals your HR software as a service company is using artificial intelligence to make systematically biased decisions, not the unconscious bias-free decisions you promised to clients. You and your executive team now have to quickly develop a solution to the PR nightmare. That is because in a matter of hours you’ll soon have to present that solution to a board of directors, all the while dealing with backlash from concerned stakeholders and the public. That was the nightmare scenario presented to more than 170 graduate students from Michigan Ross and 14 other colleges at the University of Michigan as part of the 2022 Leadership Crisis Challenge on January 27-28. The program was developed by the Sanger Leadership Center at Michigan Ross and sponsored by PNC Bank this year.
Ross MBA Graduates Sink Their Teeth into FAANG Companies
Michigan Ross had the second highest number of full-time MBA graduates landing jobs at the country’s leading tech giants, the FAANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google), according to data put together by Menlo Coaching. Menlo Coaching analyzed more than 50,000 student profiles, drawn from publicly posted lists and social media profiles on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, to extract information about MBA grads hired by the FAANG employers over 2018, 2019, and 2020. The organization’s findings were highlighted by Fortune. “It’s no secret that Michigan Ross has long led the pack as a feeder school for Amazon; it hired 76 MBAs in total from the classes of 2018, 2019 and 2020,” stated the Fortune article. One reason Fortune described Michigan Ross as having such a strong MBA-to-Amazon pipeline is Ross grad Peter Faricy, MBA ’95, who spent nearly a decade as vice president of Amazon Marketplace. “Faricy left Amazon in 2018 and now is CEO of SunPower Corp. Still, he clearly planted the seeds for continued interest in the school and he maintains ties with Ross, serving in his ninth year on the (Ross School) Advisory Board, where he is currently vice chairman,” wrote Fortune. For several years, there has been a growing interest in tech offerings and post-graduation careers in the industry by Michigan Ross students. According to the Ross Full-Time MBA employment report, 24.9% of the Ross Class of 2021 went into tech.
Over half of the tech hires accepted positions at the ever-popular post-grad MBA destinations: Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple.
One-Year Master’s Grads from Ross See High Employment Rates, Range of Opportunities
The Michigan Ross MAcc employment report showed graduates landed jobs with a mean base salary of $60,000. Over 98% of the Class of 2021 received a job offer within six months after graduation, compared to 82% in 2020. Among these offers, 75% of grads were hired by a Big 4 accounting firm — Deloitte, EY, KPMG, or PwC.
Consulting and media and entertainment management were the most popular industries for the Class of 2021, with 22% and 23% of grads going into those fields respectively. Students also found roles in healthcare, technology, consumer packaged goods, financial services, manufacturing, and the public sector. The mean salary package for the Class of 2021 was $66,000. Grads went to work for 69 companies, up from 40 last year. Graduates earned competitive compensation, averaging $84,000 in salaries and $20,000 in signing bonuses at leading companies. Class of 2021 grads also saw historically high offers and acceptance rates at 94% three months after graduation. The hiring companies included many sought-after employers, including Accenture, Amazon, Deloitte, and General Motors.
The 2021 employment reports for Master of Accounting, Master of Management, and Master of Supply Chain Management show that graduates of Michigan Ross continue to be employed by the most desirable companies across a variety of industries.
ALE Conference Celebrates Black Business Excellence in Many Forms
Organized by Michigan Ross MBA students in BBSA, the ALE Conference is the longest-running conference at the University of Michigan and takes place during Black History Month in February each year. This year, the ALE Conference’s theme was “Center Stage: In the Spotlight of Transformation,” and events discussed the evolution of Black America in business and society in recent years.
There was much to celebrate Feb. 4-5, 2022 at the 46th Alfred L. Edwards Conference — from recognizing the accomplishments of Black business leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic and recent social unrest to the announcement of the second Black Business Student Association (BBSA) Fellow and reaching a fundraising goal to endow the fellowship for future BBSA members at Michigan Ross.
“In choosing this year’s theme, we wanted to celebrate the accomplishments of Black business leaders in the face of the rapid social and economic transformations that have taken place following the racial reckonings of 2020 and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” said the conference’s co-chairs, Patrice Drummond, MBA ’22; Kyra Grant, MBA ’22; Ana Taylor, MBA ’22; Kathleen McDonnell, MBA ’22; and Candance Samuel, MBA ’22.
