BHP Students Honored for Leadership and Service to McCombs

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BHP Students Honored for Leadership and Service to McCombs

Congratulations to all of the students recognized at the McCombs Honors Convocation this past Friday. Here is a list of the BHP students who received awards at the event. In addition to these individuals, we were proud to honor many of you for your outstanding scholastic achievements, and want to congratulate all business students and organizations who were honored with an award this year.

McCombs BBA/MPA Alumni Advisory Board Award
Rising Star Leadership Award – Sai Yeluru

This award is presented to a graduating McCombs undergraduate or MPA student who has proven an established commitment to service within the McCombs School through outstanding scholarship and achievements, as well as exemplary leadership and community involvement. The recipient demonstrates significant growth potential as a future leader in the McCombs community.

BHP Award
Conrad Doenges Award – Sai Yeluru

This award is given to a Business Honors senior, who in the judgment of their peers and the BHP faculty and staff, have distinguished themselves in academics and leadership.

Undergraduate Business Council Awards

George Mitchell Business Leadership Award – This award recognizes students who have exhibited strong leadership within the McCombs School. There are two winners per class.

Freshmen – Nivva Emmi

Sophomores – Siji Deleawe, Daniel Madden

Juniors – Daniel Miyares, Megan Tran-Olmsted

Barbara Jordan Business Leadership Award – This award recognizes seniors who have been committed to leaving a legacy of mentorship, leadership and passion at the McCombs School. There are two students selected each year for this award.

Seniors – Mackenzie Moore, Eric Saldanha

Texas BBA Program Awards

BBA Outstanding Service and Leadership Awards – Erika Rodrigues, Jon Burstain, Rakshana Govindarajan, Mackenzie Moore, Aasim Maknojia, Kenny Young, Kobi Nasesk, and Callie Blumenfeld

 

McCombs Teams Dominate at National and International Case Competitions

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McCombs Teams Dominate at National and International Case Competitions

Ashley Akin, Swetha Davuluru, Anushka Madhuvarshi, and Rebecca Ortiz

This past weekend, McCombs sent a team comprised of four BHP sophomores, Ashley Akin, Anushka Madhuvarshi, Swetha Davuluru and Rebecca Ortiz to the University of Washington Global Business Case Competition in Seattle. The competition featured a short and long case. The UT Austin McCombs Team won their bracket for the short case and took second place for the long case.

Twelve teams from around the world competed at the event. The competitors included American University of Beirut (Lebanon), Maastricht University (Netherlands), Peking University (China), Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Ecuador (Ecuador), Thammasat University (Thailand), Universidad Panamericana (Mexico), University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong), University of Sydney (Australia), Western University (Canada), University of Arizona and University of Washington. The long case focused on global expansion for Amazon Web Services. The winning team was Thammasat University, but Texas was a close second.

“We were so much more invested in the product of our work because we had a whole week of bonding with the other participants,” said Rebecca Ortiz. “It was humbling to hear the experiences that led each international team to Seattle, and to present to a full auditorium about a case that particularly challenged us. When selecting the countries for our solution, we had to consider so many factors, yet create a cohesive strategy and story. The fact that there were no overlapping countries presented by the four finalists really shows the diversity of thought we saw during the week.”

Also this month, the USC Value Investing Group hosted its third annual USC Stock Pitch Competition and two UT teams took home first and second place. Twenty teams from across the country competed. Eric Sun (BHP sophomore), Nick Marchenko (BHP freshman), Dhruv Dhuper (BBA freshman), Joseph Buschmann (BBA senior), and Bryan Goh (BBA junior) took first place. They are all members of the University Securities Investment Team, a group which also financed their travel to the competition. Daniel Chen (BHP Senior), Michael Everett (BHP junior), Jackie Ye (BHP junior), and Reese Davis (BHP junior) took second place at the event.

