Events Archives - Page 3 of 8 - College of Business

May 6, 2015

Adidas: A culture of empowerment

A culture built around honesty, commitment, passion, innovation, inspiration, teamwork, empowerment and student engagement has earned adidas this year’s Distinguished Business Partner award.

That culture is in sync with that of the College of Business, adidas executive Nic Vu said.

“The professors and other educators focus on placement,” said Vu, a senior vice president and a 1995 College of Business graduate who spearheaded his company’s partnership with the college. “College of Business students are very well versed in team dynamics, group projects and results orientation, and they’re open to learning.

“I work with lot of Ph.D.’s and consultants who have master’s, MBAs, whatever, and they don’t have all of that packaged together as well as some of the undergrads I see coming out of Oregon State,” he said. “That’s a compliment to the dean and all the educators at Oregon State.”

Beavers who have joined Vu at adidas have taken note of a supportive environment that mirrors that of the college that prepared them to launch their careers.

“The College of Business stresses networking and adidas allows recent grads to take networking to an entirely new level,” said OSU senior Jacob Knightley, who’s majoring in finance and business information systems and works 30 hours a week for adidas’ finance reporting team.

“All managers — junior, senior and above — are extremely approachable and will take time out of their day to talk with you. My CFO walks around and talks with everybody on a first-name basis and will make the effort to learn your name as soon as possible.”

Knightley said he and others consider the adidas culture to be an extension of their university life.

“We make sure our work is getting completed to the best degree, but we have fun while we do it,” he said. “Adidas benefits (from the College of Business partnership) by getting great local talent who bring new and fresh ideas about how to win in America, and the college benefits by having a local company that loves to recruit local talent.”

Adidas 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.

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.

May 1, 2015

Willener: COB students poised to soar

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.

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.

April 27, 2015May 4, 2015

OSU rules Civil War Shark Tank

Nathan Fuller delivers his winning Shark Tank presentation

Nathan Fuller and his startup, Fused Machines, took the top prize April 24 at the Civil War Shark Tank at Austin Hall.

The event, sponsored by the Austin Entrepreneurship Program, included three startup companies from Oregon State and two from the University of Oregon, and the evening also featured an Elevator Pitch competition open to any student with a business idea he or she wanted to present to a panel of judges.

Fuller, a junior studying mechanical engineering, has developed a CNC tool head designed to improve the performance of 3-D printers. His first-place finish earns his company a $1,000 prize and entry into the Willamette Angel Conference scheduled for May 15 at the CH2M HILL Alumni Center on the OSU campus. At the conference, startups compete for seed funding.

Placing second at the Civil War Shark Tank and earning $500 was another Beaver entry, Steady Budget (http://steadybudget.com/). OSU computer science students Chris Vlessis and David Teofilovic are company cofounders along with CEO Jon Davis. Vlessis is chief technical officer and Teofilovic chief information officer of the company, which aims to provide a software budgetary solution for pay-per-click advertising analysts. Another OSU student, marketing major Dominique Catabay, is Steady Budget’s financial manager.

The third Oregon State entry in the Shark Tank was Sona, a company whose founders include business administration major Kristin Johannes, prebusiness student Jacob Harvey and chemical engineering major Jacob Lum. Sona, whose product is a crowdsourcing disc-jockey app, was the people’s choice winner – the top vote-getter in balloting among the roughly 150 people in the audience. The company’s motto is, “It’s your music, it’s your persona,” and its app lets attendees at a party cue up their favorite tunes on the event’s sound system.

The UO startups in the Shark Tank were consulting company Smarter Marketing and used-clothing-exchange network ThriftSwap.

In the Elevator Pitch contest, which kicked off the evening, 11 students presented their business ideas and leading a top-two OSU sweep was Steven Miller, whose proposal was ConnectMD, a televideo medical consultation service.

Placing second was Miranda Crowell (who pitched Asian carp as food and fertilizer), and tying for third were EJ Albaugh (monthly healthcare service), Katie Breeden (schedule-organizing consultancy for students) and Steve Gessling (an app for learning which beers are on tap and where to find them). Breeden is from the University of Oregon and the other two are OSU students.

The Elevator Pitch winner received $250, the runner-up earned $100, and the third-place finishers each won $50.

April 7, 2015April 8, 2015

Spring DAMchic: ‘Contemporary Streets’

The spring 2015 edition of the College of Business’ student-produced online fashion magazine, DAMchic, made its online debut at midnight Friday night following a launch party hosted by the magazine at Austin Hall, which included performances by OSU’s Hip Hop Club.

The title is “Contemporary Streets” and editor Eliot Frack calls the 88-page issue “our best one ever.”

“It has lots of color,” she said. “It’s really, really fun, less cluttered, and has a really clean look. We added more flair and a kind of quirkiness.

“The layout is really great,” Frack said, praising art director John Conner. “I tell him what I want, and he goes above and beyond.”