Last year, the ALE Conference added a new recognition: the naming of the first recipient of the BBSA Fellowship. The fellowship was created after a fundraising effort to honor and reward a second-year Full-Time MBA student and BBSA member who has impacted the Black community and Michigan Ross community in a meaningful way each year. That effort, the BBSA Solidarity Campaign, had the ambitious goal of raising $100,000 to endow the scholarship in perpetuity. Thanks to the support of Michigan Ross students, faculty, staff, alumni, and allies, the campaign, which was started by Jen Nwuli, MBA ’21, in 2020, reached its endowment goal. After her husband TJ Banks was awarded the inaugural fellowship, Brittani Banks, MBA ’22, was announced as the second recipient of the BBSA Fellowship this year. With career goals centered around increasing diversity in healthcare delivery, Banks has been a leader and advocate for creating a more diverse and inclusive community at Michigan Ross and beyond.
Ross Alum Leads Black Business Alumni Association to Make Connections, Give Back
As a Michigan Ross MBA student, Jackson joined the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management and became president of the Black Business Student Association in her second year. “My time as BBSA president was focused on ensuring that we give back in service to those who might come after us,” she said. “I worked with the administration to bring to light the importance of ensuring the legacy of large representation of Black students at Michigan Ross and found ways to showcase the amazing alumni and student
As president of the Black Business Alumni Association at Michigan Ross, Kendra Jackson, MBA ’12, is able to witness the strength of the Michigan Ross Black alumni network firsthand. From reaching out to fellow Black alumni to help navigate career advancement to mobilizing BBAA members to make a difference in the lives of current and future Black students at Ross, Jackson sees the community as a constant resource that she can rely on – both on a personal level and to achieve the association’s goals. Moreover, Jackson has been extremely successful in leading BBAA since becoming president two years ago, fostering an engaged membership base and serving as an important connection between Michigan Ross and its Black alumni.
experiences of the Ross Black community to prospective students as we sought to drive up acceptance of offers of admission.”
president of the Black Business Alumni Association, Jackson immediately began working hard to add value and create spaces for the association’s 1,300 members to meaningfully connect through in-person networking events, talks, and more. Another key effort that Jackson has led is to support current and prospective students. That includes supporting the Black Business Solidarity Campaign at Michigan Ross, which was launched last year by then-MBA Council President Jen Nwuli, MBA ’21, to create an endowed fellowship for BBSA members in their second year.
Upon graduating from Michigan Ross, Jackson landed the post-MBA job she wanted at Goldman Sachs in Salt Lake City. “Navigating the business environment as a Black executive is tricky, and while working in affinity groups at a company is great, working with individuals outside your organization allows you to have more open conversations. That’s where the Michigan Ross alumni network has been super beneficial in making my experience feel heard and
“The Black Community at Michigan Ross is a family, and this family has helped me navigate the ups and downs of corporate advancement,” Jackson said. “Many of us are one of a few or only senior Black executives, and leaning on each other through times of uncertainty or pivotal decisions is invaluable. Michigan Ross gives you access to an amazing alumni network that cares deeply about the success of those who come before and after your time in school.”
