MBA Alumni Business Conference Speakers
Keynote Address
Peter Zandan, Ph.D, Senior Advisor, Public Strategies, Inc.
Topic: Keynote Address - Aligning Business and Public Interests: How Business Leadership Will Need to Bridge the Gap in the 21st Century
Bio:
Peter Zandan is a Senior Advisor at Public Strategies, Inc.
and provides strategic counsel to corporate clients.
Prior to joining Public Strategies, Zandan founded IntelliQuest, and
served as the Chairman and CEO for 15 years. IntelliQuest was the fastest
growing market research company worldwide through the 1990s as it provided
new product marketing and database services to corporations such as
Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. Under Zandan's leadership,
IntelliQuest grew to 500 employees with offices in Austin, Silicon Valley,
New York and London. He took the company public in 1996 on the NASDAQ
exchange (IQST), and sold to W.P.P in 1999. Zandan also founded Zilliant,
which is funded by JP Morgan, Austin Ventures, Cardinal Venture Capital,
Trellis Partners and ABS Ventures.
Zandan earned his M.B.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin,
where he serves as a faculty member for the McCombs Graduate School
of Business. He also is a member of the University's Business Advisory
Council.
Zandan was named one of the 25 Unsung Heroes of the Internet by Interactive
Week and received Ernst and Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award for
his work at IntelliQuest. He also continues active involvement in several
venture-capital-backed technology businesses.
Faculty Speakers
John Butler, Ph.D., Director of H.K. Entrepreneurship
Center & Professor, Department of Management
Topic:
Job and Wealth Creation Through Entrepreneurship,
Growth, and Renewal
Dr. Butler will provide an overview of entrepreneurship
at The University of Texas at Austin today, including: the mission,
definition, framework, and management.
Bio:
John Sibley Butler is the Director of the Herb
Kelleher Center for Entrepreneurship Growth and Renewal and the IC2
Institute. He has published extensively in the area of organizational
behavior and new venture development. He has also been active in new
venture development, helping to bring to the market new technologies.
He is Professor of Management at The University of Texas at Austin.
Thomas J. Darwin, Ph.D., Director Professional Development
and Community Engagement, The Graduate School
Topic: Beyond “Don’t Do That”:
Ethics, Innovation
and Productivity
Bio:
Thomas is Director of Community Partnerships at the University
of Texas at Austin. A published researcher in the field of communication,
he has more than ten years’ experience teaching and consulting with
businesses and non-profits in the areas of entrepreneurship, innovation,
communication, and ethics.
John Daly, Ph.D., Professor, College of Communication
Topic: Influence and Advocacy
Bio:
Dr. Daly teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on topics
such as Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Behavior, Advocacy
and Persuasion. He has won eleven different teaching awards while at
the University of Texas. He also instructs programs on advocacy, customer
service, communication, teamwork, sales management and leadership for
Texas Executive Education and the Executive MBA programs of the McCombs
School of Business. He has published more than one hundred scholarly
articles and completed six academic books. He has served as President
of the National Communication Association, and on the Board of Directors
of the International Communication Association and the International
Customer Service Association. He is one of less than 50 scholars in
the world who is a Fellow of the International Communication Association.
Fellows are recognized for their major scholarly contributions.
Dr. Daly has worked with more than 300 public agencies and private organizations
around the world in consulting, training and speaking roles. He has
worked on customer service related topics with Apple Computer, Newell-Rubbermaid,
ISS, Zachry, Marriott, Consolidated Edison, State Farm, Trammell Crow,
3M, Halliburton, La Quinta, Alcon, Dun and Bradstreet, The Boston Financial
Group and Continental Airlines, among others. On communication-related
topics (e.g., advocacy, leadership, team-building, and sales), some
of the companies has worked with are: Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman
Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Roche, Pfizer, Bayer, Astra-Zeneca, State Farm,
Essilor, Union Pacific, Centex, LG, Kraft, IBM, BP-AMOCO, PetroChina,
CNOOC, Shell, Halliburton, AGIP, Merck, AT&T, Telcordia, Ryder, BellSouth,
Home Depot, Texas Instruments, UPS, FedEx-Kinkos, EDS, McCarthy, American
Airlines, 3M, Novell, Frito-Lay, Dell Computers, AT&T, Prudential and
Samsung.
