coin flip - carey business school · 6 perspectives . the #metoo movement as a work in progress,...

JOHNS HOPKINS CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL

SPRING 2018 MAGAZINE

Scoring Success in the Sports Arena Meet three alumni with leadership roles in pro athletics

By the Numbers Consumers seek out companies that take a values-driven approach

COIN FLIPCryptocurrencies are all the rage. But should they be in your wallet?

FEATURES

8 COIN FLIP

Cryptocurrencies may be the money of the future, or a fraud. Carey faculty members are among the experts trying to answer the question: Should digital currencies be in your wallet? By Richard Byrne

14 BY THE NUMBERS

More companies appear to be making a values-driven approach central to their business mission – because it’s the right thing to do, and consumers are demanding it. By Sue De Pasquale

16 THE SPORTING LIFE

Meet three Carey Business School alumni who are key players in the high-stakes and increasingly profitable world of professional athletics. By Greg Rienzi

SPRING 2018

DEPARTMENTS

2 DEAN’S MESSAGE Your success depends largely on

the networks you build.

3 EDITOR’S NOTE Cal Ripken has nothing on this Carey

professor’s 40-year streak.

3 CAREY IN THE NEWS Coverage by The New York Times,

The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The Guardian, Forbes, NBC News, Knowledge@Wharton, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Inside Higher Ed, The Baltimore Sun, and more.

6 PERSPECTIVES The #MeToo movement as a work

in progress, and the power of diverse experience.

22 OTHER BUSINESS Carey’s burgeoning Executive

Education program, $1 million prize for Flex MBA student, a visit by Barbara Mikulski, victories in case competitions, library expansion, new high for Career Fair, Kudos, and more.

27 ALUMNI NEWS News and notes about graduates

of the Carey Business School. Also, the latest list of the members of the Dean’s Alumni Advisory Board.

32 CAREER FILE Advice from a Carey faculty expert

on management education and collaborative learning: Failure is most definitely an option.

COV ER ILLUS TR AT ION: M ICH A EL WA R A KS AOPPOSITE: PHOTO BY ANDRES CORTES, COURTESY OF TIMBERLAND

CAREYBUSINESS

JOHNS HOPKINS CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL

Workers in Haiti take part in an initiative by the footwear company Timberland to plant 5 million trees over five years in the Caribbean nation, targeting its severe decline in tree populations. Since 2001, the company says, it has planted about 9 million trees worldwide. See page 14

JOHNS HOPKINS CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL • SPRING 2018 | 3

D E AN ’ S M E S SAG E

CASTING A WIDE NETWhy build a network?

After many years in business, I still hear this question. My view is that

the extent of your network – the people with whom you foster strong and

mutually beneficial relationships in both your personal and professional

lives – often determines how successful you will be in the long term.

This is particularly important for business school

graduates as they take what they’ve learned in

the classroom and use it to develop their careers.

Carey Business School alumni are fortunate

to belong to a variety of networks, starting

with family and friends. They can also count

on their Johns Hopkins family. The university’s

alumni network has a total of 212,000 graduates

worldwide. That includes more than 25,000

from Carey.

Indeed, the ranks of Carey alumni have been

growing rapidly; nearly 6,000 full- and part-time

degrees have been awarded in the past five years.

But what most impresses me about our

graduates, beyond mere numbers, is that so

many of them are eager to make Carey an

even better school. They give back by joining

a board, getting involved in a school event,

making a financial gift, finding employment

opportunities for our graduates, and serving as

mentors to our students, just to mention a few

of the ways they contribute.

Over the past 3½ years, Carey has been

working to make it easier for our alumni in dif-

ferent parts of the world to stay connected with

each other and with the school, through the

establishment of alumni clubs. We started with

a Beijing club in late 2014, and by the summer

of 2016 clubs had been launched in Shanghai,

San Francisco, and New York. Another opened

in the Mid-Atlantic region last year, and we

recently celebrated the launch of our new

club in Boston. Our first alumni club in the

Midwest, based in Chicago, should be up and

running in weeks.

These clubs have helped greatly in the

growth and nurturing of our alumni network.

I invite all Carey graduates to reach out to the

club nearest them so they might become better

engaged with their fellow alumni. (Drop an

email to [email protected].)

As alumni, you are the most important ambas-

sadors of the Carey Business School. The work

you do and the support you give one another

play a significant role in elevating not just your

own careers but also the reputation of Carey.

And if you haven’t done so in a while, come

home from time to time and visit the school.

See how we are continuing to thrive. Stay con-

nected by completing our surveys, sending your

professional updates to Carey Business, telling

us the stories of your successes. We are looking

forward to seeing and hearing from you.

Bernard T. Ferrari, Dean

AS ALUMNI, YOU ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT AMBASSADORS OF THE CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL. THE WORK YOU DO AND THE SUPPORT YOU GIVE ONE ANOTHER PLAY A SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN ELEVATING NOT JUST YOUR OWN CAREERS BUT ALSO THE REPUTATION OF CAREY.

2 | CAREY BUSINESS • JOHNS HOPKINS CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL

E D ITOR ’ S NOTE More on page 4 >

PLAY BALL! Even the most casual sports fan knows that profes-sional athletics has grown into a huge industry. Particularly at the top levels of pro sports, the money being made by players, teams, leagues, TV networks, and advertisers reaches astronomical proportions.

(Yes, we’re looking at you, New York Yankee Giancarlo Stanton, with your MLB-record contract of $325 million for 13 years. Ditto for you, NFL, and the reported $3 billion that Fox will pay you for the rights to Thursday night games for the next five seasons.)

In this issue of Carey Business, we devote one of our full-length features, “The Sporting Life” (page 16), to the success that three Carey alumni have enjoyed as key figures on the business side of sports. No, they may not make anything close to Giancarlo money, but they are doing themselves and their alma mater proud, putting to good use the business insights they gained while earning their degrees at Carey.

Someone who’s not a casual fan, especially when it comes to her hometown Orioles and Ravens, is Carey Associate Professor Toby Gordon. This past March 29, as she prepared to attend the Baltimore Orioles’ Opening Day for the 40th year in a row, Toby penned a short piece about her amazing streak and emailed it to friends and colleagues.

Because it’s spring, and because this issue includes a sports-related feature, I thought it would be fitting, and fun, to share Toby’s email here (with her kind permission):

“Today my Johns Hopkins friend and colleague, [Children’s Center administrator] Ted Chambers, and I are attending our 40th consecutive Baltimore Orioles Opening Day. Our streak started when we were in graduate school together at JHU’s public health school in 1979.

“As part of our tradition, we wait for tickets to come our way or buy them at the last minute. Over the years we’ve gone from buying them from scalpers to online purchases. We’ve taken our kids to the game from toddler days to adulthood. We are training them to keep the streak going for us even if they have to roll us in wheelchairs when we are in our 90s.

“It’s a laidback day, when once a year we rehash prior years and games, reminisce about the good old days at work and old friends, but mostly we just enjoy the game. We are proud that we were at Cal Ripken’s first Opening Day as an Oriole, when he hit a home run (in his first at bat, as I recall), and that our streak outlasted his. A few close calls threatened the streak. I gave birth to my youngest son two days after the first game at Camden Yards, and we’ve had snow and rain on Opening Days. Eventually I will make a scrapbook with ticket stubs and photos that show us aging across the 40 years, though person-ally I think we look the same as in 1979.”– PE

CAREY BUSINESS

Associate Dean for Global Marketing and Communications: Kiera Hynninen Director of Communications: Tim Parsons

Writer/Editor: Patrick Ercolano Consulting Editor: Sue De PasqualeDesign: Skelton Sprouls Inc Photos: Homewood Photography (except where noted)Administrative Support: Kelly Cumberledge

CAREY IN THE NEWS‘FILLER WORDS’ CAN BE SO HARD TO, UH, LIKEAn NBC News report March 9 on the pros and cons of conversational “filler words” such as “umm,” “so,” “like,” and “uh” featured an interview with Assistant Professor Steven Cohen, an expert on business communication and the academic program director for Executive Education at Carey. Filler words should be avoided, because they distract from the intended message and harm the speaker’s credibility, Cohen said. One of his tips for killing the filler: At a pause point, skip “umm” and say, “That’s a good question” or “Let me think about that for a minute.”

Carey Business is available in a print edition and online at careybusiness.carey.jhu.edu. Please direct all correspondence to Editor, Carey Business magazine, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, 100 International Drive, 6th Floor, Baltimore MD 21202-1099, or call 410-234-9290. To submit a class note, write to the above address or email [email protected]. (By submitting a note, you give Johns Hopkins University permission to edit and publish your information in the print magazine and the online edition. Thank you.)

4 | CAREY BUSINESS • JOHNS HOPKINS CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL JOHNS HOPKINS CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL • SPRING 2018 | 5

ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY Bloomberg Distinguished Professor Paul Ferraro, who studies the economic impact of environmental policies, commented in a January article in The Guardian on New York City’s five-year plan to divest its pension funds of approximately $5 billion tied to fossil fuel production. “Divestment isn’t about economically punishing businesses, it’s a tool of collective action that can politically isolate companies,” Ferraro said. “New York is fabulous in this respect because it’s so visible and it gives others room to create change. But it will only work if everyone follows, much like how everyone has to reduce their electricity use collectively for it to have a consequence for climate change.” Ferraro also was quoted in a New York Times Magazine feature in March on federal proposals to revise the Endangered Species Act in a way that would give more consideration to the economic impact of species protections. Economic and environmental trade-offs are bound to happen when protections are determined, Ferraro told the Times: “The fact is that when you spend resources on one species, you by definition are not spending them on another. In the end, you can’t get away from putting values on species.”

CAUTION FLAGSAdjunct Professor Richard Koss published two articles in early 2018 for the Bloomberg View website, one on the government’s lackluster efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the other on the need for regulators to address the boom in nonbank lending. In the lead of the latter piece, Koss didn’t mince words: “The last financial crisis occurred in part because unregulated lending in the mortgage market got out of hand. Believe it or not, it’s starting to happen again, and could ultimately precipitate another disaster unless regulators get their act together.”

CAR E Y IN THE NE WS

SUPERSTAR, SUPERHEROTwo pop culture phenomena – NBA superstar Stephen Curry and the movie megahit Black Panther – were the subjects of recent stories that quoted Associate Professor Ricard Gil. In the first piece, for The Associated Press, the Carey economist noted that Curry’s popularity in China could produce a great marketing

boon for his apparel supplier, Baltimore-based Under Armour. Gil observed in the other article, in Bloomberg, that Black Panther’s success with both black and white audiences was not surprising given its similarity to other action/superhero movies that have been big hits at the box office.

LET’S GET DIGITALThe ups and downs of the cyber-currencies market has led many journalists to seek out Assistant Professor Jim Kyung-Soo Liew for comment. Liew, an expert on Bitcoin and other digital currencies, was interviewed for stories that appeared recently in outlets including Bloomberg View, Forbes, and Institutional Investor. (For more on Liew and this topic, see the lead feature of this issue of Carey Business,

“Coin Flip.”)

TRUST IS A MUSTA research colleague of Associate Professor Brian Gunia, Amit Nandkeolyar of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, wrote an article that appeared last fall in Forbes India about their work on the role of trust and distrust in negotiations. (The piece originally appeared in ISBInsight, the research publication of the Indian school.) “Ultimately,” the article concludes,

“trust matters the most in negotiations.”

A HELPFUL NUDGE The Globe and Mail of Toronto reported in February on a recent study co-authored by Associate Professor Mario Macis, which observed that expectant mothers are more likely to donate the stem cell-rich blood from their babies’ umbilical cords if “nudged” with information about the donation process. The Toronto newspaper wrote that the study, published in January in the journal Nature, “found that mothers who received the most nudges had the highest donation rate: Out of 850 expectant mothers, 57 cord blood donations were made when nudging was used, compared to 18 to 20 without the intervention.”

BENEFITS OF REGULATIONRather than suppress growth, Maryland’s regulation of hospitals in the state has helped spur investment, Assistant Professor Tinglong Dai said in a Baltimore Sun article March 1 on Johns Hopkins’s plans for a $469 million expansion and modernization of its Bayview Medical Center in Southeast Baltimore. “Conventional wisdom says that when you regulate prices, it will stifle invest-ments and lead to low quality,” Dai told The Sun. “The opposite is happening in Maryland: When hospitals have stable and predict-able revenues and financial stability, they have every incentive to upgrade their facility and maintain high service standards.”