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2022SPRING
’22 • Sanger, General Motors Join Forces to Empower Women in Business • How Does Michigan Ross Make an Impact? Let Us Count the Ways • Students Tackle High-Impact Projects for Global Orgs & Minority-Owned/Local Nonprofits for MAP • Speaker Encourages Students to Enter New Worlds at Inaugural Mitchell Lecture • Professor With Roots in Ukraine and Russia Discusses War; MBAs Show Support • Program for Executive-Level Women Leaders Celebrates Its Success at Increasing Prep for the Boardroom • All Michigan Ross MBA Programs Ranked By U.S. News Are in the Top 10 This Year • Ross Professor Sarah Miller Earns Prestigious Health Economics Honor • Tauber students create training plan for Whirlpool • +Impact Studio Helps Undergraduates Make Impact in Detroit • Ross Weekend MBA Employment Data Shows High Salaries, Increased Interest in Impact • MAP Marks 30 Years of Action-Based Learning • GM’s Mary Barra Shares Her Journey at Kick-Off of Sanger’s Leadership Dialogue Series • Two Michigan Ross BBAs Honored as the ‘Best & Brightest’ of 2022 by Poets&Quants • Ross 2022 Commencement: Gathering as a Community to Celebrate Graduates • Sharon Matusik Appointed to Lead Michigan Ross as New Dean
Although women bring unique perspectives and skills when they lead teams in high-performing organizations, they made up only 8% of C-suite leadership positions at Fortune 500 companies in 2021. Recognizing this gap, the Sanger Leadership Center at Michigan Ross, in partnership with General Motors, created Women in Leadership, a new program debuting during the Winter Semester to inspire, motivate, and equip women and their allies to be successful business leaders. WIL seeks to educate women and allies about leadership skills, provide a space to practice these skills, share tools and resources, and offer mentorship from supportive women leaders and allies. The program, which is open to all University of Michigan students, includes workshops, speaker events, and mentoring opportunities across the academic year. The events vary based on student needs.
Sanger, General Motors Join Forces to Empower Women in Business
Lindy Greer, Sanger faculty director and associate professor of management and organizations at Michigan Ross, said having a program built for women and allies at Michigan Ross will encourage more women to step into leadership roles in their future careers. “Promoting the rise of women in leadership is critical for organizations to live up to both their financial and moral imperatives,” Greer said. “Women remain shockingly underrepresented in leadership positions and face, at times, a difficult road to the top of their organizations. With programs like Women in Leadership, we hope to pave the pathway for more diverse leadership in companies and better performing organizations.”
Michigan Ross is home to a community motivated to make a positive impact in business and society. Michigan Ross fundamentally believes business can and should make the world a better place. The Business+Impact initiative at Michigan Ross is just one embodiment of this commitment, and it serves as a hub to the many, many activities and opportunities that Ross and the University of Michigan has been developing for years. Students can explore the Business+Impact Gateway for a deeper look at how to get involved in social impact work at Michigan Ross. The following are just a handful of the more than 100 social impact-themed programs, clubs, and activities featured at Ross: Social Venture Fund; Michigan Business Challenge - Seigle Impact Track; Summer Internship Funding from Business+Impact; WDI International Investment Fund; Dare to Dream Impact Grants for Student Startups; +Impact Studio; Optimize Club; C.K. Prahalad Initiative; Design+Business Club; Center for Positive Organizations; Erb Institute Ms/Mba Dual Degree with the School for Environment and Sustainability; Detroit Accounting Outreach; Optimize Club; and Ross GiveA-Day Fund Club.
How Does Michigan Ross Make an Impact?
Let Us Count the Ways
As part of the Capstone MAP course in 2022, 79 BBA students and 17 Master of Management students at Michigan Ross took on complex business challenges and impactful initiatives facing a variety of companies and organizations around the world, including many from small businesses in Detroit. The Capstone MAP course pairs student teams with sponsoring organizations — ranging from established Fortune 500 corporations to small startups and nonprofits — to conduct original research, develop a project framework, and ultimately deliver strategic recommendations to their sponsor organization. Guided by faculty, Capstone MAP provides BBA and MM students with an opportunity to apply knowledge from their Michigan Ross business education to real-world organizational opportunities and problems. By tackling these hands-on projects for companies, students develop and refine skills necessary to succeed in the workplace, such as critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and collaboration skills. There were 20 Capstone MAP projects representing a diverse range of industries, including financial services, tourism, real estate, sports, and education. In addition, seven of the projects were sourced through U-M’s Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurship Project with minority- and women-owned small businesses.
