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Alumni Connections
No. 41 - December 2007
Alumni Connections is a sampling of alumni
news gleaned from media online and in print, including news submitted
to Chicago GSB Magazine. Submit information about yourself or
fellow alumni to editor@ChicagoGSB.edu. |
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Quick Links
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Alumni on the Move
Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority
Dayne Lim, �07 (AXP-6), was named product development director. Lim previously worked at the Singapore Tourism Board for 12 years, where he oversaw international operations as well as the attractions and cruise sectors.
AOL
Mark Pinney, �82, has been named head of business planning for the Platform A division. Recently formed, Platform A was designed to offer advertisers access to targeting and measurement tools. Pinney was CFO and chief privacy officer at TACODA, which AOL recently acquired. AOL is headquartered in New York.
Bank of America
Mark Sander, �83, has been named Midwest region commercial banking executive. The financial institution is based in Chicago.
BioReliance Corporation
Darryl Goss, �01 (XP-70), has joined as vice president of global process excellence. Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, the firm provides testing, development, and manufacturing services for the biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical industries.
Brunswick Acceptance Company
Scott Danahey, �87, was named general manager of the firm, a joint venture between GE and Brunswick Corporation, the leisure company known for bowling and boats. Danahey handles financing for Brunswick�s marine dealers. Brunswick is headquartered in Lake Forest, Illinois.
CA, Inc.
Marc Stoll, �02, has been named senior vice president and corporate controller. Based in Islandia, New York, the information technology firm makes management software.
The Cambridge Group
Carrie Shea, AB �87, MBA �90, has been named a principal at the Chicago-based consulting group.
Caterpillar
Thomas Bluth, �97, has been named vice president, Asia Pacific manufacturing operations. Bluth previously was managing director, Caterpillar France. Based in Peoria, Illinois, Caterpillar is the world�s largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment.
Contactual
David Chen, �89, joined the firm as vice president of finance and administration. Based in San Carlos, California, it provides support for call centers.
Clarkson University
Nancy Kin, �90 (XP-59), has been appointed CFO. The private university is located in Potsdam, New York.
CoreOptics
Niel Ransom, �86 (XP-55), has been named to the board as an independent director. The company makes subsystems for optical networks used in information technology and telecommunications. It has headquarters in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Nuremberg, Germany. Ransom was chief technology officer for Alcatel.
Cushman & Wakefield
Laura Quayle, �91, has joined as director to the global real estate firm�s office brokerage group. Quayle is based in the firm�s Rosemont, Illinois, office. The firm is headquartered in New York.
Eaton Vance Corp.
Payson Swaffield, �83, has been appointed chief income investment officer. The Boston-based firm manages investments.
EFJ, Inc.
Massoud �Max� Safavi, �76, has been named to the newly created position of chief operating officer. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, the firm is the parent of wireless telecommunication companies that make radio and security systems for police departments, government agencies, the military, and cellular service providers.
Emerson
Jay Geldmacher, �91 (XP-60), has been named executive vice president and will serve as a business leader for the Emerson Network Power business platform. The power, technology, appliance, and tools company is based in St. Louis.
ITA Software
Venkat Chandramoleshwar, �99, country manager, India, has been named to an expanding business development management team. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the company develops airline information technology, including an airfare pricing and shopping system.
Lake Capital
Anthony Broglio, �04, has been named a principal at the Chicago-based private equity firm, which invests in service-based companies in various industries. Broglio also joined the firm�s newlyformed executive committee.
MonoGen
James Boyle, �93, has joined as CFO. The medical device company is based in Lincolnshire, Illinois.
Nixon Peabody LLP
Karen Greenbaum, �02 (XP-71), has joined the New York��based international law firm as chief operating officer and managing director.
Peerless Manufacturing Company
Charles Mogged Jr., �84, has been appointed vice president for manufacturing and supply chain management for the Dallas-based company. Peerless makes specialized products for air pollution abatement and for the separation and filtration of contaminants from gases and liquids.
Phenomix Corporation
John Crawford, �79, was named CFO. Headquartered in San Diego, the firm develops drugs to treat diabetes and hepatitis C.
PrivateBancorp, Inc.
Karen Case, �86, has joined the investment bank as president of commercial real estate banking at The PrivateBank�Chicago.
Public Radio International
Javier Escobedo, �01 (XP-70), has been named to the board of directors. Based in Minneapolis, the public radio producer provides more than 400 hours of programming each week through its partnerships with BBC World Service and station-based and independent producers. Escobedo founded OLE, an ad agency that focuses on the Hispanic market in the United States.