“ THERE’S A 1.5 BILLION-PERSON MARKET READY FOR THEM. [STEPHEN] CURRY IS BELOVED THERE, SO OF COURSE CHINA REPRESENTS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR UNDER ARMOUR.”CAREY'S RICARD GIL, QUOTED BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, ON THE POPULARITY IN CHINA OF NBA SUPERSTAR STEPHEN CURRY, WHO HAS A PRODUCT ENDORSEMENT DEAL WITH BALTIMORE-BASED SPORTS APPAREL COMPANY UNDER ARMOUR

QUICK HITSACADEMIC MINUTE“Health Benefits of a Congestion Tax,” January 11, 2018. In an audio commentary for the nation-ally broadcast Academic Minute program produced by WAMC public radio in Albany, New York, Assistant Professor Emilia Simeonova described her research showing that a tax on driving in Stockholm, Sweden, decreased pollution and significantly low-ered the rate of asthma among local children. (Academic Minute is also featured daily on the Inside Higher Ed website.) Simeonova’s study also was covered in an extensive article in THE WASH-INGTON POST on March 27, 2018 (“Congestion pricing also clears the lungs, researchers say”).

USA TODAY“This kind of small-business thinking can lead to big changes (and big bucks),” January 19, 2018. The national newspaper reported on the $1 million prize won by MBA student Kevin White in the WeWork Creator Awards competition. (For more on White, see page 24.)

NBC NEWS“Hospitals made $21B on Wall Street last year, but are patients seeing those profits?” February 7, 2018. Assistant Professor Ge Bai, an accounting expert whose research examines billing in the health care industry, was quoted in this report: “We want the hospitals to be financially viable. However, it’s not clear to me that they’re channeling those profits to give patients lower prices.”

KNOWLEDGE@WHARTON“What’s Driving India’s Fintech Boom?” February 11, 2018. Associate Professor Ravi Aron noted in an interview for this

article that India is underserved by traditional banking services, but the internet connectivity of many millions of Indians could provide them with the financial tools they need. "An entire gen-eration of Indians leapfrogged the use of personal computers and laptops to connect to the internet via mobile devices. A similar leapfrogging,” Aron said, “could take place in certain categories of financial services such as payments, lending, and wealth management."

TECHNICAL.LY/BALTIMORE“Baltimore students learned about building games and tech careers at HackCarey,” February 19, 2018. The technology-news website reported on the fourth version of HackCarey, an annual event in which a few dozen students from Baltimore public high schools come to Carey’s Harbor East campus for hands-on les-sons in computer coding and app development.

POLITICO“Nonprofit generic drug venture could include third of hospi-tal market,” March 19, 2018. This article arose from the Drug Accessibility and Pricing Symposium hosted at Carey’s Harbor East campus in March. The piece focused on remarks by keynote speaker Dan Liljenquist, vice president of Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, who spoke in support of a new nonprofit venture in which health care systems such as Intermountain manufacture their own generic medications. Carey faculty mem-bers Stacey Lee, who organized the event, and Ge Bai were among the nearly 20 other speakers at the day-long symposium.


#METOO: A WORK IN PROGRESSCarey experts consider movement’s next phases The hashtag #MeToo has become the symbol of a social revolution, generating public reckonings from Hollywood to Washington of prominent men accused of sexual harass-ment. The movement also has made a mark beyond the media glare, as organizations of all sizes around the world have begun ques-tioning whether their workplace cultures are welcoming and safe for all employees.

For this issue of Carey Business, four members of the Carey School’s full-time faculty with expertise germane to this historic moment were invited to express what they think the movement means and where it might go in the months to come.

Stacey Lee, associate professor in the practice track with expertise in business law, health law, and negotiation:

“A year from now, I think, the #MeToo movement will enter its next phase. What started out as a few courageous voices sharing their stories and speaking out against sexual abuse has turned into a national, if not international, awakening. In the United States, it is fair to say that the movement is accomplishing something that sexual harassment laws have not. It is erasing stigmas that have allowed sexual harassment to continue – fear of speaking out and not being believed. In the next year, the changing norms of the movement will transform the law in the area of increased transparency by elimi-nating sexual misconduct nondisclosure agreements, extending statutes of limita-tions for sexual harassment, and allowing victims to sue perpetrators, enablers, and institutions jointly.”

Colleen Stuart, assistant professor in the research track with expertise in collaborative work, social networks, and diversity; a co-organizer of the fall 2017 “Broadening Perspectives on Women in Work” conference at Carey:

“The #MeToo movement is an important moment in history because it is encour-aging long-overdue conversations about inclusion at work, not only for women but also for minority groups. How our institutions respond to this challenge may be the best indicator of its staying power. Many in positions of power have turned a blind eye or even enabled these transgressions, and it is hard to imagine lasting change unless our organizational structures and systems of power funda-mentally change. Initiatives such as the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund (offering legal and public relations support to vic-tims of harassment) and 50/50 by 2020 (an initiative to achieve gender equity in leadership roles and pay) are important steps in the right direction.”

Erik Helzer, assistant professor in the research track with expertise in organiza-tional behavior, ethical leadership, and con-flict management; also a co-organizer of last fall’s “Broadening Perspectives on Women in Work” conference:

“#MeToo teaches us to look beyond sim-plistic explanations that attribute violence and workplace mistreatment of women to ‘a few bad apples.’ The roots of this social ill are everywhere, from overt inequalities in promotion and status in the workplace to the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways our language and customs prioritize men over women. Where will #MeToo be a year from now? It has surfaced the pervasiveness of this problem for us; the success of the movement depends on the collective efforts of those with eyes to see. All of us, including policy mak-ers and those in positions of institutional power, can make a difference if we arm ourselves with behavioral science and cultivate a genuine desire to improve life for half of our population. The only thing stopping us is our own willingness.”

ILLUSTRATION: JENNIFER TAPIAS DERCH

PE RS PEC TIVE S

Jaana Myllyluoma, lecturer in the practice track with expertise in business leadership and human values; also an empowerment practitioner and executive coach working primarily with women in management:

“I see the #MeToo movement in the context of a larger moral revolution that is transforming the way women are valued and consequently treated. Through the extraordinary courage of a few, much of this moral revolution has been quietly ris-ing in societies with culturally condoned violence against women. The #MeToo movement, in contrast, has swept over the entire globe because of its locus in the workplace. Social and public media have provided a platform for collec-tive shaming of perpetrators as well as empowering victims, with the ensuing conversations taking place in organiza-tions large and small. The fear of lawsuits is no doubt driving some of the impetus for companies to sharpen anti-harass-ment training and office policies; but a lasting change has to come from eliminat-ing gender inequalities that largely have enabled the mistreatment of women. Will the momentum gained from #MeToo usher in a working culture that esteems women and men equally? Eventually, yes. In the process of getting there, though, we can expect a turbulent ride.”

STUDENTS PLOUGH DIFFERENT COURSE Business internships on farms offer purpose, new experiences

By Anna Fitzgibbon

As an avid traveler who spent five years after college graduation working and volunteer-ing around the globe, I believe strongly in the power of diverse experience. It does wonders for your quality of life, your understanding and appreciation of other people, and the develop-ment of your personal and professional skills.

Most of us tend to view travel as a means of vacation or escape. I believe it should be used as a tool for self-discovery, connection, and purposeful development.

I’ve long wondered why college students are expected to go from the classroom to the office with little if any opportunity for truly independent decision making, problem solv-ing, or even discomfort. The truth is that we not only need to encourage students to build sought-after career competencies in real-world settings, we also need to encourage them to cultivate meaningful and purpose-driven careers. How are they to do this if we don’t create an environment where they are invited to have new experiences, take a few risks, stumble a little, and perhaps fail miserably?

This spring, while finishing up the work for my Carey MBA, I have been devoting myself to creating dynamic experiential opportunities, connecting students to real-world, project-based internships.

The company I recently founded, OutGrowth, will begin this summer placing college students as residential interns for a month at working farms that practice sustainable, socially conscious methods. The students’ credit-bearing projects will all relate to the business development of the farms. Students will spearhead projects related to marketing, social media strategy, educational program development, and other initiatives.

OutGrowth prides itself on creating the ulti-mate immersive learning environment, with the students and farmers alike reaping benefits by sharing their respective stores of knowledge. By creating powerful partnerships, OutGrowth is committed to lasting impact.

I’m drawn to this pursuit because I feel there are few causes in the United States as important as agriculture. It spans industries and issues, from business to education to health to sustainable living. Farming is deeply connected to purpose and community – a connection that college students today seek in their professions.

Farms, sustainable small businesses, and eco-friendly companies are sprinkled throughout every state. These businesses are helping to solve issues surrounding food production. They are creating social good by tackling the food-desert problems so commonly found in our cities. They promote health and wellness by giving communities access to fresh ingredients and fostering a deep connection to the Earth.

And like any business, they have to manage systems and processes related to marketing, partnership development, product line expan-sion, and grant funding.

That’s where OutGrowth comes in. Just as young people need a diversity of experience, farmers need the diversity of talent that smart and engaged college students can provide. My aim is to guide students toward hands-on, project-based work situations that reflect their coursework and connect them to meaningful professional development.

Linked as we are to a school that teaches “business with humanity in mind,” we are obligated to tomorrow’s leaders, to small businesses, and to the planet. If, through OutGrowth, I can build a business that stays true to those obligations, day in and day out, then I will have honored my own profes-sional purpose.

Anna Fitzgibbon (MBA ’18) is the founder of Outgrowth (outgrowthtoday.org). A different version of this article appeared recently on the website of Fair Farms Maryland (fairfarmsnow.org).

“WILL THE MOMENTUM GAINED FROM #METOO USHER IN A WORKING CULTURE THAT ESTEEMS WOMEN AND MEN EQUALLY? EVENTUALLY, YES. IN THE PROCESS OF GETTING THERE, THOUGH, WE CAN EXPECT A TURBULENT RIDE.” JAANA MYLLYLUOMA

8 | CAREY BUSINESS • JOHNS HOPKINS CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL ILLUS TR AT ION: M ICH A EL WA R A KS A

FE ATUR E | CRY P TO CU R R E N CY

CRYPTOCURRENCIES MAY BE THE MONEY OF

THE FUTURE.

THEY MAY BE A FRAUD.

CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL FACULTY MEMBERS

ARE AMONG THE EXPERTS TRYING TO ANSWER

THE QUESTION:

SHOULD DIGITAL CURRENCIES BE IN YOUR

WALLET?

B Y R I C H A R D B Y R N E



CRY P TO CU R R E N CY

itcoin. Ether. Litecoin. Whatever name you choose, the phenom-enon of cryptocurren-cies is among the hottest business topics of the past year.

But the questions about these new digital currencies are manifold. How do they work? What risks are attached to obtaining or investing in them? Can they actually become a new currency? And what are the regulatory and tax implications?

Such questions have created not only confusion in markets but also a sharp divide in expert opinion.

Founders and early adopters see cryp-tocurrencies as a way to bypass centralized financial institutions and middle men and create a more direct, more secure system of monetary transactions. They are also designed in a way that creates wealth for those building the new currencies.

In late 2017, the financial media trumpeted the fact that the number of accounts holding cryptocurrencies at digital currency exchange Coinbase (13 million) had exceeded the number of accounts at brokerage firm Charles Schwab (almost 11 million). Investors are flocking to speculate in these new currencies on futures exchanges or in so-called ICOs (initial coin offerings), a cryptocurrency-based challenge to the traditional IPO (initial public offering).

Yet the rush to embrace cryptocurrencies has many vocal (and prominent) naysayers. Some economists see the entire concept as worthless. Others point to precipitous plum-mets in valuation. On the last day of trading in March, Ether was trading at under $400 after having lost 47 percent of its value since the start of 2018.

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett told CNBC in January: “I can say almost with certainty that cryptocurrencies will come to a bad end.”

There is a growing consensus that the foundational structure of cryptocurrency

– known as the “blockchain” – will have far-reaching impacts on how people make legal contracts or purchase health care. But the prospects for the emerging cryptocurrencies themselves remain mercurial, even to those who are in the thick of the fight.

Matt Green, an assistant professor of com-puter science at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, helped create the protocol that fuels a cryptocurrency called Zcash. He observes, “There is a lot of sketchy stuff going on. So it’s valid to ask if deploying all these new currencies makes any sense.”

Cryptocurrency has also occasioned a lively debate among Carey Business School economists.

Jim Kyung-Soo Liew, an assistant professor in finance and real estate at Carey, is bullish. He co-authored a recent paper recommend-ing that investors place a sliver of their port-folios in cryptocurrencies to get ahead of the curve, despite the murky landscape.

“We looked at it purely from an empirical exercise and determined that 1.3 percent of a traditional institutional investor's portfo-lio should have exposure,” says Liew. “Sure, there’s lots of fly-by-night stuff out there at the moment, but the underlying blockchain technology is legitimate and has the poten-tial of creating tremendous efficiency gains across many industries.”

Nicola Fusari, an assistant professor of finance at Carey, is more skeptical about the immediate prospects. “The volatility of cryptocurrencies,” he observes, “is way too wild to do anything reliable with them.”

