Foster Business Magazine Summer 2019

FOSTER

MICHAEL G. FOSTER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SUMMER 2019

BUSINESS

Golden Age In an extraordinary 14 years as dean, Jim Jiambalvo has led the UW Foster School into the nation’s elite PAGE 9

PLUS:

Meet the New Dean PAGE 18

Ascending America PAGE 20

We Wrote the Book On… PAGE 24

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

FOSTER

BUSINESS Dean James Jiambalvo

Associate Dean of Advancement Steven Hatting

Director of Alumni Engagement

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In an extraordinary 14 years as dean, Jim Jiambalvo has led the UW Foster School into the global elite. Including The Jiambalvo Effect (page 10) on every facet of Foster, the dean’s reflections on a Heckuva Run (page 12) at the helm of the most productive era in school history, and a 360 Review (page 16) of his tenure by alumni, advisors and faculty.

Dynasty Restored, Innovations Galore, Rankings Scorecard, Best in Placement… Again, Fostering Global Leaders, CPAce, All Class, Business Leadership Celebration, Alumni Calendar, Washington v. World, Get Foster Gear

Golden Age

News

Andrew Krueger

Managing Editor Ed Kromer

Business Manager Aimy Callahan

Contributing Writers Andrew Krueger, Eric Nobis, Kristin Anderson, Janna Lopez

Photography Matt Hagen, Paul Gibson, Christine Brown, Suzi Pratt, Tara Brown

Design a.k.a. design

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Foster School of Business Marketing & Communications

Meet the New Dean Frank Hodge brings a coaching mentality to the deanship of the Foster School

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Faculty Research Briefs

Ascending America Through an ambitious new program, Foster’s Consulting and Business Development Center is expanding its impact nationwide

University of Washington Box 353200 Seattle, WA 98195-3200 206.685.2933

On the Web foster.uw.edu

Foster Business is published twice a year by the University of Washington Foster School of Business. The publication is made possible by proceeds from the Ivar Haglund Endowment.

No state funds are used in its production.

Change of Address?

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We Wrote the Book On… Foster faculty drop knowledge on generations of management students the world over

fans@uw.edu

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Alumni Yasmin Mowafy, Tim Louie, Josh Rodriguez, Connie Glowney, plus Pod-Casting with the UW Hyperloop team

Comments? bizmag@uw.edu

FROM THE DEAN

TRANSITIONS As you read this, I’ll be packing up my dean’s office in Dempsey Hall and moving to a faculty office in PACCAR. And as I reflect on the past 14 years, I must say that being dean of the UW Foster School has been the highlight of my career—fulfilling, stimulating and enjoyable beyond what I imagined.

People are the reason the position has been so enjoyable. My wife, Cheryl, and I have met the most wonderful alumni and supporters— people who have contributed to the school financially and by sharing their time, energy and talent on advisory boards, as mentors to students, and as guest speakers in classes.

With their help, we’ve built outstanding facilities and worked hard to ensure the classroom and experiential-learning opportunities were second to none. Our mantra has been that we’re going to be The Best Public Business School in the United States. And “best” is defined in terms of a transformational learning experience. Whether we are the single best business school in the US is debatable, but what’s not debatable is that we are in the set of premier schools.

That was a dream 14 years ago, and it’s a reality today.

If you’ll allow me to brag a bit, I think I contributed to advancing the Foster School by doing two things well: I made good faculty and staff appointments, and I listened to the advice I received. We have many, many outstanding faculty and staff dedicated to the success of the school. Over the years they’ve made numerous suggestions for important program initiatives and ways to improve our processes.

I listened to them, and their ideas made a major difference in Foster’s success.

Jim and Cheryl Jiambalvo The next dean, as many of you know, is Frank Hodge. He will be terrific in this role. I’ve been fortunate to know Frank and his wife, Abby, for almost 20 years. Frank is an outstanding researcher, a tremendously accomplished teacher and, in his role as chair of the Department of Accounting, he has demonstrated that he is a great administrator.

Now, I’m looking forward to travel with Cheryl and spending more time with my grandchildren. And I hope to stay in touch with the many Foster supporters who have played such an important part in my life and the life of the school. Finally, I’ll look forward to reading future issues of Foster Business documenting the activities of a community focused on ensuring the great Northwest is home to one of the finest business schools in the nation.

With warm regards to all,

James Jiambalvo

Orin & Janet Smith Dean UW Foster School of Business

2 | FOSTER BUSINESS

NEWS

DYNASTY RESTORED

©istock.com/DrAfrer123

Foster MBAs win second Challenge for Charity in three years

The Golden Briefcase has come home to Foster.

That’s the victor’s trophy in the MBA Challenge for Charity (C4C), the annual contest between eight prominent west coast MBA programs to raise the most funds and volunteer the most hours in support of Special Olympics and local charities of each school’s choosing (for Foster, Boys & Girls Club of King County and the University District Food Bank). The challenge culminates in a sports weekend at Stanford University each spring.

Foster MBAs raised $165,000 and donated more than 4,400 volunteer hours to their organizations this year. They also proved to be pretty good sports—winning gold medals in table tennis, cornhole and men’s basketball, and silvers in men’s softball, coed football, women’s volleyball, trivia, dodgeball, coed softball and men’s soccer.

With this latest claim to the Golden Briefcase, Foster MBAs have won the C4C prize twice in three years, and nine times overall.

INNOVATIONS GALORE Buerk Center awards best student business, environmental and health innovations The annual UW Business Plan Competition did a little rebranding for its 22nd edition.

The Dempsey Startup Competition, renamed to honor the philanthropy of venture capitalist Neal Dempsey (BA 1964), crowned HRG Infrastructure Monitoring its champion. The team from the University of Victoria won the $25K Herbert B. Jones Foundation grand prize for its drone-based diagnostic system that detects and quantifies damage to civil structures.

The $10K BECU second place prize went to Adventure Game Works, a team from Gonzaga making customizable kits that turn any home or office into a liveaction, role-playing puzzle game. The $7.5K Friends of the Dempsey Startup third place prize was awarded to Bottomline, a collaboration of UW MBA and computer science students whose analytics service calculates the true value of job offers.

And the $5K Fenwick & West fourth place prize went to AeroSpec, UW engineers developing a wearable air quality monitor.

At the Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge, the $15K grand prize went to MOtiF Materials, a team of UW mechanical engineers developing a more sustainable battery technology.

Chibage Chip Atomo Coffee, MS Entrepreneurship students who have developed a molecular process to make coffee without coffee beans, won the $10K Herbert B. Jones Foundation second place prize. Chibage Chip, an agricultural drought gauge developed by a UW biochemist, took the $5K Port of Seattle third place prize. And ElectroSolar Oxygen, a team of UW chemical engineering and business students touting a solar-powered oxygen delivery device, won the $5K UW Clean Energy Institute Clean Energy Prize.

At the Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge, Nanodropper, a team of UW pharmacology, bioengineering and medical students, won the $15K IntuitiveX grand prize for their affordable universal eye dropper.

The $10K Herbert B. Jones Foundation second place prize went to Appiture, a team of WSU students developing a carmera-integrated app for early diagnosis of autism. And Pulmora, a team of UW bioengineers who developed an intuitive emergency Nanodropper ventilator, won the $5K WRF Capital third place prize.

SUMMER 2019 | 3

NEWS

RANKINGS SCORECARD The UW Foster School continues its unprecedented climb up the rankings. Since 2000, Foster has risen 31 places, on average, across the three leading MBA rankings—considered the key indicators of overall school quality.

Here’s how Foster stacks up against the nearly 500 accredited business schools in the United States.

FULL-TIME MBA #16 (#3 public) – Bloomberg Businessweek #18 (#6 public) – Economist #21 (#7 public) – U.S. News & World Report #22 (#7 public) – Poets & Quants #25 (#9 public) – Financial Times EVENING MBA #12 (#7 public) – U.S. News & World Report EXECUTIVE MBA #13 (#5 public) – Financial Times #19 (#8 public) – Poets & Quants #23 (#6 public) – U.S. News & World Report UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM #21 (#11 public) – U.S. News & World Report #32 (#13 public) – Poets & Quants

FACULTY RESEARCH #7 (#1 public) – Financial Times SPECIFIC MBA STRENGTHS #1 in job placement – Financial Times, Poets & Quants #1 in return on investment – U.S. News #1 in resources for women – Princeton Review #2 in entrepreneurship reputation – Businessweek #5 in entrepreneurial skills and drive – Businessweek #5 in student diversity – Businessweek #8 in most creative and innovative grads – Businessweek #8 in marketing – Princeton Review #9 in operations – Princeton Review #10 in best professors – Princeton Review #10 in best classroom experience – Princeton Review #12 in school brand value – Businessweek #12 in grads better trained – Businessweek #13 in entrepreneurship – Princeton Review

BEST IN PLACEMENT… AGAIN

FOSTERING GLOBAL LEADERS

Foster leads the nation with 99 percent job placement for graduating MBAs

Global Business Center to launch transformational student program

According to U.S. News & World Report, Financial Times and Poets & Quants, Foster’s Full-time MBA Program ranks #1 among the nation’s top-tier schools for job placement, with a 99.1 percent employment rate after graduation. It’s the fifth time in the past six years that Foster has led the nation’s elite into the workplace.

The Foster class of 2018 commanded an average salary and bonus of $157,050. This, coupled with a comparatively affordable tuition and considerable scholarship support, also landed Foster at #1 in return-on-investment among the top schools by U.S. News, and in the FT’s top five.

Poets & Quants lists Foster as the tech industry’s favorite business school.

A major philanthropic investment in the Foster School’s Global Business Center (GBC) will launch the transformational Hovind Global Leaders Program this fall.

The gift from David (BA 1964) and Shelley Hovind will enable the GBC each year to rigorously select a diverse cohort of 12 Foster students who will undergo a year-long immersion in global leadership development focused on executive mentorship, cross-cultural communication and, naturally, boundless exploration.

“We are living in an unpredictable and constantly changing world,” says Kirsten Aoyama, director of the Global Business Center. “The Hovind Global Leaders Program will uniquely equip some of our best and brightest students to define the future.”

