Author: Christine.Burdell (page 1 of 2)

Texas McCombs Homecoming Weekend, Sept. 27-28, 2024

Save the date for Homecoming Weekend on September 27-28, 2024, for a half-day business conference with outstanding McCombs faculty members, a BBQ tailgate before the first SEC home football game against Mississippi State, and a special reception for five-year class reunions (classes of ’19, ’14, ’09, etc.). Reconnect with your classmates, network with fellow alumni,  and get back into the classroom! Registration information coming in July.

Class Note: Kevin Pearce, BBA ’04, and Brian White, BBA ’04

Alumni Kevin Pearce and Brian White, both BBA ’04, are co-founders of Urgent Care for Kids, which will provide Austin school district with virtual doctors. Read more.

Pumping Up Your Power and Influence: Strategies for Being Heard and Making a Difference

Power and influence, not performance, are often keys to succeeding in the workplace and both come in many forms such as legitimate, expert, reward, referent, and coercive. Dr. Kristie J. Loescher, Sr. Lecturer, Department of Management, discusses ways to master and balance these multiple sources of power in her webinar for the Texas McCombs Alumni Network, Pumping Up Your Power and Influence: Strategies for Being Heard and Making a Difference. Watch the webinar.

Dr. Kristie J. Loescher teaches management, leadership, and business communications at the McCombs School of Business. Prior to her career in academia, Kristie worked in the health care industry for 15 years in the areas of quality assurance, utilization management, and clinical research. Her academic publications focus on ethical education, organizational ethics, communication, change management, diversity management, process improvement in health care delivery systems, and health care reform. Dr. Loescher is the associate director for the Business Foundations Program and the director of curriculum and community engagement for the Healthcare Innovation Initiative.

The McCombs School Announces New BBA Advisory Board Members and Executive Committee Leadership for Fall 2018

The McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin announces the appointment of the following members to its BBA Advisory Board.

  • Barry Kobren, BBA 1984, Senior Vice President, Sanders Partners Incorporated, El Paso, TX
  • Fauzul Lakhani, BBA 2009, Vice President, Riverstone Holdings, Sugar Land, TX
  • Jessica Rancher, BBA 2002, MPA 2002, Tax Operations Leader, Baker Hughes, Houston, TX
  • Sai Yeluru, BBA 2018, Business Analyst, McKinsey & Company, Dallas, TX

Additionally, the board’s executive committee assumed new leadership:

• Chair: John Briscoe, BBA 1981, Consultant, Houston, TX
• Vice Chair: Maria Garate, BBA 1998, Regional Talent Recruiting Manager, The United Family of Stores, Plano, TX
• Past Chair: Brandi Kleinman, BBA 2000, Vice President, Veritas Advisory Group Inc., Dallas, TX
• Values Ambassador Chair: Terese Everson, BBA Business Honors 1996, Vice President, Cienda Partners, LP, Austin, TX

The McCombs School would like to thank our new members and leaders and also thank outgoing leaders Erin Patten, who has become an emeritus member having served as vice chair, chair, and past chair respectively during the past three years, and also Angela Morisette, who has finished her one-year term as values ambassador chair. Additionally, Cameron Chandler, Terese Everson, Maria Garate, Meagan Gates, Angela Moras, and Sean Waggoner have been reappointed for a second active term, and Bethany Rolan has been appointed for her first three-year term having served the previous year as the Rising Star representative. Sai Yeluru is serving as the Rising Star representative in 2018-19. View the full membership.

The McCombs School of Business BBA Advisory Board formed in 2008. Members assist the dean, associate dean of undergraduate programs, faculty, and staff of the McCombs School of Business in achieving and maintaining “best of class” status for the BBA programs. Members support the BBA program’s strategy planning, curricula, external affairs, alumni engagement, fundraising efforts, and student placement. Member nominations are accepted on a rolling basis. The executive committee considers nominations for membership each spring and new three-year terms begin Sept. 1.

Three Texas McCombs Alumni Recognized as 2018 Outstanding Young Texas Exes

Texas McCombs alumni Bryan Jones, BS ’00, JD, MBA ’05, Rosa Flores, BBA, MPA ’01, BJ ’05, and Leon Chen, BBA ’01, are three of the four 2018 Outstanding Young Texas Exes. Read more.

