JeAnna Parker, MPA ’93, has recently accepted a position as Managing Director at Andersen. Prior to accepting her new position, JeAnna has garnered more than 28 successful years of public accounting and tax consulting. Congratulations to JeAnna!
Read more here.
Gay Gaddis, Dean’s Advisory Council Member, has recently been nominated for the 2022 Best CEO Awards, and has been named this year’s Legacy Award recipient. Gay founded and formerly acted as the head of the advertising agency T3 before stepping down in 2019. Now Gay supports the her alma mater by acting on the Texas Exes Board of Alumni , as well as acting on the Dean’s Advisory Council. Congratulations to Gay!
Read more here.
Samar Kamadar, MBA ’07, has recently accepted the position of Chief Financial Officer at Biote Corp in their Irving office. Samar previously was the CFO of TaxAct.
Congratulations to Samar! Read more here.
McCombs Alumnus and Texas running back Roschon Johnson was recently named to the Paul Hornung Award Honor Roll announced by the Louisville Sports Commission. The selection committee is comprised of 17 sports journalists and former NFL stars, who look to shine light on otherwise unrecognized talent. Congratulations to Roschon!
Read more here.
Knowledge To Go: Work Relationships and the Post-COVID Workplace with Art Markman (Oct. 14, 2022)
The effects of the COVID pandemic are still being felt in the way we work. Many organizations have adopted flexible work arrangements in which many employees are working from home a significant amount of the time. These arrangements influence the nature of people’s workplace relationships. Professor Art Markman discusses the three key types of relationships people engage in, as well as the nature of social connections, and then explores how the current workplace environment affects these aspects of our social world.
You can view the webinar recording here.
Art Markman is the Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology, Human Dimensions of Organizations and Marketing, and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. He has written over 150 papers on topics including reasoning, decision making, and motivation. Art brings insights from cognitive science to a broader audience through his blogs at Psychology Today and Fast Company and his radio show/podcast Two Guys on Your Head. He is the author of several books including Smart Thinking, Smart Change, Brain Briefs, and Bring Your Brain to Work.
Please note: Alumni Network webinars must be viewed live to receive CPE credit. Watching the recording does not qualify for CPE credit.
Knowledge To Go: Crazy Times in the Markets! with Sandy Leeds (Aug. 19, 2022)
Stocks have dropped 20% in 2022. Interest rates have increased, meaning that bonds have also lost value. An index of commodity prices has increased 20%, but earlier in the year it had been up 40%. The dollar had appreciated more than 10% this year. Suffice it to say that there’s been a lot going on. In this fast-paced webinar, Sandy speaks about the markets, the economy, the Fed, and the world.
You can view the webinar recording here, and view the slides presented here.
Sandy Leeds is a professor of instruction in the Finance Department at McCombs and served a thirteen-year term as president of The MBA Investment Fund, L.L.C. He teaches both graduate and undergraduate level courses, including Corporate Finance, Advanced Corporate Finance, Public Policy (Long-Term Issues in the Markets), Investments, Portfolio Management / Security Analysis, Money and Capital Markets, and Macroeconomics.
Please note: Alumni Network webinars must be viewed live to receive CPE credit. Watching the recording does not qualify for CPE credit.
Texas McCombs Presents: The Soul of Business: Leading with Impact and an Entrepreneurial Mindset
A Conversation with Brett A. Hurt and Dean Mills (May 26, 2022)
As part of the Texas McCombs Presents series, Dean Lillian Mills and Brett A. Hurt ’94, CEO of data.world, discussed leading in uncertain times, Austin’s evolution as an innovation hub, diversity in the workplace, supporting female entrepreneurship through Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute, and more.
You can watch the webinar recording here.
Read more about Brett’s book, The Entrepreneur’s Essentials, here.
Read his feature in the McCombs Magazine here.
Brett A. Hurt is the CEO and Co-founder of data.world, the enterprise data catalog for the modern data stack. data.world’s cloud-native SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform combines a consumer-grade user experience with a powerful knowledge graph to deliver enhanced data discovery, agile data governance, and actionable insights. data.world is a Certified B Corporation® and public benefit corporation and home to the world’s largest collaborative open data community with more than 1.6 million members, including 90% of the Fortune 500. The company has 48+ patents and has been named one of Austin’s Best Places to Work six years in a row. Brett is also the co-owner of Hurt Family Investments (HFI), alongside his wife, Debra. HFI is involved in 125 startups, 40 VC funds, and multiple philanthropic endeavors.
Brett co-founded and led Bazaarvoice as CEO, through its IPO, follow-on offering, and two acquisitions. Bazaarvoice became the largest public SaaS (Software as a Service) business in social commerce and was named by the WSJ as one of the top IPOs of 2012 after becoming a unicorn. Brett also founded and led Coremetrics, which was rated the #1 Web analytics solution by Forrester Research and, like Bazaarvoice, expanded into a global company and leader. Coremetrics was acquired by IBM in 2010 for around $300 million.
Knowledge To Go: The Future of Work with Bukky Akinsanmi and Greg Hallman (May 17, 2022)
Entering the third year of the COVID pandemic, employees and firms have adapted to work from home while they are finally planning on a return to the office. The pandemic has brought seismic changes to the use of real estate, including both firms use of office space and workers use of their homes as home offices.
This was an informative webinar on how firms have dealt with changes in their use of office space and how they manage employees. Dr. Hallman discusses the effects of the pandemic on office buildings and investment in office assets by real estate investors. Professor Akinsanmi Oyedeji discusses how managers have adapted and can adapt to the new rules of work such as employees working from home, employees coming back to the office, and the effectiveness of hybrid work with some days in the office and some at home.
You can view the recording of the content presented by Professor Greg Hallman here. We are unable to provide the content provided by Professor Akinsanmi until the research findings have been published.
Bukky Akinsanmi Oyedeji is a licensed architect and Assistant Professor of Strategy at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin. She earned her PhD in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship at the Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research examines the conditions under which firms may attain a superior market position through human assets given their uniquely transient and agentic nature. She focuses on the role of complementary firm resources in moderating the value created by a firm’s human capital and explores these effects within the contexts of employee mobility and employee entrepreneurship. She draws on her professional background as an architect to understand how spatial configurational characteristics play a role in these relationships.
Greg Hallman teaches finance and real estate courses in the Finance Department at the McCombs school of Business at University of Texas at Austin since 2002. Dr. Hallman’s teaching focuses on real estate investment and he is the Director of McCombs Real Estate Investment Fund. The student real estate investment fund manages a public and private portfolio of real estate investments, including investments in public REIT securities and private equity real estate investments. Dr. Hallman has a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia, an MBA from Tulane University, and a PhD in Finance from University of Texas at Austin.
Please note: Alumni Network webinars must be viewed live to receive CPE credit. Watching the recording does not qualify for CPE credit.
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