Students Tackle High-Impact Projects for Global Organizations and Minority-Owned and Local Nonprofits for Capstone MAP
Michigan Ross welcomed Fanshen Cox, an award-winning actor, educator, writer, and producer, as the first speaker for its inaugural Mitchell Lecture Series on March 10, 2022. The Mitchell Lecture Series, presented by the Mitchell Program for Business Ethics and Communications at Michigan Ross, showcases thought leaders from the film, television, and media industries who can exemplify the importance of ethics and diverse voices in business practices. Cox gave a presentation titled “Inclusion in the Entertainment Industry: Entering New Worlds with Truth, Justice & Love.” In her presentation, Cox shared her experiences in education and the entertainment industry, her observations on the construction of race, and the steps that can be taken to initiate individual and systemic change. A large focus of Cox’s talk was her journey to co-authoring the Inclusion Rider, a provision in an actor or filmmaker’s contract that asks for a certain level of diversity in casting and hiring for production staff. She urged listeners to apply the concept to their own work and hiring processes throughout the world of business.
Speaker Encourages Students to Enter New Worlds at Inaugural Mitchell Lecture
Prior to the Mitchell Lecture, more than 100 donors, scholars, and staff gathered in the Davidson Winter Garden for the Donors and Scholars Celebration to recognize the impact that donor-funded scholarships have on Michigan Ross students. “Scholarships at Michigan Ross make a world-class business education possible for aspiring business leaders regardless of their financial circumstances,” said Interim Dean Francine Lafontaine. “We are incredibly grateful to the generous donors who make this possible.”
The dispatches of destruction, suffering, and death coming out of Ukraine since the Russian invasion began in late February 2022 have been unrelenting.
Maxim Sytch, professor of management and organizations at Michigan Ross, came to the United States as a college student and still has relatives and friends in Ukraine and Russia, can understand both languages. What he can’t understand are the atrocities being committed in Ukraine, given the close ethnic and cultural bonds between the people of Ukraine and Russia. “It’s all so particularly painful and incomprehensible to me.
... I want all of us to appreciate the severity of the situation,” he said during an online session he facilitated with a Michigan Ross alumni group about the war on Ukraine. He discussed the war in Ukraine in his Michigan Ross classes, particularly the differences in leadership styles of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. In war, Sytch says, “Ukraine has become as united as it’s ever been, in part because of Zelenskyy and his government emerging as the beacon of the fight for their country and freedom.”
A group of Michigan Ross MBA students with a strong connection to the region worked in different ways to support Ukraine through fundraisers, awareness, and volunteering at Ross and beyond. The students’ efforts — led by Maksym Palazov, MBA ’22; Kris Ivanov, MBA ’23; Ivan Kudenko, MBA ’23; and Iryna Bocharova, MBA ‘23 — included issuing a statement on the war in Ukraine in February and placing posters with QR codes linking to various resources, events, and donation options around the business school.
Discusses War; MBAs Show Support
Professor With Roots in Ukraine and Russia
Ascending to the C-Suite immerses participants in specialized subjects from advanced business and financial acumen to persuasion and influence, crisis communication, strategic innovation, and true networks. Each topic is taught with a 360-degree view by pairing renowned Michigan Ross faculty with global business leaders. “I’ve heard participants say this program has been a turning point in their career on their ascent. For example, many have said the negotiation skills they gained from the action-based learning crisis challenge taught by Ross Professor Sue Ashford has helped them better tackle crises at work, including the impact of the pandemic in their companies.”
Program for Executive-Level Women Leaders Celebrates Its Success at Increasing Preparation for the Boardroom
Six years ago, the Ascending to the C-Suite: From Theory to Practice program was launched by Michigan Ross, in partnership with Inforum, to equip seniorlevel women leaders with the key business and leadership skills needed by C-suite executives. Since then, the Michigan Ross Executive Education program has reached an important milestone of surpassing more than 100 participants from around the world. “Michigan Ross partnered with Inforum to launch the Ascending to the C-Suite program because we recognized that women leaders were often missing the business and financial acumen essential for C-suite executives,” said Cheri Alexander, professor of management and organizations at Michigan Ross, who helped launch the program. “We designed the program to give participants those skills, as well as connect them with other women executives, our world-class Michigan Ross faculty, and global business leaders to further support their professional development.”