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company
Miles McHugh, �93, has been appointed executive vice president and CFO, and Andrew Coxhead, �98, has been promoted to senior vice president, controller, and chief accounting officer. The commercial printing company is based in Chicago.
Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd.
Kristina Peterson, �90, has joined as director, structured finance, of Suntech America, based in the company�s U.S. headquarters in San Francisco. Suntech Power makes photovoltaic solar cells and solar electric systems for public utilities and residential, commercial, and industrial customers.
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Alumni to Know
 Mike Graham, �86,was profiled in Crain’s Chicago Business in October for what he brings to Career Education Corporation, where he has been CFO since September. The firm, based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, is the world’s largest on-campus provider of private, for-profit postsecondary education with more than 80 campuses in the United States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. Graham told Crain’s his strong suit is leading large teams of financial professionals. “I bring big-company skills without the bureaucracy and politics that sometimes come with it,” he said.
�Successful managers should never put their people in �agency mode,�� Bill Henry, �81, CFO and chief operating officer of Niles, Illinois�based Affy Tapple, told the Chicago Tribune in an October 28 article about his career path. �That�s when you direct people so much, they stop thinking independently. They act like an agent, not like a principal in control of things. People taking initiative need to be encouraged to take risk, not criticized for failure.� An executive took a chance on Henry when he was working in computers at International Minerals and Chemical, and asked him to do a financial simulation for his next capital project. �I did, and the next thing you know I started getting invited to all these big meetings with senior executives,� Henry told the Tribune. �I became fascinated with finance. That�s when I decided to return to school for an MBA.�
 When it comes to the future of 3D in the digital age, Chris Johnson, �98,and Dreamworks Animation’s Jeffrey Katzenberg agree that it’s poised to make a comeback. Johnson and Katzenberg were among panelists who promoted the technology at a movie industry conference in Hollywood last fall. Johnson, vice president of Chicago-based Classic Cinemas, found success at the box office after installing three 3-D screens in his 12-cinema chain. When Johnson showed “Meet the Robinsons,” two 3-D showings grossed more than $101,000 during its run, while a single 2-D screening in the same multiplex grossed about $21,000 for the same period, according to Variety. “It certainly delivers an audience and can invigorate the exhibition industry,” Johnson told the audience, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Katzenberg said his firm is investing heavily in 3-D through higher production costs that run about $15 million per film. He’s hoping there will be 6,000 3-D screens in the country by March 2009 when Dreamworks releases ‘Monsters vs. Aliens,’ the Hollywood Reporter said.
 James Kilts, �74,is hailed as “one of the most successful corporate CEOs of our time,” in a November 15 article in the Chicago Sun-Times. Kilts has written a new book called Doing What Matters: How to Get Results That Make a Difference–The Revolutionary Old-School Approach, which the newspaper hailed as “an insightful account of how to manage in today’s global business” and a “must-read for anyone who wants to achieve in business. Students seeking a business career should devour it. Young managers should take it to heart. Mid-level and senior executives should use it to benchmark their own performance.” Kilts has held executive positions at Nabisco, Gillette, Kraft, and General Foods. But his career nearly stalled at the start when, as a Chicago-based materials manager, he failed to order enough cartons to keep the Kool-Aid plant running, the article said. Warned by a plant manager that he might be fired, “Kilts did what mattered,” the article said. “He called his supplier, rolled up his sleeves, and unloaded a truck of cartons that night. The line kept running, and Kilts kept his job.”
 At a time when the stock market can rise or fall based on the latest words of a Federal Reserve official, William Poole, MBA �63, PhD �66,president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, is not afraid to speak out. An October 29 article in the Wall Street Journal said Poole “stands out as a maverick” and is “known for making off-the-cuff, market-moving remarks about the economy—including one in August that the Fed could wait until the next month to move on interest rates, barring a ‘calamity.’” That comment sent stocks down, but two days later the Fed lowered the separate discount rate, and stocks surged. Poole told the Journal it’s important “to convey information to the market, but at the same time not to be a loose cannon, not to be a random disturbance. I’ve concentrated on trying to improve market understanding of the policy process.” Poole has let his own policy stances be known: “Mr. Poole has played a role in pushing the Fed toward loosening,” the article said. “He was recently ahead of colleagues in arguing that the risks to the economy were shifting away from inflation to a more equal balance between risks on the growth and inflation fronts.” In addition, Poole “is adamant in public statements that investors should pay the price for bad bets,” the article said. And according to Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, a St. Louis forecaster, Poole’s speeches “moved the bond market last year more than those by any other Fed official except (Ben) Bernanke,” the article said.