In the governmental arena, Dr. Daly has worked with the White House
(Executive Office of the President) designing and implementing a major
customer service initiative as well as with numerous Federal, State,
and local government units throughout the United States.
Doug Dierking, Ph.D.,
Senior Lecturer, Department of Management
Topic:
Balancing Individual and Management Responsibilities
In today’s
lean business environment it is often difficult for managers to find
and maintain an effective balance between their own specific responsibilities
and those related to the management of their direct reports. To be most
effective, managers must be able to delegate effectively to both accomplish
their unit’s objectives and to grow their direct reports. Managers must
learn to lead and manage in a sustainable manner, neither burning out
themselves or their direct reports. This means using strategies and
tools which develop and maintain a culture conducive to consistently
accomplishing the mission of the organization and the retaining valuable
employees. This session will focus on how to develop and apply these
tools and strategies.
Bio:
Dr. Dierking is a Lecturer as well as Internship Coordinator
and Undergraduate Faculty Advisor in the Management Department at the
McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin. At the
graduate level, he teaches courses in negotiation, managing people,
and in leadership. At the Undergraduate level, he teaches courses in
consulting & change management, strategic human resources and honors
organizational behavior. He has been teaching at the university for
over ten years. Additionally, Dr. Dierking has developed and delivered
Executive Education programs worldwide for Royal Dutch Shell in the
area of leading effective project teams.
For over twenty-five years, Dr. Dierking maintained a private consulting
practice providing executive coaching, management consultation, organizational
design & development, negotiation training, team building, leadership
and employee development services to a wide variety of technology, manufacturing
and service organizations. During that time he worked on projects for
Texas Instruments, Dell Computer, Motorola, Compaq (Hewlett Packard),
Emerson Electric (Fisher-Rosemount), Lower Colorado River Authority
and Capital Metropolitan Transit Authority as well as numerous smaller
organizations.
Dr. Dierking currently serves on the Board of Directors of a large non-profit
organization (past president) and has served on several community boards.
Janet Dukerich, Ph.D., Sr. Associate Dean & Professor, Department
of Management
Topic:
How Leaders Affect Culture
Culture is the shared, taken-for-granted
implicit assumptions that a group holds and that determines how it perceives,
thinks about, and reacts to its various environments. It reflects basic
values and distinguishes the organization from others. It makes the
organization unique. It is the tradition of the organization and is
the foundation for management practices. Culture influences how committed
people are to their organization, how information is shared, and people’s
willingness to speak up. Leaders play a large role in shaping the organization’s
culture through their shared vision and through their actions. Who is
selected in the organization, how they are socialized, and how they
are rewarded, affect the culture of the organization. Effective leaders
shape their organization’s culture through these practices and by their
symbolic actions.
Bio:
Professor Dukerich received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior
from the University of Minnesota. Her current research interests focus
on organizational identification processes, the creation and maintenance
of organizational identity, reputation management, and corruption control
processes in organizations. She has published papers in Administrative
Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Organizational Behavior
and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Business Ethics, and
Human Relations. Professor Dukerich is a member of the editorial board
for Corporate Reputation Review and Journal of Management Inquiry. She
was awarded the Academy of Management Journal Best Paper Award for 1992
with Professor Jane Dutton for their research on the Port Authority
and homelessness. She also received an Administrative Science Quarterly
Award for Scholarly Achievement (with Jane Dutton and CV Harquail) in
2000. In 2003 she was awarded the Fawn & Vijay Mahajan Teaching Excellence
Award for Executive Education.
Dean Gau,
Ph.D., Dean, McCombs School of Business
Dean Gau will provide a school update and answer questions during the Friday luncheon
Bio:
In June, 2002 George Gau became the ninth dean of the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin, one of the largest business schools in the nation. He is responsible for leading a school with nine academic programs enrolling approximately 6,200 students taught by 170 faculty and supported by 300 staff with an annual budget of $68 million. As dean he developed with the school’s constituents a new strategic plan for the school entitled “Leading in the 21st Century” that was adopted in October, 2003. Implementing that plan, he significantly expanded the school’s budget and raised funds for the hiring of twenty-five faculty over the past three academic years. He oversaw a major reorganization of career services in the school and established a new development operation to manage the school’s corporate relationships. In addition, he created a new MBA diversity initiative, “Jump Start”, in partnership with eight leading companies and a new executive MBA program in Houston. He is presently raising funds for a new $120 million executive education and conference center that is currently under construction with expected completion during the summer of 2008.
