Alumni Notes

McCombs Plaza Renovated

A Beautiful Legacy

The renovated plaza was an immediate hit with students, faculty, and passers-by.

Thanks to the MBA Classes of 2002 and 2003, students at the McCombs School of Business have a new way to enjoy Austin’s world-famous weather while pursuing their business education. On Jan. 21, 2005, students, faculty and staff gathered for the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the newly renovated McCombs plaza.

While sculptor Charles Umlauf’s “The Family” remains in the plaza as a business school landmark, the surrounding shrubs have been removed to make room for café tables and shade-giving umbrellas. Wireless Internet access and additional lighting make the plaza convenient as well as comfortable. The plaza has already proven to be a great hit with students.

The renovation was made possible by the 2002 and 2003 MBA Leave A Legacy campaigns. More than 60 percent of the students in the Class of 2002 and more than 75 percent of students in the class of 2003 raised the seed money for the renovation. Special thanks are due to Stacey Bernhard and Stephen Noteboom, campaign co-chairs for the Class of 2002, and Landy Fox and Michael Wojtasek, campaign co-chairs for the Class of 2003. Taras Filenko, MBA ’03, also took an active leadership role in the campaign. Project management support was provided by The University of Texas at Austin’s Physical Plant.

Since the inception of the Leave A Legacy program in 1996, graduating MBA students have given back to the McCombs School of Business in ways that will endure for future generations of students.

Class	Gift
1996	Interview changing rooms
1997	Suit lockers
1998	Group meeting rooms
1999	Graduate fellowship and marketing plan
2000	MBA lounge (Carpenter Center)
2001	Cohort room renovation
2002	Plaza renovation
2003	Plaza renovation
2004	Special Events room renovation

Network McCombs

Burnt Orange in the Golden State

More than 1,100 McCombs MBA alumni live in California, with more than 500 in the San Francisco Bay Area alone. According to Pamela Palacios, MBA ’05, it’s not surprising that so many MBA alumni end up trading the Gulf Coast for the West Coast. “The Bay Area has one of the McCombs School’s strongest alumni chapters,” she says, “and California is one of our largest pools of incoming students.”

A Northern California native herself, Palacios knew that a McCombs MBA is well-regarded in the area. But soon after arriving in Austin, she came to feel that students didn’t have enough opportunities to pursue their interests in California companies.

While current students are able to meet with alumni around the country during the annual Winter Receptions, and formal trips are taken to New York and Washington, D.C., as part of the Plus Program, there were no organized student trips to the West Coast. “I saw this as a clear needs gap,” Palacios says.

After a survey of her classmates confirmed that interest in California companies was widespread, Palacios began planning a trip to the area. In January, about 40 students trekked to San Francisco, where they met with McCombs MBA alumni at companies including Cisco, Yahoo!, Hewlett-Packard, WellsFargo and ChevronTexaco.

Another group of 16 MBA students traveled to San Diego on a trip led by Melissa Hernholm, MBA ’05, where they met with executives from companies including Qualcomm, Duncan-Hurst, Cisterra Partners, FoodMaker Inc. and Hewlett-Packard.

“It was encouraging to see how well represented the McCombs alumni network is in San Diego,” wrote Brian Melinat, MBA ’06, after the trip. “Almost all the company contacts we met with were McCombs alumni or business acquaintances of current McCombs students.”

These meetings yielded interviews for several students, at WellsFargo, eBay and Apple, among others—but not all students were looking for internships or jobs. Palacios, for example, had accepted a job in brand management with Pennsylvania-based McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals a few months prior to the trip.

More generally, the trips were opportunities for McCombs MBAs to increase the school’s visibility outside the Lone Star State. “We let West Coast employers know,” says Palacios, “that many McCombs MBAs are interested in working in California.”

Restoring Athens on the Colorado

Susan Dawson, MBA '90

Since antiquity, Athens, Greece, has been credited with kick-starting Western civilization. Few realize, however, that in the 1960s, Austin’s intellectual culture earned the city the nickname of “Athens on the Colorado.”

This local connection to the birthplace of democracy was the inspiration behind the naming of the Athens Group, an Austin-based technology consulting firm. “Finding a more democratic way of building and running a business was very important to us,” says Susan Dawson, MBA ’90, president and co-founder of the company.

Susan Dawson, MBA '90

As co-owners of the company, Athens Group’s employees are invested in the company professionally as well as financially. “There is no outside investor who can influence us to make decisions which we don’t think are in the best interests of our clients, our employees and our company,” says Dawson, adding that turnover at Athens Group is practically nil.

For Dawson, who decries the “grind-people-up-and-spit-them-out, dehumanized workplace,” founding Athens Group along such egalitarian lines was an ethical imperative. And the success of the firm so far, which weathered the tech bust and is busily growing new markets, suggests that this structure was the right thing to do from a business perspective as well.

After all, notes Dawson, “Employee ownership allows us to attract and retain the very best, most seasoned technology consultants.”

This confidence in the company’s human capital may be one reason why, when speaking to Dawson, one notices a conspicuous absence of those references to the competition that make many entrepreneurs seem a little neurotic. The harmonious co-existence of professional and ethical imperatives is a point of pride for Athens Group. “We try to be living proof that supporting employees and their families, and being involved in communities is not harmful to business goals,” Dawson says. “In fact, it can be very aligned with business goals.”

Of course, many executives still hew to the idea that business success requires single-minded devotion. This makes it all the more impressive that Dawson rounds out her schedule with one husband, two children, numerous civic commitments and the occasional fishing trip.

In February, Dawson received the 2005 Trailblazer Award at the McCombs School’s annual Women in Business Leadership Conference, put on by the Graduate Women in Business. According to the next generation of leading businesswomen, in other words, Dawson is not just remarkable—she’s a role model.