Throughout the first year of the MBA Program, my classmates and I get a chance to participate in leadership activities and receive academic credit as a result.  A total of 12 points are required for academic credit and can be attained from a large menu of activities offered through Kenan-Flagler’s Leadership Initiative.  The first points towards the Leadership credit are gained during First Year Orientation by completing the Pre-MBA Assessment and Workshop.
Regular classes were canceled on Friday, November 6th so that First Year MBAs could participate in Leadership Day.  The morning kicked-off with “Lessons of Experience” talks from successful Kenan-Flagler alums.  The speakers included Fred McCoy, Vice Chairman, Synecor and former President, Guidant Cardiac Rhythm Management; Keith Pigues, SVP & CMO, Ply Gem; and Mick Hawk, President, Bonton, who was just honored by Kenan-Flagler with a Global Leadership Award, which honors an alumnus, alumna or friend of the school whose global participation and initiative advance the school’s education, research and public service mission.  I attended the talk by Mick Hawk, who is currently President of Bonton, a major Czech media company with holdings including Bontonfilm, a.s., which is a movie-distributing company, and Bonton Home Entertainment.  Mick’s talk was very inspirational (especially to students like me who are particularly interested in the media and entertainment industry) and a lot of fun.  He shared incredible stories about joining Bonton in Prague when he spoke no Czech and when the company only had 3 employees.  The person who recruited Mick to Bonton in Prague was a UNC Kenan-Flagler professor, and Mick has been there ever since!
The afternoon of Leadership Day was spent in small teams working on a Diagnosing & Leading Change Simulation.  The online simulation provided us with an interactive way to think about how to implement change, something all successful leaders must be able to achieve.  We all received reading material a week before Leadership Day in order to prepare for the online simulation.  The materials included readings on theories regarding managing organizational change as well as a “Player’s Guide” for the simulation.  The “Player’s Guide” included a case study on GlobalTech, a fictitious company which provided us with a snapshot of a company at a critical time in a particular industry.  The case study also included interviews with key executives at GlobalTech who all had differing opinions of the company’s strategy going forward and different attitudes regarding potential change in the organization.  It was our group’s job to build and implement a change plan for GlobalTech by utilizing a series of tactics to bring about change within the organization.  After implementing each tactic, each Kenan-Flagler team was able to see how that particular tactic influenced the receptiveness of each GlobalTech’s employee to change initiatives.  My team was particularly nervous when we required the GlobalTech employees to attend a team building exercise.  When we hit “submit,” the online simulation played a video showing GlobalTech employees running out of their corporate headquarters.  We were sure that we had made a terrible mistake and that the employees were fleeing the building in protest.  We were happy to see, however, that the employees were soon throwing Frisbees and playing games with each other (the simulation’s way of illustrating team-building activities, I presume).
I was really impressed with Leadership Day and thoroughly enjoyed myself.  Mindy Storrie, Director of Leadership Development and Peter Romanella, Associate Director of Leadership Development are hard at work on the early stages of planning the Spring Leadership Day.  In fact, they asked participants of the Fall Leadership Day for feedback on what worked best, and to solicit ideas of what they might do differently in the future.  This is a real testament to the involvement students have in our curriculum and activities at Kenan-Flagler.
Nick Bradham

Class of ‘11

One of Kenan-Flagler’s greatest attributes is the opportunity available to students outside of the classroom to apply lessons learned through projects and homework assignments. This year, Kenan-Flagler has added a new program: Non Profit Board Fellows. The six month stint allows 1st and 2nd years the chance to work with a non profit organization in the area with the end goal of providing key insight and problem solving skills that will contribute to the overall mission.

On October 31st, over twenty Kenan-Flagler students came together for a daylong seminar, which included non profit board meeting simulations and solution-based analytical skills training. By the end of the afternoon, each of us felt more prepared to tackle problems specific to a 501C3 and bring a fresh perspective to a dedicated organization. The application process included a written essay portion and an interview round in front of the project leaders and Associate Dean. Within a few short days, 8 local non-profits were assigned two MBAs for the duration of the academic year.

On November 6, Jacob Wheeler, a 1st year student pursuing a concentration in Finance, and I attended our first preliminary meeting with the Make-a-Wish Foundation of Eastern NC. Neither Jacob nor I knew what to expect leading up to the meeting, but our trip back to Chapel Hill was full of idea generation and anticipation of the months to come. We are charged with increasing the market presence of the organization and developing a quantitative metric to measure the results of marketing efforts.