Dr. Gau holds the Centennial Chair in Business Education Leadership as well as two professorships, the George S. Watson Centennial Professorship in Real Estate and the J. Ludwig Mosle Centennial Memorial Professorship in Investments and Money Management. He received his Ph.D. in finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an award-winning teacher and recognized scholar in the field of real estate finance, authoring over forty publications in leading real estate and finance journals. He is a past president of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association and a past fellow of the Urban Land Institute.
Prior to becoming dean, Professor Gau served for ten years as Chairman of the Finance Department in the McCombs School. He has also held academic positions at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and the University of Oklahoma. He has been a visiting professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong, National University of Singapore, and DePaul University in Chicago.
Dr. Gau is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Brazos Mutual Funds. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Guaranty Preferred Capital Corporation II, the American Association of Individual Investors and The MBA Investment Fund, L.L.C. Prior to becoming dean, Professor Gau served as a real estate consultant to a number of government agencies and private corporations as well as an expert witness in major real estate and financial litigation.
Pam Haunschild, Ph.D., Department Chair & Professor, Department of
Management
Topic:
Creating and Managing Effective Teams
There is substantial
evidence that the effective use of teams in organizations can contribute
to increased productivity, employee satisfaction, and other important
outcomes. Yet the processes through which teams can be effectively created
and managed is not clear, and many examples of poorly-run teams exist.
In this session, we will use a team exercise to examine the factors
that have been shown to lead to effectiveness – including useful ways
of managing team conflict and dealing with difficult team members, increasing
commitment to the team, effective decision making and information sharing,
and developing member accountability.
Bio:
Pamela R. Haunschild is the Herbert Kelleher/MCorp Regents Professor
of Business and Chair, Department of Management at the McCombs School
of Business, University of Texas at Austin. She received her PhD in
December of 1992 from Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to joining UT,
she was on the faculty of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford
University. Dr. Haunschild’s research involves studying organizational
(and inter-organizational) learning processes, especially how and under
what circumstances organizations learn from their “errors” or “mistakes.”
She has recently published papers related to airlines learning from
their accidents and automotive firms learning from their product recalls.
She is also interested in issues related to networks and corporate governance,
and how governance decisions are affected by network information and
influence. Her work in these areas has been published by several journals,
including Administrative Science Quarterly, Industrial and Corporate
Change, and Organization Science. Her awards include a Fulbright Distinguished
Chair in Corporate Governance, the Best Paper Award from the Academy
of Management, and the Louis R. Pondy Award for Best Paper Based on
a Dissertation. She also serves on several editorial boards and is the
past Division Chair of the Organization and Management Theory Division
of the Academy of Management.
Eric Hirst, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Graduate Programs & Professor, Department of Accounting
Topic: Developing Influential Business Leaders at McCombs
Bio:
Eric Hirst is the Ernst & Young Faculty Fellowship Professor in Accounting and Associate Dean for Graduate Programs at the McCombs School of Business. He received his B.A. and M.Acc.
from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, and his Ph.D. from the
University of Minnesota. His research and teaching interests include
financial accounting, investor and auditor judgment, and decision
theory.
David Jemison, Director of the Texas Executive MBA Program & Professor,
Department of Management
Topic:
Making Acquisitions for Competitive Advantage
The global business
landscape has been dramatically changed by mergers and acquisitions.
Yet many firms find that the results of their own acquisition experiences
continue to disappoint. This session will focus on research that addresses
how the decision making and integration processes impact the ability
of a firm to create value with acquisitions. We will address:
- How a firm can use acquisitions to improve its competitive position
- Developing an acquisitive strategy
- Different types of value creation
- Challenges in the decision process and how to address them
- Approaches to integration that are linked to value creation
Bio:
David B. Jemison is the Foster Parker Centennial Professor of
Management and Finance and Director of the Texas Executive MBA Program
at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, where
he teaches in the Strategic Management area. He has served as Senior
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and as Chair of the Management Department
at the McCombs School. Jemison has been a member of the faculty at Stanford
University and at Indiana University and a Visiting Professor at INSEAD
in Fontainebleau, France and the China Center for Economic Research
at Peking University in Beijing. Before joining academe, he worked in
planning and finance at Cummins Engine Co., Inc. and has served as a
Procurement Officer in the U.S. Air Force. He received his B.S. and
MBA from Ohio State University and his Ph.D. from the University of
Washington.