All Michigan Ross MBA Programs Ranked By U.S. News Are in the Top 10 This Year
Michigan Ross is a great place to earn an MBA degree no matter which program you choose, according to the 2023 Graduate Business Schools Rankings by U.S. News & World Report. U.S. News ranked Michigan Ross in the top 10 in its rankings of residential MBA programs released in April 2022. The Ross Full-Time MBA Program jumped to No. 10, moving up three spots from last year, while the Executive MBA Program maintained its No. 5 ranking, and the Ross Weekend MBA — listed in the part-time MBA ranking — came in at No. 7. In addition, Michigan Ross landed in the top 10 in 10 out of 13 graduate business specialties ranked by U.S. News, and was the only school to be ranked in all 13 specialties.
Those results — which reflect the expertise of the school’s world-class faculty who are global thought leaders in their fields — were:
“This latest recognition continues to build on the momentum we have seen in the Full-Time MBA Program this year, and provides further proof of the strength of our program and the incredible students who join our community.”
• Project management: No. 3 • Marketing: No. 3 (tie)
• Information systems: No. 14
“We are thrilled to return to the top 10 of the U.S. News & World Report ranking this year,” said Brad Killaly, associate dean for full-time MBA programs.
• Management: No. 3 (tie) • Production operations: No. 4 • Accounting: No. 5 • Nonprofit: No. 5 (tie) • Entrepreneurship: No. 8 • Supply chain: No. 8 • Finance: No. 9 • International: No. 9 • Real estate: No. 12 (tie) • Business analytics: No. 13 (tie)
Prestigious Health Economics Honor
Ross Professor Sarah Miller Earns
The American Society of Health Economists awarded in April 2022 its prestigious ASHEcon Medal to Sarah Miller, an assistant professor of business economics and public policy at Michigan Ross. The society presents the medal to “an economist age 40 or under who has made the most significant contributions to the field of health economics.” According to a statement on the ASHEcon website, “Over the past decade, Professor Miller’s research program has dramatically changed our understanding of the impacts of health insurance coverage on health, and the role of health insurance in protection against financial risk. A major theme in Professor Miller’s work is creatively employing existing data to provide new insights on important research questions. She is bold and ambitious in her research endeavors, which often leads her to new opportunities to make major contributions. An example is a newly published study providing the first causal evidence on the relationship between gestation limits for abortion and women’s financial health. This study was made possible by a unique collaboration initiated by Professor Miller that extends an important public health study with new data and methods from Millereconomics.”saidof the medal, “I’m deeply honored to win this award. It’s very exciting to see the research I’ve conducted over the past ten years be recognized in this way by the American Society of Health Economists. It also makes me feel very grateful for all of the support and encouragement I’ve received during my career from my colleagues, mentors, and coauthors.”
Tauber students create training plan for Whirlpool
A pilot program conducted by the Tauber team indicated a 30% decrease in time spent, a 30% increase in project effectiveness, plus an overall boost to employee morale. The team outlined a plan to implement the training framework globally to deliver savings to Whirlpool of between $9 and $11.5 million over the next three years.
The Tauber business + engineering student team of Margaret Kirk (MBA ’22) and Matthew Rodeman (EGL BSE/MSE-EE) developed a core training framework for the Whirlpool Corporation that has the potential to save Whirlpool millions of dollars. Whirlpool Global Advanced Manufacturing Principal Engineer Michael Cukier remarked, “The real innovative strategy for this project was the identification of different training strata within the organization and a change in the timing requirements for that training. It resulted in a defined training plan that can be easily applied to any project, not just a technology application.”
The Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project +Impact Studio for Local Business (DNEP +ISLB) offers internships to undergraduate U-M students wanting to use their skills to help Detroit-based business owners grow their businesses. The effort is a collaborative project between Michigan Ross, its +Impact Studio, and U-M’s Center on Finance, Law & Policy, as well as other schools across campus: Ford School of Public Policy; Stamps Schol of Art & Design; School of Information; and the College of Engineering. This year, $30,000 was made available to fund student stipends while students and staff worked out of the studio during the summer. As part of the program, juniors and seniors gain professional experience while working as interns in interdisciplinary teams with a portfolio of Detroit small business clients to implement marketing and operations projects.