To most, this project might seem ambiguous or even unimportant. However, what most of us fail to recognize is the overall value and necessity of the aforementioned strategic planning. Every business in operation requires a careful evaluation of marketing efforts. But the efficiency of that evaluation is rooted in the ability to track success and measure progress. Ironically, we have heard similar statements repeated or restated in different terms throughout our more qualitative Mod II. However, with Non Profit Board Fellows, we have been given the rare opportunity to channel those ideas into a real life problem-solving scenario with enormous significance. Armed with knowledge and skills from the classroom, the first set of Board Fellows look forward to learning from and contributing to the passionate teams working for life-changing causes.

Parker S.Wilson
Class of  ‘11

Wow, this is a great event. I’m a naturally optimistic guy and can pretty much find the good in anything, but I’m really impressed with this conference. Here are a few statistics on my last two days at the Urban Land Institute expo in San Francisco:

8 – Great sessions I’ve attended

1 – Bummer sessions I’ve attended

3 – Absolutely delicious tacos I ate at a little Mexican place on Wednesday (cilantro is way under appreciated!)

14 – business cards received/relationships started

22 – pages of notes

6 – homeless guys sleeping on the sidewalks

1 – botanical gardens visited while playing hooky from a session

Before I came to school I had aspirations of downtown redevelopment with an emphasis on some kind of green building / sustainable development or whatever. I didn’t really have a great understanding of what all that meant, but had a feeling and some big ideas. At school we’ll be starting our real estate classes during Mod III so I haven’t had much exposure to the industry other than the brown bag lunch seminars that the real estate club has put on. But, we’ve got a great Net Impact chapter driving the school’s sustainability goals and some of the second year students that I’ve talked with have worked in downtown development. Now I come here and realize that downtown infill and sustainable development truly are a part of the national conversation about real estate! Just about every panel discussion or lecture that I attend discusses these factors even if the topic of the discussion isn’t explicitly either one.

This tells me two things: 1) there is a lot of great stuff going on in this country in the areas where I’m interested and 2) Kenan-Flagler really gets it. In addition to the real estate club, we’ve got the Center for Real Estate Development and the Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the Kenan Institute. My colleagues are fired up about taking care of the earth via the built environment and the school is helping to expose me to the issues, skills and people I need to be successful.

One of the most interesting sessions I attended was this morning. It was an Advisory Service Project Analysis on the Old Spanish Trail in Houston. This wasn’t really a marquee event for people to attend, but it was by far the most educational for me. The program worked like this: Paul Charles, the executive director for the Neighborhood Recovery Community Development Corporation (how’s that for a name) has five different potential projects on which he wants some feedback. His community development group is trying to lead the regeneration of a 4 mile stretch of road in Houston. To provide him some great perspective, ULI puts together a forum with seven other real estate professionals. Paul explains the situation, asks some questions and gets some advice. What was most helpful for me was twofold. First, it was interesting to see a deep dive discussion on a downtown redevelopment project highlighting some of the progress they’ve made (it’s taken 2 years already) and some of the challenges they’ve run into (for example, there are a handful of motels that rent rooms by the hour). Secondly, I got the inside look at how developers analyze/scrutinize a project. They are curious about obvious things like traffic counts, speed limits, nearby employers and such, but the other stuff that I learned that wasn’t obvious was even more illuminating. They wanted to know what kind of board of directors the development group had, how much and where their funding came from, if the corridor acts as a divider or uniter of the different neighborhoods. It’s interesting stuff that drives me to think more comprehensively about all the players involved in a project and all the impacts that it has on the community.

It’s been a tremendous two days and we’ve got another half day left to go.

Jeremy Bergwerff

2011

PS One of the photos is of a group of us eating lunch the first day. I don’t even remember the name of the restaurant, but it was great. The other photo is Bill Emmott, former editor and chief of The Economist, speaking on Wednesday night about the state of the world economy. He had an interesting take on things coming from a British perspective. It’s good for us to hear things about how the US is just one piece of the puzzle when I think it’s so easy to stay ethnocentrically focused and think we’re the only piece of the puzzle.

