Alumni Archives - Page 2 of 4 - College of Business

April 30, 2015September 28, 2015

Haakenson: Success reflects on OSU

Katie Haakenson.

When Katie Haakenson was still an intern, Boeing tasked her with creating and hosting a conference for the company’s project managers in the Puget Sound area.

The idea was for them to talk about methodologies they’d used and lessons they’d learned.

About 20 people attended.

“Everyone thought it was very valuable and said, we want to do that again,” said Haakenson, who earned a finance degree from Oregon State in 2009 and added an MBA a year later. “So the next year when we hosted the Boeing Project Management Conference, it went from 20 to about 100, and they came from all across the country. The third year, there were more than 300 from around the world. The event still goes on, and all the project managers look forward to it. It’s pretty cool to be able to say I started it.”

The creativity, leadership skills and organizational savvy that Haakenson used in developing the conference are among the reasons she’s this year’s Distinguished Young Business Professional.

“I think it’s a great honor,” she said. “Any success I’ve had reflects back to my experiences at OSU.”

Haakenson, hired as a permanent employee after starring in her internship, spent nearly four years with Boeing at the Everett (Wash.) Delivery Center. She’s now a project leadership associate with Point B Management Consultants in Seattle, having started there in January following one-year stints at Microsoft and Logic 20/20, also a Seattle-based consulting firm.

The bustle of Seattle represents a stark change from Haakenson’s youth in Corbett, Ore., where her graduating class at Corbett High featured 45 people.

Choosing Oregon State after a campus visit and conversations with faculty made her feel at home, she worked two jobs to pay for school and still graduated in three years, then stayed a fourth year and collected an MBA.

“I really liked the IBP (integrated business plan) program, and I wanted some additional time with College of Business faculty since I’d learned so much as an undergraduate,” Haakenson said.

She mentioned in particular professor Erik Larson, who taught Haakenson project management, and professional development instructor Gene Young, whose lessons “helped me get positions that on paper I didn’t have enough experience for by defining and highlighting what I could bring to the table.”

“Going to OSU was a great experience, and the connections I’ve kept with the university are very valuable for me,” she said. “I don’t think I could have made a better choice.”

April 29, 2015

Spathas was destined for OSU

Matt Spathas with his wife and four children.

The son of an OSU-educated entrepreneur and a graduate of the same Portland high school that produced Linus Pauling, Matt Spathas’ trail to Corvallis was blazed early on.

“My dad told me, ‘You can go to any college you want, but the only one I’ll help you pay for is Oregon State,’” he said.

Four decades later, there’s little doubt in Spathas’ mind that his father really did know best.

“I’m really grateful for the education I received at Oregon State,” said Spathas, this year’s Distinguished Service Award winner.

Spathas, College of Business class of 1980, is one of three managing principals at SENTRE Partners, a San Diego-based firm that describes itself as “Stewards and Entrepreneurs of Real Estate.” He’s been with the company for 21 years and in his career has had a hand in more than $2.5 billion in transactions.

But what stands out for Spathas isn’t dollars or buildings, it’s “the mentors I’ve had along the way, and second to that are the relationships that we’ve built.”

Spathas grew up in southeast Portland, where his family operated Claudia’s Tavern. His father, Gene, had opened the saloon on Hawthorne Boulevard in 1958, fulfilling a promise to put his bride’s “name up in lights.”

“It wasn’t exactly what she had in mind,” Spathas joked.

As a senior, Spathas was named athlete of the year at Washington High School – where the principal was former OSU football All-American Bill Gray.

After earning his degree, Spathas landed a job as a sales associate with Portland commercial real estate firm Norris, Beggs & Simpson. There he found mentors in Clayton Hering, now the company chairman, and another OSU alum, Joe Wood, who’d earned the nickname “Mr. Downtown.”

“He was legendary,” Spathas said. “He’d leased virtually every new high-rise that had been built in Portland.”

After two years, Spathas and wife, Kristen, also an Oregon State graduate, moved to San Diego, where Spathas became a marketing principal for Trammell Crow, the nation’s biggest commercial development company. He joined SENTRE Partners in 1994.