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CPAce Foster accounting grad receives top honor for CPA Exam performance The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) has granted its 2019 Elijah Watt Sells Award to Foster grad Michelle Bauer (BA 2018).

The annual award honors outstanding performance on the Uniform CPA Examination. Nearly 86,000 individuals sat for the CPA Exam in 2018 with only 110 candidates meeting the award’s stringent criteria. That puts Bauer’s performance in the top .001 percent of last year’s prospective CPAs. An active member of the UW chapter of Beta Alpha Psi, Bauer represented Foster at several national accounting case competitions and studied economic and business trends in the Middle East via a Foster/Jackson School study tour of Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

She was named the Most Outstanding Accounting Graduate of 2018 and graduated summa cum laude last June with a BA in accounting and information systems.

Now Bauer works in the Business Risk Services group at Moss Adams.

ALL CLASS New grads pay it forward through Foster It’s unanimous. Every single member of the Full-time MBA class of 2019 has contributed to a combined graduation gift to the Foster School. This is the ninth time in the past 11 years that Foster MBAs have achieved 100 percent participation.

They’re not alone.

More than 400 graduating students from six other Foster degree programs— Undergraduate, Evening MBA, MS Taxation, MPAcc, MS Entrepreneurship and Master of Supply Chain Management—have raised more than $150,000 to create Foster futures.

To support Foster on behalf of your graduating class, visit https://bit.ly/2ZciRf3.

VE SA

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E AT D E

NOVEMBER 14, 2019

28th Annual

UW FOSTER SCHOOL BUSINESS LEADERSHIP CELEBRATION Westin Seattle Details to come at foster.uw.edu/businessleadership-celebration/

To keep up with the full calendar of Foster School events at home and away visit: foster.uw.edu/fosteralumni/

SUMMER 2019 | 5

NEWS

WASHINGTON v. WORLD This academic year, Foster students have participated in case competitions all over the map UNDERGRADS • 1st at the Georgetown McDonough Business Strategy Challenge (Washington, DC) • 1st at the San Diego State International Business Case Competition (California) • 1st at the National Women’s Case Competition (Texas) Also competed at the USC Marshall International Case Competition (California), the National Diversity Case Competition (Indiana), the Emory Global Health Case Competition (Georgia), the Foster Global Business Case Competition (Washington), the HKUST International Case Competition (Hong Kong), the IE University Business Challenge (Spain), the UBC Sauder Summit (Canada) and the Chulalongkorn International Case Competition (Thailand).

MBAS • 1st at the ACG Cup Northwest (Oregon) • 2nd at the PepsiCo Invitational Case Competition (Texas) • 2nd at the Deloitte Human Capital Case Competition (Tennessee) • 4th at the KeyBank Minority Student Case Competition (Ohio) • 4th at the Net Impact Case Competition (Colorado) Also competed at the Smeal MBA Sustainability Case Competition (Pennsylvania), the Paramount Case Competition (California), the Smith Emerging Markets Case Competition (Maryland), the USC Marshall Case Competition (California), the Venture Capital Investment Competition (Colorado), and the McGill International Portfolio Challenge (Canada).

MASTER OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT STUDENTS • 2nd at the TCU Invitational Supply Chain Competition (Texas) Georgetown Business Strategy Challenge champs.

GET FOSTER GEAR ONLINE AT THE FOSTER SCHOOL STORE

foster.uw.edu/store 10% off with the code: magazine

6 | FOSTER BUSINESS

LOST IN TRANSFORMATION Shulman produces documentary on efforts to sustain Seattle’s vanishing Central District In five seasons of his award-winning Seattle Growth Podcast, Jeff Shulman has explored Seattle’s ongoing transformation and examined its repercussions on nearly every facet of life in the Emerald City.

Now Shulman, the Marion B. Ingersoll Professor of Marketing at the Foster School, and filmmaker Steven Fong are offering a closer look at what is at risk of getting lost amid this unprecedented economic boom.

Their feature-length documentary film, On the Brink, tells the story of history, hope and determination in Seattle’s Central District, the once-vibrant heart and soul of the city’s African American community that is on the verge of vanishing. Long-time residents, community leaders and business owners—many supported by Foster’s Consulting and Business Development Center—share their efforts to sustain the place they’ve called home for generations.

“On the Brink is about the universal struggle to hold on to a sense of community in the face of change,” Shulman says.

“It also tells the story of individuals from that community who are determined to play a role in defining its future.”

Learn more about the film and upcoming screenings at: onthebrinkmovie.com.

INSPIRATIONAL EDUCATOR Schabram wins UW Distinguished Teaching Award Students describe her as “caring,” “inspirational,” “transformational.” Colleagues call her “energizing,” “committed to inclusion,” and a “superstar instructor.”

Now Kira Schabram, an assistant professor of management, has received the 2019 UW Distinguished Teaching Award.

Schabram joined the Foster School in 2016. And she has made an immediate impression in the classroom.

She earns rave reviews teaching Leadership and Organizational Behavior to Foster undergrads (she’ll add MBAs next year as well).

Previously, Schabram has won the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (in 2018) and has twice received the Undergraduate Business Council’s Management & Entrepreneurship Faculty of the Year Award.

It might be because she views teaching as more than just the transfer of knowledge.

“My philosophy is informed by my research on positive organizational scholarship, which is about human potential, virtue and thriving,” she says.

So, coursework is geared toward individual discovery. Schabram focuses content on how it can be applied—in work and in life. And she makes a lecture course feel intimate, through mentorship and advocacy. She introduces students to different forms of work that might suit them, prepares them to critically analyze their career plans, and offers personal and customized insights and skills.

The added value does not go unnoticed. “Kira is the definition of what a transformational leader is and should be,” wrote students Kyle Philley (BA 2019) and Madison Oraivei (BA 2019). “And her positive influence is one that we hope we can live up to one day when we are in our own professions.”

UW Distinguished Teaching Award Foster School of Business Recipients 1971 – Robert Higgins, Professor of Finance 1974 – David Hart, Professor in Business Administration 1976 – Alan Hess, Professor of Finance and Business Economics 1983 – Gerhard Mueller, Professor of Accounting 1984 – Sharon Gailbraith, Professor of Marketing & International Business 1986 – Nicholas Binedell, Lecturer in Business Administration 1998 – Frank Rothaermel, Lecturer in Business Administration 1999 – June Morita, Senior Lecturer in Management Science 2006 – William Wells, Senior Lecturer in Accounting 2011 – Christina Ting Fong, Assistant Professor of Management 2015 – Emily Cox Pahnke, Assistant Professor of Management 2015 – Leta Beard, Lecturer in Marketing and International Business 2019 – Kira Schabram, Assistant Professor of Management

SUMMER 2019 | 7

Grand Prize – “The Troll’s Tongue” by Max Thomas (BA 2019), from Trolltunga, Norway.

People’s Choice Category – “The Great Gaudí”

by Chloe Lium (BA 2019), at the famed architect’s Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain.

WORLD VIEW Nearly 400 Foster students engaged in international study this year. Each brought home indelible memories—and some vivid photographs. Here are a few of the best, winners of the Global Business Center’s 2018-19 Foster Study Abroad Photo Contest.

Study Abroad & Me Category – “Studying Abroad is a Hoot!” by Hailey Sagmoen (BA 2020), making new friends in O’Reilly’s Rainforest, Brisbane, Australia.

My Global Lens Category – “Newest Student of Gaozhou” by Tristan Ingold (BA 2019), touring a school on the Business China Exploration Seminar.

Foster Spirit Category – “P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney” by Riley Flynn (BA 2019), of the Australia Exploration Seminar on the iconic waterfront of Sydney, Australia.

Golden Age In an extraordinary 14 years as dean, Jim Jiambalvo has led the Foster School into the global elite

It usually takes the expansive scope of history to determine a “golden age.”

Yet it sure seems like the Michael G. Foster School of Business is in the heart of one right now.

The past 14 years has been a remarkable time by any measure. To wit, the infusion of nearly $400 million in philanthropy from legions of generous donors. The construction of PACCAR and Dempsey Halls, to be followed soon by Founders Hall. Expanded centers, programs and initiatives. Six new master’s degree offerings. A measurable elevation of student and faculty caliber. Strategic partnerships with the prime engines of Seattle’s economic boom. Best-in-class career management. An historic rise in the rankings.

But every golden age needs a catalyst, a champion.

For Foster, Dean Jim Jiambalvo has been the person with the Midas touch.

To a fault, he prefers to distribute credit far and wide for the Foster School’s considerable achievements.

“Great faculty, great staff, great students,” he repeats, like a mantra. “Great alumni, great donors, great corporate partners.”

Yet no one doubts that these successes would not have been possible without Jiambalvo’s essential, authentic leadership.

Now it’s time to pass the torch. As he approaches the end of his tenure as dean, check out the Jiambalvo Effect on every facet of Foster (page 10), Jim’s reflections on a Heckuva Run (page 12) at the helm of the most productive era in school history, and a 360 Review of his tenure by alumni, advisors and faculty (page 16).

SUMMER 2019 | 9

The Jiambalvo Effect

Dean Jiambalvo’s leadership over the past 14 years has inspired UW Foster to…

Launch

Engage Jiambalvo’s deanship has spanned two historic capital campaigns at the UW. During “Creating Futures” (2000-2008), Foster raised $181 million from 13,000 donors. Among those was the transformational $50 million from The Foster Foundation, which led to the school’s renaming. In the current “Boundless” campaign (2012-2020), more than 12,000 donors have contributed more than $230 million to Foster— so far. These gifts have fueled Foster’s rise.

Foster has established the Center for Leadership and Strategic Thinking (2008), the Center for Sales and Marketing Strategy (2014) and the University of Science and Technology of China-UW Institute for Global Business and Finance Innovation (2017).

Build The Foster School campus has been transformed. Privately funded PACCAR Hall became the school’s bustling hub in 2010, with 135,000 square feet of classrooms, auditoriums, faculty offices, team rooms and community spaces. Dempsey Hall followed in 2012, with 65,000 square feet of classrooms, team rooms and administrative offices. And coming soon is Founders Hall, projected for 2021 completion, funded by a panoply of leadership philanthropy.