I’m part of the Real Estate club at UNC Kenan-Flagler, and one of the things that the club spearheads throughout the year are trips to various industry events around the country. There was a career trek to New York over the fall break between Mod I and Mod II and now there are 25 of us heading to San Francisco for the Urban Land Institute’s fall land expo. I’m pretty excited about this. It’s a four-day event, but the first day is really just meetings for the committee members. Wednesday through Friday are several lectures and workshops that we’ll be attending while staffing a booth to promote Kenan-Flagler’s real estate program.
In addition to several academics and real estate professionals, we’ll have the opportunity to hear from Adrian Fenty, Mayor of Washington DC; Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco and Bill Emmott, former editor-in-chief of The Economist, will be giving the keynote address. There are two main types of sessions during the conference: Real Estate Academy educational talks and Market Trend discussions. Most of what I’ll be going to are the educational workshops since I’m still new at this. But I’ll be hitting a couple of the market trend talks as well. In fact, one of Kenan-Flagler’s own, James Johnson, director of the Urban Investment Strategies Center will be discussing “The Demographics of the Next Decade: Pent Up Demand is Building – How will the world be different after the downturn?”
I’m really interested in attending the expo for two main reasons. Primarily, the education I’ll be getting from attending these lectures and hearing about the industry from it’s movers and shakers. Secondarily, I’m looking forward to meeting more people in the industry. I’m considering going back to Michigan after I’m done with school, so I want to continue to develop my network with that geographic focus but still with a broad view. To do so I scoured the attendee list for the conference and made contact with a handful of people I was interested in meeting and made some contacts. I know it’s just informal meetings, but honestly, I had been a little anxious since I have felt like every interaction with someone outside of business school had to be official “networking” and like I was unofficially looking for a job. But, if you’ll recall my post from a week ago, Roy Cowell gave us some excellent perspective and that really took the pressure off.
I won’t be arriving until close to 11pm local time tonight and then I have to be at the Kenan-Flagler table tomorrow right away at 8am, so it will be a short night. But really, after cramming in all the homework that I had to do in advance of this trip; I think tonight will be the most sleep I’ll have gotten in a week.
Jeremy Bergwerff

Class of ‘11

As a student at Kenan-Flagler you are part of one of eight legacies. The legacies are groups named after faculty who had a significant impact on the school. You could be a part of Zeithaml, Berhman, Fulton, Dearborn, Levin, Evans, Rizzo or Tillman. Besides taking your core classes with your legacy you also participate in the Legacy Cup. The mission of Legacy Cup is to strengthen the sense of community and tradition among MBA students during their two years at UNC Kenan-Flagler by participating in friendly competition and community service events held throughout the year.
This past month the Legacy Cup events were Bowling and Community Service Day. Early on Saturday morning (also a National Day to Help Others) members of all legacies met in the café for breakfast and then split up and went to help out ten different organizations including Union Independent School, A Helping Hand, Habitat for Humanity and the North Carolina Therapeutic Riding Center. You earned points for your legacy by joining in the event and got to feel great about helping out at the same time. I spent my morning at the Union Independent School with kindergarteners, first and second graders. We played games, drew pictures and talked to them about why it is important to help others.
On Sunday evening we all took a break from studying and met up at the AMF Durham Bowling Lanes to compete for the top score. I’m a terrible bowler so I stood on the sidelines and cheered my legacy bowling team on. It was a great time and a wonderful way to end the weekend. As I watched my team take first place I looked around and saw so many things that I believe make Kenan-Flagler what it is. Even though we were competing for the top score all the students were laughing and enjoying each other’s company. We had a lot of work at home to finish up later in the evening but the students came out to support their legacy. The sense of community that we value at Kenan-Flagler was very prevalent that evening.
Teamwork, community, integrity, excellence and leadership are the core values that the Kenan-Flagler community lives by. And they are not just words on a plaque. All you have to do is walk the business school halls or hang out with the students as they try to win the Legacy Cup and you will see each and every one of those values in action.