Spathas will be honored May 11 in Portland at the college’s annual Celebration of Excellence, along with the rest of the 2015 award winners as well as retiring Dean Ilene Kleinsorge. For more on the event and the honorees, follow the College of Business blog as the countdown to the celebration continues over the next couple of weeks.

The evening begins with a reception at 5:30 p.m., followed by dinner and the awards presentation. For more information or to register, contact Elsa Frey at elsa.frey@oregonstate.edu or call 541-737-6648, or register online at http://business.oregonstate.edu/awards.

April 29, 2015April 28, 2015

COB alum gives ethics lessons

Retired Accenture executive Joe Lobbato.

University professor and retired executive Joe Lobbato delivered a series of powerful yet simple messages on business ethics April 27 to a crowd of about 150 in Austin Hall’s Stirek Auditorium.

Among them: If you’re unethical, it will eventually come to light.

Lobbato earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of Business in 1981 and added an MBA the following year before embarking on a 22-year career with Arthur Andersen, later known as Andersen Consulting and now Accenture. He was a managing partner the last 10 years and has worked and lived abroad extensively, currently residing in Thailand, where he teaches business ethics at Chulalongkorn University.

Lobbato graduated from Corvallis High School and noted one of his earliest business ventures was a paper route not far from Austin Hall.

That newspaper theme came up again later when he outlined strategies business people can use to remain ethical. They included the “newspaper headline test”: If you wouldn’t be comfortable with the news of what you’re doing being blared across the top of page one, don’t do it.

Also on the list: Take responsibility, develop personal discipline, know your weaknesses, align your priorities with values, admit wrongdoing quickly and ask forgiveness, take extra care with finances, use checks and balances, put your family ahead of work, place high value on people, and don’t associate with corrupt people.

Lobbato noted that a society’s culture, norms and values dictate which practices are acceptable. In some cultures, including Thailand’s, corruption is just considered part of the overall landscape.

But accepted or not, corruption brings many negative consequences, said Lobbato. It reduces the overall wealth of a country and the amount spent on “good stuff,” distorts the way money is spent, undermines trust, and harms the environment and innocent people

Lobbato noted that a person crosses three lines on the way to the most unethical types of conduct. The first line is violating the Golden Rule, the second is the “tort line” – venturing into territory that makes you vulnerable to civil action – and the third is the criminal line, i.e. doing something that makes you subject to prosecution.

He left the students in the audience some words of advice if they ever feel pressured by an employer to do something they know is wrong.

“Do not ever do anything that you believe is unethical,” he said. “You guys will always lose. The company will say, ‘we never told him to do that.’”

Lobbato passed along a number of tips designed to foster ethical behavior.

April 28, 2015May 4, 2015

Meet the Weatherford winners

Ryan Hildebrand never set out to define himself as an entrepreneur, and Tim Hildebrandt doesn’t necessarily think of himself that way, either.

Labels aside, their innovative excellence has earned each of the College of Business graduates a 2015 Weatherford Award.

“It’s pretty awesome,” Hildebrand said. “I’m very humbled.”

Added Hildebrandt: ““It means a lot to me,” he said. “The past winners are so accomplished, I don’t think I’m in the same category as those guys yet. But I’m honored to be recognized, and excited.”

Hildebrand is a cofounder of Seed, an online and mobile banking service for startups headquartered in Portland and San Francisco. Prior to Seed, he was vice president of finance for Simple Finance, a similar type of company whose target clientele is 18- to 30-year-old consumers; while at Portland-based Simple he hired Hildebrandt to be the company’s controller.

Hildebrandt and Hildebrand worked together on the $117 million deal that saw the startup acquired by Spanish banking giant BBVA.

“Some people say they want to be entrepreneur, like it’s some kind of title, and it often ends up having a connotation based around ego, and that’s not what I believe in,” said Hildebrand, who left Simple to try his own startup, Seed. “Some people are not meant to start their own companies but they can be effectively innovative within their organization or doing whatever they’re doing. For me, entrepreneurship is starting something new, whatever it is — thinking through how the status quo is and trying to change it for the better.”