Excel The quality of Foster students is at an all-time high, and rising. The Freshman Direct undergraduate program admitted nearly 350 students this year, with an average GPA of 3.91 and 1410 SAT. Incoming MBAs brought an average GMAT of 696 (a 30-point jump from the mid-2000s).

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Inform A new generation of Foster faculty—more than 60 hired since 2007 against a constantly rising bar—has elevated the level of teaching and research. Average classroom ratings are at an all-time high. Nearly half of research faculty serve on editorial boards of top journals. And Foster is ranked #7 in the world (and #1 among public b-schools) by Financial Times for its research productivity in the top 50 journals.

Diversify Foster has introduced the Young Executives of Color high school pipeline program (2006), Business Bridge (2010) and Women’s Leadership Summit (2016), overseen by its robust Undergraduate Diversity Services. A new director of MBA Diversity & Inclusion (2017) helps the school serve underrepresented minorities, women, veterans and LGBTQ communities. As a result, Foster was invited to join the prestigious Forté Foundation (2017) and the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management (2018). In 2018, Princeton Review named Foster #1 in resources for women and the #5 most diverse MBA.

Innovate Climb Since 2005, the Foster School has risen 18 places, on average, across the three leading MBA rankings (U.S. News, Businessweek and Financial Times), considered key indicators of overall school quality. The school’s ascent from #38 (#15 public) to #20 (#6 public) is unprecedented. In terms of upward momentum—even into the rarified air of the top 25—no other American b-school even comes close.

The always enterprising Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship has launched the Lavin Entrepreneurship Program (2007), Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge (2009), Jones + Foster Accelerator (2012), Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge (2016), and renamed its marquee event the Dempsey Startup Competition (2019).

Explore The Global Business Center has introduced new programs such as the Global Health Case Competition (2016) and the Hovind Global Leadership Program (2019). Its expanded international study opportunities enable more than 400 Foster students to study abroad each year—a population percentage that leads the UW.

Transform Grow Market-driven program launches have doubled master’s program enrollment since 2007. New offerings include the MS in Information Systems (reboot 2012), Master of Supply Chain Management (2016), MS in Entrepreneurship (2017), MS in Taxation (renamed 2017), Hybrid MBA (2017) and MS in Business Analytics (2019).

And more are in the works.

Serve The Consulting and Business Development Center has added Tribal Enterprise partnerships (2007), the Minority Business Executive Program (2011), a national conference (2013) and, most recently, the Ascend nationwide initiative (2016). The center has helped minority business enterprises generate more than $210 million in new revenue and create or retain over 200,000 jobs across the state of Washington.

Best-in-class MBA Career Services has led to Foster’s #1 placement rate among the nation’s elite in five of the past six years. Grads in the MBA class of 2018 reported an average starting salary + bonus of $157,050. Foster’s ROI also rates at or among the top, and the school has been named the “tech industry’s favorite.” Meanwhile the EY Center for Career Advancement (created in 2013) serves Foster undergrads and specialty masters with a placement rate of 90% and an internship rate of 89%.

SUMMER 2019 | 11

Heckuva

Run

J

Jim Jiambalvo reflects on his path to and tenure as dean of the Foster School

by ERIC NOBIS

im Jiambalvo never aspired to be dean of the Foster School.

He never dreamed of raising the roof on two world-class buildings (with a third on the way). Or of catalyzing and championing the launch of myriad new degree programs, centers, competitions and initiatives. Or of building a faculty that stands among the world’s elite in teaching and in research. Or of leading a school to climb more places in the rankings than any other over the same period. Or of being named “Dean of the Year” by the premier business school site in the world.

In fact, Jiambalvo’s early dreams amounted to just attending college, much less leading one.

Highest starting salary sounds good Born in the Chicago area to hard-working parents, Jiambalvo would be the first member of his family to attend four-year college—the University of Illinois—where he studied business.

“I wasn’t sure where to specialize,” he says. “But a teaching assistant in one of my accounting classes said that accountants had the highest starting salaries out of college. So, I thought, okay, let’s do that.”

He was grateful to find that accounting suited him well, and he graduated with a job in Chicago at one of the forerunners of Deloitte. Before long, he saw an opportunity for further advancement by returning to Illinois for his master’s degree. “I had to explain to my parents that I wanted to go back to school to get ahead in the job I already had,” Jiambalvo says. “The logic may not have fully gelled, but they were supportive.”

12 | FOSTER BUSINESS

As he pursued his master’s he had an epiphany. He liked thinking about accounting and examining its complexities more than he enjoyed practicing it. This led him to Ohio State University for his PhD, and then onto the accounting faculty of the University of Washington in 1977.

Turns out, I loved it A lot of Jiambalvo’s reluctance to be considered for the deanship had to do, ironically, with his commitment to making a difference.

“I’d been a professor for 27 years,” he says. “I knew I could contribute to research, that I was effective teaching students, and that my service as a faculty member was having an impact.

What I didn’t want to do was move into a completely new arena in the last phase of my career and end up falling short.”

SUMMER 2019 | 13

However, the faculty believed in him. His wife, Cheryl, gave him a lot of encouragement. And the school’s advisory board saw in him enormous potential to lead the school into a new era.

“Looking back? As it turned out,” Jiambalvo says, “I loved being dean.”

If you build it…

He got right to work, and quickly built momentum. It didn’t hurt that one screaming mandate met him at his office door: the school’s outdated and insufficient campus was in mortal need of an expansion, if not an extreme makeover. A bold plan existed, but it was patently unrealistic.

“It was clear that to be competitive we needed new facilities,” Jiambalvo says. “But the proposal underway was completely out of reach—it would have been the most expensive b-school building in the nation.”

Enter Neal Dempsey (BA 1964), Ed Fritzky and Mike Garvey— pillars of the advisory board and supporters extraordinaire of the Foster School. Jiambalvo convened this leadership triumvirate in a meeting with UW President Mark Emmert and negotiated a two-phase approach, the latter of which was slated for state funding assistance.

Generous support from an army of donors led to the construction of PACCAR Hall. Dempsey Hall was largely financed by the university with additional money from private donors. Meanwhile, the historic renaming gift from The Foster Foundation ensured that these new world-class buildings would house the caliber of professors and staff that can take a school from good to great.

And the Foster School’s fortunes took off from there.

All about the team “Maybe it’s because of my initial reticence,” Jiambalvo says, “but as I’m winding down as dean people ask me what the hardest thing about this job has been.”

He pauses a moment, combing through his memories to see if he’s missed something.

“You know, there isn’t much of a downside to being dean if you have the right team in place. Our faculty is the best it’s ever been, our staff is helping us navigate the changing world of higher education, our students are very bright and highly motivated, our connections to the business community are manifest everywhere you look, and our supporters remain committed to our mission and vision.”

That’s why he’s a little uncomfortable accepting personal recognition such as the 2018 “Dean of the Year” distinction from the influential MBA site Poets & Quants. “I’ve had plenty of occasion to talk shop with deans at other business schools, and when I hear them talk about various problems, it’s almost always on account of something missing or broken at the team level,” he explains. “That’s why I’m 100 percent serious when I tell my colleagues at Foster that ‘Dean of the Year’ is really a team accolade. This is a team sport—you don’t get this far because you have the right dean.”

It’s all changing very quickly There may be a kernel of truth in that. But having the right dean doesn’t hurt. And on July 1, Jiambalvo will pass the torch to another long-time leader promoted from within Foster’s deep bench of faculty. Frank Hodge, the Michael G. Foster Endowed Professor of Accounting, chair of the Department of Accounting and UW Faculty Athletics Representative, enters the deanship with the school on a high, but with plenty of challenges ahead.

What does Jiambalvo see in the b-school crystal ball?

“More components of education are going online, business disciplines are rapidly becoming more quantitative and dependent on analytics, then you’ve got AI, machine learning, fin-tech, blockchain… it’s all changing very quickly,” he says.

“Luckily for us, Frank is going to hit the ground running. Here we have an incoming dean who’s played a strong leadership

Jim through the Ages

1970s 1980s 14 | FOSTER BUSINESS

2010s

1990s 2000s

“That’s why I’m 100 percent serious when I tell my colleagues at Foster that ‘Dean of the Year’ is really a team accolade.

This is a team sport—you don’t get this far because you have the right dean.”

role at Foster and won every award we have. Frank was one of only six researchers nationwide invited to participate in the initial Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative. And he’s also demonstrated leadership representing Husky Athletics to the Pac-12 Conference and the National Collegiate Athletic Association.”

‘I’ll be back’ Jiambalvo may not have experienced much downside to being dean, but he did sacrifice a lot in service to the school (and logged hundreds of thousands of miles and many months on the road). That makes the one-year sabbatical he’ll begin in July look—in the best way—like an empty canvas.

He’ll take a golf lesson or two to improve his game. Do some traveling with his wife, Cheryl, including a planned trip to Europe.

“But what I’m really looking forward to is time with our grandkids,” he says. “Cheryl and I have eight of them to spoil.”

If Jiambalvo’s extraordinary tenure as dean of the Foster School is coming to a close, his time on Foster’s faculty is not.

“I’m really excited about the sabbatical,” he says. “But before you know it, I’ll be back. As of July 1, 2020, I’ll be coming to campus not as dean, but as a proud member of our accounting faculty.” n

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360 Review

Faculty, staff, alumni and advisors weigh in on Dean Jiambalvo and his outsized legacy Neal Dempsey (BA 1964) Managing General Partner, Bay Partners “Jim came to the dean search committee with an incredible plan to improve the school. He has executed on every part of that plan. Bottom line is that he raised the money, built the facilities, improved the faculty dramatically, and the students came pouring in. It’s been a phenomenal 14 years. Fabulous hire.”

Dan S. Fulton (MBA 1976) Retired President & CEO, Weyerhaeuser Company “What Jim has accomplished during his tenure has been remarkable. He has demonstrated a clear, consistent vision of what the Foster School could be. He brings a quiet modesty but an intellectual curiosity and a lot of competitiveness.