Janet Bowler

Class of ‘11

On  Oct. 30th, Brett Carter, the President of Duke Energy – Carolinas, visited UNC Kenan-Flagler for a discussion with MBA candidates around Duke Energy’s role regarding climate change.
Carter was an excellent presenter, and while I disagree with some of his positions, he guided the conversation in an incredibly skilled, productive manner.
Before digging into Duke Energy’s strategies to mitigate climate change, he raised the question, “How do we define energy independence?”  One student proposed that it means the ability for America to generate all of its energy within its own borders.  Another student expanded the definition to mean the freedom to generate energy.  To me, the second definition is a more plausible scenario; however, it sounds more like energy security than energy independence.   With this in mind, perhaps energy independence misses the boat, and we should reframe the discussion around energy security.
Carter also raised the question around climate change, and specifically, humanity’s contribution to climate change.  He polled the group whether or not we thought climate change was part of a natural global heating trend.  No one raised their hands, introducing a little tension into the room.  The awkwardness was eased a bit when one student commented that climate change could be caused in part by humanity and in part by a natural heating trend.  Following this, Carter commented that humanity was most likely contributing to climate change, but it was difficult to decipher exactly how much.
On this final point, I disagree with Carter.  Humans are the primary contributor to climate change, not a natural heating trend.  While we may not know exactly how much, it hurts the world’s ability to curtail global warming when introducing doubt regarding humanity’s impact into the equation.  Just last night, I attended a lecture by a Nobel Prize winning scientist, who depicted the causal relationship between carbon dioxide and climate change with the support of reams of evidence.  Carbon dioxide is the 800 lb greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and it is clear that humanity is well on track to double, and most likely triple the content of CO2 content in the atmosphere before industrialization.
Duke Energy’s primary driver remains the provision of cheap energy.  And this is exactly what they are supposed to do.  First and foremost, today’s presentation reminded me that changing the world’s  carbon orientation must begin with policy, and that policy must include all countries.
On a related note to this final point:  In a presentation earlier this week, Kristel Dorion of ENERGETIX mentioned a course on systems thinking taught by Drew Jones.  During the course, students are asked to represent different nations and build a protocol for mitigating climate change.  When played out, the scenarios demonstrates that countries categorically underestimate the size and speed of the actions they need to take.  Professor Jones has been recruited by the United Nations to inform international climate policy.  Not only is UNC part of the climate conversation, we are directly impacting it.  Pretty cool stuff.

Joel Thomas

Class of  ‘11

Saturday had some beautiful weather. It started off a bit cool, but by the time the sun had a chance to do its work, we felt quite comfortable in shorts and t-shirts…on the last day of October. Where I’m from (Michigan), October is usually frost in the morning and a good jacket most of the day, so this is definitely a change of pace. It’s got some positives and negatives though. It’s great to see the changing of the seasons and not have to be bundled up, but at the same time, when you’re accustomed to the cold, it feels like you’re missing a little something when the leaves are red/yellow/orange but you’re still in sandals. Missing something or not, it was still a beautiful day.

The MBA families club organized a day at Ganyard Hill Farm compete with a hay ride, pumpkin patch, corn maze, animals to pet…the whole bit. For Amy and I, it was a nice reminder of home. We’ve got several farms and apple orchards that we have had the opportunity to visit each fall. Admittedly, we did this before we had kids. But now that we’ve got kids, it just adds to the fun. Seriously, it’s pretty cute to see these little kids (yours or otherwise) squeal with excitement when a goat licks their hand or eats some cornhusk right from them (don’t worry, they have hand sanitizer right near by).

In addition to seeing your kids have fun, kids also provide an instant medium for conversation. We’ve got just under 300 students in the class of 2011 so I have not had a chance to meet everyone, much less the second year students, but these types of low key social events are great opportunities for conversation. I’ve talked to my classmate Shahid Murtuza a handful of times, but Saturday I had a chance to meet a few second years and my wife made some new connections with the wives of some second year students. It’s great to have other families to talk with and realize your families seem to be experiencing some of the same things. Shahid and I both have an older daughter and a younger son and it’s interesting to see so many similarities in how they interact.

All in all, Ganyards was pretty fun. It was a bit pricy, but we got a partial admission subsidy from the families club budget, so that was nice. We had a fun time, met a handful of other families and even got to pick out a pumpkin as we left.

Happy Fall!

Jeremy Bergwerff

UNC  Kenan-Flagler Business School recently orchestrated and hosted the 8th Net Impact Careers in Sustainability Forum. The event was a resounding success. I  attended a fascinating dialogue between representatives from Duke Energy (large utility), Enernoc (Demand Response Organization), Sensus (Smart Metering), Southern Energy Management (renewable energy provider) and Sencera (solar start-up). As one might imagine, these diverse perspectives contributed to a discussion that exposed the complexities of moving forward into a clean energy economy. Here are some of the highlights:

1)    Policy: Good or Bad? From the Enernoc, Sencera, and Southern Energy Management side, government subsidies play a crucial role in helping young companies get off the ground. Burgeoning renewable technologies often need financial assistance in order to compete with the status quo, i.e. coal, nuclear, and natural gas. However, from Duke Energy’s perspective, regulation can also pose problems with their own efforts to move towards renewable energy. Traditionally, utilities are mandated by regulating bodies to provide, cheap, reliable, abundant electricity. This is a standard that has been enforced with us, the consumer, in mind. However, this same mandate prevents utilities from expending any type of significant capital in pursuing renewable energy projects that may cause increases in rates. The recurring question thus became, how much are we, the consumers, willing to pay for clean energy?
2)    How is the economy affecting the clean energy industry? The representative from Sencera noted that the current economic climate has made the solar industry particularly challenging to compete in. Credit illiquidity and price reductions in solar panels are the two main contributors to this struggle. Enernoc depends on high energy usage which correlates with strong economic growth, in order to manage peak energy demand for utilities. The representative noted that the reduction in demand for energy has also reduced some of Enernoc’s business for demand response. However, he also mentioned that Enernoc is expanding further into energy efficiency with software and consulting services, which are in higher demand.
3)    Where are the jobs? All the panelists noted that their respective companies were actively hiring, indicating that the industry is moving in a positive direction. All of the representatives concurred that the energy efficiency and energy metering (smart grid) technologies were the fastest growing opportunities. This makes sense because energy efficiency measures have long been touted as the “low hanging fruit” of energy cost savings and carbon reduction.
For more information about UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and its involvement with Net Impact and other sustainability related initiatives visit: http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/cse/index.cfm.
Rory Huntly
MBA Classof ‘11