AN ASSET REVOLUTION

Even the initial creation of cryptocurrencies is shrouded in mystery. Satoshi Nakamoto (or a team under that pseudonymous name) produced the original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, in January 2009. Nakamoto shep-herded it for more than a year, then handed over the controls to others and vanished.

Carey’s Alessandro Rebucci, an associate professor of finance and real estate, likens Nakamoto’s innovation to a “white paper” on the technology.

So what did Nakamoto create – and how does it work?

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are built on the “blockchain” – a cryptographically secured and widely distributed digital ledger for transactions. These currencies exist in digital space and take no physical form, but the blockchain is where entries to the digital ledger are secured and maintained.

Users access the blockchain via electronic “wallets.” These devices hold the two cryp-tographic keys – a private key known only to the owner and a public key established on the blockchain – that are required to store, send, and receive cryptocurrency funds.

Open your Bitcoin wallet to buy, say, a milkshake, and a number of things happen.

First, your request to spend on the milk shake is broadcast to an entire network of comput-ers (or “nodes”) that run the cryptocurrency’s software. That network (a) authenticates the request via algorithms and (b) keeps a perma-nent and time-stamped record of it.

Your approved purchase of that milk shake with your Bitcoin funds is then welded together with other approved transactions into a “block” added to a pre-existing “chain” of Bitcoin blocks that began with Nakamo-to’s very first block.

This process is how the “blockchain” gets its name – and its growing record of collec-tively authenticated transactions (cemented with cryptography and time stamps) is extraordinarily difficult to alter without the consent of the entire network that created it.

What, then, is the incentive for members of this network to authenticate Bitcoin trans-actions? This is the “mining” – or creation of blocks – that is an essential part of building cryptocurrencies.

Creating blocks is not an easy process. It requires that a “miner” solve a complex computational problem (also known as “proof of work”). But successful completion of the process allows a miner to claim newly minted cryptocurrency offered as a reward for creating a block.

Other cryptocurrencies have followed in Bitcoin’s wake. Green says establishing them

is a leap into a different economic future. “If you make these kinds of assets,” he observes, “that are open and widely accessible, and trustworthy in the sense that people believe that they won’t go to zero just because the technology breaks down, then they will be worth money. And once you have them –even if the prices are volatile and terrible – and they can be traded electronically and efficiently, then you can build applications to do things that you could not do before.”

The lure of this promise of efficiency is precisely what has Liew bullish about cryptocurrencies and the potential they hold to forge innovative ways to raise capital and bring services to customers. “Blockchain technology can disrupt almost any industry that has a middle man,” he says.

One part of the blockchain’s underlying strength, says Liew, is the way it distributes benefits widely through the network that creates and maintains cryptocurrencies. “The economics are very important,” says Liew. “The blockchain incentivizes the nodes correctly. If Satoshi had gotten the formula wrong, it wouldn’t have taken off.”

Liew says initial coin offerings hold the promise of even greater transformation. An ICO offers investors tokens – which they purchase with popular cryptocurrencies or fiat money (physical currency declared legal tender by a government) – to raise capital for a project in development. Closer in spirit to crowdsourcing than the ownership stake offered in an IPO, most ICOs offer no ownership with the purchase of a token. Purchasers may see a sharp rise in token value if the project succeeds, and the use of cryptocurrency pulls in a different investor class with an already existing stake in digital currency networks.

“It’s realigning where the benefits go,” argues Liew. “Benefit usually accrues to the shareholders of the company. With an ICO, value can accrue to the network. That is really exciting. It’s shifting how people think about raising capital and who benefits. Who are the real stakeholders? Is it just the equity shareholders, or is it the network?”

“THE UNDERLYING BLOCKCHAIN

TECHNOLOGY IS LEGITIMATE AND

HAS THE POTENTIAL OF CREATING TREMENDOUS

EFFICIENCY GAINS ACROSS MANY INDUSTRIES.”

JIM KYUNG-SOO LIEW, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

OF FINANCE AND REAL ESTATE, CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL

“THE VOLATILITY OF CRYPTO-

CURRENCIES IS WAY TOO WILD TO DO

ANYTHING RELIABLE WITH THEM.”

NICOLA FUSARI, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

OF FINANCE, CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL

WALLET

DIGITAL STORAGE

DEVICE FOR THE TWO

CRYPTOGRAPHIC KEYS

REQUIRED FOR THE

SENDING, RECEIVING,

AND HOLDING OF

CRYPTOCURRENCY

FUNDS

BLOCKCHAIN

DECENTRALIZED,

DIGITAL PUBLIC

LEDGER THAT RECORDS

CRYPTOCURRENCY

TRANSACTIONS IN

CHRONOLOGICAL

ORDER

INITIAL COIN OFFERING

UNREGULATED

METHOD OF RAISING

FUNDS, THROUGH

THE SALE OF A NEW

CRYPTOCURRENCY

TO INVESTORS


CRY P TO CU R R E N CY

SEEKING EQUILIBRIUM

A challenge to business as usual is embed-ded into the sinews of cryptocurrency. It intentionally stands apart from traditional currency. Its structure aims to reward the work of creating and securing value in the system. And in a financial industry riddled with hacks and identity theft from central-ized databases, the distributed network of the blockchain is extraordinarily difficult to hack in any meaningful way.

Carey economists Nicola Fusari and Ales-sandro Rebucci agree on the technology’s future potential. But they have questions about its current viability and functionality.

“The whole technology and system is in its infancy,” says Fusari. “We’re trying to think about what the equilibrium will be down the road. Is it sustainable?”

The questions burrow down to the very foundations of blockchain technology. “Bit-coin and any other cryptocurrency is a set of rules that somebody created – and someone can change the rules,” says Fusari. “With my skeptical eye, I also wonder, because this is the first time they wrote rules for it, what are the chances that these are the optimal rules? Maybe some of these rules are too binding. Maybe we need to relax them.”

Rebucci says that efficiency, as well as innovation, will govern the adoption of this new technology to replace existing models. “The blockchain was a great way to illustrate the potential that we have to replace govern-ment with something administered by the community,” he observes. “But, economically, the blockchain is not necessarily the most efficient solution.”

Efficiency can be measured in something as simple as buying a cup of coffee. A grow-ing number of businesses do accept digital currencies, but they lack the simplicity and speed of paper currency or a debit card.

And precisely how many Bitcoins does it take to buy that coffee? The extraordinary volatility of cryptocurrencies also has caught the eye of both economists.

“The Bitcoin bubble is like nothing since the 14th or 15th century,” says Rebucci. “It is the largest in history ever.”

Fusari says that individual digital currencies also are not differentiating themselves from competitors in a meaningful way. “You believe you are buying many different kinds of cryp-tocurrency,” he says. “But the correlation of these currencies is almost one to one. You have the appearance of diversifying investment, but

you are just buying the same thing.” Cryptocurrency also lacks some of the

safety nets – typically provided by govern-ment regulations and protections – that would guard against a systemic failure such as the bursting of the cryptocurrency valua-tion bubble.

Additionally, ICOs have offered investors none of the protections found in IPOs, and it is an environment in which scams are rife. In December, a newly-formed “Cyber Unit” in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commis-sion took what it described as “emergency action” to halt an ICO called PlexCoin, which used fake experts and claims of a rate of return of more than 1,330 percent to take in $15 million from consumers.

“Economists know that there are market failures and government failures,” observes Rebucci. “As economists, we want the best of both worlds in dealing with them – market solutions and government solutions. It’s dif-ficult to see how to strike that balance when it comes to blockchain technology.”

Exposing cryptocurrencies to wider market forces is becoming key to testing their worth and stabilizing them. The Chicago Board Options Exchange opened a futures exchange for Bitcoin in December 2017, and there is a significant consensus that this is an important step in the evolution of cryptocurrencies.

“Investors can take a contrarian view that it’s a bubble and try to take it down,” says Rebucci of the exchange. “This is a stabilizing force.”

Fusari adds that the futures exchange is also a bridge for investors. “When you buy a Bitcoin future, there’s no exchange of Bitcoin,” he observes. “Investors are saying, ‘I don’t want the complication of Bitcoin; I just want to buy the value of Bitcoin.’”

REBOTTLING THE GENIE

Cryptocurrencies and the blockchain are moving into markets and other areas of busi-ness and finance at a dizzying speed.

Green wrote his first paper laying out the structure of Zcash in 2014. “By 2016,” he says, “it was a real currency, and it launched. That’s the neat thing about this. You can

come up with an idea and crank away at it and have it up and running with real people. Very few actual advanced research projects ever do that in the rest of the world.”

Liew is teaching a blockchain course at Carey this fall. “Advances in blockchain technology are rapid,” he observes. “MBAs may have to come back and get retooled for the new economy. There are skills I’m teach-ing now that I didn’t teach even two or three years ago.”

The speed of innovation also may acceler-ate solutions to some vexing problems posed by cryptocurrencies and the blockchain. “The sky’s the limit on the innovation side,” says Liew.

For instance, the race to solve complex mathematical problems, which undergirds the “proof of work” model, requires an inten-sive use of energy and computing resources to be profitable. Proposals to adopt a “proof of stake” model – which prioritizes holders of significant amounts of a cryptocurrency as creators of new blocks for the block chain – holds the promise of drastically reducing wasteful consumption.

One feature of Nakamoto’s design for Bit-coin was its utter transparency. Everyone with access to the blockchain knows the details of every transaction, which doesn’t square with most consumers’ expectations of being able to control knowledge of their finances.

Green’s work on Zcash aims to improve on that aspect of the technology. “You don’t want the rest of the world to know how much money you have,” he says, “or who you’re spending it with, or what you’re spending it on.”

Green sees his work on building more capacity for privacy in cryptocurrency as part of a larger debate: “If you start with the most privacy as a technology, it’s easy to relax that if you want to. But you can’t go the other way very easily. Then there’s no privacy, and you are at risk.”

Some inherent tensions in the burgeon-ing cryptocurrency movement – especially its relationship with government – cannot be solved by technology and innovation, and digital currencies are drawing increased

scrutiny from regulators. Some governments, such as China’s, have made tentative moves to regulate cryptocurrency. In March, the Trump administration announced a ban on Venezuelan cryptocurrencies.

But aside from emergency actions for fraud, most watchdogs are taking a wait-and-see approach. “Regulators are not leading the process,” says Rebucci. “They are just trying not to make mistakes.”

In part, observes Fusari, that’s because the cryptocurrency movement is not yet a big enough headache: “Right now, people don’t look at it, because the ecosystem is too small. But as it gets bigger, they will look at it.”

Fusari adds that the still undefined “legal risk” in holding cryptocurrency is perhaps the largest unsolved element. “From a taxa-tion perspective,” says Fusari, “it’s not 100 percent clear how you declare, or what you declare. Is it a currency for those purposes?”

Liew says governments that overregu-late may lose the chance to shape the new landscape. “If regulators clamp down in their home markets,” he observes, “all this stuff is just going to move to other countries.”

Despite the divide over how cryptocurren-cies are functioning in today’s markets, there is broad agreement that they will eventually take their place in the future of the global economy.

“I don’t think we can put the genie back in the bottle,” says Liew. “You have to learn about it, embrace it, and integrate it into your business or organizational processes. If you don’t do it, but your competitor does, you will subsequently fall by the wayside.”

Green thinks keeping an eye on the big picture is key. “What does matter is that this tech has applications,” he says. “We don’t know what they are yet. But we have to pay attention.”

As with any emerging force in finance, observes Rebucci, “you need to let the process play out. There will be winners and losers. There will be casualties. There are already casualties. But a new business model has come about, and it’s important. It’s mak-ing the world a more exciting, and better, and more competitive place.”

PROOF OF WORK

SOLVING OF A COMPLEX

COMPUTATIONAL

PROBLEM, A

REQUIREMENT OF

THE BLOCK-CREATING

MINING PROCESS

NODES

NETWORK OF THE

COMPUTERS THAT

ARE RUNNING A

CRYPTOCURRENCY’S

SOFTWARE

MINING

PROCESS BY

WHICH DIGITAL

TRANSACTIONS ARE

VERIFIED AND THEN

ADDED TO

THE BLOCKCHAIN

“THERE IS A LOT OF SKETCHY STUFF

GOING ON. SO IT’S VALID TO ASK IF

DEPLOYING ALL THESE NEW CURRENCIES

MAKES ANY SENSE.” MATT GREEN,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE,

JOHNS HOPKINS WHITING SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

“THERE WILL BE WINNERS AND LOSERS. BUT A NEW BUSINESS

MODEL HAS COME ABOUT, AND IT’S

IMPORTANT.” ALESSANDRO REBUCCI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

OF FINANCE AND REAL ESTATE, CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL


BY THE NUMBE RS

By Sue De Pasquale

Tom’s Shoes has given more than 75 million pairs of new shoes to children in need through its One for One program. Microsoft has pledged $50 million to “AI for Earth”– a commitment to leverage artificial intelligence technology to combat climate change. Timberland has promised to plant 10 million trees by 2020.