That mission statement also describes Hildebrandt, who now has Hildebrand’s old job at Simple.

“Tim is an excellent accountant, and what he was able to do was take those excellent skills and experiences and bring it into an innovative environment and apply it directly to something that didn’t exist,” College of Business Dean Ilene Kleinsorge said.

Hildebrandt and Hildebrand will be honored May 11 in Portland at the college’s annual Celebration of Excellence, along with the rest of the 2015 award winners as well as the retiring Kleinsorge.

For more on the event and the honorees, follow the College of Business blog as the countdown to the celebration continues.

April 23, 2015May 4, 2015

Born to run, Snow at home at Nike

Nike executive Angela Snow’s path toward Distinguished Business Professional honors began, appropriately enough, on a running track.

“I always knew I’d work at Nike,” said Snow, the company’s vice president for design culture and community. “I started running on the Beaverton track when I was 5 or 6 years old; there were meets every Saturday. That definitely introduced me to the idea of running and the whole aspect of competition. I grew up with Nike.”

Snow spent her childhood on a 50-acre farm on Weir Road five miles from what’s now the site of Nike headquarters. She was born in 1959 in Toronto to British parents and moved to Beaverton at 9 months; her father, Jim Strike, a former semi-pro rugby player, was a forest products manager, and his wife, Iris, was a “renaissance homemaker” whose talents and loves ranged from upholstery to baking to sewing to the arts.

Snow studied fashion design, graphic design and art history at OSU. Soon after earning her degree she joined Nike, and her initial role was putting together the burgeoning company’s first graphic design team. From there, she went to Hong Kong to start an apparel design team for the Asia-Pacific market, and after 21/2 years she moved to The Netherlands to be the creative director for apparel for the European market for three years.

“That led me back to the U.S., where I ran the men’s apparel department and then made the leap to footwear,” she said.

A half-dozen years ago, in response to an organizational evolution that designers found displeasing, Snow accepted her current assignment.

“Designers were working for business people and not creative people, and we said we’ve got to make sure design is holistic and has a strong organizational structure of its own,” said Snow, who notes that next to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., “OSU is our biggest feeder. The designers who come out of OSU, they’re developed and prepared and inspired.”

Snow, who as a member of the COB’s industry advisory board for design aims to help keep it that way, will be honored May 11 in Portland at the college’s annual Celebration of Excellence, along with the rest of the 2015 award winners as well as retiring Dean Ilene Kleinsorge. For more on the event and the honorees, follow the College of Business blog as the countdown to the celebration continues over the next couple of weeks.

April 21, 2015April 27, 2015

Hall of Fame to induct Bailey

Stephen Bailey with wife Marian and other members of their family.

Stephen Bailey had gravitated toward Oregon State partly because he was a Beaver sports fan, and as graduation neared, he came to realize his choice of universities was fantastic for academic and career purposes, too.

“It became apparent when I got a job offer,” said Bailey, who completed his accounting degree in 1970. “That’s a little bit tongue in cheek, but it’s not far from right. I think I was offered five different jobs coming out of Oregon State. Oregon State within the profession had a high level of awareness because graduates had demonstrated an expertise.”

Bailey had grown up on a Tillamook farm and developed an affinity for Oregon State while following the exploits of all-America end Vern Burke, who in 1962 had the best receiving season the NCAA had yet seen, and quarterback Terry Baker, that year’s Heisman Trophy winner.

A football and basketball player for the Tillamook High Cheesemakers, Bailey arrived in Corvallis ready to meet any challenge, prepared by his duties on the family’s 120-cow dairy.

“That type of environment gives a lot of life lessons, and the primary one is work ethic,” Bailey said. “You don’t shy away from hard work, and in one form or another you pick up a number of job skills along the way. I was left from time to time running the farm by myself while my father was away, and shouldering that load gives you a keen awareness of what responsibility is and how you carry it.”

After completing his degree, Bailey went to work with Touche Ross & Co. (now known as Deloitte & Touche) as a CPA and audit manager. That was the springboard for a long career, capped by a 10-year stretch at Flir Systems, the thermal-imaging company he helped turn around from the brink of failure, that earned Bailey induction this year into the College of Business Hall of Fame.