Last Friday was my third Career Forum. I’m not an alum called back to talk about my career path, nor a dual degree MBA student, but a staff member at Kenan-Flagler in the Center for Sustainable Enterprise. As an old hand at this, I must confess that I was blown away by the level and depth of discussion the Green Building panel of 7 was able to delve into in the hour and 20 set aside. Following is a snapshot of participants:
•         Lynn Fisher, moderator, associate professor of real estate at Kenan-Flagler Business School
•    Jessica Halvorsen (UNC MBA ’07, Duke MEM ’07), Bank of America, VP in BofA’s Corporate Workplace Sustainability Team
•    Annie Lux (MBA/MRP ’07), Pulte Homes, Strategic Marketing Manager for the southeast region
•    Gordon Merklein, Executive Director of Real Estate Development, UNC
•    Allison Moy (MBA ’07) Greenfire Development, Development Associate
•    Jonathan Philips, Managing Principal of Anka Funds and General Partner of Cherokee Investment Partners
•    Brad Wood  (MBA ’04), Progress Energy, Sr. Program Specialist
Here are my top take-aways  from the panel:
Internships and connections made during the MBA career search all have significant impact on where people land.   Jobs in this space have evolved to require both whole systems thinking as well as specialization in order to be successful
Trends from each panelist:
a.       Gordon – The US Green Building Council and LEED are refining themselves. You now see communities adopting green strategies as code. Institutions, like UNC, are committing to sustainable green building practices, and investors are starting to look beyond 10 year cash flow positions to what is sustainable for a development.
b.      Annie – During the real estate boom, green wasn’t big except in the top 5% of the wealth market who were willing to pay. Builders found that with very few changes, something could truly be green and that created a differentiated space when the squeeze hit – energy efficiencies allowed builders to compete on green standards. Up next, will be marketing and educating to general consumers on the higher quality and longer-term cost effectiveness of green standards.
c.       Jessica – Operations will take a bigger role with sustainability becoming less about building new LEED-level structures and more about retrofits and obtaining efficiencies in existing spaces.
d.      Allison – Green building has forced people to a convergence ponit.  Cities and municipalities are now giving incentives for sustainable buildings. Changes in building codes have allowed new sectors to look at green building, bringing historic codes, building codes and environmental considerations together.
e.      Jonathan – 1.) You hear about Echo-boomers moving to city centers and vacating suburbs – is it really true? Keep your eye on this. 2.) Making homes cost effective, aesthetically pleasing and with convenience. 3.) Green finance: the next step to take is for the lending industry to view green standards and sustainability as a profit center rather than something to be tolerated for the time being.
f.        Brad – The grid will have to experience significant change to address what is coming: increased capital costs, increased population, volatility of the market, huge increase in electricity demand. Energy efficiency is where it is AT right now.
My greatest complaint is that an hour and 20 minutes wasn’t nearly enough time to further explore some ideas like green finance, stimulus money and code revisions. Kudos to Net Impact for putting together a great group and the bar is sitting pretty high for next year’s event!
Tracy Triggs-Matthews

Center for Sustainable Enterprise

On Friday, October 23, KFBS hosted the 8th Annual Careers in Sustainability Forum.  The forum consisted of a series of panels around numerous types of functional roles in the world of sustainability.  Each panel consisted of roughly six practitioners.  The roles covered by panels included:
•    Renewable Energy
•    Green Building
•    Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital
•    Sustainabiltiy Consulting
•    Corporate Social Responsibility
It was especially encouraging to see that individuals can impact environmental and social bottom lines in a host of different roles.  In other words, it is possible to get the type of job you want, and have it be sustainably focused too.  This is a hopeful proposition for anyone entering the sustainability focused.

Joel Thomas (Class of ‘11)