That’s been demonstrated in the growth that’s taken place within the school and in the increase in quality over time.”

Christina Fong Senior Lecturer in Management “What a pleasure it has been to teach leadership and management to our students with an incredibly authentic role model in such close proximity.”

Ken Denman (MBA 1986) Former CEO, Emotient “We all have an ego. I’m sure Jim does too. But he is one of those folks that I would describe as a ‘still-waters-rundeep’ kind of leader. He doesn’t do a lot of arm waving. He’s not aggrandizing.

He’s focused on being a phenomenal administrator and hiring—and empowering—great people around him.”

16 | FOSTER BUSINESS

Steve Buhaly (MBA 1984) Retired CFO, Qorvo, Inc. “Dr. Jiambalvo taught a management accounting class I took in 1983. I was impressed by the same things I have seen ever since: he is authentic, humble, friendly, has high standards and a commitment to steady improvement. It’s remarkable what 35 years of steady improvement have done for our school.

The magic of compounding works in more places than just finance!”

Nancy Zevenbergen (BA 1981) Founder and CIO, Zevenbergen Capital Investments “I’ve been in business with Foster grads for 30 years and Jim was the first representative of the University of Washington to visit us at our office. What an honor that was to be recognized and celebrated by my institution. He’s been a huge supporter of women-owned business enterprises.”

Kate Cullen CFO, Husky Athletics “Jim could always bring humility and humor to situations. He has this ability to disarm a room and relate to everybody. I’ve seen him talk to really diverse groups. He is always very approachable.

It’s something I’ve really thought a lot about as I’ve been in more and more situations where I have to be that person who is the face of an organization.”

Shelley Reynolds (BA 1987) Chief Accounting Officer, VP & Controller, Amazon “What I appreciate most about working with Jim is he’s an accountant at heart.

It comes through frequently, which is kind of nice because most people don’t expect to see accountants out leading anything. Most often people seem to think they should be in the back room.

But no, we’re out in front, too!”

Robert Christensen (BA 1979) Retired President and CFO, PACCAR Inc “The thing that’s always struck me about Jim is just his whole enthusiasm for the task at hand. He’s always positive, enthusiastic, energetic, thoughtful, a great communicator and collaborator, and very committed to the process of improving Foster and the University of Washington.”

Gary Wipfler (BA 1981) VP & Corporate Treasurer, Apple “When we take on a position of leadership, stewardship is very, very important. It’s clear that Jim has embodied this and has left the Foster School much better than he found it.”

Stein Kruse President & CEO, Holland America Group “It is remarkable to see the progress that the school has made under Jim’s leadership. Jim is a world-class leader.

He’s passionate. He has used resources very wisely. He has grown the stature of the school. He has attracted worldclass faculty and excellent staff. It takes a village, but Jim certainly has been the leader and the steward of that effort.”

Nate Miles (BA 1982) VP of Strategic Initiatives, Eli Lilly & Co. “What’s that character on TV, the Energizer Bunny? Jim Jiambalvo is the smoothest Energizer Bunny you will ever see. He’s got this very smooth way of going about getting you to do things, asking you to get engaged, asking you to help and getting you on the Jiambalvo team to be part of what’s going on.”

Pete Dukes Emeritus Professor of Accounting “Jim was reluctant at first to become a candidate for dean. The thing that impressed me about him is that once he decided he was going to apply, he was all in. He did his homework, then he developed a plan and he articulated it with confidence, energy and enthusiasm.

After he was appointed, he made good on carrying out his plan. And the rest is history.”

Naomi Sanchez Assistant Dean, MBA Career Management “Jim’s continual support has made the MBA Career Management office worldclass. Having the results that we’ve had the last seven years is amazing. All that he promised me when I joined in 2011, he has fulfilled and surpassed. I could count on him during the most difficult times to help our students find their careers.”

Artie Buerk (BA 1958) Former Managing Director, Montlake Capital “Jim is a great listener. You can sit down and discuss anything. He listens very carefully to what you have to say and, eventually, you see this stuff that you’ve talked about roll into the programs. His impact has been incredible. And he does it without any fanfare. That’s what I consider to be credibly authentic leadership. If I had to grade him, I’d give him an A+ on the job he’s done.”

Mike Garvey (BA 1961, JD 1964) Retired Chairman, Saltchuk “Jim is a learning machine. From the time he became dean to today, he is constantly learning. You can see that in the growth of the sophistication of Foster programs, sophistication of our board meetings, sophistication of the way he deals with the business community.”

Jean Choy (BA 1987, MBA 2007) Associate Dean, Executive Education “Jim is authentic and genuine. He can speak intelligently on almost any topic.

He is worldly and culturally sensitive.

He is smart and knows what he wants.

He is generous with his time, talent, kind words and money. He works hard, appreciates his friends, loves his family.

It says a lot about his character.”

Dan Turner Associate Dean, Masters Programs “We teach, as a business school, that enterprise is about value creation. But leadership is about people. Jim’s been a great ambassador for that idea.”

Steven Hatting Associate Dean, Advancement “Jim was newly appointed when I was interviewing to join Foster. When we wrapped up my interview, Jim told me, ‘We’re going to work hard and make great things happen. And we’re going to have fun doing it.’ I was hooked immediately. As a result, I’ve been able to see what authentic leadership and transformation look like up close. And it has been a lot of fun.”

Steve Sefcik Associate Dean, Undergraduate Programs “Had Jim not asked me to be associate dean, there’s no way I would have taken the job. I was coming off five years in administration with the Technology Management MBA Program and I felt like it was time to get back into the faculty game.

But he asked me. And I would never say no to Jim because I had so much confidence in his leadership and where he was going to take the school. It’s been fun to be on this ride with him for the last decade-plus.”

Doug MacLachlan Emeritus Professor of Marketing “Having been a member of the Foster School faculty since 1970—almost 50 years—I can say without qualification that Jim Jiambalvo has been the best dean by far over that time, on any dimension one would care to mention.”

SUMMER 2019 | 17

MEET THE NEW DEAN O

n July 1, Frank Hodge officially will become the Orin and Janet Smith Endowed Dean of the UW Foster School of Business.

But you can call him “Coach” if you like. His students all do.

“I’ve taught at every level at Foster: undergrads, MBAs, executives,” Hodge says. “They all use the same title.”

It’s a moniker that puts people at ease and serves as a familiar shorthand for his distinctive approach to teaching. It also gets at the essence of Foster’s 14th dean.

“My goal is to motivate and enable people to be better tomorrow than they are today,” he says. “To help them achieve a level of performance they could not achieve on their own.”

Now the scale of that mission is expanding dramatically.

Learning to listen You could say that Hodge’s path to the deanship traces back to elementary school. He grew up in Priest Lake, Idaho, a small settlement near the Canadian border. His father was a forest ranger. And the wilderness was his playground.

“When you grow up in wilderness, you become adept at listening, at perceiving what’s going on around you,” Hodge says.

“I think that’s been incredibly helpful for me. I’ve always considered listening to be a competitive advantage.”

He also learned the value of mentorship in his tiny school, which mixed ages by necessity. “I learned that it’s okay to ask for help when you don’t know the answer,” he recalls. “I also learned that when you have knowledge, you have to help others learn and achieve their goals.”

Hoop realities Hodge also participated in every sport he could, and eventually played college basketball, where he picked up another facet of his leadership portfolio.

In his junior year at Carroll College in Montana, he joined a team made up of talented but diverse individuals—ranging from urban kids from Los Angeles to Idaho farm boys. The coach entrusted Hodge with a special assignment as unsung as it was essential: be the glue. “That’s the first time I remember really thinking hard about what it takes to make a group of people better as a team than they are as individuals,” Hodge recalls. “I realized that I was better behind the scenes in bringing people together than I was at being the star player.”

The team had a tremendous year.

Found in translation Hodge studied business and international relations at Carroll and, eventually, landed a job with a Japanese wood products company.

A life-long advocate of pushing against comfort zones, he found

18 | FOSTER BUSINESS

Frank Hodge brings a coaching mentality into the deanship of the Foster School

by ED KROMER

living and working in Japan to be a rich period of growth. It also afforded him plenty of time alone, to contemplate. And his future began to coalesce.

“That’s when I decided that what I really like to do is help people be better, help them achieve their goals,” he says.

“It’s where the whole ‘coach’ thing comes from. If I can help you achieve a level of performance you couldn’t achieve on your own, then I feel like I’ve been successful.”

But Hodge couldn’t see many opportunities to elevate others along his career path in the wood products industry, so he decided to change directions.

After earning his MBA and PhD at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, Hodge joined the Foster School faculty in 2000. “Coach” quickly proved an exemplary educator by any measure. The Michael G. Foster Endowed Professor of Accounting has received just about every teaching award—at every level—that Foster has to give, including the PACCAR Award for Excellence in Teaching, the school’s highest teaching honor, which is selected entirely by students.

Expanding influence Hodge also was called early to serve beyond the classroom.

Just a year after being promoted to full professor, he was appointed chair of the Department of Accounting. And in recent years, he has served double duty as the UW’s faculty athletics representative, facilitating relations between Husky Athletics and faculty and administrators, and representing the UW to the Pac-12 and NCAA. With each new opportunity to lead, Hodge found his sphere of influence expanding. He was able to help more achieve more—and was energized by doing so.

So, when it was time for Dean Jim Jiambalvo to turn over the keys to Foster, Hodge was up for his biggest challenge yet.

“It goes back to fundamentally being that coach,” he says.

“It’s what motivates me. The bigger the leadership position, the more people you can potentially help. I see this as the ultimate way to serve those within and connected to Foster. I work for them.”

People business Hodge says that his transition to dean has begun with a “listening tour” of Foster’s many stakeholders, as he works to crystallize a collaborative plan forward for the school’s next years. “It will not be my vision,” he promises. “It will be our vision.”