32 Texas McCombs Alumni Featured as Founding Leading Austin Tech Companies

Built in Austin recently featured 35 University of Texas alumni who founded leading Austin tech companies. Thirty-two are Texas McCombs graduates:

Panos Adamopoulos, MSTC 2013, Seismos
Thomas Allen, MBA 2006, AgileLaw
Colin Anawaty, BBA 2006, Patient IO
Tyler Bambrick, MBA 2018, Home Run Dugout
Mario Barrett, MBA 2014, Sockwork
Josh Bohls, BBA 1997, Inkscreen
Jeff Cardenas, BBA 2008, Apptronik
Matt Chasen, MBA 2004, uShip.com
Christine Chen, MBA 2012, Moth to Flame
Leon Chen, BBA 2001, Tiff’s Treats
Ken Cho, MBA 2003, Spredfast
Michael Garel, MBA 2012, eyeQ
Amy George, MBA 2000, Earthly Labs
Deven Hariyani, MBA 2016, Kwaddle
Ed Hemphill, MBA 2005, WigWag
Nick Hermandorfer, MBA 2016, Home Run Dugout
Cam Houser, MBA 2010, 3 Day Startup
Sangram Kadam, MBA 2010, Ordoro
Charles Leonard, MBA 2015, Cybernance
Chandra Mambapoor, MSTC 2015, SigTrak
Travis McCollum, MBA 2006, WigWag
Erik McMillan, BBA 2003, Shelfbucks
Jagath Narayan, MBA 2010, Ordoro
Erik Norwood, MBA 2012, CURB
Michael Pierce, BBA 2006 and MBA 2012, Equipboard
Chantal Pittman, MBA 2012 Unique Influence
Robert Reeves, MSTC 2012, Datical
Ninis Samuel, BBA 2003, BarkHappy
Jeremy Sapriel, MBA 2016 – TripRiff
Naruby Schlenker, MBA 2010, Ordoro
Tyron Stading, MSTC 2004, Innography, Inc.
Bill Welch, MSTC 2015, Apptronik

 

 

Alumni Q&A: Ken Parekh, MBA ’87, CEO, Parekh Partners LLC

“When I started school, GSB was a relatively new building,” Ken Parekh reflected as he now looks forward to all that the new graduate business building, Robert B. Rowling Hall, has to offer to students, alumni, and the greater Austin business community. Parekh will become the chair of the MBA Advisory Board this fall and we recently had the opportunity to interview him about his business school memories, career path, and goals for the board.

How did you choose McCombs and what are some of your business school memories?

I was an engineer at Texas Instruments in Dallas and I decided to start exploring MBA programs. I really craved the in-person experience, so I wanted to explore programs where I would feel a part of a community. When I visited the Texas business school, not yet called McCombs, I found the community that I wanted to connect to. The balance between case study and practical applications and the management applications—and to do it with a fairly diverse group of students—really appealed to me.

Some of my fondest business school memories involve my professors. I had multiple classes with Professor Dan Short who changed by perception of accounting and he became my favorite teacher and a sort of mentor. I also really enjoyed Jack Brittain’s organizational behavior class. I found the combination of what I learned from these classes with what the Kozmetsky Center had to offer very interesting.

How did your educational experience change you?

It ended up bringing me in a very different direction than I would have initially predicted. With my engineering background, I was particularly interested in the school’s program for information systems and the practical application of theory. However, after taking Dan Short’s accounting classes and Jack Brittain’s organizational behavior class, my eyes were opened to the value and importance of people. I was an engineer at the time and all of a sudden I’m introduced to the concept of teams and culture. This was an eye-opening experience for me. You need to have the right teams and culture to be successful in business. That really started my path to what I do now. That class was the spark for me. Here was a technology guy—an engineer—who discovered a much larger scheme to this puzzle.

Can you walk me through your career path since graduating? How did you end up in the Bay Area?