He’ll be honored May 11 in Portland at the college’s annual Celebration of Excellence, along with the rest of the 2015 award winners as well as retiring Dean Ilene Kleinsorge. For more on the event and the honorees, follow the College of Business blog as the countdown to the celebration continues over the next couple of weeks.

April 2, 2015April 1, 2015

The wide world of Jackie Swint

Jackie Swint and her friend, Foy Renfro, outside the Austin Hall project room Swint sponsored.

College of Business donor Jackie Swint of Tigard toured Austin Hall for the first time on Feb. 28, taking enthusiastic notice of the project room she sponsors, the gleaming and mesmerizing Abacus sculpture that hangs from the ceiling, and … the students’ backpacks.

“Why are all of those people wearing backpacks?” she asked.

Another member of the tour group explained to Swint, a 1951 College of Business graduate, that backpacks were simply the tool of choice these days for hauling around textbooks, laptop, etc.

“Well, I guess it’s better than just carrying a pile of books,” she said.

Swint knows a bit about both books and luggage, having traveled the globe as a secretary for the Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State. Equipped with her degree in secretarial science, she worked in eight countries and eventually published “Who Was That Man?” (Inkwater Press, 2008, $22.95), a collection of stories about her adventures.

The title refers to an on-train encounter in the old Soviet Union with a person Swint imagines as possibly being USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

“She saw the world,” said Foy Renfro, formerly of the Oregon State University Foundation, who worked with Swint to set up the scholarships she funds and also accompanied her on her trip to Austin Hall. “Without OSU, she would not have been able to do all of those things, and she’s very appreciative of that.”

Among the ways Swint shows that appreciation is $10,000 in annual scholarship money distributed to four female students in the College of Business, one in each year in school; $1,000 goes to a freshman, $2,000 to a sophomore, $3,000 to a junior, and $4,000 a senior.

Financial need and academic excellence are the criteria used by the College of Business Scholarship Committee in determining the winners.

This year’s recipients are Ilwaad Aman, Jamie Martin, Annemarie Lewandowski and Allyssa Taylor.

Each year, Ilene Kleinsorge, dean of the college, brings her scholarship recipients to Portland to have dinner with Swint “so she can share her stories with her students.”

In addition to sponsoring the project room and funding the scholarships, Swint has donated to the Memorial Union a collection of 11 rubbings she made at the sites of various bas-relief carvings at temples and other ancient building sites in places such as Cambodia, Thailand, Peru and Greece.

“She thought if international students saw something of beauty from their own country it would help them to feel proud of where they came from and less homesick,” Kleinsorge said.

Lewandowski, who helped show Swint around during her visit, was impressed by her concern for other people, among other parts of her personality and life.

“She wanted to ensure that women within the College of Business have a chance to do what she did,” said Lewandowski, a junior majoring in management. “She wanted to show us that we could do it, too.

“She’s so sculpted by her travels and has such a good world perspective,” Lewandowski said. “Every aspect of her life is so intriguing. I was just completely inspired by this lady. She was so great. I wish I could have sat with her all day and just listened.”

March 1, 2015April 29, 2015

Willener: Beavers among the best

The College of Business prepares people to measure up against the best, says Curt Willener, this year’s Distinguished Early Career Business Professional.

The Hillsboro resident should know. Three years after his OSU graduation, he was accepted into the MBA program at Harvard Business School.

“OSU was on my list, but since I’d gone there as an undergraduate, I wanted a new experience,” who at the time was working at a mill in Albany. “I had just gotten done with a super dusty, 14-hour shift when I talked to (Dean) Ilene (Kleinsorge) about going to graduate school. I think I got her office dirty. But she was so open to talking with me and supporting me, and Ilene wrote a recommendation letter that helped me get into Harvard.

“You’re always a little nervous with something like that, but Ilene said don’t worry, we prepared you, and she was absolutely right,” Willener said. “The top students at Oregon State can compete anywhere in the world against anyone.”

