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Alumni award honorees showcase diverse talents, backgrounds

The six alumni honorees at the College of Business May 7 Celebration of Excellence each bring a unique story, talents and even geography.

This year the award winners will travel to Portland from four different states and the United Arab Emirates. While two currently live in Oregon, one recently moved back after six years living and working in New York City.

The 2013 honorees include:

Hall of Fame

Dr. Robert G. Zahary, higher education consultant (United Arab Emirates) 

Dr. Robert Zahary is an international Higher Education Consultant, with experience throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the USA. For more than 10 years he was a Founding Director of SpringStart Education Group, Pte. Ltd., a Singapore based consultancy in higher education.

Dr. Zahary received a B.S. from Oregon State University in Business and Technology in 1965. After working as a CPA in Southern California he returned to higher education to earn an MBA from Southern California and then a B.A. from California State University, Los Angeles in Biology and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Southern California.

After more than 20 years teaching and working in administration in the CSU system, Zahary moved to Singapore to work with a small university there, eventually starting his own consulting firm. He’s lived or worked in 94 countries, currently in the United Arab Emirates.

 

Distinguished Service Award

Frank Morse, Oregon State Senator and businessman (Albany, Ore.)

Frank Morse served 10 years as a senator in the Oregon Legislature after working for and eventually taking over Morse Bros., the construction materials company his father started in 1941.

Morse started his career in the ministry, serving as the Associate Pastor of the Forest Grove Christian Church.  He joined the family business in 1972 and served as President of the Morse Bros. for nearly 20 years.

Morse was elected to the Oregon State Senate in 2002. A primary focus of Senator Morse’s legislative tenure was to build a stable fiscal foundation for the state. One of his most successful bills is what is called the University Venture Development Fund, a very unique way of funding the commercialization of university research.

Morse prided himself on collaborating with members of both parties, highlighted by being named Oregon Business Association Statesman of the Year. Upon Morse’s retirement, Senate President Peter Courtney called him “the perfect Oregonian.”

 

Distinguished Business Professional:

Gordon Clemons ’65, chairman and CEO, CorVel Corporation (North Carolina)

Gordon Clemons founded CorVel Corporation in 1988.  From 1988, Mr. Clemons held the position of President and Chief Executive Officer. When CorVel became a publicly traded enterprise in 1991,  Mr. Clemons became Chairman of the Board. Today he serves as Chairman and CEO.

Prior to his career at CorVel, Mr. Clemons was President of Caremark, Inc., a NASDAQ company and the then-largest home intravenous therapy company in the United States. In 1987 Caremark was purchased by Baxter International.  Mr. Clemons also served as President of both Intracorp and of Advanta, after beginning his career as a division manager at FMC Corporation. Mr. Clemons has over 40 years of experience in the healthcare and insurance industries.

 

 

Don Atkinson, senior executive, Sales Management, Marketing and Business Development (Federal Way, Wa.) 

Don Atkinson is an innovative and highly successful executive with over 20 years of experience in corporate leadership, new product development and professional consulting leading.

At Weyerhaeuser Cellulose Fibers, he served as Vice President of Market Development and Innovation. Atkinson also held various finance positions with Willamette Industries, before leading the integration of Willamette Industries and Weyerhaeuser. Prior to that, Mr. Atkinson was a CPA and audit manager for Deloitte & Touche.

He has been a College of Business Dean’s Circle of Excellence member since 2009, and is affiliated with the OSU College of Business Accounting Circle. He serves as Board Member and President of the Epilepsy Foundation of Oregon Rotarian, and is active in fundraising for Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital.

 

Distinguished Early Career Business Professional

Meadow Clendenin Stahlnecker ‘99, attorney, Patton Boggs LLP (Dallas, Texas)

Meadow Stahlnecker is a business transactions attorney at Patton Boggs LLP in Dallas, Texas.  She provides legal counsel to a variety of investors, including those in the venture, mezzanine, senior-secured and Shari’ah-compliant sectors relative to both debt and equity transactions.  During her tenure at Patton Boggs, she has also provided nearly 1,000 hours of pro bono legal services to indigent clients and non-profit organizations.