However it takes shape, that vision certainly will lean into innovation. Hodge’s own research explores the effects of new technologies on old ways of operating. He volunteered to teach in Foster’s new online Hybrid MBA Program. And he believes a relentless eye for opportunity will be critical in leading the school forward. “We’re looking at an educational field that’s pretty well established and doesn’t change very quickly,” he says. “We have to be more agile and more innovative.”

But whether it’s innovation or just operational excellence, the quality of a business school ultimately comes down to its people.

“Anything I do as dean will be people-centric,” Hodge says. “It will focus on recruiting and retaining the best and brightest faculty, staff and students, and on what we can do for the community in which we live. And I mean that locally, nationally and globally.”

Leveling up He’s determined to unleash the potential of this sprawling team of individuals, and realize the ultimate marker established by his predecessor: to become the #1 public business school in the nation.

“People are naturally drawn to rankings,” Hodge says. “I am passionate about what’s behind being the number one business school. Being number one in terms of a transformative learning experience, in terms of engagement with our students and faculty, in terms of the impact we have on our community and the world—that’s what gets me excited.

“I appreciate where we’ve come from and how far we’ve advanced under Jim Jiambalvo’s leadership toward becoming the best public business school in the nation. And I won’t rest until we get there.”

The next issue of Foster Business will take a closer look at the future of Foster with Dean—or, Coach—Hodge. n

SUMMER 2019 | 19

ASCENDING AMERICA Through an ambitious partnership with JPMorgan Chase, Foster’s Consulting and Business Development Center is expanding its impact nationwide

by ED KROMER

I

n Atlanta, Amari Ruff has added Fortune 1000 customers and raised venture capital to scale Sudu, his tech-based logistics company that matches shippers with small independent trucking companies owned by people of color, women and veterans.

In Houston, a critical loan and complementary management consulting helped Roxana Collazo realize her dream of opening Firefly Dual Language Academy, a progressive early learning center.

In Chicago, Jimmie and Tiffany Williams have rebranded their landscaping and snow removal business as Urban Roots, secured growth capital, signed commercial customers and doubled revenues in the past year.

In the Bay Area, Maria Palacio’s fair-trade, farm-to-bean roaster, Progeny Coffee, has seen ten-fold revenue growth after landing big corporate contracts, a loan to ramp operations and consulting to help manage this exponential growth.

What could this diverse set of rising businesses possibly have in common? For one, they are all founded and led by entrepreneurs of color. And their recent growth—often against great odds—has been supported by a new nationwide initiative created by the Foster School’s Consulting and Business Development Center (CBDC).

Ascend, a partnership with the global financial services firm JPMorgan Chase, is a national network of business schools, non-profit lenders and B2B market makers that collaborate locally to spur business growth in their communities.

“These ecosystems address systemic challenges,” explains CBDC director Michael Verchot (MBA 1995), “with a goal of accelerating the growth of businesses owned by people of color, women and military veterans, especially those operating in inner cities.”

The Three-M model Ascend is perhaps the logical evolution of the CBDC and its nearly 25 years of experience, expertise and insights supporting the growth of businesses owned by people of color in Seattle and the state of Washington.

But the audacity to go national came from its long partnership with JPMorgan Chase.

During the Financial Crisis, Chase invested heavily in highgrowth businesses to accelerate job growth around the country.

20 | FOSTER BUSINESS

PROGENY COFFEE

But as the recovery picked up speed, it became apparent that some communities were getting left behind. Notably, the disparity between the fortunes of majority and minority owned businesses was growing wider. So Chase pivoted the strategy of its small business philanthropy toward addressing this disparity.

When Foster’s Consulting and Business Development Center wanted to convene a national conference of like-missioned programs and centers, Chase was all in.

In addition to building a national network and comparing best practices, the 2014 conference produced a moment of clarity.

That year William Bradford, the Business and Economic Development Endowed Professor of Finance at Foster, delivered his synthesis of 15 years of research on minority business development. He found that minority owned businesses underperform versus white-owned businesses due to systemic gaps in access to management education, money (loans, investment, personal net worth), and markets.

“None of us was surprised by the findings,” Verchot says.

“But the data validated our hunches, identified the gaps in education, access and financing. And it clearly identified that the key to a solution is coordination across these challenges— something we had been practicing for years.”

Management

URBAN ROOTS

ENTREPRENEURS OF COLOR

FIREFLY DUAL LANGUAGE ACADEMY

Coalescing a coalition At the end of the conference, Phyllis Campbell (MBA 1987), chairman of JPMorgan Chase, Pacific Northwest, posed a pivotal question to Verchot: what’s next? “Phyllis kept saying, think bigger, go bigger,” recalls Cat Martin, the firm’s Pacific Northwest regional philanthropy officer. “Think about what the endgame looks like and we’ll figure out a strategy to help you get there.”

That strategy became Ascend.

Chase invested $2.5 million in Verchot’s center to develop, train and coordinate a network of collaborative business growth

SUDU

ecosystems. Each would deliver the Three-Ms to underserved entrepreneurs.

“The idea that you need to address all three—management skills, money and market access—is simple, but it’s also true that many small businesses don’t have access to them,” says Ted Archer, the executive director of the Small Business Forward program at JPMorgan Chase. “It’s easy to say what’s missing, but difficult to bring those resources together. Ascend is a great vehicle to support the spirit of collaboration between organizations with shared goals.”

SUMMER 2019 | 21

The program launched in 2017 in six metro areas: Atlanta, the Bay Area, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington, DC. Columbus, Houston, Long Island, New Orleans and New York are officially joining this year.

In each Ascend city, a local JPMorgan Chase philanthropy officer facilitates the collaboration of a lead partner—often a business school—and other organizations that provide B2B market access, community financing and management training. Chase also underwrites administration and funding in each locale.

“Ascend brings these pieces together in a way that’s really unique for the small business development work we’ve been doing at Chase,” says Archer.

Custom solutions Verchot says that prior national efforts to develop minority owned businesses failed for lack of collaboration and flexibility.

“Because we’ve been doing this work the longest at the Foster School, we’re the model on which Ascend has been built,” he says. “But we’re not making carbon copies. No site looks exactly like Seattle.”

Every city has a different economy, different demographics and different challenges. Plus, the strengths and combinations of partner organizations are different. So Ascend operates without rigid rules. “Our approach is to provide direction, resources and some guardrails,” Verchot adds. “It would be really difficult to tell the partners in, say, Atlanta, exactly how to do their work.”

Indeed. Atlanta has its own unique set of challenges and opportunities. While the “Silicon Valley of the South” has exploded in recent years, business in the city’s predominantly African American south side has languished in negative growth.

So Ascend Atlanta set out to spark minority-owned tech companies. “They hire the most, pay the most and can have the biggest impact on closing the wealth gap,” says Tiffany Bussey, director of the Entrepreneurship Center at Morehouse College, the program’s lead.

With Chase’s coordination, Morehouse has partnered with TechSquare Labs to provide management education, with Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs for a funding source, and have brought in the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative to facilitate market access.

The result has been two cohorts of 30 companies that have nearly doubled revenues and raised more than $4 million in growth capital, including Aquageneity, the first data-driven water quality rating technology, and Sudu, which aspires to be the Uber of commercial trucking.

And when Bussey saw the need, she was able to expand the cohort to include early stage startups and general businesses that are poised for growth.

“I love that saying: Think globally, act locally,” says Bussey.

“That’s what Ascend allows us to do.”

Partnership Power Even more than local flexibility, the “killer app” of Ascend may be the network itself. Connecting the previously unconnected creates positive feedback loops across the USA.

22 | FOSTER BUSINESS

In the Bay Area, Mills College is working with ICA Fund Good Jobs and Working Solutions. LiftFund partners with the City of Houston and Houston Community College for Ascend Houston.

And Ascend New Orleans connects the business schools of Xavier and Tulane Universities and the New Orleans Business Alliance.

Ascend Chicago is about the only thing—short of a sporting contest—that could bring together the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. “On many levels they are competitors, cross-town rivals,” Verchot says. “But it turns out to be an amazing partnership when they come together for a common cause.”

That cause, of course, is reducing Chicago’s intractable wealth gap and the litany of social ills it causes.

Both schools focus on areas of highest unemployment. But each approaches the challenge differently. Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation dispatches student consulting teams to help minority owned businesses solve problems and grow. Northwestern’s Kellogg School offers an intensive cohort model of practical management education.

They work with Boston Consulting Group, with Axion and Local Initiatives Support Coalition (LISC) for access to capital, and with Chicago Anchors for a Strong Economy (CASE) and World Business Chicago for market access.

The whole package has supported the exponential growth of companies large and small. “We wouldn’t be where we are today without Ascend,” says Jimmie Williams of Urban Roots, a veteran of both Chicago programs.

He’s also hiring, which is the ultimate goal of Ascend Chicago— and everywhere else.

“We have societal issues that are bigger than business issues,” says Michele Rogers, the director of Chicago partnerships at Northwestern Kellogg. “But we know if people have education and jobs, violence and other social ills pretty much go away.

So we’re addressing our piece of this here.”

Coming soon to a city near you There is one other essential attribute to Ascend: ambition.

The initiative was built to grow. And it is expanding—rapidly.

Five more cities are vying to join the existing 11 in the Ascend network in the coming year.

Two of the newest Ascend sites are serving very different populations of underserved entrepreneurs in the New York metro area. Ascend Long Island, led by Hofstra University, specializes in advancing businesses in low-income suburban communities.

Ascend New York, led by the Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development, is an urban play.

Nancy Carin, executive director of the Business Outreach Center Network, serves both burgeoning partnerships in different capacities. Her organization is the finance partner in Long Island and handles recruiting and management education in NYC. “In both these communities,” she says, “We want these businesses to be leaders and a force for good, for economic justice.”

Nowhere is the virtue of community held more dearly than in NYC’s final frontier for gentrification. “The communities in the

SEATTLE SWEETNESS As the model for the national Ascend program, the Foster School’s Consulting and Business Development Center is naturally the lead organization in Ascend Seattle—“First among equals,” as director Michael Verchot likes to say.

The center delivers the management education piece of the program’s Three-M model, which is the evolution of its Business Growth Collaborative.