Increasingly, companies large and small, across the United States and around the world, appear to be making a values-driven approach key to their business mission – and not just because it’s the right thing to do. It’s because consum-ers are demanding it, says Carey Assistant Professor Sylvia Long-Tolbert, a marketing expert who has been watching this trend gain traction over the past decade.

“Doing good and doing well is now the new imperative in business,” says Long-Tolbert.

From the consumer’s perspective, “capital-ism has gone unhinged … and individuals are trying to reclaim their voice in terms of what’s important to them,” she says. “Collectively, consumers can shift the tide around the types of decisions that businesses are making. The top-down approach, saying, ‘It’s good for shareholders,’ is no longer the best answer. I don’t know if it ever served social and environ-mental well-being, but it certainly has broken down at this point.”

While socially conscious millennials are driving the trend, they aren’t alone. Baby Boomers, many of whom spent their younger years advo-cating for equality, sustainability, and social justice, find themselves in (or near) retirement, with some degree of disposable income. “Their search for purpose is taking up more of their time,” notes Long-Tolbert. “They are raising the bar for concern about the world they thought they had changed.”

Additionally, the rise of social media has made it easier to find and communicate with like-minded individuals and advance grassroots consumer movements. “Our social identity heavily influences what we buy and what we consume,” says Long-Tolbert. “And it allows us to put pressure on the collective to do better.”

In the months and years ahead, look for more businesses to follow the lead of values-driven pioneers such as REI and Patagonia (see accompanying statistics), says Long-Tolbert.

“Companies that go off the balance sheet to live up to altruistic, purpose-driven goals are going to be the winners.”

I LLUS TR AT ION: S COT T ROB ERTS

FINDING VALUE IN VALUES

The 2017 Meaningful Brand Study, conducted by the Havas Group and covering 1,500 global brands and more than 300,000 interviews in 33 international markets, found:

Meaningful brands (defined as those that promote 12 different areas of personal and collective well-being, including social, emotional, and environmental) have out-performed the rest of the stock market by

between 2006 and 2016.

of us expect brands to make more of a contribution to our

well-being and quality of life, yet only believe brands are doing so.

People wouldn’t care if of the brands they use every day disappeared.

Fewer than said the brands they use notably improve their quality of life and well-being.

The generation that demands most from brands is millennials,

of whom demand useful, interesting, or meaningful

content, along with services that go beyond a brand’s core mission.

SOURCE: 2017 Meaningful Brands Study

206%

74%

40%

27%

77%

75%

BLACK FRIDAY $$$

In November 2015, REI shut down on Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving and the company’s busiest day of the year. Through its #OptOutside initiative, REI closed business distribution centers and retail locations and headquarters, and urged all 12,000 employees to take the day off and spend it outside. “We’re closing our doors, paying our employees to get out there, and inviting America to OptOutside with us because we love great gear, but we are even more passionate about the experiences it unlocks,” noted Jerry Stritzke, president and chief executive officer of REI.

Number of people who posted the #OptOutside hashtag on their social pages.

Increase in annual social media mentions for REI in 2015, compared with 2014.

Increase in REI’s digital sales in 2015, over 2014.

Record number who joined the members-only retail co-op in 2015.

SOURCE: REI Co-Op Newsroom

In fall 2016, Patagonia announced it was donating

of its global Black Friday sales to charity – specifically to grassroots environmental groups.

Amount brought in on Black Friday 2016 — more than expected.

SOURCE: Patagonia

According to a study published in Harvard Business Review:

of consumers surveyed who said they had a brand

relationship cited shared values as the primary reason.

SOURCE: CEB Study in Harvard Business Review, by Karen Freeman, Patrick Spenner, and Anna Bird

1.4million

$10million

1million

7,000%

100%

23%

5x

TOP 15 ‘MEANINGFUL BRANDS’

1 GOOGLE 2 PAYPAL 3 WHATSAPP 4 YOUTUBE 5 SAMSUNG 6 MERCEDES-BENZ 7 NIVEA 8 MICROSOFT 9 IKEA10 LEGO11 COLGATE12 WIKIPEDIA13 AUDI14 MARRIOTT15 BMW

SOURCE: 2017 Meaningful Brands Study by the Havas Group, Paris-based advertising and public relations company

64%


FE ATUR E | A LU M N I I N S P O R TS

B Y G R E G R I E N Z I

MEET THREE ALUMNI WHO ARE KEY PLAYERS IN THE HIGH-STAKES AND INCREASINGLY PROFITABLE WORLD OF PROFESSIONAL ATHLETICS.

In Super Bowl LII, the perennially never-

quite-good-enough Philadelphia Eagles

vanquished a dynastic New England

Patriots team led by arguably the greatest

coach and the greatest quarterback in

National Football League history.

You probably watched it all unfold live on

TV. According to Nielsen ratings, more

than 103 million viewers worldwide tuned

in. With that many eyes affixed to screens,

it’s not surprising that a single 30-second

commercial slot cost an average of $5 million.

NBC alone shelled out close to $1 billion

this past year for the rights to broadcast the

Super Bowl and and other NFL games. >

KEN BABBY MBA ’08, Owner, Akron RubberDucks and Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp

TOM WYATT MBA ’10, Senior Director of Corporate Partnerships, Detroit Lions

JOSH GOODSTADT MS, Marketing ’05, Executive VP of Licensing, Think450, National Basketball Players Association


Professional sports mean big business. The North American sports industry brought in more than $69 billion in ticket and merchan-dise sales, media rights, and sponsorship fees in 2016, according to Pricewater-houseCoopers, and that number is expected to reach $78.5 billion in 2021. Beyond the live action, sports-branded merchandise rules both the fashion and gaming worlds. The jer-seys of National Basketball Association stars such as LeBron James and Stephen Curry sell worldwide. The console video game NBA 2K18 has to date sold more than 8 million copies; last year it was the second-biggest seller among all categories of video games.

With such large and growing coffers, the sports industry attracts not just fans but busi-ness-savvy people who want to work outside the lines. Meet three such individuals, Carey alums who are wielding their considerable business acumen in the worlds of profes-sional basketball, baseball, and football.

A TEAM OF HIS OWNKEN BABBY MBA ’08 Owner, Akron RubberDucks and Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp

Growing up, Ken Babby had an enviable baseball education. He learned the nuances of the hit and run play from Hall of Famer

Frank Robinson and watched close-up as Cal Ripken and teammates took batting practice at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. For spring break, Babby worked as a bat boy at the O’s spring training facility in Sarasota, Florida.

Such was life as the son of Lon Babby, the one-time general counsel for the Wash-ington Redskins and Baltimore Orioles, and later a long-time NBA player agent whose client list included Tim Duncan, Grant Hill, and Ray Allen.

“I was fortunate to grow up around pro-fessional sports and get exposure to a lot of talented athletes,” says Babby.

Babby attended Wheaton College in Mas-sachusetts, where he graduated with a dual

degree in computer science and economics. He tried out for Wheaton’s baseball team but didn’t make the cut. His sophomore year, he landed an internship in The Washington Post’s technology department.

Babby gradually worked his way up to become the chief revenue officer and general manager of the newspaper’s digital compo-nent while taking night classes to complete his MBA at the Carey Business School. All the while, he maintained his passion for baseball. “My whole life I wanted to work in baseball,” he says, “and I would do whatever I could to get there.”

By his early 30s, he was spending most of his vacation time attending minor league baseball games throughout the East Coast and Midwest. “I found myself fixated on the fan experience,” he says. “The food. The pro-motion. Who did these things well, and who

A LU M N I I N S P O R TS

didn’t. I imagined if I was ever in a position to call the shots, what I might do differently.”

He took notes and talked to fans about their impressions of the game-day experi-ence. Before long, he developed a plan to buy a team. When one became available, he pounced, and in 2012 Babby acquired the Akron Aeros, the Double-A affiliate of the Cleveland Indians. A year later, Babby renamed the team the Akron RubberDucks, in a nod to Akron’s claim to fame as the “rubber capital of the world.”

As a team owner, Babby says, he has leaned on the knowledge he gained at Carey, noting, “It’s at Carey I learned that you need to hire the best people and put together a phenom-enal leadership team.”

In 2015, Babby acquired a second ball club, the Jacksonville Suns, the Miami Marlins’ Double-A affiliate, now called the Jackson-ville Jumbo Shrimp. He went on to invest $1.8 million in renovating the team’s home, the Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville.

Today his company, the Fast Forward Sports Group, operates both his teams. Babby says he learned early on to cater to “Mom,” who often holds the role of family decision maker. He reduced ticket prices, revamped the concession stands to offer healthier foods, and renovated bathrooms. “I thought if we didn’t get the details right, Mom was not as likely to want to come back,” he says.

The second year of his ownership, the Akron RubberDucks saw a 27 percent increase in attendance, and in 2016 the team won the Eastern League championship.

The Jacksonville club was honored in 2017 as the Southern League’s Organization of the Year, and team general manager Harold Craw was named the league’s Executive of the Year (the first time an African-American won the award in minor league baseball).

Babby says he’s living a dream. On most days, he attends games so he can sit with the fans. But he still sweats every detail. Is the food hot enough? Should that scoop of ice cream be bigger?

“I can be obsessive,” he says. “I sit there in the late innings worrying less about the score and more about how we can serve the fans better.”

GOOD TIMINGTOM WYATT MBA ’10 Senior Director of Corporate Partnerships, Detroit Lions

In professional terms, Tom Wyatt’s sense of timing is acute. Wyatt joined the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2009,

just as the mixed martial arts organization began its upsurge.

While poised for mainstream success, the UFC was still viewed as a fringe sport in the eyes of sponsors who wanted to target the coveted 18- to-34-year-old male demo-graphic. Wyatt, as UFC sponsorship sales account executive, would help change that.

In just under two years, the UFC went from relying on sponsors such as T-shirt companies and obscure energy drinks to inking deals with Anheuser Busch, Kraft, Microsoft, Sega, Sony, NBC/Universal, and Harley Davidson. Wyatt also helped convince Dodge/Ram to become the first official vehicle of the UFC and the presenting sponsor of UFC Facebook Fights – long before live digital sports stream-ing was in vogue. As the lead sales represen-tative for the UFC, Wyatt created a book of $22.5 million in sponsorship business.

“[These deals were] not just about achiev-ing legitimacy as a sport but positioning UFC as a marketing vehicle to reach the most attractive, hardest-to-connect-with demo-graphic – millennial males,” says Wyatt, today Senior Director of Corporate Partnerships for the NFL’s Detroit Lions. “We legitimized the UFC in the eyes of Fortune 500 marketers

“ I FOUND MYSELF FIXATED ON THE FAN EXPERIENCE. THE FOOD. THE PROMOTION. WHO DID THESE THINGS WELL, AND WHO DIDN’T. I IMAGINED IF I WAS EVER IN A POSITION TO CALL THE SHOTS, WHAT I MIGHT DO DIFFERENTLY.” —KEN BABBY

PHOTO: AGNES LOPEZ, POSE WELL IMAGES PHOTO: JOSH MANDUJANO


and paved the way for the UFC to achieve its groundbreaking broadcast rights deal with Fox and plant the company’s flag as a main-stream global sports property, built upon the passion of the entire fan base.”

Wyatt – who had worked in corporate sales with the Chicago Bears of the NFL, just after graduating from the Indiana University with a public affairs degree, and then as a corpo-rate account executive with the NBA’s Min-nesota Timberwolves – enrolled in the Carey Business Fellows program to earn an MBA because he was intrigued by the nontradi-tional, project-based educational experience.

Through the Carey program, Wyatt worked on a project for the BM&FBOVESPA, the Brazilian stock exchange based in Sao Paolo. His cohort was tasked to help design strategies for human capital management and stakeholder on-boarding for the stock exchange, now known as B3. Working from both Baltimore and Sao Paulo, Wyatt discussed best practices with officials from major multinational companies.

“At the time, this was extremely helpful to my career: understanding the cultural and interpersonal norms outside the U.S. and how to negotiate effectively in Brazil,” says Wyatt, who joined the UFC during his time at Carey. “The UFC at that time was really concentrat-ing on sponsors and advertisers in global markets, with the priority being Brazil.”

His success with the UFC didn’t go unno-ticed. In 2011, Feld Entertainment lured him away to serve as the company’s director of national sales. In that role, Wyatt worked with Fortune 500 companies across the company’s portfolio of live events. Wyatt later re-joined the NBA, this time as director of corporate partnerships for the Houston Rockets. In 2017, after he had spent three years in Houston, the Detroit Lions hired Wyatt as senior director of corporate partnerships.