After graduating from the Oregon State College of Business, she served as Assistant Vice President within the Technology Practice Group at Marsh in Portland, where she provided risk and insurance consulting services to emerging and middle market technology clients.  She also served on the Board of Directors and as the Membership Committee Chair for the Oregon Entrepreneurs Forum (now known as the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network).

In 2004, Stahlnecker was awarded a merit scholarship to attend the Emory University School of Law in Atlanta. During law school, she was a member of Emory and Georgia Tech’s multi-disciplinary TI:GER(r) program through which she developed commercialization strategies for a cancer-detecting nano-biotechnology product and earned top awards in several international business plan competitions.

 

Distinguished Young Business Professional

Alicia Miller ‘05, senior financial analyst, Nike, Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.) 

Alicia Miller is a Senior Financial Analyst with Nike in Global Apparel Margin Planning Management.

In 2006 Miller decided to move to New York without a job over or place to stay, living on friends’ couches while interviewing for jobs.

She eventually found a home with the luxury retail firm Coach. Miller worked with the company for five years advancing to a senior planner in global inventory.

Miller is a 2005 graduate of Oregon State University with a degree in Business Administration.  She grew up in Bend, Ore., graduating from Mountain View High School.The annual Alumni and Business Partner Awards recognize outstanding professional achievements and services to the college by alumni and business partners.

 

Now in its 12th year, the College of Business Alumni and Business Partner Awards recognize outstanding professional achievements and services to the college by alumni and business partners. For more information or to register, go to http://business.oregonstate.edu/awards or contact Rachelle Nickerson at rachelle.nickerson@oregonstate.edu.

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Awards, bylines for College of Business students in Barometer Best-Of issue

Josh Gilardi got a text message May 11 that sent him scrambling for a copy of that morning’s Daily Barometer.

“I couldn’t find a paper for the life of me,” said Gilardi, co-president of the Oregon State Marketing Club. “I got one the next day and took two or three copies. It made my day.”

The text told Gilardi that Marketing Club was picked as one of the top-3 student organizations at OSU in the Barometer’s 2013 Best-Of issue.

“We figured there are around 250 groups,” Gilardi said. “So to be in the top three in the whole of OSU, that’s amazing.”

The club’s award wasn’t the only College of Business connection, with Weatherford Hall winning for best residence hall and for Bing’s Cafe, which was named best place to eat on campus.

Karissa Moore, co-president of the club with Gilardi, said the honor validated the hard work they and all the members have put into the club.

“We put so much time into providing students with opportunities for now and in the future and to me, getting on the Barometer best-of list was the students’ way of saying  ‘Thank You,‘” Moore said. “I feel like a proud parent.”

The section was organized by another college of business student, Nathan Bauer, who serves as the Barometer’s business manager.

Bauer said the section, in its second year, helps the paper connect with students and local businesses in a different way from its everyday offerings.

“We realized it’s something that people enjoy, and it’s all about staying relevant to the community,” Bauer said. “We’re adding value to the paper to keep people reading.”

Bauer and his team organized the all-online survey, which drew more than 1,000 responses. After tabulating the results, they contacted businesses and organizations to write profiles of the winners.

“That issue was really driven by the business side,” Bauer said. “We were the ones who got the photographers, wrote the articles.

“Getting something to go to press takes a lot,” he said. “That was the biggest eye-opener.”

That commitment meant Bauer and the rest of the staff was still putting the finishing touches on the section late into the evening.

“One sales rep and I, we were there until 1 a.m., finishing everything,” Bauer said. “I have a lot more respect the writers and editors now.”

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MBA students find time to unwind at end of the term

Last week the Oregon State MBA Association organized its once-a-term happy hour event, bringing MBA students together in a relaxed setting to take a breath at the end of winter term.