Access to money is provided by community lender Craft3 and market access by the local chapter of the Minority Supplier Development Council—with additional support from the center’s deep well of corporate and institutional contacts.

The Ascend Seattle ecosystem accelerates growth of established firms owned by people of color, women and veterans. Successful alumni include Maricelys Borrero of American Abatement and Demo, Marti Hoffer of Lumenomics, Yuri Parreno and Ivonne Jurado of Ultrafino, Lewis Rudd of Ezell’s Famous Chicken, Nishit Mehta of HyGen Pharmaceuticals.

Odette D’Aniello is the founder and CEO of Celebrity Gourmet Ventures, a sweet suite of specialty dessert companies. The Filipina developed a passion

for cake decorating as a childhood escape from laboring in her uncle’s industrial bakery in Guam. Upon arriving in Washington state 20 years ago, she founded Celebrity Café & Bakery with her husband and brother.

“We had no clue how to run a business,” she admits.

After years learning at the school of hard knocks, D’Aniello found enormous value in the academic insights and invaluable network of the first cohort of Ascend Seattle. Then the second. Then the third.

Three years of Ascend has equipped D’Aniello to acquire several companies, to comprehend the vagaries of growth financing, and to scale sustainably. This has proved essential as she leveraged contacts in the Ascend ecosystem into a nationwide market for her Dragonfly Cakes—another acquisition—via high-end groceries including Whole Foods.

“I’m always learning,” D’Aniello says.

“So when an opportunity like Ascend came along, I was all over it. It has given me a pathway and allowed me to see my business from so many different perspectives than I could see through the daily grind. Ascend has given me a wider lens.

“Now I want to send my team.” n

South Bronx don’t want to replicate Brooklyn,” Carin says.

“They want more local ownership and local empowerment.

So we’re really going beyond just supporting minority owned or woman owned or veteran owned businesses. We’re looking to grow local businesses, owned and operated by people who live in the community.”

There’s a lot of that going around.

Local heroes This powerful mix of community and collaboration gets at the essence of Ascend.

“Equity is at the root of this,” explains Archer of JPMorgan Chase. “But as a firm with a large footprint, we’re not talking about community in the abstract. We are actively engaged in our communities. Ascend impacts our business as much as it impacts society.”

His colleague Cat Martin adds that she uses Ascend’s business growth collaborative ecosystem as a model in the smaller markets she serves, too.

Celebrity Gourmet Ventures CEO Odette D'Aniello

As for the founder of this national movement, Verchot admits that Foster gets as good as it gives. The national Ascend network is a means of gleaning innovations and crowd-sourced best practices that can benefit the Consulting and Business Development Center’s core work in Washington.

He co-founded the center nearly 25 years ago to spur the growth of businesses owned by people of color, women and veterans—especially in underserved communities. The result is more than $210 million in new revenue, and over 200,000 jobs created or retained across the state.

Now Ascend is multiplying that impact. All over the national map.

“We’ve discovered a model that can begin to close the business performance and wealth gap, and sharing it is the right thing to do,” says Verchot, who’s developing a playbook to scale the program beyond the limits of his personal coaching and consultation. “Look at the slogan of the current UW capital campaign: For Washington, For the World.

“Ascend is our for the world contribution.” n

SUMMER 2019 | 23

FACULTY

WE WROTE THE BOOK ON… Foster faculty drop knowledge on generations of management students the world over Textbooks are not glamorous. But they are essential.

Their volumes contain multitudes of knowledge, delivered with miraculous cohesion and concision, a fundamental digest of the state-of-the-science in every subject area. In the supply chain of business education, textbooks are the conduit between research, teaching and practice.

But they don’t write themselves. That job often falls to Foster School faculty, who have produced more than 20 textbooks currently in circulation. Their scope ranges from niche to genuine blockbuster.

Charles Hill’s International Business, for instance, has reigned at #1 in its category for 25 years running and has been translated into 14 languages.

“To write a textbook, you must have a breadth of knowledge about the field,” says Xiao-Ping Chen, associate dean of academic affairs and author of two Chinese management texts. “The fact that we have so many authors at Foster demonstrates that our faculty have expertise far beyond their own area of research. And they are able to connect all of the cutting-edge theory and technique in their fields, and put it in a coherent framework to share with students around the world.”

In so doing, Foster scholars are multiplying their impact well beyond PACCAR and Dempsey Halls.

Here’s a selection of textbooks authored by Foster faculty.

Accounting Introduction to Management Accounting (16th edition) – Dave Burgstahler and Gary Sundem with Charles Horngren and Jeff Schatzberg Financial Accounting (10th edition) – Frank Hodge with Robert Libby and Patricia Libby Managerial Accounting (6th edition) – James Jiambalvo

Marketing and International Business Handbook of Marketing Analytics – Natalie Mizik with Dominique M. Hanssens Marketing Strategy – Rob Palmatier with Shrihari Sridhar

Business Consulting in a Multicultural America – Thaddeus Spratlen and Michael Verchot with Leslie Lum and Detra Montoya From Big Data to Big Profits – Russell Walker Winning with Risk Management – Russell Walker

Finance and Business Economics Fundamentals of Corporate Finance (4th edition) – Jarrad Harford with Jonathan Berk and Peter DeMarzo Analysis for Financial Management (12th edition) – Jennifer Koski and Rocky Higgins with Todd Mitton

Management and Organization Full Range Leadership Development (2nd edition) – Bruce Avolio Organizational Transformation – Bruce Avolio Motivation and Work Behavior (7th edition) – Greg Bigley with Lyman Porter and Richard Steers Human Relations – Greg Bigley with Lyman Porter Empirical Methods in Organization and Management Research – Xiao-Ping Chen Managing Across Cultures (3rd edition) – Xiao-Ping Chen International Business (11th edition) – Charles Hill with Thomas Hult

Global Business Today (12th edition) – Charles Hill with Thomas Hult Strategic Management (6th edition) – Charles Hill with Melissa Schilling and Gareth Jones Metrics 2.0 – Ruth Huwe

Information Systems and Operations Management Introduction to Management Science (6th edition) – Mark Hillier with Frederick Hillier Project Management – Ted Klastorin Practical Business Statistics (7th edition) – Andrew Siegel

FACULTY RESEARCH BRIEFS

UNINFORMED INVESTING

TECHNOLOGICAL TURBULENCE

WINNING ONLINE

Understanding why everyday traders use old news over new

Teams willing to learn and realign power innovate best amid external disruptions

Creating a ‘just right’ online shopping experience boosts sales on Amazon

“Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

This familiar disclaimer—a cautionary mantra of every mutual fund prospectus and investment disclosure—often goes unheeded by casual investors who nevertheless trade on historic stock returns rather than new accounting information.

Why is this?

A new study by Elizabeth Blankespoor and Ed deHaan, associate professors of accounting at the Foster School, identifies several barriers that can prevent investors from incorporating the insights of financial reports into their investing decisions.

The first barriers are knowing about and finding the accounting information.

But when the researchers removed those barriers—by providing a simple summary of both new accounting information and historic stock returns on a given company—investors still acted on old stock return trends.

This was due to a third, most-prohibitive barrier: everyday investors lack the skills necessary to evaluate and use accounting information to make smart trading decisions.

“Our findings suggest that the costs of monitoring and acquiring accounting reports are not the primary barriers to unsophisticated investors’ use of accounting information,” Blankespoor says.

“Rather, the likely obstacles are lack of training, behavioral biases—or both.” n 26 | FOSTER BUSINESS

These are turbulent times for anyone attempting to innovate, as fast-emerging technologies disrupt every aspect of modern life. So, it’s no surprise that corporations are more reliant than ever on their research and development, marketing and consultancy teams to gain some competitive edge.

Such teams, though, may find themselves unable to innovate successfully if they cling to the old rules of engagement, according to new research by Xiao-Ping Chen, a professor of management and the Philip M. Condit Endowed Chair in Business Administration at the Foster School.

Chen’s study finds that teams of knowledge-workers must be open to learning about emerging technologies and willing to redistribute power to members with relevant expertise, regardless of their experience.

This works best in an environment of autonomy and empowerment.

“If we want our teams to be innovative, their power structure needs to be flexible,” Chen says. “Knowledge expertise is paramount in these kinds of teams. Even if some of the members are young and naïve, we should not only let them participate in the decision-making, but also value their input.”

In other words, appreciate your Millennials. n

Amazon has become the undisputed superstore of the Internet, an essential platform for most every brand—in every category—to peddle its wares. Yet many brands treat their online page content as an afterthought.

Now research co-authored by Rob Palmatier, director of the Foster School’s Center for Sales and Marketing Strategy, demonstrates how carefully crafted Amazon content—in image, type, tone and text length—boosts shopper engagement and can increase sales by 15 to 20 percent.

Getting the content “just right” means paying close attention to the kind of product on offer—and creating a complementary experience. It starts with knowing deeply the brand and product, which informs the right combination of information, entertainment, social presence and sensory appeal.

“Brands that create an effective shopping experience on Amazon have a huge advantage over their competitors,” says Palmatier, the John C. Narver Endowed Professor in Business Administration.

“Their success depends on their ability to employ design elements on product pages to evoke customer experiences that not only convey information but also entertain, imply human interactions and mimic sensory experiences from the offline world.” n

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BUILDING BETTER BOARDS

PREDICTABLY UNPREDICTABLE

SEX AND THE WORKPLACE

Machine learning could help firms select more effective board directors

The hidden cost of just-in-time employee scheduling

Happy at home, engaged at work— and vice-versa

A growing chorus of institutional investors and economic critics is finding flaws in the way that corporate boards of directors advise and monitor senior management.

A key reason is that CEOs effectively control the board selection process, tending to choose directors who are unlikely to offer opposition or provide the diverse perspectives necessary to represent shareholders’ interests.

Emerging technology could help, according to new research by Léa Stern, an assistant professor of finance at Foster.

Stern’s analysis demonstrates that machine learning algorithms trained on the performance and attributes of potential candidates could help mitigate cognitive biases and complement CEOs’ efforts to pick effective corporate directors.