The theme permeating Contemporary Streets is “sportswear with an urban touch,” Frack said. “It’s like sportswear meets streetwear, high-fashion sportswear with a street vibe. Nightwear inspired by sportswear.”

Among the issue’s many features is a look at the “athleisure” trend – athletic wear as casual attire – by writer Meagan Amos and photographer Max DeYoung.

“It gives the new fashionista a lazy way out,” Frack joked.

There’s also an “In the Fast Lane” spread highlighting ways to “take life by the handlebars” with “pops of neon on a palette of edgy black and leather,” and a story on Michelle Lesniak of “Project Runway.” Lesniak, a Portland-based designer, was a speaker at the LaSells Stewart Center on Feb. 12 for TEDxOregonStateU.

The spring 2015 issue of DAMchic, a magazine first published in 2011, is viewable at http://issuu.com/damchicmagazine/docs/damchic_spring2015_contemporarystre.

March 16, 2015April 27, 2015

Students prep via mock interviews

Employers and students descended on the CH2M HILL Alumni Center ballroom for the mock interviews.

Representatives from 23 employers helped College of Business students prepare to compete for jobs Feb. 20 during 5½ hours of mock interviews at the CH2M HILL Alumni Center.

Among the participating organizations were COB corporate partners Mutual of Enumclaw and adidas.

“We’ve developed a very strong relationship with the College of Business, and every time we interact with someone from the business school, we walk away amazed at how much of a partnership we’ve built and how cool the students are,” said Larry Beck, a trainer for Mutual of Enumclaw who was conducting mock interviews at Oregon State for the first time.

Added adidas recruiter Thomas Stuyvesant, also a first-time mock interviewer: “We get a lot of talent from OSU, so it’s important for us to maintain that relationship. It’s about pipelining and building goodwill and preparing these strong students to be successful in their careers. It could pay immediate dividends for us, or it could be down the road.”

Prior to the start of the afternoon session, Stuyvesant said he was “very impressed” with the students he’d talked to.

“It’s been great,” he said. “I’ve interviewed four so far, and they’ve all had obvious strengths. One of them, I wish he’d have applied for our internship; he’d have been a great candidate.”

Student reactions to the interviews were just as positive.

“I thought it was so helpful,” said Megan Goody, a junior in finance and management, following an interview with a representative from Target. “I haven’t done a lot of interviews, and she made me feel relaxed, at ease about this whole situation. I was so nervous going into it.

“I think you just need to relax before you answer a question and not let nerves get to you. Take a deep breath — you do have a second to think.”

Mohannad Hadi, a senior business information systems student, interviewed with a representative of the State of Oregon.

“It was really worth it,” he said. “She gave me a lot of advice. I’m planning to get a graduate degree, and she gave advice about what fields to go into.”

And he also learned a key lesson about being a strong interviewee.

“That I should relate my answers to experience listed in resume,” Hadi said. “That was really useful.”

March 11, 2015March 12, 2015

Loge event caps career fair

Students and employers mingle at last month's career fair. — Students and employers mingle at last month’s career fair.

More than 100 employers and about 800 students came together Feb. 18 at the all-majors winter career fair hosted by OSU’s Career Development Center at the CH2M HILL Alumni Center.

Afterward, the College of Business and the Department of Athletics held a reception in the Reser Stadium loge that gave COB students and Beaver athletes a chance to connect with prospective employers in a less formal, more conversational setting.

Strong consensus among recruiters and job seekers alike indicated that both events were valuable as well as enjoyable.

“I love going to these things,” recent marketing graduate Chris Pham said at the career fair. “It’s a great chance to network.”

“It’s excellent,” agreed freshman pre-business student Sean Fox, who had talked with roughly a dozen companies. “I’m trying to position myself so that two or three years from now I can put together a resume that looks like I have five or six years of experience.”

A few hours later in the loge level of the football stadium’s northeast grandstand, College of Business students had a second opportunity to market themselves.

“More informal conversations, more personal,” is how Matt Adams, a junior studying finance and business information systems, described the after-hours reception. Among other things, Adams used the event as a chance to talk with a representative from Fisher Investments for a fifth time.

“Anytime students get to interact with professionals, it’s great,” said Sukhpreet Singh, a senior double-majoring in business information systems and accounting. “I’m trying to get a lot of companies interested in me and weigh which is the best fit for me. You can’t know what’s the best fit if you only look at one or two.”

Slade Crooks, general manager of Foodguys, called the after-hours reception “a great event.”

“You get to talk to students in a more casual setting and get insight into who they really are,” he said. “I’m looking for people interested in sales, so I watch how they interact, who the wallflowers are, who are the aggressive ones who put themselves out there.”

Juili Tonape, an MBA student in the marketing track, was trying to do just that. She admitted, though, “it’s not really natural for me. It’s a little overwhelming.”

In all, the reception featured more than 100 students and representatives from roughly 80 businesses.

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.

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

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.