With the Lions, Wyatt says, he has not only come full circle in his sporting industry career, returning to the NFL, but he’s also able to synthesize all the lessons learned about sports promotion. The sports industry has evolved “light years” in just the past two years, he says. Today, team and sponsor work more closely as partners, finding “synergistic touch points” that build the brand of team, company, and even home city.

“This is why I am truly excited to be a part of what we are building here at the Detroit Lions,” Wyatt says. “When the powder keg of consumer engagement and team success explodes, it’s going to be a sight to see.”

A GAME OF PROMOTIONSJOSH GOODSTADT MS, Marketing ’05 Executive Vice President of Licensing, Think450, marketing arm of the National Basketball Players Association

In 1997, as a fresh-out-of-college intern for Major League Soccer, Josh Goodstadt found himself braving wind gusts on the roof

of RFK Stadium just before D.C. United’s home opener. Someone had to put up the team and league flags.

“I didn’t have a huge fear of heights, but it was not ideal [being up there.] My philoso-phy back then was to just jump in and do whatever needed to get done,” says Good-stadt, whose career has since taken him to well-known entertainment and sports giants such as HBO, the NFL, and more recently the NBA. Currently, he is executive vice president for licensing at Think450, which he refers to as the “innovation engine” of the National Basketball Players Association. (The NBPA controls the group licensing and marketing rights for all 450 active NBA players, hence the Think450 name.)

Major League Soccer was only in its second year of existence, so Goodstadt essentially joined a startup – an ideal way to wet his feet in various elements of the professional sports industry, including marketing, ticket sales, and game-day operations. “I loved sports growing up. I would call myself a sports fanatic,” says Goodstadt, who played on his high school’s varsity soccer team. He earned his undergrad-uate degree in kinesiology at the University of Maryland at College Park.

Goodstadt turned the MLS internship into a full-time job. Before long, he went from ticket selling to a marketing account posi-tion in the area of in-stadium promotions with clients such as Honda, Budweiser, and Irish Spring. After five years, he left to take a position in the trading card and collectibles segment of NFL Players Inc., the licensing

and marketing subsidiary of the NFL Players Associa-tion (NFLPA).

Goodstadt said he leapt at the opportunity to get into product licensing and work with companies such as Topps, Upper Deck, and McFarlane Toys. His

day-to-day responsibilities included the negotiation of commercial licensing terms and the review of trading cards for errors and typos, and ensuring that action figures and other collectibles offered good represen-tations of the players.

Before long, Goodstadt realized he needed more grounding in business, so he attended the Carey School to earn a master’s degree in marketing, working full time during the day and taking classes at night.

“Carey refined the way I thought about marketing and communication,” says Good-stadt. “In my days at D.C. United and starting out with the NFLPA, I went mostly by gut. The business principles I learned at Carey would help propel me throughout the rest of my career.”

From playing cards and action figures, Goodstadt graduated to video game licensing, which included the giant John Madden game franchise. As assistant vice president for licensing at NFL Players Inc., Goodstadt managed the business relationship of more than 25 licensees for the video game, wireless, and fantasy categories.

In 2007, Goodstadt’s career in sports took a detour, when he became director of global licensing and retail for HBO. A film and TV buff, Goodstadt joined the cable company at a time of transition. Within a year, HBO had a new hit show in the vampire camp fest, True Blood. In his role, Goodstadt oversaw all operations pertaining to licensing and

retail of consumer products worldwide, such as launching a True Blood cosmetic and fragrance line and slot machines bearing the theme of another HBO hit, Sex in the City.

Then along came the behemoth of Game of Thrones. To help promote the show, Goodstadt and his team got really ambitious, creating a live music arena tour – a spectacle with orchestra, vocalists, and giant screens that sold out venues such as Madison Square Garden. During Goodstadt’s tenure, HBO also launched its first-ever mobile game, Game of Thrones: Conquest, and worked with Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, New York, on a line of Game of Thrones-inspired beers.

Today, Goodstadt finds himself back in the sports realm. When the NBPA recently took back its group licensing rights, a former colleague recommended Goodstadt to lead the new endeavor. “NBA players are really unique,” he says, “whether it’s rookies like Jayson Tatum or more established players like Kevin Durant who have transcended the league and have a big social presence. They are young, cool, fashionable, and intelligent. I thought if I was going to leave HBO, I would want a really unique opportunity. And I found it.”

“ I AM TRULY EXCITED TO BE A PART OF WHAT WE ARE BUILDING HERE AT THE DETROIT LIONS. WHEN THE POWDER KEG OF CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT AND TEAM SUCCESS EXPLODES, IT’S GOING TO BE A SIGHT TO SEE.” —TOM WYATT

A LU M N I I N S P O R TS

“ THE BUSINESS PRINCIPLES I LEARNED AT CAREY WOULD HELP PROPEL ME THROUGHOUT THE REST OF MY CAREER.” —JOSH GOODSTADT

Josh Goodstadt

A BOV E: GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS VS . SAN ANTONIO SPURS; MARK SOBHANI , GETTY IMAGESPHOTO: JOSH MANDUJANO


percent different. You need to keep your credentials current, and it’s short courses like this that enable you to do that.”

While the program targets the business community in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area, the majority of participants to date have been Johns Hopkins staff and faculty who seek personal development.

A faculty member or research scientist moving into a director or lab management position may not have a financial or budgeting back-ground, so a course such as Finance for the Non-Financial Manager can offer tips on financial statement analysis, investment opportunities, and capital budgeting.

One of the program’s more popular courses to date has been Strategic Negotiation, taught by Brian Gunia, an associate profes-sor at Carey whose research has appeared in academic journals and popular media outlets such as The Economist, The Wall Street Jour-nal, and Forbes. Steinbach points out that we negotiate every day with co-workers, clients, and others; what we might lack, however, are the strategy and psychology expertise to negotiate most effectively. Attendees in this course participate in interactive and increasingly complex negotiation exercises to practice their skills. They learn to cope with win-lose situations, and to find those win-win opportunities.

“Sometimes people will lay a stake in the ground prematurely: I’m going to ask for this,” Steinbach says. “What about sitting back and listening first? You’re looking for outcomes. What are the outcomes? Every-one can learn something in a course like that, whether you have to negotiate with a boss, a vendor, or your spouse. These skills come in handy.”

Williams says that while the courses are rooted in research and empirical evi-dence, they are

more experiential than academic. To

drive home points, the instructors use case stud-

ies and group exercises rather than death by PowerPoint.

Most courses are taught by a Carey faculty member and supplemented with guest speakers, including industry experts. To make the content relevant to most of the class, instructors will send out surveys or otherwise prescreen the

roster to better understand everyone’s back-ground and level the playing field.

“This is not a class where you get to learn things about [the participants] over the term – you have one or two days to get to know your audience and learn what they bring to the table,” she says.

The program has had nearly 1,000 par-ticipants to date, with a quarter of those registered for two or more courses. With increasing demand, there are plans to expand to the school’s Washington, D.C., campus in Dupont Circle, and to offer online courses.

“We are growing solidly. The word is out that this is a quality program,” Williams says. “There’s a lot of energy and buzz in these classes. It’s not like you’re going to school. It’s active. It’s innovative and transformational. The best part, what you learn you can apply the very next day.”

To learn more about the program and to register for a course, go to carey.jhu.edu/exec-ed.

This article originally appeared on the Johns Hopkins University website The Hub at Work.

EXEC ED IS ALL THE BUZZBy Greg Rienzi

In her class Design Thinking for Innova-tive Problem Solving, Sharon Kim starts with an icebreaker. She’ll hand out common household items, such as a cardboard box, a newspaper, and a pencil, and then ask the 20 to 30 participants to brainstorm uses for the objects. Some might envision a doghouse, or a shoe bin, or maybe a child’s game.

There’s no prize for the best idea. Kim just wants people to think, well, outside the box. What if the group comes up with 20 differ-ent concepts? All the better, she says.

“The more variety in responses, the more creative the group, I’ve found,” says Kim, a Carey Business School assistant professor who focuses on management and organiza-tion. “But one of the goals of this exercise is that there’s not one answer. It gets them into a mode to think creatively when it comes to problem solving.”

Design Thinking for Innovative Problem Solving is just one of the dozens of courses currently offered by the Carey School’s Executive Education program, aimed at those in middle management positions but open to anyone looking to sharpen his or her business acumen.

The program, launched in 2015, offers both customized seminars for groups and “short courses” for individuals in content areas such as innovation and human-centered design, health care, leadership, business communica-tion, and management competencies. In 2017, the program started to offer executive certifi-cates in business communication and health care leadership and management.

Executive Education presents, on average, 40 short courses and executive certificate programs per academic year, in sessions at the school’s Harbor East campus. This spring, the program rolled out five new offerings: Women in Leadership, Risk Man-agement, Budget and Strategic Performance Measurement, Project Management, and Cross-Cultural Management.

Courses such as Design Thinking, Kim says, offer a new approach to problem solving that’s inherently more creative and empathetic. Whether designing a physical space such as an office or a waiting room, or implement-ing a new protocol or policy, design thinking has you shape a solution with the end user in mind. For that new office space, some staff might ask for windows, others for a tall ceil-

ing; others want art or objects to hang on the walls. “You piece this all together. What are they really asking for?” Kim says. “Maybe we can’t give everyone what they want, but what do these elements all have in common? Then we can define the problem to overcome and start to think of a design that will work.”

For example, in one class she presented a design challenge for reimagining Baltimore’s “Rethink your drink” campaign, which was aimed at reducing the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages among the city’s

youth. The group focused on the target demographic. What sort of marketing would they respond to? How do we reach them? One group suggested interactive, educational exhibits that would move around the city in a “pop-up” fashion.

Pamela Williams, assistant dean for executive education at Carey, says that courses such as these offer hands-on, practi-cal, research-based instruction for how to better perform a busi-ness task or navigate a

problem. Since the participants are working professionals whose time away from work may be limited, the courses don’t run more than three or four consecutive days, with all the subject matter condensed.

Glen Steinbach, senior associate dean for finance and administration at Carey, says the school wanted to offer something unique in this growing field of professional education.

“We asked ourselves: How could we take the assets we have at this school – a great faculty, a great location, and a track record of edu-cating people – and turn that into something widely appealing to mid-level managers and those moving up to executive positions?” Steinbach says.

The program helps address the need for “stackable education,” Steinbach says, refer-ring to the concept of adding on to an MBA or other graduate-level degree that might be 10 or more years old. Many employers, when looking to promote or hire, will want to see that an individual has kept his or her educa-tion current, he says.

“Quite frankly, that MBA from 20 years ago is somewhat out-of-date now. Things are changing so fast,” he says. “How we do marketing today versus 20 years ago is 100

OTHER BUSINESSNEWS FROM INSIDE THE CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL

COURSES SUCH AS DESIGN THINKING OFFER A NEW APPROACH TO PROBLEM SOLVING THAT’S INHER-ENTLY MORE CREATIVE AND EMPATHETIC. WHETHER DESIGNING A PHYSICAL SPACE OR IMPLEMENTING A NEW PROTOCOL OR POLICY, DESIGN THINKING HAS YOU SHAPE A SOLUTION WITH THE END USER IN MIND.

CHECK OUT THE NEW LIBRARY In February, the Carey Business School completed construction of a new library at the school’s Harbor East campus in Baltimore. The expanded library adds 50 percent more study space for students and four new group study rooms.

The new library also provides access to several Bloomberg Financial Services terminals. Specialized financial software and analytic tools, including SPSS, Oracle’s Crystal Ball, and ArcGIS statistical mapping software, are available to students as well.

Carey’s Harbor East Library is a branch of the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University, which provides library services at Carey’s Baltimore and Washington, D.C., campuses. Students and faculty can receive reference consultation, instruction, and book delivery services from any Johns Hopkins campus library catalog.

CAREY, NER ISRAEL AGREE TO COLLABORATE The Carey Business School reached an agreement with the Ner Israel Rabbinical College, a rabbinical school in Pikesville, Maryland, to offer its students enrollment in Carey’s degree programs and non-degree certificate programs. The Carey Business School programs are available to select students who have completed all or most of their studies at Ner Israel.

Johns Hopkins University has a long history of collaboration with Ner Israel dating back to the 1950s, including a prior agreement with the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education, a precursor to the Carey Business School.

“We are delighted to forge a new relationship with Ner Israel to support the business education of its students,” said Kevin Frick, professor and vice dean for education at Carey. “The mission of the Carey Business School is to train business leaders who are exemplary citizens, which complements the educational mission of Ner Israel.”