The models consistently suggest alternative directors who would have been likely to outperform the directors actually chosen by the firms.

The one commonality of those alternative directors? They don’t resemble the CEO. “In a sense,” Stern says, “the algorithm is telling us exactly what institutional shareholders have been saying for a long time: that directors who are not old friends of management and come from different backgrounds both do a better job in monitoring management and are often overlooked.” n

Do you know your work schedule for tomorrow? How about today? For millions of Americans in the service industry, the answer is no.

Employers are increasingly using “just-in-time” scheduling to more closely match front-line staffing with unpredictable customer demand. Such flexible scheduling is a far more efficient use of labor than traditional fixed scheduling.

But there are some hidden costs, as identified in a new study by Yong-Pin Zhou, a professor of operations management and Evert McCabe Endowed Fellow.

Zhou and his co-authors find that “realtime” scheduling—which requires service workers to extend shifts with no advance notice—can reduce sales by 4.4 percent due to a drain on employee efforts to up-sell (push more expensive items) and cross-sell (push complementary items).

But the study also indicates that less-extreme “short-notice” scheduling— issued a day or two in advance—has no such negative effect on productivity.

Zhou points out that the uncertainty caused by real-time scheduling also contributes to increased turnover. And more and more cities are enacting regulations requiring higher pay for employees working unpredictable schedules. “In this case,” he says, “a shift from real-time to short-notice schedules can improve a firm’s profitability by up to 4.5 percent.” n

Sex is good for business.

That’s the broadest interpretation of new findings by Chris Barnes, an associate professor of marketing and Evert McCabe Endowed Fellow at Foster.

Barnes’ diary study of married and employed adults reveals that the warm afterglow of sex with one’s partner lingers into the following workday. The morning after sexual relations (and that entire day), employees reported feeling more satisfied and engaged at work.

But there is a downside to the fluidity of moods between home and work. Barnes also found, perhaps not surprisingly, that a stressful day at the office reduces the odds that anyone will be in the mood that evening.

He says this is another byproduct of the blurring lines between work and home in the modern world. As these boundaries become more permeable, we should expect to see more positive and negative emotions spill unabated in both directions.

“Sex is often excluded from management research because it may be perceived as taboo,” Barnes says. “But it is an evolutionary necessity and a common behavior. And our study demonstrates it does in fact positively impact both job satisfaction and job engagement the next day.” n

Interested in reading more about Foster research? Visit foster.uw.edu/research-briefs

SUMMER 2019 | 27

ALUMNI

IT’S A SMALL WORLD… Yasmin Mowafy’s career has spanned the globe, from IBM to Disney to Google Yasmin Mowafy’s (MBA 2016) career path has spanned the globe.

“Every step along the way was a stepping stone,” she says.

Mowafy’s journey began in Egypt, where she was born and raised. She earned a computer science degree and started working as a software engineer for IBM. From there, she worked as a business analyst, consulting with the Egyptian government.

In 2011, Mowafy moved to the United States with her first child and husband as he pursued his MBA at Carnegie Mellon University. The transition was made easier by the campus community. Because she didn’t have permission to work in the US, Mowafy used this time to focus on her family.

“We were having fun with it,” she says.

“The hardest part was not being able to work.”

Career restart When her husband landed a job in Seattle at Amazon, Mowafy knew it was time to jumpstart her own career. She wanted to focus on the business side of technology.

“I knew that was the one block I was missing,” she says.

That led her to the Foster School’s Technology Management MBA Program.

Mowafy loved the fast pace of the TMMBA and the challenges she received from her professors and teammates. She learned the importance of networking and making connections. Her cohort helped her fill in the blanks of the working world she wasn’t experiencing on a day-to-day basis.

Mowafy even had her second child during the program, four months before graduation. “My professors were understanding,” she says. “I knew what I was getting into.”

She was back at school two weeks after her son’s birth.

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Creating magic A TMMBA company trek gave Mowafy the opportunity to visit the Walt Disney Company. She knew instantly that she wanted to work there.

“I liked how the company and people talked about creating magic. I was like, ‘Yes, that’s perfect for me,’” Mowafy says. “They are building the next generation of leaders, making them tech savvy. It aligned with what I wanted to be in the future.”

Through Foster connections, she landed a spot in Disney’s incredibly selective Technology Management Rotation (TMR) Program.

The program exposes participants to the company’s technology organization through six-month rotations in four different businesses.

“I learned how to be very flexible and adapt and to learn fast,” she says. “The quick rotations with highly visible projects helped me form relationships and drive impact.”

Once she completed the program, Mowafy landed a full-time job at Disney as a senior product manager.

Then her ever-expanding network helped her land a job as a product manager at Google earlier this year. At Google, Mowafy acts as a liaison between customers and the tech team, a position for which she is well-equipped. “We think about what the customer needs, then translate those needs to the tech team to build,” she says. “It’s like being the CEO of the product.”

Experiences of a lifetime Mowafy has found a way to bring insights from her life experiences—from where she’s lived to her previous jobs—to her work every day.

“Egypt gave me diversity. At Disney and Google, I’ve brought perspective,” she says. “I present a different point of view for developing countries to design for diversity.”

Reflecting on her career path, Mowafy credits Foster’s emphasis on network connections.

“In the TMMBA, I learned the importance of building relationships—with alumni, different companies, career networking,” she says. “I’ve taken that advice to heart.

It’s what got me my first job. Disney had a relationship with a former student. [My job at] Google came through a referral.”

While she’s just getting started at Google, Mowafy is still setting long-term goals.

“I like the idea of starting my own business one day,” she says. n – Kristin Anderson

FLOUR, WATER, EGGS, SALT Tim Louie takes a century-old family recipe for success into modern times “Pillar of the community,” decrees Tim Louie’s old Scoutmaster, who has dropped by the Tsue Chong Company to pick up some fortune cookies to take to the VA hospital. “The pride and joy of Chinatown!”

He’s speaking of Louie (BA 1984), an Eagle Scout back in the day who now runs Tsue Chong, the century-old maker of Chinese noodles and cookies which has become an institution as essential to Seattle’s Chinatown/International District as Louie himself.

Just as it has been for generations.

Family + flour The Louie family business dates back to Tim’s great grandfather. Gar Hip Louie immigrated from his small town in southern China to Seattle to work as a general laborer in the late 1880s. Finding nowhere to buy the staple of the Chinese diet, he began selling handmade noodles, wrapped in newspaper and delivered fresh. “He saw an opportunity,” Tim Louie says, “and started making noodles himself, using four simple ingredients: flour, water, eggs and salt.”

In 1917—the same year the Foster School was founded—Gar Hip formally established Tsue Chong.

When he retired, he handed over operations to Fat Yuen Louie, Tim’s grandfather, who ran the show for many decades with his wife, Eng Shee Louie. She introduced fortune cookies to Seattle, folding and stuffing thousands each day.

In the 1970s, company leadership passed down to Henry Louie, Tim’s father, and his Uncle Kenneth.

Tim’s time For young Tim Louie, Tsue Chong was a preschool, playground and, eventually, employer. “It was a negotiating tool to get my driver’s license early,” he says. “I told my dad, ‘If I can drive, I can deliver noodles for you.’”

At Whitworth College, Louie initially studied pre-engineering before having a change of heart. “I realized that the family

business is not such a bad deal,” he says. “It was already set up.

And it wasn’t like a Chinese restaurant where you have to work every evening and weekend. I thought, why not?”

So he transferred to the UW and switched his major to business administration.

After graduation, he rejoined the family business.

And, apart from a brief departure to hone sales skills at a big food service company, he’s been at Tsue Chong ever since.

He took over for his father and uncle just before the Great Recession struck.

Modernizing the operation Though noodles are somewhat economy-proof—“People always have to eat,” Louie says—he had to make some tough decisions to sustain the company into its second century. Some strategic adjustments led to more efficient operations.

He invested in new accounting systems.

And he brought in some truly magical modern machinery whose hum, hiss and clank would draw a wink from Willy Wonka.

Louie’s modernization campaign eventually earned the approval of his skeptical elders. “Now my dad thinks we should have done this years ago,” he says.

Today, Tsue Chong is booming as big as the city it calls home. It produces 10,000 pounds of noodle products—fresh, dried, steamed and fried, plus wrappers for wontons, gyoza and egg rolls—and 80,000 fortune cookies every day, under the Rose brand. All of this is distributed to restaurants and groceries throughout the Pacific Northwest and as far afield as Denver and Salt Lake City.

People business The secret of this success? Louie is a steward as much as an innovator, maintaining family traditions even as he has brought Tsue Chong into the modern era.

“They say that everyone is six degrees from anyone in the world,” he says. “In Chinatown, it’s two degrees. So I’ve learned to treat everyone with respect and kindness. Our success, our longevity is really about relationships. That was passed down from my great grandfather to my grandfather to my father to me. We do everything ethically and with integrity, work hard, treat our employees well and build relationships. And those relationships last a long time.”

Which is why Tsue Chong can feel like a community center as much as a business. Retired workers drop by to say hello.

Family hang out in the office. School kids come on field trips, or Boy Scouts from Louie's childhood troop (which he still leads today).

He welcomes all comers with the grace of a head of state (flour-dusted shirt notwithstanding). In his business, relationships are everything.

And noodles are forever. n – Ed Kromer

SUMMER 2019 | 29

ALUMNI

NEVER FORGET Josh Rodriguez carries indelible memories—and memories carry him—from combat to finance For instance, getting to know his classmates at the Foster School. “It’s easier for veterans to get to know our class than it is for our class to get to know us,” Rodriguez explains. “My team included a bond trader, an engineer, a coder, and an advertising guy. It’s much easier for me to ask them about their careers. Initially, every time I talked about my past someone would say, ‘Sorry. Thanks for your service.’ Then there was silence. It killed the mood [laughs] and the conversation almost immediately.”

Josh Rodriguez (MBA 2017) wears a bracelet with names inscribed: Navarro, Yllescas, Vile, Pirtle, King, Prange.

“Peter [Navarro] and I were best friends in high school,” Rodriguez says. “He died in Taji, Iraq, 13 December 2005. An IED killed his entire Humvee two weeks before he was coming home.”