+Impact Studio Helps Undergraduates Make an Impact in Detroit
High Salaries, Increased Interest in Impact
Graduates of the Weekend MBA Program at Michigan Ross continue to earn high salaries, land new jobs at top companies, and accelerate in their careers, according to the most recent employment data released in the spring of 2022. The data showed the Michigan Ross WMBA Class of 2021 received a mean total compensation package of nearly $149,000, with 62% of students switching jobs after graduation. Among the top employers of WMBA grads were Google, EY, Deloitte, Ford Motor Co., and Capital One. “Many Weekend MBA students come into Michigan Ross with great work experience, and we work with each student to help them determine the next best role in their career that they hope to obtain after graduation,” said Heather Byrne, managing director of the Career Development Office at Michigan Ross. “Whether that is advancing into a higher leadership position at their current company, moving to a different company in their field, or switching to an entirely different industry, our coaches provide the support and resources they need to achieve their professional goals.” Of all WMBA graduates, around 34% reported having jobs in manufacturing, while nearly 30% were in consulting and 12% in technology. There was also a strong interest shown by WMBA students in sustainability and impact-related careers, with 10% of the Class of 2021 reporting jobs that had a sustainability aspect to them.
Ross Weekend MBA Employment Data Shows
MAP Marks 30 Years of Action-Based Learning
The MAP program — the cornerstone of action-based learning at Michigan Ross — celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2022. Far from quietly easing into its third decade, however, MAP continues to grow, expand, and enrich the experiences of its participants, both students and sponsors. Initially conceived as a signature component of the full-time MBA curriculum, MAP is now a required course in the part-time MBA, Executive MBA, and Global MBA programs at Michigan Ross. In the last five years, there has been further growth into the BBA and one-year master’s degree programs at the school, to the point where nearly every Ross student now has the opportunity to participate in MAP or a similar course. To date, more than 17,000 students have taken part in more than 3,100 projects.
MAP — which stands for Multidisciplinary Actions Projects — involves a small team of students taking on an in-depth, real-world challenge for a sponsoring company or nonprofit organization. “The foundational benefit of MAP, and why it is such a crucial part of the Full-Time MBA Program, is that it embodies the Michigan Ross belief in action-based learning,” said Brad Killaly, associate dean for Full-Time MBA Programs. “We believe MAP provides an exceptional opportunity, and perhaps unrivaled opportunity in all of MBA education, for students to learn by working on a really important issue facing real companies across industries and functions where our students want to gain experience working in. As a result, it positions students for success in securing top jobs and excelling in their internships, along with providing valuable leadership and teamworking skills they can use throughout their academic and professional journeys.”
During the 2021-2022 Academic Year, MBAs tackled projects with diverse sponsoring organizations from 13 countries spanning five continents. As with each year, the organizations represent a diverse range of industries, from technology to sustainability, media entertainment and sports, healthcare, and financial services. Support for MAP from the vast Michigan Ross alumni base is strong: Alumni sponsored 42 MAP projects during 2021-2022. Twenty-nine MBA student teams traveled domestically and internationally for their projects, while 11 teams visited local organizations, and the others engaged with sponsors virtually.
GM’s Mary Barra Shares Her Journey at Kick-Off of Sanger’s Leadership Dialogue Series
Bold ideas take center stage in a new speaker series, called the Leadership Dialogues, launched by the Sanger Leadership Center at the Ross School of Business. Mary Barra, chair and CEO of General Motors, was the featured speaker at the inaugural event in the series in April 2022. She joined Lindy Greer, associate professor for management and organizations and faculty director of Sanger, to discuss Barra’s leadership journey. More than 500 audience members, including Michigan Ross students, faculty, staff, and alumni, along with external executives, attended the event via livestream or in-person at the business school. Throughout the conversation, Barra and Greer discussed piloting a changing business strategy, generating leadership development strategies, and implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in organizations. When asked about her approach to leading wide-spanning changes at GM, including the moves to electric and autonomous vehicles as well as efforts to create a more inclusive organization, Barra attributed the impressive progress she’s made to intentionality and open communication. “You have to win the hearts and minds of your team. The most effective leaders truly care about their people, want them to have the best, and invest in them,” Barra said. “Communicate so they understand not only what we need to do, but why we need to do it.” Greer also touched on the importance of the leadership development process and inquired about Barra’s approach. “At the end of the day, the success of every company comes down to its people,” Barra responded. “Are you attracting the best and the brightest talent and the people who are passionate about what your company does?”