For Willener, now operations manager and Danaher Business System leader at Tektronix/Danaher, the route to OSU began on Sauvie Island, where from age 12 to 18 he worked at a local farm and kennel. After graduating from Scappoose High School, he followed in the footsteps of his OSU alum father, Henry, and headed to Corvallis.

Willener graduated in management and finance from OSU in 2004 and earned a place in a Weyerhaeuser program designed to develop new leaders. Within a few months he was the night-shift supervisor, winning over the older, more experienced workers by “treating them with respect and giving them a fair shake” and “approaching situations with humility and common sense.”

“Listening is a really big part of it,” he said. “People respect you for it.”

Willener will be honored May 11 in Portland at the college’s annual Celebration of Excellence, along with the rest of the 2015 award winners as well as the retiring Kleinsorge. For more on the event and the honorees, follow the College of Business blog as the countdown to the celebration continues over the next couple of weeks.

February 26, 2015May 15, 2015

Alumni return for Career Symposium

Cameron Stanislowski picks up tips from OSU alum Katie Barger, who works for Nike.

Representatives from more than 50 companies were at the CH2M HILL Alumni Center on Wednesday for the 29th annual Career Symposium for College of Business students majoring in interior design, graphic design, apparel design and merchandising management.

“It’s great to be involved with people in the industry, and it’s cool they brought it to us,” Hannah Bonilla said during a “life after graduation” networking session featuring Oregon State apparel design and merchandising management alumni who work for companies such as Aquent, Firebrand Sports, Gap and Macy’s.

“You hear what they do and think ‘Oh, I might want to do that too,’” said Makenzie Donnerberg, like Bonilla, a junior majoring in merchandising management.

Fred Meyer, Kohl’s, Nike and SmithCFI were the gold-level sponsors for the four-hour symposium, the theme of which was, “Yesterday’s Dream, Today’s Mission, Tomorrow’s Reality: Shaping the Future of Business & Design.”

Columbia Sportswear and Dream Careers were silver-level sponsors, and traditional-level sponsors included Accademia Italiana, Adidas, American Home & Stone, the American Society of Interior Designers, Buckle, Fine, Hanna Andersson, JanSport, Linn County, Lucy, The North Face, Pacific Furnishings and Pendleton Woolen Mills.

“It’s really fun to walk around and talk to people and see what they’re doing and figure out what I’ll actually do after graduation,” said John Conner, a senior in apparel design. “I’m interested in sportswear but am keeping everything open.”

Senior Cameron Stanislowski, who’s studying merchandising management, said his dream job would be to work in footwear design or footwear product development, ideally in the areas of cleated, training or basketball shoes.

“It’s so useful to have your past classmates come back and talk to you,” he said. “You can network and really find the heart of what you’re into as you prepare to make that transition from graduation into the possible industries you might be in.”

More than 390 students attended.

Claire Rose, an OSU grad working for Macy's, talks to students at the symposium. — Claire Rose, an OSU grad working for Macy’s, talks to students at the symposium.

January 30, 2015January 30, 2015

BIS and the art of bridge building

Madeline Mill figures her education in business information systems makes her a builder of bridges – the type that links the work of data gatherers and analysts with those who need that information to make effective business decisions.

“I was a double major in BIS and accounting,” says Mill. “I picked up BIS at first to help meet 225 credits, which are required to take the CPA exam. But I soon found out that I enjoyed BIS much, much more than I ever would have thought.”

So much so that upon her graduation, she went to work for professional services giant Deloitte as a consultant.

“A lot of people I met in the college weren’t sure what BIS was exactly, but I just like to explain it as the bridge between management and technical processes,” Mill says. “The things learned in BIS classes help students identify how business processes can be improved with technical solutions.”

At OSU, Mills immersed herself in projects undertaken by the Students of Information Management Club. The biggest one involved researching how the university mitigates risk when changes are made to Banner, Blackboard and other computer systems used on campus.

“We made flow charts of the process and made documentation of the process and potential improvements,” Mill says. “This project allowed me to gain real-world experience and help the OSU community. It also made me attractive to potential employers because I stood out for doing this extra project outside of class for my own learning.”

SIM Club. — Members of SIM Club hold signs indicating where their job offers came from.