 Russell Read, AB �84, MBA �87,chief investment officer of Calpers, has been appointed by the Bush administration to help create guidelines for best practices for hedge funds. Read will chair a committee of investors. A September 26 article in the Financial Times said that the appointment by the president’s working group on financial markets was made “to formulate a private sector-led response to concerns about the activities of hedge funds and avoid potentially draconian regulations.” The article said Read’s position with Calpers is “regarded as one of the most influential jobs in U.S. capital markets.” Read also was mentioned in an October 29 article in the Wall Street Journal about climbing pay for pension fund runners. Read could earn as much as $971,880 this year if he receives the maximum bonus, Calpers told the newspaper.
 After 20 years in strategic planning, marketing, and sales roles around the world, Sarah Richardson, �87,started her own consultancy in Perth, Australia, in 2004. “What I like about running my own business is that you get to do very similar work [as you do working for corporations] but across a number of different industries and different clients. I like the client contact and the flexibility of being my own boss,” Richardson said in a September 27 article in Western Australian Business News. The article described a study by researchers from Murdoch University Business School, Bond University, and Oregon State University that showed self-employed business owners are happier than salary-earning counterparts, with higher levels of life and job satisfaction. Richardson said the survey findings agreed with her own experience and what she knew of others’ through her work as a consultant to small- and medium-sized business owners, the article said.
 Jill Smart, �91 (XP-60),was named to the 2007 HR honor roll of Human Resource Executive. The online magazine said, “With a unique perspective and a full measure of motivation, Smart has changed the way HR works at Accenture,” where she is chief human resources officer. Smart spent 20 years at the firm as a consultant working with clients in the financial services, government, transportation, and health services industries before she was tapped by the CEO to take on the top HR post. Since 2000, she has established “more global and diversified training programs to match the expansion and diversity of the company,” among many other accomplishments, the magazine noted. “HR is absolutely a business partner at Accenture now,” Smart said.
 The unusual first name of Shundrawn Thomas, �99, is far from his only uniqueness, said a November 5 profile of him in Crain’s Chicago Business. Thomas, head of corporate strategy for Chicago-based Northern Trust Corp., is building a new South Side church and has written three books on Christian themes. Thomas joined Northern Trust in 2004, having worked at Goldman Sachs Group in Chicago and Morgan Stanley in New York. “What’s vaulted Mr. Thomas is a keen and charismatic intellect, high level of energy, and willingness to question conventional wisdom, says John Mooore, principal at William Blair & Co. and Mr. Thomas’s mentor when both were at Goldman Sachs,” Crain’s said.
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CEO Watch
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Making Headlines
 Jim Neal, �83
CEO
The Agema Group
Neal plans on challenging U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole in 2008. One thing that can help his campaign is that Neal knows how to raise funds, according to an October 5 article in the (Raleigh) News Observer. Neal took a year off from work in 2006 to raise money for the presidential campaigns of General Wesley Clark and U.S. Senator John Kerry, the article said. Neal plans to take another year off to raise funds to challenge Dole. “I’m looking forward to introducing myself to the electorate,” he told the News Observer. “I don’t have any name recognition, so I’m going to spend the next year winning the confidence of the people of North Carolina.” Neal, who is openly gay, worked at Goldman Sachs, but told the (Greensboro) News-Record that being a father was “the most important job I’ve ever had in my life.”
 Brian Posner, �87
CEO and Co-chief Investment Officer
ClearBridge Advisors (now part of Legg Mason)
Posner still uses the lessons learned in the stock market crash of 1987, he told the Wall Street Journal in October. Posner had worked at Fidelity Investments as a financial services advisor for only five months when the crash occurred. “One of the lessons at the time—and it’s questionable whether or not it’s been learned—is that there’s no free lunch,” he told the Journal. While portfolio insurance was seen at the time as a way to protect institutional, Posner said it exacerbated the crash 20 years ago. “Like with most silver bullets, there were some fatal flaws,” he said.
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Taking the Lead
Brent Willis, �91 (XP-60)
CEO
Cott
Based in Toronto, the beverage firm makes RC Cola as well as several sports drinks, juices, teas, and bottled waters.
Jorge Bautista, �06 (EXP-11)
CEO
ING Car Lease Spain
Bautista has been promoted from deputy general manager. Based in Madrid, the company was launched about eight years ago and now runs a fleet of nearly 15,000 cars with a staff of about 100 employees. It is owned by the Dutch financial institution ING.
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Submit information about yourself or fellow
alumni to editor@ChicagoGSB.edu.
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