Ross School of Business students Drew Arnson, BBA ’22, and Kirsten Lam, BBA ’22, were awarded spots on Poets&Quants’ “Best & Brightest” Class of 2022 list honoring the top 100 undergraduate business majors from the nation’s best business schools. Each year, P&Q publishes its Best & Brightest Business Majors list to recognize standout students from the top 50 undergraduate business schools. Schools nominate students based on their academic excellence, extracurricular leadership, personal character, and overall impact on their B-school program. Arnson took advantage of the many opportunities that Michigan Ross has to offer for BBA students. He served as the vice president of consulting for the Michigan Ross Impact Investing Group, the lead case writer and lead student volunteer coordinator for the Sanger Crisis Challenge, curricular design assistant for the course, Business and Leaders: The Positive Differences, and student researcher for Cathy Shakespeare, the associate dean of teaching and learning at Ross. With her innate leadership and passion for paying it forward, Lam’s involvement within the Michigan Ross community has helped foster a more inclusive and introspective space for all. Lam noted that she is most proud of the work she has done with her business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi, such as founding the fraternity’s DEI committee to improve diversity and inclusion in all facets of DSP, both internally and externally.
Two Michigan Ross BBAs Honored as the ‘Best & Brightest’ of 2022 by Poets&Quants
Ross 2022 Commencement
Gathering as a Community to Celebrate Graduates
“Our world needs your resilience, your determination and creativity, your passion and your energy, your business knowledge and skills, and most of all,
After two years of celebrating graduates virtually from screens in living rooms, dining room tables, and home offices, Michigan Ross came together as a community on April 29, 2022 to conduct spring commencement at Crisler Center with more than 1,600 graduates and their loved ones in the same big room.
The Michigan Ross Class of 2022, which included graduates from 20 countries, featured 587 BBA graduates, 687 MBA graduates, 326 one-year master’s program graduates, and eight PhD graduates.
… You are all extraordinary individuals, extremely talented. You’re also purpose driven and you’ve learned to work together for impact. You’ve been tested like very few graduating classes have been tested, through a pandemic and the public health protocols that came with it, and you’ve persevered. You should be really Lafontaineproud.”stressed the impact the class of 2022 can make on business and the world as a whole.
Interim Dean Francine Lafontaine addressed the audience by saying, “We come together to celebrate as a community — the Michigan Ross community. A community that is built on values of caring for each other, shared success, and a lifetime commitment to making a positive difference in the world.
The graduate speaker was Onyekachi Ezirike, MBA ’22, who embraced the obstacles that came with being a 2022 class member: “Audacity. Gumption. Some might even say stupidity is what we had when we decided to join the Ross class of 2022. But I like to call it courage.
The undergraduate speaker was Keith Johnstone, BBA ’22, who noted the brilliance of the inhabitants of the arena on that Friday afternoon. “Collectively, there’s more ambition in this room than almost anywhere. But that ambition means nothing unless we are willing to take risks to fulfill it. … Without risk, there is no reward.” He continued by urging graduates to find what they love and make it part of their everyday lives. “We all love something. … We need to ensure that we can express that passion, that love for our work moving forward, because if we don’t love the work that we do, we need to be doing different work. You don’t need to love every aspect of your job, but you do need to find something that makes you smile every single day.” Heading into his career in consulting, Johnstone said that wasn’t what defined him on this day. “What defines me today is that I’m a part of the most unique graduating class in the history of the Ross School of Business. This incredible university that I am proud to call my neighborhood taught me that you can come from Detroit, or Puerto Rico, or China, or Paw Paw, Michigan, and you will come away better for the experiences that you’ve had here.”
your leadership. The world needs leaders who will advance society through bold ideas and commitment, who can create opportunities for all members of society to thrive and lead meaningful lives.Your futures are very bright and filled with hope and optimism. We are very proud of all of you.”