“Competing at USC was an amazing experience,” said Eric Sun. “We got to meet a lot of students from around the country and watched some amazing stock pitches. Given the caliber of everyone there, we were shocked and ecstatic when we made it into the finals and even more so when we won! I definitely learned a lot from this experience and know more about the economics of the international tobacco market than I ever thought I would.”

Congratulations to all of these students on these impressive wins!

Eric Sun, Nick Marchenko, Dhruv Dhuper, Joseph Buschmann, and Bryan Goh

Student Spotlight: Abhishek Ramchandani

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Student Spotlight: Abhishek Ramchandani

Abhi RamchandaniBHP senior Abhishek Ramchandani always knew he wanted to teach. After graduating, he will be pursuing a PhD in Accounting at the University of Texas at Austin. “The reason I first got into research was because I knew that I liked teaching. I looked at what would get me a teaching job. The answer was a PhD, and PhDs do research. So I realized that in order to start teaching, I would need to start doing research.”

Over the past four years, Ramchandani has indeed amassed a wealth of research experience across the fields of sociology, finance, MIS, and strategy. “As I started delving deeper, I realized that research is incredibly important. This connection is a little hard to see in business. Cancer research makes sense because cancer is a daily problem that people have, and we want to cure it. With accounting research, you have to wonder how it really changes the world,” says Ramchandani. “Yet, the real reason accounting research is important is because it redraws those lines that our economic society works on. We hold comments and beliefs that society is supposed to interact a certain way, that the economy is going to work a certain way, and that accounting information comes out a certain way. Research helps us look at how people are doing with the current state the world is in, and it tells us what is effective. We can redraw those boundaries. I have always thought research is really cool because you are extending the boundaries of what humanity knows and helping people lead better lives, even though it might not be super tangible.”

For students who may be interested in research, Ramchandani recommends reaching out to faculty, and going for it. “Freshman year, when I first started, I was looking to get into a finance project. I applied and didn’t get the position. I was very crestfallen. At the time, I was also in my sociology class for the core requirements. One day after class, I went up to my professor and told her I thought she was doing some really cool stuff, and then I asked if she would take me on. That’s all it took. We went to her office, talked for a while, and she told me that I had the necessary math skills but that my coding wasn’t up to par. So she gave me the resources I needed to learn.”

Through his experience as a research assistant, Ramchandani can attest that help is never far away. “Professors are so willing to help if you ask them. It’s important, however, to read their research – don’t just reach out to someone because they’re hiring. If you like their research and can talk meaningfully about it, professors will love it. I made sure that whoever I was reaching out to, I was reading their research and really, truly enjoyed it. You need to know what you’re talking about. If you come on for a year-long project and don’t think what they’re doing is interesting, you probably aren’t going to apply yourself to the work.”

Ramchandani has also honed several important skills through his time in research. “I wrote a case for Professor Hannah and he gave it back with a thousand edits. I rewrote it so many times. I learned how to write better, and more academically. Now when I am writing case reports or audit documents, I know how to write just the right amount to get all the information across but not lose the reader to boredom.” Another skill he learned was how to critically reason. “Research definitely helps you make connections between areas,” says Ramchandani. “I’ve learned to parse statements which are complex but perhaps logically flawed. Sometimes logical fallacies can be said in a way where you believe them simply because of the way they are said.” He believes the best skill he developed though is the ability to tell a story. “Research can be a particularly drab story. It’s a lot of data and numbers, and nobody’s going to delve into your numbers and models unless you can tell them why they should care about it. When I was working with these top-level researchers at McCombs, what I learned from them was how to be infectious with my passion.”

Ramchandani will be continuing his passion for research and teaching McCombs as a PhD student, but he is grateful for his years in BHP, and the skills he learned in the program, which he was able to apply to his research as an undergraduate.