Ner Israel was established in 1933. It trains students in religious scholarship and Jewish living, including critical thinking, finance, commercial law, and business ethics.

– Tim Parsons

PAMELA WILLIAMS, ASSISTANT DEAN FOR EXECUTIVE EDUCATION


MIKULSKI SHARES INSIGHTS IN FIRESIDE CHATBarbara Mikulski, who represented Mary-land in the U.S. Senate for 30 years, spoke at the Carey Business School last November, addressing a host of topics ranging from women’s leadership to the economy in a lively one-on-one discussion with Carey Dean Bernard T. Ferrari.

Mikulski, now a Homewood Professor of Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University, sat for a fireside-style Q&A at Carey’s Harbor East campus. In her trademark matter-of-fact and animated style, Mikulski spoke on a wide range of issues, weaving in anecdotes and insights from her political career.

When asked to critique the strengths and opportunities of business that future leaders should examine, Mikulski said business was good at creating and adapting to techno-logical change but slow on the uptake for social progress.

“For business to really succeed, it has to look at the new democracy – that more women are coming to work, the fact that we have a very diverse society and are moving toward a majority black and brown country. . . . The welcoming of LGBT people – it’s a changing democracy,” she said. “I think business has to look at it and be a force for society. Society is open, so should opportunity be.”

Later on this topic, Mikulski said the strongest push should come from within an organization – not from the govern-ment – and that the tone for corporate culture is set at the top.

“Culture trumps rules, regulations, and so on. How does [your business] create a positive culture that is welcoming, inclusive, and that looks at talent?” she said. “That is

going to be driven by the board of directors and shareholders.”

Mikulski said one of the keys to addressing the dearth of women in leadership roles in both the public and private sectors is identi-fying and developing talent. As she recounted her rise from a community organizer to the Baltimore City Council to the U.S. Congress, Mikulski touted the importance of resilience.

“We heard ‘no’ so often in our life, but we took every ‘no’ and turned it into a ‘yes,’” Mikulski said, recounting the challenges that she and others faced.

Mikulski said the biggest risk to the U.S. economy is also a national security issue: international trade. Noting the importance of trade, Mikulski said she is not in favor of multilateral trade agreements but instead is “a bilateral trade agreement gal.”

She said political efforts to renegotiate trade agreements are “putting into tatters interna-tional security agreements and international trade agreements, and we are wrecking our relationships with allies that have been built over years. And I think business should raise hell about it.”

– Luke Lavoie

Mikulski came to Carey in the school’s Leaders+Legends speaker series. Her visit was also part of a series of events at the business school focusing on women’s leadership.

OTHE R BUS INE S S

GREAT OPTICS FOR KEVIN WHITE

By Tim Parsons

Kevin White, a Flexible MBA candidate at the Carey Business School, has done it again.

Carey Business previously reported that White had been announced as one of four winners in National Geographic’s “Chasing Genius” competition to promote world-changing innovations. White was awarded $25,000 to further develop his idea for USee, an affordable, easy-to-use diagnostic tool and lens kit that can provide eyeglasses in parts of the world where corrective lenses are difficult to get.

In January, White and his USee concept bagged an even bigger prize when he was named one of two $1 million prize winners at the first WeWork Creator Awards Global Finals in New York.

White, a former Marine, became interested in vision while running humanitarian assis-tance projects for the military. After retiring from the Marines, he set out to develop a business solution that would address the unmet need for corrective eyewear.

“I realized there was a lot I didn’t know about running a business, so I thought maybe I should go to business school,” says White. “In my search, I found Johns Hopkins and connected with Carey’s message of ‘business with humanity in mind.’”

White explains that he was also drawn to Carey by the idea of studying with Kevin Frick, Carey’s Vice Dean for Education. Frick has conducted numerous studies on the economic impact of eye care worldwide, an issue that White is trying to address with his invention. White says that he told Frick at orientation, “You probably don’t hear this very often, but you are one of the reasons I came to this school.”

White, on track to graduate this year, also cites his classroom experience as critical to helping him develop his business: “Every pro-fessor I’ve had has let me use my own com-pany for projects. I’ve been able to develop my business plans with input from professors and fellow students while earning my degree.”

Being at Carey, he adds, has helped him gain access to other areas of Johns Hopkins, including its renowned schools of public health and medicine. White has already completed clinical trials at the Dana Center for Preventive Ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute, and he is working on an economic impact study.

The World Health Organization estimates that 253 million people worldwide have an unmet vision impairment and that more than half of these cases are linked to a lack of corrective eyewear. Other estimates suggest the number of people with vision problems could be as high as 2.5 billion, although many of them use eyewear to see better.

LIVELY DISCUSSION: FORMER SENATOR BARBARA MIKULSKI WITH CAREY DEAN BERNARD T. FERRARI.

MAKING A STRONG CASE FOR CAREY

By Luke Lavoie

Two teams of Carey Business School students

took first-place honors in recent national

case competitions, earning $5,000 in one and

$12,000 in the other.

In the fifth annual Pfizer Case Competition,

held last November at the Carey campus, a team

of three Global MBA students and two students

from JHU’s Bloomberg School of Public Health

defeated teams from Harvard, Columbia,

University of Chicago, University of South-

ern California, Berkeley, Duke, Dartmouth,

Northwestern, and New York University.

The challenge was to create a strategy for

increasing compliance with a pneumonia vac-

cine in either children or seniors. The teams were

told to lean on behavioral economic theory to

create and defend a unique strategy for the case.

The Johns Hopkins team – Priya Arunacha-

lam, Stephen DeMars, and Misha Isran of

Carey, and David Buxton and Dexter Waters

of the Bloomberg School – employed a design-

thinking approach that focused on creating a

catch-all for pitfalls within possible solutions.

They won the $5,000 first prize, while the

University of Southern California took second

place and $3,000, and the University of Califor-

nia at Berkeley finished third and won $2,000.

In December, a group of four Carey MBA

students – Ryan Douglas, Chirag Potdar,

Marcus Tan, and Nariman Ziaee – earned

first place and $12,000 at the U.S. Chamber

of Commerce Foundation’s 2017 MBA Case

Competition in Wash-

ington, D.C.

Their challenge was

to examine the public’s

perception of business

and recommend ways

to reinforce the message

that business plays a

crucial role in society.

“Our presentation

strategy was focused on

a ‘different’ solution as

opposed to just a ‘better’

one. Our solution incorporated elements of a

proposed summit, blockchain accelerator, and

tailored consulting opportunities. By creat-

ing a strong slideshow and preparing well in

advance, we were able to pull through,” team

captain Douglas says.

More than 100 teams from 42 business

schools entered the competition, but only

three in addition to Carey reached the final:

the business schools of George Washington

University (second place) and runners-up

Stanford and Berkeley.

“FOR BUSINESS TO REALLY SUCCEED, IT HAS TO LOOK AT THE NEW DEMOCRACY— THAT MORE WOMEN ARE COMING TO WORK, THE FACT THAT WE HAVE A VERY DIVERSE SOCIETY AND ARE MOVING TOWARD A MAJORITY BLACK AND BROWN COUNTRY.”

VICE DEAN KEVIN FRICK (LEFT) WITH THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE COMPETITION WINNERS.


OTHE R BUS INE S S

KUDOS Recognizing Accomplishments of Carey Business School Leadership and Faculty

n Bloomberg Distinguished Professor Paul

Ferraro was an invited speaker at the National Academy of Sciences’ Sackler Colloqium on Economics, Environment, and Sustainable Development, held in January in Irvine, California. That same month, he gave the inaugural lecture at the Inter-American Development Bank’s Sustainability Research Seminar Series. Additionally, Ferraro has established and serves as the director of the Environmental Program Innovations Collaborative (EPIC). According to its mission statement, the Carey-based initiative “works with environmental program managers and their partners to develop evidence-based programs that can change human behaviors in ways that benefit the environment and society.” EPIC’s goal is to “create evidence-based program designs that achieve greater levels of efficiency, broad satisfaction with the programs, and improved environmental outcomes.”

n Assistant Professor

Semih Uslu received the Hakan Orbay Memorial Prize for his study “Pricing and Liquidity in Decentralized Asset Markets.” The prize is awarded annually by Sabanci University School of Management in Istanbul, Turkey, to the

best paper in microeconomics and finance written by a young researcher. In January, Uslu presented the study at the annual meeting of the American Finance Association, in Philadelphia.

n Associate Professor

Stacey Lee was chosen for the roster of the Fulbright Specialist Program, an initiative of the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and World Learning. As a member of the

roster, Lee is eligible to be assigned to a project that matches her expertise at a host academic institution in any of more than 150 countries. Her tenure on the roster began December 1, 2017, and continues until December 1, 2020. After being matched with a host site abroad, a Fulbright Specialist works in partnership with the institution on projects that support its priorities and goals. The activities might include delivering a seminar or workshop, consulting on faculty or workforce development, developing academic or training curriculums and materials, lecturing at the graduate or undergraduate level, and conducting needs assessments or evaluations for a program or institution. After the three-year period ends, specialists are encouraged to continue working with the host institution. Lee said she expects that her work in the program will involve issues related to health care, negotiation, and conflict resolution.

n Associate Professor Alessandro Rebucci was appointed a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, based in London, England.

n Assistant Professor Tinglong Dai was a co-supervisor and co-writer of the study “Service Design under Acclimation and Non-homogeneous Memory Decay,” a finalist for the IBM Service Science Best Student Paper Award at the annual meeting of INFORMS (the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) last October in Houston. In January, at the international conference of the Production and Operations Management Society’s Hong Kong chapter, the study won the competition for the best student paper. The student, Yifu Li, is a visiting scholar at the Carey Business School, conducting research on service design under Dai’s supervision until this August.

n Assistant Professor Shabnam Mousavi was elected president of the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics. Her two-year term in the position will begin this July.

n Assistant Professor Jim Kyung-Soo Liew was one of the six speakers at the annual Center for International Securities and Derivatives Markets Conference, held last October at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. The event’s keynote speaker was Robert Merton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who received the Nobel Prize in economics in 1997.

n A paper co-written by Assistant Professor Emilia

Simeonova, “How Does Awareness of Financial Incentives Affect Physician Behavior?,” won the best-paper award at the Conference on Health IT and Analytics last November in Washington, D.C.

n Assistant Professor Shubhranshu Singh was appointed a senior editor of Production and Operations Management in the POM-Economics Interface Department.

n A paper co-written by Assistant Professor

Zhaogang Song, “A tale of two option markets: Pricing kernels and volatility risk,” won an honorable mention in the competition for the 2017 Dennis J. Aigner Award for the best article in empirical econometrics

published in the Journal of Econometrics in 2015 or 2016. Song’s article appeared in the journal in January 2016.

n Associate Professor Ravi Aron, an expert in information technology strategy, health care strategy, and health care information systems, presented his research last September at the Sasin School of Management in Bangkok, Thailand. Members of Thailand’s royal family and government attended the presentation.

n Paul Gurny of the adjunct faculty co-authored the new book The Search for Excellence in Clinical Practice: A Handbook on Clinical Process Improvement for Providers, from Sentia Publishing of Austin, Texas. Gurny wrote the book with Roger Orsini, who also has taught as a member of the adjunct faculty and is a Carey alumnus (MBA ’07).

Zhaogang Song

Stacey Lee

1970s–1980sKenneth G. Koller (Certificate in Business Manage-ment ’70; Bachelor of Science, Business, ’73) is chief executive officer and chief operating officer of Advanced Ceramic Fibers in Idaho Falls, Idaho. The company has developed a process to convert high-strength carbon fiber for use in extreme environments.

Alfred Calabria (Master of Administrative Science ’74) is founder and principal of Calabria Advisors Inc. He reports: “Most recently I’ve been serving on the committee of the ACG Cup Northwest, an event sponsored by the Association for Corporate Growth. This is a business-case competition that pits teams from Washington state universities against those from Oregon. The event offers MBA and finance majors a real-world experience not available in the classroom and exposes them to potential hiring managers in the business world, in addition to cash awards.”

Karen Peetz (MS, Behavioral Science and Manage-ment ’81), the retired president of BNY Mellon, was elected to the board of directors of Ingersoll Rand.

Hilary Robertson-Hickling (Master of Applied Behavioral Science ’85) is a senior lecturer at the Mona School of Business and Management at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. She recently was named to the National Library of Jamaica Commemorative Exhibition Committee for the 70th Anniversary of the Empire Windrush’s journey from Jamaica to England.

Cavan Redmond (Master of Administrative Science ’87) was appointed as an independent member of the board of directors of Alameda, California-based BioTime, a late-stage, clinical biotechnology company developing and commercializing products addressing degenerative diseases. He will be the chairman of the Corporate Development Committee.