The commencement guest speaker was Brad Keywell, BBA ’91, Founder and Executive Chairman, Uptake Technologies. Keywell focused his speech on maintaining the sense of wonder we all had as seven-year-olds and never losing sight of our authentic selves.
Onyekachi showed his school spirit by leading a call-and-response chant from the crowd of the Wolverine mantra heard around the world: “Go Blue!”
And it will be the same courage that will enable us to be leaders of tomorrow despite whatever the future may hold.
“While school fills our minds with knowledge, our guts and minds too often are ignored. Grades and rankings and job interviews have created a thick fog around us, masking at times our authentic selves,” Keywell said. “Our job is to chip away at this fog. … GPAs don’t make you, you. They don’t make me, me. What defines our years and our lives is
… What we went through made us more intentional about how we chose to spend our time, because we knew we had to make every single experience, every single interaction, every single relationship, count.”
Graduates of the 2020 class at Michigan Ross were part of the university-wide Comeback Commencement Ceremony hosted May 7, 2022 at Michigan Stadium. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, encouraged graduates to consider the normalization of untruths permeating society. “If you remember nothing else from what I say today, I truly appeal to you, please remember this: It is our collective responsibility not to sink to a tacit acceptance of the normalization of untruths, because if we do, we bring danger to ourselves, our families and our communities,” he said.
our play – what we find fascinating, what interests us, what we imagine we can do. Our lives are measured by curiosity and imagination and passion.” Keywell repeatedly referred to a “Wonder 101” course, encouraging graduates to think of this course, even though their time in the classroom may have come to an end. “This is your final class,” he said. “Your grade is based on how proud you make two people. … Your grade will be based on how proud you make the sevenyear-old version of you and the 77-yearold version of you. If you are happy with the choices you’ve made and the way you’ve lived your life, then you will get an A plus.”
Matusik is a distinguished scholar and teacher whose foci include strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship,” Provost Laurie McCauley said. “As an academic leader, she has a strong record of ac complishment in critical areas – student success, diversifying the faculty, campus and community engagement – that will contribute to Michigan Ross achieving its goals.”
Sharon F. Matusik – whose efforts as dean of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder led to greater student outcomes, record fundraising, and significant growth in the academic preparedness and diversity of applicants – was announced in May 2022 as the next Edward J. Frey Dean of Business at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business.The Board of Regents approved her five-year appointment May 19 following a national search conducted by a search advisory com mittee. Her renewable term began Aug. 1, 2022 and runs through July 31, “Professor2027.
Sharon Matusik Appointed to Lead Michigan Ross as New Dean
Matusik credited Michigan Ross for its “tremendous impact” on the field of business and her own career. “When I reflect on the transformational ideas in my field, the most influential mentors, and my teaching role models, they have a Ross connection,” Matusik said.
Matusik’s teaching and research interests include strategy, innovation, en trepreneurship, and knowledge assets. She has received multiple awards for research, teaching, and service to her profession, including the Excellence in Leadership Award from the University of Colorado four-campus system. Matusik earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and English from Colby College. She earned a PhD in strategic management from the Uni versity of Washington’s Foster School of Business and worked in the field of consulting prior to her academic career.
“What unites them all is a deep commitment to making an important impact. It is truly my honor to work with the Ross community to further elevate this impact through students, research, and community connections, and to lead Ross as its next dean.”
Matusik follows Scott DeRue, who stepped down as dean in 2021. Francine Lafontaine (pictured below) served as interim dean of the school since May 2021. Dean Lafontaine joined the Michigan Ross faculty as an assis tant professor in 1991. She was promoted to associate professor in 1995 and to professor in 2000. She held the Jack D. Sparks – Whirlpool Corporation Research Professor of Business Administration chair from 2005-2007, and has held the William Davidson Professor of Business Administration chair since 2010. From 2016-2020, she served as the senior associate dean for faculty and research. In 2020, Lafontaine was appointed the associate dean for Business+Impact.
If you have any questions or feedback, please contact us at RossDevAR@umich.edu.
This book was produced by staff members Lisa Pappas, Joel Sensenig, and Abbie Buhr in the Office of Development and Alumni Engagement at Michigan Ross.