He tells stories about each of them.

One hell of a story Rodriguez witnessed a lot of death in direct action, so it’s not surprising one of his proudest moments was bringing his infantry reconnaissance platoon home alive after the Taliban attacked their post in Kunar, Afghanistan.

“We had nine US Soldiers, one Latvian officer, and ten Afghan National Army Soldiers in defense,” he recalls. “The enemy had approximately 80 fighters committed to ending our lives.

They came within eight meters of us, but we all made it through that fight. We left the mountain with two Bronze Stars for Valor, three Army Commendation Medals for Valor, and one hell of a story.”

Getting to know you Rodriguez earned his bachelor’s degree at the United States Military Academy in 2007 and then embarked on a series of deployments across a decade-long career in the US Army.

“I once did an interview for a documentary called When War Comes Home.

One of the questions was, ‘How vast is the issue of post-traumatic stress?’ I said, ‘There’s no way anyone can come back the same if they were in a combat zone.’ ”

Soft skills Rodriguez credits soft skills for getting him through many harrowing experiences.

“What I did, if anything, was facilitate the management or the execution of things.

Literally, you live and die by that in the military, especially if you’re on the front lines. You have to have soft skills to the nth degree.”

He prided himself on being able to formulate a team to accomplish anything.

Anything. Like the time he was tasked with

30 | FOSTER BUSINESS

the plan to shut down southern Afghanistan—24 hours after President Obama announced it on TV. “Like ‘Rodriguez’s job is to figure out the plan and brief his general, then everybody in the south is going to adopt it,’ ” he says.

“I didn’t know Afghan land law, or engineering, but I knew how to make the team.

You, engineer guy, you’re on this team.

What team? You’re about to find out. You, lawyer, you’re on this team. You, logistics guy, you’re on this team. Now, here’s what we need to get done...”

Become the expert When Rodriguez left West Point, he was a second lieutenant in the Army, immediately overseeing 40 people.

“Then, my job was to find the experts,” says Rodriguez. “When I started the MBA program, I needed to be an expert.”

He credits his teachers and classmates for helping him find that confidence. It clicked during a finance class taught by Thomas Gilbert, the two-time PACCAR Award-winning associate professor of finance.

“We were assigned a weighted-average-cost-of-capital problem set and I was our team lead,” Rodriguez says. “I knocked hard into the night, really hard, because if you get called out by Tommy G, he’s going to stick with you. So of course, I’m called on. My whole team’s messaging me, and my friend Mike Greene texts, ‘Josh is all over it.’

“I thought, ‘The former bond trader just said I was all over finance.’ That was a turning point for me.”

Thankful Now an associate at Goldman Sachs, Rodriguez is still regularly on campus.

“I’m not where I am solely through my hard work,” he says. “It happened because people helped me along the way. I’m indebted to those people.”

And he’s not one to forget. n

– Andrew Krueger

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER Education has enabled Connie Glowney to construct a life she never could have imagined Education is always important. For Connie Glowney (MBA 2013), it has been essential.

School paved her path to confidence, self-discovery and freedom—not to mention her current role as a leader in Starbucks’ international retail operations.

But it was a long and winding path.

Like many children of the 1960s, Glowney grew up in a traditional family where men went off to work and women stayed home to raise children. As a result, she believed that college was something for her brother, not her.

“This view on life definitely influenced me,” she says. “In some ways, I saw the same life for myself. I thought that was what I was supposed to do.”

Dead-end job Glowney was married at 20 and had two kids by 23. But financial realities dictated she bring home a paycheck. In 13 years with JC Penney, she worked her way up from customer service to the accounting department. Then, at 29, she had a startling epiphany.

“It was incredibly depressing,” she recalls. “These women around me were all in their 60s, had been sitting at the same desks doing the same jobs for 30 years.

I realized that would be me. I knew right

then and there I had to do something to save myself and I knew that in order to do that I needed to go to school.”

A second life-changing moment of clarity followed in quick succession. Her plans to pursue a degree in hospitality at community college were met by her husband with an ambivalent shrug.

“That’s when I had my second epiphany: he was not going to be in my life.”

A fresh start Glowney got divorced and worked her way—slowly—toward her associate’s degree while raising her two kids on her own and living on the edge. She applied at Starbucks for the benefits and flexible schedule.

She started as a barista, but her hard work and facility with accounting led to a promotion to manager and eventually the corporate office. She also met and eventually married John Glowney, a partner much more supportive of her career aspirations, and gave birth to her third child at the age of 39.

After decelerating her career climb during her daughter’s formative years, Glowney knew she needed a jumpstart.

Surprised to receive such enthusiastic

support from her family, friends and employer, she enrolled in the Foster Executive MBA Program.

Her prospects improved almost immediately. While in the program, she was tasked to lead operations for Starbucks’ arrival in India. Then she took on Asian operations. And things went up from there.

The currency of confidence The Foster EMBA was a great education, and a huge confidence boost. “A degree is more than a piece of paper,” Glowney says.

“I realized how smart I was, how much I intrinsically knew and how much business experience I had. After getting educated, I had a language to coincide with thoughts I already had.”

She parlayed this into her ever-rising profile at Starbucks. Today she leads a team that ensures Starbucks delivers on its strategic and annual operating plans at thousands of locations around the globe.

It’s a long way from the sales floor at JC Penney. Where Glowney once saw insurmountable challenges, she now sees endless opportunities.

“I’ve always challenged myself to learn more, do more, be more,” she says. “The gifts from actually completing school allowed me to trust that as a partner at Starbucks, as a leader, as a manager, as a wife and mother, my ideas are my ideas and it’s okay to own them or even change them. Owning them in confidence—and letting them go through true leadership—is a power discovery.

“There are many roads that fork. Every day, every week there are choices to be made. Some of those choices will be easy and obvious, others will be difficult or seem dark. When we show courage for ourselves, we don’t always know where the road goes, only that it’s got to be taken.” n

– Janna Lopez and Ed Kromer Connie Glowney (center) with her EMBA team.

SUMMER 2019 | 31

POD-CASTING Foster students power the business end of an international engineering challenge involved with the team as At last year’s a whole,” Hale says. “This SpaceX Hyperloop helped motivate members Pod Competition, to devote the time needed the annual student to successfully market our challenge to develop team to potential sponsors Elon Musk’s vision of leading to this year’s fundhigh-speed tubular raising success.” transport, a team of The Foster team has University of Washtirelessly negotiated ington undergrads discounts and donations of finished first in the parts and resources. And United States, fourth in they’ve tripled investment, the world and received raising $100,000-plus an innovation award from more corporate partfor its cold gas thruster ners than you could fit on propulsion system. the canopy of a NASCAR, But the gap among them Boeing, 3M, between the UW entry Siemens, MathWorks, and the European General Plastics, Scorpion champs was pretty Motors, Solvay and even a vast. The difference? few less obvious ones like Money.

Tacos Chukis and PagliIt takes resources UW Hyperloop business team members Nicholas Wood, Will Oaks, Dom Gorecki, Emma Xia and Luke Cantor with this year's pod. acci Pizza (students gotta to engineer the optimal eat). The Foster School aerodynamics, matehas even provided financial support. rials, stability, fuel and propulsion required to be the fastest “Just as in any design firm, we are limited by our pod in the tube. And compared to last year’s top teams, resources,” says Nicole Lambert, a UW engineering senior each amply financed by big corporate R&D, the UW operand director of UW Hyperloop. “Without our business team ated on a shoestring. we wouldn’t have the funds to build an award-winning pod.”

Not this year.

This year, they’re aiming for the biggest award. That Charles Hale, a senior studying accounting and finance means top speed. And Hale thinks UW Hyperloop can hit a at Foster, saw to it. When his roommate took an engineering blazing 260-280 mph when they run their pod through the leadership role on the project three years ago, he joined mile-long SpaceX Hypertube in Hawthorne, CA, this July. to provide some business support. But he says the Foster Win or lose, the experience is certainly one-of-a-kind. “As contingent worked too independently of the engineering an engineer, it’s been amazing to work with a fully integrated teams to make a significant impact. business team,” Lambert says.

So this year, he recruited a larger team of Foster “This project really functions as a startup,” adds Wood. students, including Will Oaks, Dom Gorecki, Emma Xia, Luke Cantor, Ben Barton and Nicholas Wood, who took over “It’s about going above and beyond expectations and finding ways to apply your specific skill set to benefit the team. the lead role.

Each of the business team was embedded with one engi- That’s the coolest part of this experience. What you put in is what you get out.” n neering sub-team and worked toward clear objectives and – Ed Kromer deadlines. “The business team was then substantially more

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US MILITARY VETERANS

Founders Hall, the next addition to the UW Foster School’s world-class campus, will not only provide greatly needed space.

It also will celebrate the value of leadership and service in a tangible way.

Through the generosity of Kathy Connors (BA 1982) and her husband John, a collection of Founders Hall team rooms will include Honor Walls listing all University of Washington business graduates who have served in the US Military.

To complete these installations, we ask for your help.

If you served in the United States Air Force, Army, Marines or Navy, please contact us at fans@uw.edu and provide your name (as you prefer to be listed), your UW business degree, year of graduation, and your branch of service.

And if you know of family or friends from earlier generations who were US Veterans and earned their business degrees at the UW, please send the same information to fans@uw.edu.

With your help, the Foster School will proudly recognize the leadership and sacrifice of our alumni who have selflessly served our nation and protected our freedom. Thank you for your service!

photo: Library of Congress

For questions/comments about this initiative or Founders Hall, please contact Associate Dean Steven Hatting at hatting@uw.edu.

­N O N P R O F IT O R GAN I ZATI O N U.S. P O STAG E

PAI D S EATTLE, WA P E R M IT N O. 62 ADVAN C E M E NT B OX 353200 S EATTLE, WA 9 8195-3200

MICHAEL G. FOSTER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SUMMER 2019

FOSTE R

Jim Jiambalvo, Foster’s 13th dean, with Frank Hodge, Foster’s 14th dean, on the steps of PACCAR Hall.