1990sPatricia Likakis (MS, Information Services and Tele-communications, ’95) is an author and blogger who has published her second book, Streamline Your Life: 5 Fundamentals to Simplify Your Life, Reduce Stress and Have More Joy, under the pen name of Ariel Paz.

David Hewett (MS, Business and Finance ’96), managing director/U.S. surety leader at Marsh, an insurance and risk management firm based in New York, was featured in a Q&A article in Engineering News-Record.

Craig Enger (MS, Information and Telecommunica-tion Systems ’99) is a principal consultant and team lead at CACI International, a multinational professional services and information technology company based in Arlington, Virginia. He also has released Wish, a new music album.

2000sLilly Cheng (MS, Information and Telecommunica-tion Systems ’00) is a senior program director and counselor at Oakton Academy in Oakton, Virginia, which offers academic enrichment, college admission advice, and standardized testing tutorials.

Gregory “Rocky” Goins (MBA ’00) is president of Leading Light Development and Construc-tion Consulting. He reports that the firm has been awarded construction management services for new assisted living communities in Brentwood, Tennessee, and Simi Valley, California (combined value of $90 million). Leading Light also successfully completed acquisition services for new assisted living sites in Mt. Juliet and Gallatin, Tennessee, as well as in Palm Beach County, Florida. Goins also serves as a board member for the Tulsa, Oklahoma, chapter of the American Cancer Society. He and his wife, Lynn, will chair the 2018 Cattle Baron’s Ball in Tulsa, an annual fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.

ALUMNI NEWS

Semih Uslu

I LLUS TR AT IONS: GLUEKIT

DON’T BE A STRANGER

We want to hear from you, Carey alums. Send us news of your professional accomplishments so we can publish them in Carey Business.

The magazine’s class notes section is a great way for the growing number of Carey graduates to share their professional news. We welcome your information about new jobs, awards, board appointments, and other career achievements.

Please email your update (with your name, year of graduation, degree earned, current organization and title, and a message of up to 100 words, subject to editing) to [email protected] for the next issue of Carey Business, due to be published in fall 2018.

Thank you.

A PLACE TO PIVOT

Mahdi Hemingway’s life experiences belie

his youth. The New Jersey native has served in

the Marine Corps, volunteered on one of Pres-

ident Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns,

and worked on Wall Street as a stockbroker.

And yet Hemingway reached a point in 2015

when he was looking for a career shift.

Fast-forward to spring 2017. Hemingway

delivered the student remarks at the Johns

Hopkins Carey Business School gradua-

tion, where he received his MBA degree.

After graduating, he took a job with Exelon

Corporation as a senior analyst working on

internal financial controls.

“I came to business school to make a pivot –

a pretty significant pivot – and Carey did that

for me,” Hemingway said.

He credits members of Carey faculty and

staff with aiding him during his pivot. He

says the Career Development Office helped

him land an internship with Exelon, which

ultimately led to his full-time position. He

recalls the advice he received from the CDO

before his interviews at Exelon.

“I came in with a certain level of skill and

hustle, and they reminded me to tap into that

and sell my strengths – my true self. Not to

pretend to be someone I’m not,” he said.

He recalls similarly reassuring advice from

Associate Professor Ricard Gil and Professor

James Calvin, who he said gave him tips and

confidence.

“I had never had relationships with profes-

sors like that,” he said. “These are folks I

really appreciate getting to meet and devel-

oping a relationship with.”

— Luke Lavoie

MAHDI HEMINGWAY


Marc J. Gerstein (MS, Marketing ’07) was appointed national media marketing manager of Maserati North America, in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

Heather Bowen Ray (MS, Marketing ’07) is a healthy habits coach and consultant, helping clients reduce stress, improve sleep, lose weight, and increase mobility, among other beneficial steps.

Kassandra Saridakis (MS, Real Estate ’07) is a vice president at NKF Capital Markets in Washington, D.C., specializing in originating and executing debt and equity placements for the firm’s debt and struc-tured finance team, with annual transaction volume exceeding $1 billion. She was named to the DCA Live 2018 Rising Stars of Real Estate, nominated by peers in the D.C. real estate community and selected for demonstrated performance in the field. Additionally, she was recently named an advisory board member at Airport Sherpa, the first inside-the-airport mobile ordering and delivery platform.

Sean Doordan (MS, Real Estate ’08) was recently promoted to senior vice president of acquisitions at St. John Properties. He has been with the company since 2005.

Selena Rezvani (MBA ’09) was appointed in Janu-ary as vice president for consulting and research at Be Leaderly, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based company that specializes in the development of women leaders. In addition, she was quoted in the article “How to Use Your Alumni Network for Business Success,” which ran in March on the website of Business News Daily.

Jeff Ryan (MBA ’09) was promoted to chief operat-ing officer of Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Philadelphia. Ryan, who has been at CTCA since 2012, will continue in his position as senior vice president of finance.

2010sFaizun Kamal (MBA ’10) is a franchise coach with the Franchise Consulting Company. Kamal works with professionals in the midst of a life transition, helping them find their “perfect fit” franchise businesses based on an assessment of their personal, career, and income goals.

Jonathan Williams (MS, Real Estate ’10) is owner-principal at Real Projectives in Laurel, Maryland, a consulting services firm that he founded and that is marking 10 years in operation. It employs 10 people, three of whom are also Carey graduates. The firm pro-vides professional project management and advisory services to owners, investors and users of income-producing real estate throughout the United States.

Nigel Assam (MS, Marketing ’11) is a Realtor with the Bordon Team of Keller Williams Integrity in Ellicott City, Maryland.

Danny Severn (MS, Real Estate ’11) was promoted to director of development for the Virginia/Central

Maryland region for St. John Properties. His new duties include directing entitlement efforts for ground-up construction activities and working with local juris-dictions to obtain necessary approvals and permits.

Claudia Bellony-Atanga (MBA ’12), an economic research specialist with the Charles County, Mary-land, Department of Economic Development, received the designation of certified community researcher last December from the Council for Community and Economic Research, an Arlington, Virginia-based organization that promotes excellence in community and economic research. She is reportedly the second person in Maryland to earn the designation and the first African-American woman in the United States to do so.

Ted Simpson (MBA ’12; MS, Information Systems ’12) was promoted to managing director at global consultancy Huron, focusing on the education busi-ness. With more than 20 years of experience in the higher education field, he has helped universities plan for and implement financial, human resource, and student information systems to improve operations.

Steve Chaplain (MBA ’13) is operations manager at Social Progress Imperative in Washington, D.C., work-ing as an operations management professional and implementer of numerous organizational enhancements and strategic systemic change in various nonprofit organizations. Also, he has volunteered for the past two years as the treasurer and fundraiser for the Bancroft Elementary School Parent Teacher Organization.

John Sadowski (MBA ’00) is executive vice presi-dent and chief information officer at Sandy Spring Bank, based in Columbia, Maryland.

Jahansha (John) Behzad (MBA ’03) is principal at the Bronwood Group, a Los Angeles-based health care management and consulting firm that works with health care provider organizations. Behzad previously served as the first chief executive officer of the Cali-fornia Rehabilitation Institute in Los Angeles.

Oleg Naydonov (MBA ’03) is founder and president of VisaHQ. He writes: “Spurred by growth in Asia-Pacific nations, the online visa and passport company opened five new offices in 2017. With these addi-tions, VisaHQ has 24 offices in 12 countries and is available to over 3.5 billion people worldwide.”

Kathy Mignini Walsh (MS, Marketing ’03) was recently named the director of strategic marketing and communications at the John Carroll School, an independent, coeducational, Catholic high school in Bel Air, Maryland. Previously she served as director of marketing for the Fallston Group, a Baltimore-based reputation agency, and owned JigSaw Marketing Solutions, a marketing and public relations firm twice named a “Fastest Growing Woman-Owned Business” by the Baltimore Business Journal.

Dan D’Orazio (MBA ’05) was named chief executive officer last September of Sage Growth Partners, a Baltimore-based health care research, strategy, and marketing firm. He started at the firm in 2005 and rose to become president in 2016. He was profiled in March in The Baltimore Sun.

Wendy M. Edmonds (MS, Marketing ’05) is a lecturer at Bowie State University. She was presented with the 2018 Idahlynn Karre Exemplary Leader-ship Award (Team Award) at the Chair Leadership Academy’s 27th Annual International Leadership Conference in Denver, Colorado.

Paul Christo (MBA ’06), an associate professor in the pain medicine division at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, is the host of the radio show Aches and Gains, which airs Saturdays on Sirius XM. It has fea-tured experts in therapeutic techniques, as well as every-day people and celebrities who have overcome chronic pain. He also has released a new book, a layman’s guide to pain management, titled Aches and Gains: A Com-prehensive Guide to Overcoming Your Pain.

Seing Youn (MS, Finance ’06) is an associate principal examiner at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Samuel C. Durso, MD (MBA ’07) is the Mason F. Lord Professor of Medicine and director of the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; and executive vice chair of the Department of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. He was named editor in chief of Current Geriatric Reports and editor of the seventh edition of Reichel’s Care of the Elderly: Clinical Aspects of Aging from Cambridge University Press.

SOMETHING VENTURED, SOMETHING GAINED

Elizabeth Galbut, a

2015 graduate of the

MBA/MA in Design

Leadership program

offered jointly by

the Carey Busi-

ness School and the

Maryland Institute

College of Art, has

been named to Forbes magazine’s 2018 list of

“30 Under 30” in the venture capital field.

Galbut, 28, is the co-founder and managing

partner of SoGal Ventures, a New York-

based venture capital firm that specializes in

diverse organizations, particularly those led

by women. Since launching in 2015, the firm

has invested in more than 40 start-ups in the

United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

“We started SoGal Ventures because through

our global community reaching over 50,000

diverse founders and funders, we saw that the

biggest problem for these founders is raising

money,” Galbut said in a June 2017 interview

with Vator, a news website that covers entre-

preneurship and investing. “We're true believ-

ers that women are one of the last remaining

arbitrage opportunities for investment, both

in private and public markets, but we're also

big believers, and this comes from my design

background and education, that diverse teams

are much deeper than just gender.”

She added, “Our DNA is centered around

investing in start-ups with a culture where

diversity is cherished and celebrated. That

means that any individual, whether it's the

founder, investor or employee of the start-up,

can achieve their fullest potential . . . [and] that

their differences are celebrated as a value-add,

rather than a value-detractor.”

This past February, Galbut described SoGal

Ventures and its mission in a live interview on

CNBC’s Squawk Box.

This isn’t the first time Forbes has recognized

Galbut. In 2015, she was invited to participate

in the magazine’s annual summit that brings

together 250 notable women leaders to discuss

major social, political, and business issues.

Before entering the Carey/MICA program,

Galbut worked as a strategy and operations

consultant at Deloitte, focusing on clients in the

health care industry. Once in the dual-degree

program, she became a co-founder of A-Level

Capital, a venture firm run by Johns Hopkins

students with the goal of funding innovations

by other JHU students and young alumni.

In addition to her MBA/MA in Design Leader-

ship, Galbut earned a bachelor of arts degree

in economics and government from George-

town University. She also studied at Stanford

University, the London School of Economics

and Political Science, and the Universitat

Autònoma de Barcelona.

Jarrett Bauer, a 2012 graduate of the Carey

Business School's Global MBA program, was

named to the Forbes “30 Under 30” list for 2016

in the area of health care entrepreneurship. While

in his 20s, Bauer co-founded Health Recovery

Solutions, a New York-based firm that works

with hospitals to help patients with high risk of

readmission avoid return visits.

ELIZABETH GALBUT


ALUMNI

THE COMPANY THEY KEEP

Baltimore-based emocha Mobile Health,

co-founded by Sebastian Seiguer and

Morad Elmi (both MBA ’13), made the top

10 of Fast Company’s 2018 list of the most

innovative companies in the health sector.

Established the year chief executive officer

Seiguer and managing director Elmi

graduated from Carey’s Global MBA

program, emocha was recognized for its

innovative use of technology to increase

patient adherence to medication. The

company was ranked ninth in the health

category, which was led by CVS Health,

followed by 23andMe in second place.

In its article, Fast Company sang the praises

of emocha’s “HIPAA-compliant mobile

app that lets patients record a video of

themselves taking their meds and send it

to their care provider. Hospitals and public

health agencies around the country are using

emocha to support people with tuberculosis,

opioid use disorder, HIV, and hepatitis C –

and demonstrating medication adherence

rates as high as 95 percent.”

Fast Company added: “The app has proven

particularly valuable when natural and man-

made disasters impact normal infrastructure.

In late 2016, emocha donated services to

Puerto Rico, where a financial crisis had

frozen funds for health care, and helped head

off an outbreak of TB among patients at a

remote facility for mentally ill patients. In

the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the

health department in Houston used emocha

to keep TB patients in treatment, helping

contain an outbreak there.”