UT really opened my aperture and I was seeking broad-based business experience. I thought the consulting path was a great opportunity. So I took a job with Deloitte based in Dallas, but focused primarily on Boston and its tech sector. I thought I would be at Deloitte for a few years and then go back into industry, but I fell in love and was there for 17 years. In 1994, the market moved from the northeast to Silicon Valley and I found myself on a plane between Boston and the Bay Area for four years before asking for a transfer to San Francisco. This was before the dot com boom. It allowed me to stay close to the tech sector and my roots. My passion is around innovation and how to create cultures to drive innovation, and the Bay Area is actually an incubator for this.

I left Deloitte in 2005 to start my own business. The firm had become so large and I craved to focus on the small, early-stage, building phase of business—Deloitte was like that in the early days. I wanted to pursue my passion for executive coaching. There was a mentor, apprenticeship culture at Deloitte in the early days and I wanted to focus full time on that. I valued that experience such as working with Dell and on the HP/Compact integration.

I also chose to start my own business for lifestyle reasons. The life of a consultant can get overwhelming at times. It ended up being the right choice for me because one month after I left Deloitte, I met my future wife and we got married one year later. We now have two sons, aged 7 and 11 years old. My family has brought balance to my life.

What are you most proud of in your career so far?

The fact that I’ve developed a number of leaders—a bunch are amazing leaders in their own right that I helped to groom when they were starting out as business analysts or engineers. Now they are running their own companies and I love that I’ve had some impact on creating future leaders. I still keep in touch with many of them professionally and informally and it’s wonderful to have built 30-year relationships with them and to see their careers progress.

And of course, on a personal note, my two boys are amazing and they are going to do great things in the world. They are my true legacy.

How have you stayed involved with the school as an alumnus?

I’ve been very involved with the MBA Advisory Board. I am starting my 4th term this fall and have spent 9 years being actively involved on the board. I have also been active in local chapters, particularly in the Bay Area. I was a class ambassador a few years ago and now I am on the Bay Area for McCombs Board. Of course, I am also involved with the Texas Exes and I’m a rabid Longhorns fan. I find some excuse to come back to Austin 3-4 times per year because there is always something going on. I also keep in touch with my classmates and attended the reunion in Austin and we have also had class reunions in New Orleans during Jazz Fest. I have personally benefited from being part of the alumni network. I am particularly proud of the work I’ve been doing with the MBA Board’s “Third-Year MBA Task Force” that works on initiatives to promote the value of the alumni network to new graduates. We are “Texas for life.” Our network is a huge force to be reckoned with. One of my main goals as the incoming chair for the MBA Advisory Board is to continue to promote the network and to educate others that The University of Texas is not just within the borders of Texas. We are prominent in other business centers throughout the world and there is great value in that. Alumni engagement and activation are key goals of mine.

What other types of community involvement initiatives are you involved with?

I am very active in nonprofit work and have three areas of focus. The first is for children’s educational development and making sure that all kids have an opportunity to get an education by leveraging technology and other resources to make this happen. My second focus is neighborhood housing and affordable home ownership, which is a big issue in the Bay Area. My third focus is my work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in support of eradicating diseases in Africa. I was born in Nairobi, Africa, so this is particularly personal for me. My work with the foundation involves coaching health administrators to use technology and other resources to increase their capacity to do their jobs. The foundation has learned that it takes more than money to solve problems. I travel there somewhat frequently and I have extended family in east Africa. I highly recommend that everyone add an East African safari to their bucket list.

Class Note: Scott Tynes, MBA ’99, and Bill Klein, MBA ’99

The Statesman reports that Scott Tynes and Bill Klein’s company, Consero Global, received $50 million and plans to shop for acquisitions. Consero was founded in 2006 with an idea Tynes and Klein had during their MBA studies at Texas McCombs. Read the Stateman story.

Class Note: Siri Chakka, MBA ’17, and Silva Gentchev, MBA ’17

Siri Chakka, MBA ’17, and Silva Gentchev, MBA ’17, are launching a company that turns dinner-only restaurants into temporary workspaces during the day. Read more in Built In Austin.

Class Note: John Goff, BBA ’77, Featured in Forbes

Forbes posted a feature story about alumnus John Goff that covered his early and recent years in the real estate business and his inkling about the 2008 financial crisis, which led to him selling his company before the collapse. Now he is in charge of the company once again. Read the full Forbes article.

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