BHP Teams Take Home Top Honors at Case Competitions

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BHP Teams Take Home Top Honors at Case Competitions

Phoebe Lin, Ananya Rajesh, Catherine Cheng, and Megan Tran-Olmsted

A team of four BHP students took second place at the William & Mary National Stock Pitch and Leadership Summit this past weekend. Phoebe Lin (junior), Megan Tran-Olmsted (junior), Ananya Rajesh (sophomore), and Catherine Cheng (sophomore) competed against 16 teams from across the world. All teams were required to pitch a long thesis on a publicly traded stock. The McCombs team pitched on EnPro Industries (NYSE: NPO), and took second place, behind the University of Sydney.

This was UT Austin’s first time attending the competition, which is one of the only competitions of its kind. The team was thrilled to win second place. “The most rewarding part of attending national stock competitions is having the chance to interact with students interested in investing across the nation. This time around, we had the opportunity to speak to teams from across the globe – that aspect was really cool,” said Tran-Olmsted.

Another team comprised of four BHP juniors participated in the Berkeley Investment Conference this month, a stock pitch competition. The team took first place, competing against 10 other teams, from schools such as Harvard, Stanford, Washington University in St. Louis, Virginia and Cal-Berkeley. Reese Davis, Michael Everett, Karna Venkatraj, and Jackie Ye learned a great deal from the experience. “It was really exciting to network with students from around the country, as well as getting to pitch to notable industry professionals and esteemed academics who offered insightful feedback on our investment idea,” said Venkatraj.

Congratulations to both teams, and thank you to BHP alumni who help support student travel to case competitions such as these by giving to the BHP Excellence Fund.

Karna Venkatraj, Jackie Ye, Michael Everett, and Reese Davis

Meet the Board – Part 3: Rachel Silverstein, Chris Crump, Joe Shields

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This is the third of a series of posts we will be doing dedicated to introducing you to our BHP Advisory Board. The BHP Advisory Board is comprised of around 20 alumni representing a mix of class years, occupations and locations. The mission of the board is to drive continued excellence of the BHP and development of leaders through advocacy, connection, and engagement. The board will be ambassadors for the program in their communities, support fundraising objectives, and assist with recruiting the top students in the nation to the program. Board terms are two years. We greatly appreciate the service of these alumni to BHP!

Rachel (Robinson) Silverstein, BHP 2010, started her career in corporate finance at large public companies such as Dell and American Express. The large company experience gave her a great foundation and the opportunity to live in new places like New York City and Singapore. Luckily, she found her way back to Austin a few years ago where she has been leading financial planning at Snap Kitchen, a healthy food start-up. At Snap Kitchen, she has learned that she thrives in a high-growth environment where she can have a direct impact on the company’s future success. She also enjoys being back in Austin as it has allowed her to get more involved with the university and with BHP.

Chris Crump spent 22 years at Accenture, 12 of those as a partner in their Strategy practice. After preaching change management to clients, he decided it was time for a change himself, so he took a sabbatical with no plan. This time away has given Chris the opportunity to experience opportunities that might not have happened without pushing back from the corporate world.  For example, Chris’ current adventure is a one year program at Harvard University called “The Advanced Leadership Initiative.”  This program is designed to prepare experienced leaders to take on new challenges in the social sector with the goal of making a greater societal impact than they perhaps did in their working careers.  With greater appreciation for pressing topics such as climate change, health care, inequality, and education, Chris will leave the program ready to apply his learnings for positive change starting in 2019.

Joe Shields works for McCombs Enterprises in San Antonio, where he’s primarily involved in the operations of Red McCombs Automotive, comprised of six car dealerships and ancillary businesses.  Joe focuses on the group’s marketing efforts and business strategy.  In addition, he helps in the management of oil and gas operations through McCombs Energy, real estate development through McCombs Properties, and private equity investments through McCombs Partners.  Between graduating from UT and moving back to San Antonio, Joe worked in Austin for the Circuit of The Americas, a McCombs Partners investment, as the Track Rental Coordinator.

Applications for the BHP Advisory Board are accepted once a year in the Spring. If you have feedback for our current board, please reach out to our board chair, Michael Daehne.