In addition to naming “The World’s 50 Most

Innovative Companies” for 2018 across all

categories (Apple, Netflix, and Square led the

way), the magazine listed a top 10 for each of

36 sectors, ranging from artificial intelligence

to finance to transportation, as well as health.

MORAD ELMI SEBASTIAN SEIGUER

A SOLID REPUTATION

The Daily Record, the

Baltimore newspaper

covering business and

legal issues in Maryland,

selected Rob Weinhold

(MS, Marketing ’03) as

one of its Most Admired

CEOs of 2017.

Weinhold heads Fallston Group, a Baltimore-

based firm designed to build, strengthen, and

defend reputations around the world. He was

recognized in the category of private company

with 50 or fewer employees.

Chief executive officers in several other

categories were acknowledged in the annual

honors. The newspaper hosted a dinner for

the honorees last November.

Besides his role at Fallston Group, Weinhold

is a published writer. He authored, with

Maryland writer Kevin Cowherd, the book

The Art of Crisis Leadership: Save Time,

Money, Customers and Ultimately, Your Career,

released in 2016 by Apprentice House.

In his career in public service, Weinhold

served as public affairs director for the

Baltimore Police Department, chief of staff

for the United States Department of Justice,

and senior executive in the Maryland

Governor’s Office.

ROB WEINHOLD



Ken Rothfield (MBA ’13), who also has a medical degree, is chief medical officer at HCA Medical City Dallas. He writes: “After completion of my MBA, I tran-sitioned from the full-time practice of anesthesiology to a leadership role as chief medical officer at Ascension Health’s hospital system in Jacksonville, Florida. After three years there, I accepted a position with HCA as CMO of its tertiary care hospital in Dallas, Texas.”

Firas Rabih Maad (MBA ’14) is vice sector head, Deputyship of Sectorial Affairs, Ministry of Economy and Planning in Saudi Arabia. He writes: “Since June 2017 I have been advising the Ministry of Economy and Planning on projects/initiatives in the areas of transportation and logistics and Special Economic Zones within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Kandarp Patel (MBA ’14), based in Portage, Michigan, is a program manager in the automotive business of the Eaton Corporation. He graduated from Eaton's Global Leadership Development Program in 2016.

Ashley Miller (MBA ’15) is marketing director for Aid Through Trade, an Annapolis-based company that creates sustainable fair trade opportunities through innovative design of fashion accessories. Aid Through Trade products were featured in a “Deals and Steals”

segment about “must-have holiday gifts” last Novem-ber on ABC’s Good Morning America program.

Ryan Beres (MS, Health Care Management ’16) is a medical economics manager at ChenMed in Miami, Florida. Beres previously worked at Highmark health care in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he began as an associate consultant in client delivery for the consulting services arm and was promoted to project manager in the medical economics department.

Jingyang Jiao (MS, Finance ’16) is an assistant to two financial advisors at Cathay Bank in Industry, California. She has worked at the bank since Febru-ary 2017 and was preparing to take the California insurance license exam and the General Securities Representative Exam this May. Her near-future goal is to become a junior advisor at the bank.

Gregory Petrossian (MS, Health Care Manage-ment ’16) is a business transformation consultant with CSG Pro, a Portland, Oregon-based firm that assists in Agile software development, data warehouse archi-tecture, and data visualization.

Rachel Ross (MBA ’16) recently joined CBRE as marketing manager in Washington, D.C., supporting the D.C., Bethesda, Tysons, and Baltimore offices.

She provides business development marketing strategy and support to real estate brokerage teams across all service lines. She was previously with Park-ing Management Inc. as director of marketing. There, she was in charge of the multi-channel marketing efforts for the company.

Spencer Twigg (MS, Health Care Management ’16) was recently promoted from administrative specialist to assistant chief executive officer at the Carolinas Hospital System in Florence, South Carolina.

Jeffrey Woolford (MBA ’16), a United States Air Force lieutenant colonel and a single-seat qualified pilot physician, was profiled last December in his hometown newspaper, the Carroll County (Maryland) Times. He also earned a master of public health degree in 2014 from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He received his medical degree in 2008 from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine.

Shiqing Huang (MS, Finance ’17) wrote the article “A Study on the Motivation of APEC Volunteer and Its Relationship with Job Satisfaction,” which appeared in the December 2017 issue of the Journal of Service Science and Management.

ALUMNI


DEAN’S ALUMNI ADVISORY BOARD 2017-18Andrew Klein, MD, Chair Certificate Business of Medicine ’99, MBA ’02Esther and Mark Schulman Chair in Surgery and Transplant Medicine Director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center Professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of SurgeryCedars-Sinai Medical Center

Chris Barnhill, MBA ’12 Manager, New Business Development Verizon Wireless Wholesale

Jonathan E. Bradley, MBA ’09 Founder and Portfolio Manager Cristata Wealth Solutions, LLC

Benjamin Cirka, MS ’06 Founder and Executive Director Community Hospitality Healthcare Services

Garry Choy, MD, MBA ’13 Chief Medical Officer of Q Bio Inc. and Co-Founder/Chief Medical Officer of CredSimple

Charles Constable, MBA ’05 Head of Private Client Business Brown Advisory

William Enright, MS ’96 President and CEO Altimmune

Anita Holloway, MD, MBA ’02, Certificate Business of Medicine ’09 Market Vice President and Medical Officer Wisconsin and Michigan Market Humana, Inc.

Sam Huleatt, MBA ’08 Co-Founder Heights Media, LLC

John Meduri, MS ’94, MBA ’00 Head of Business Development Accelerate Diagnostics, Inc.

Katherine Pinkard, MBA ’14 President Pinkard Properties

Allison Reardon, MBA ’07 Associate Vice President, Client Executive AT&T

Randy Russell, MBA ’01 Managing Director Americas Head of Media & Telecom Coverage Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Mark Schaper, MBA ’10 Vice President, Business Strategy & Corporate Development MCP Asset Development Group

Sachin Shah, MBA ’10 Program Manager Food and Drug Administration

Ted Sniffin, MS ’97 Executive Vice President Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc.

Julie Teahan, MS ’98 Principal PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP

Sally Turner, MAS ’94 IT Strategy and Business Development Consultant

Hao Yu, MBA ’12 President and Chief Commercial Officer QuanDx

NEW ALUMNI CLUBS SET FOR BOSTON AND CHICAGOCarey Business School alumni joined Dean Bernard T. Ferrari and other members of the school’s leadership at an April 17 kickoff celebration for the new alumni club in Boston.

The event, held at the State Room overlooking Boston’s downtown and harbor, marked the launch of Carey’s sixth alumni club. From late 2014 through mid-2016, chapters were opened in Beijing, Shanghai, San Francisco, and New York. A Mid-Atlantic chapter was established a year ago at a reception at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C.

A seventh alumni club, based in Chicago, is scheduled to be opened this spring.

For more information about Carey’s alumni clubs, contact the Alumni Relations office at [email protected].

BOSTON U. BUSINESS DEAN, JHU PROVOST TO SPEAK AT CAREY GRADUATIONS

Boston University Questrom School of Busi-ness Dean Kenneth W. Freeman and Johns Hopkins University Provost Sunil Kumar will be the featured speakers at the Carey Business School graduation ceremonies planned for this spring and summer.

Freeman will speak at the spring event to be held May 22 at the Joseph Meyerhoff Sym-phony Hall in Baltimore. He was appointed the Allen Questrom Professor and business school dean at BU in 2010. A study of global business leadership conducted at INSEAD business school and published in 2013 in the Harvard Business Review named him one of the 100 best-performing chief executive officers in the world.

Freeman began his career at Corning Incor-porated in 1972, going on to lead several of its businesses. He joined Corning Clinical Laboratories in 1995, and the company was

spun off as Quest Diagnostics Incorporated soon thereafter. He led the turnaround of Quest as chairman and CEO through 2004.

In 2005, Freeman joined Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), serving as a managing director and partner until joining Boston U.

From 2010 through 2013, he was a senior advisor to KKR.

Kumar, JHU’s senior vice president for aca-demic affairs as well as provost, will deliver the featured speech at the Carey School’s summer graduation ceremony August 2 at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

Kumar also is a tenured faculty member of the Carey Business School and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at the Johns Hop-kins Whiting School of Engineering.

Before arriving at Johns Hopkins in 2016, he was dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, as well as the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Operations Man-agement. During his five-year tenure as dean at Booth, Kumar focused on student recruit-ment, expanded courses for undergraduates, and helped establish the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

– Tim Parsons and Andrew Blumberg


FREEMAN

KUMAR

BEETS ARE GOOD FOR YOU In late April, the Carey Business School held its inaugural Beet Week. The Carey community gathered at the Harbor East campus to celebrate the transition of soon-to-graduate students to alumni status, and to honor the philanthropic legacy of William P. Carey. The four-day event, spearheaded by the Office of Development and Alumni Relations, featured a festive kickoff celebration with remarks by Dean Bernard T. Ferrari; presentations by Carey alumni and others on how graduates

can stay connected to the school and the university; and lots of fun activities including a pie-eating contest and a wrap-up Beet Week Beach Bash at the Sandlot restaurant on Harbor Point, just a beet’s throw from campus. (Why “Beet Week”? The name acknowledges William Carey’s commitment to cover the debt of American beet farmers who worked for a company in which the Carey family held stock and who suffered major financial losses when the company was forced to liquidate.)

DEAN FERRARI AND MEMBERS OF CAREY LEADERSHIP FIRE CONFETTI CANNONS TO MARK THE START OF BEET WEEK


CAR E E R F I LE

FAILURE IS AN OPTIONHard-Earned Advice for Aspiring Corporate Leaders:

“ Take an opportunity to prepare by failing”

RICHARD MILTER

Professor on the practice-track faculty of the Carey Business School.

Education: PhD in organizational behavior/policy analysis, University at Albany - State University of New York.

As researcher and instructor, has expertise in the areas of management education and collaborative learning.

Designer of an MBA program awarded “best practice” status as a benchmark for “Technology-Mediated Learning: Enhancing the Management Education Experience” by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business and the American Productivity and Quality Center.

Associate editor, Advances in Business Education and Training.

Editorial board member for the book series Research in Management Education and Development.

Editorial board member, Innovation and Change in Professional Education.

I believe that if you’re always succeeding, you need to seek out greater

opportunities to fail. It is only through failure that we learn. Not seeking out

those failure opportunities is like being an athlete who smokes. You’ll never

know how good you can be unless you kick the habit.

People say, “Once you’ve learned to ride a bike, you never forget.” But do

we ever talk about what it was like to learn to ride the bike? How many of

you read a book on how to ride a bike? How many of you heard a lecture on

how to ride a bike? Chances are you learned to ride because you failed in

your first attempts.

If you get good at something, and you keep doing it that way, and you’re

safe, then you’re never going to fail. You’re never going to change.

You might get locked into the tyranny of expertise. That’s when you get

trapped in “unconscious competence,” where you have all you need to know,

and you’re not aware that you’ve become unconsciously incompetent.

The idea is to take an opportunity to prepare by failing. Let’s jump in

and try something with very little information initially. But let’s try it, let’s

experience it, let’s go back to learning to ride the bike.

My challenge to you is to consider failure a true option. During the Apollo

13 mishap in 1970, the statement that was never made (but was used in the

film about the accident), “Failure is not an option,” could only have been

made because NASA had already considered hundreds of failure options in

anticipation of such an event.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

“IF YOUR CONCERN IS ‘I WANT TO BE SUCCESSFUL,’ MY SUGGESTION IS TO WORK TO FIND THE FAILURE OPPORTUNITIES.” Professor Richard Milter during his remarks (which have been edited here) at the TEDx JHUDC event held February 24, 2018, on the Washington, D.C., campus of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. For the full video of his presentation, search "Rick Milter Failing to Succeed" on YouTube.

ILLUSTRATION: SERGE BLOCH

INVEST IN THE FUTURE OF BUSINESSYour investment in the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School helps us provide the best education for tomorrow’s business leaders.

By donating to Carey, you can support the school’s mission and inspire our students with your commitment.

To make a gift by credit card, visit carey.jhu.edu/give.

You can also go to rising.jhu.edu/giftplanning to explore gift planning strategies, including:

• Gifts of stocks and bonds

• Gifts that pay you and your loved ones a lifetime of income

• Bequests through your will

• Designating the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School as beneficiary of your employer-sponsored retirement plan, Individual Retirement Account (IRA), or life insurance policy

• Gifts of real estate

3400 N. Charles StreetBaltimore, MD 21218

Non-Profit Org.U.S. PostagePaidBaltimore, MDPermit No. 1235

3400 N. Charles StreetBaltimore, MD 21218

coin flip - carey business school · 6 perspectives . the #metoo movement as a work in progress,...

Documents