Jemison's research focuses on the strategic management process in diversified
firms. His current research is focused on business combinations as a
vehicle for strategic renewal and how firms learn from their combined
activities. He is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, monographs,
and books on the subjects of general management, strategy development,
strategy implementation, the management of diversified firms, and mergers
and acquisitions. His articles and research have appeared in a variety
of journals including Strategic Management Journal, Harvard Business
Review, Academy of Management Review, Management Science, and Sloan
Management Review. Jemison is a member of the editorial board of the
Strategic Management Journal; has been a member of the editorial board
of the Academy of Management Review; has been a member of the Board
of Governors of the Academy of Management; is a founding member of the
Strategic Management Society; and has served as Chair of the Business
Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management.
Jemison's book, Managing Acquisitions: Creating Value Through Corporate
Renewal, co-authored with Philippe Haspeslagh of INSEAD, received the
George R. Terry Book Award from the Academy of Management for the "...most
outstanding contribution to advancing management knowledge." He has
received the Core Course Teaching Excellence Award at the University
of Texas, the Outstanding Professor Award in the Texas Executive MBA
Program (thrice), the Taylor Award for Excellence in Teaching at UT,
the Stanford Business School Distinguished Teacher Award, and the Outstanding
Educator Award from the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the
Academy of Management. He is faculty advisor to the Graduate Consulting
Group.
Dave has extensive executive education and consulting experience in
North America, Asia, Europe, and Latin America and works with a variety
of international firms on issues of strategy development, strategy implementation,
mergers and acquisitions, corporate partnerships, and organization design.
Kristie Loescher, MPH, DBA, Lecturer, Department of Management
Topic:
Leadership and Values
Personal values are key determinants
of how leadership power is exercised or constrained. This interactive
discussion, including video cases and real-life examples, will explore
how personal values impact leadership. In particular we will examine
the source of personal values, how value-based decisions are made, and
how people with different values can work together and manage these
differences constructively.
Bio:
Dr. Loescher is a Lecturer in the Management Department of the
McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin where
she teaches management, leadership, and business communications. She
has her doctorate in business administration from Nova Southeastern
University, specializing in human resources management. Prior to her
career in academia, she worked in the healthcare industry for 15 years
in the areas of quality assurance, utilization management, and clinical
research. Her academic publications focus on ethical education, organizational
ethics, change management, and diversity management. Dr. Loescher is
also a co-author of the book, Communication Matters: Write, Speak, Succeed
published by Kendall Hunt in 2007.
Jim Nolen, MBA, Distinguished Senior Lecturer, Department of Finance
Professor Nolen is the faculty advisor to the McCombs MBA Alumni Advisory Board and will assist with round table facilitation and attend various sessions throughout the day.
Bio:
Jim Nolen received his B.B.A. and M.B.A. from The University
of Texas at Austin. He has taught multiple sections of both the undergraduate
and graduate small business finance classes since 1980. Current classes
include three sections of the graduate Fin 394.4 Financial Management
of the Small Firm course each semester. His research and teaching interests
include corporate finance, business valuation, mergers and acquisitions,
entrepreneurship and capital formation for private enterprises. He lectures
regularly in Executive Education and Management Development Programs
on financial topics for companies such as Texas Instruments, Dell, Motorola,
Shell Oil, MD Anderson, HB Zachary, Vought Aircraft, FedEx-Kinkos, Essilor
International, PetSmart and State Farm Insurance. Jim brings practical
business experience from operating his own businesses, providing financial
consulting services to privately held companies and serving on the board
of directors of small and middle-market firms. He served as Associate
Director of The Center for Small And Middle-Sized Enterprises and The
Community Minority Business Advancement Program for over 10 years. Jim
serves as the faculty advisor for the graduate Entrepreneurs Society
and the Venture Fellows Program. Jim also teaches in the Executive MBA
degree program in Mexico City and has taught in the Dallas/Ft. Worth
Executive MBA program and the IMADEC program in Vienna, Austria.