Students had a chance to talk about projects, commiserate on the challenges of the term and just hang out and connect for a while outside of the confines of Bexell Hall (thought you’ll notice a few with papers still available).

Also, congratulations to all our students who are graduating this term. One in particular announced his end of college with authority (literally), and we gave a shout-out to him on our COB Facebook page.

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Nominations open for 2013 Excellence in Family Business Awards

Former Oregon Governor Vic Atiyeh accepting an Excellence in Family Business Award for the Atiyeh Oriental Rugs family.
Former Oregon Governor Vic Atiyeh accepting an Excellence in Family Business Award for the Atiyeh Oriental Rugs family at the 2012 awards ceremony.

Looking back more than 10 years after her business received an Excellence in Family Business Award, Lori Luchak can still remember the feeling of the ceremony.

Luchak, President of Miles Fiberglass & Composites, said being named a Family Business of the Year by the Austin Family Business program in 1999 not only gave her sense of validation for her family’s hard work, but a chance to reflect.

“The Austin Family Business Award allowed our family to celebrate the joy of being a family business and forget about the hard work of balancing family and business for one special night,” Luchak said.

Fruithill, Inc., started in 1919 in Yamhill, Ore. The farm grows cherries, plums, hazelnuts, wine grapes and other crops, and last year was named the Small Family Business of the Year.

Linda Schrepel, a member of Fruithill’s third-generation, said participating in the awards helped the family connect with the history of the business and the family.

“I like that in a way we were forced to put together our family history because now it is together,” she said. “The history is down and it’s there for generations to read.”

The program is currently accepting nominations for the 2013 Excellence in Family Business Awards.  To nominate a business, fill out the online form, or visit the Excellence in Family Business Awards website for more information.

Deadline for nominations is April 1. Businesses may still apply for the awards without being nominated before May 1.

Now in their 25th year, the awards honor innovative family businesses from around the Northwest who demonstrate innovation, entrepreneurship and a commitment to community involvement.

More than 180 companies have been honored in this peer-reviewed competition since the awards were first presented in 1988.

 

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Oregon State students get head start on careers with MECOP internships

Rachel Sauter and Xandra Jobe stand with other Intel interns during their MECOP internship earlier this school year.

Oregon State senior Xandra Jobe is pretty clear when it comes to how much she got out of her experience with the MECOP internship program.

“It’s probably the single most valuable thing I’ve done as an undergrad,” Jobe said.

MECOP places students in two paid, six-month internships, each with a different company. The program is currently accepting applications for its 2014 program, with a deadline of April 10.

Jobe is planning to graduate from Oregon State spring term and interned with Intel in the summer and fall.

A marketing major, Jobe worked with Intel’s Client Board division and helped to head up the department’s social media efforts along with fellow College of Business student and MECOP intern Rachel Sauter.

The pair helped coordinate, produce and publish social media posts for the group, researching and developing strategies that could provide a tangible return on investment for Intel.

“I was the one who updated it and helped decide what the key messages were that needed to go out,” she said. “Just the variety and magnitude of the things I was given to do went way beyond what I expected.”

Sauter, a Business Mangement major, also worked on data anlysis reports for the department and helped troubleshoot a new website before launch.

“Being a part of launching a product was really fun,” Sauter said. “It was such a broad range of experiences, I was able to apply all my knowledge from school and from working in my family business.”

Jobe said the experience gave her not only real-life job experience but also a group of mentors who are already helping her shape her next steps after graduation.

“I can’t even really put into words all the things I got out of it,” she said. “My idea of what a job is and what a career could look like has developed immensely. I have resume items that are competitive with other people. I’m not going into the workforce blind.”

Sauter, graduating this spring, already feels like she’ll be a better employee because of her internships through MECOP.

“The references I have now, I could get four or five good references from managers at Intel,” Sauter said. “This has been such a key part of my education, I can’t imagine graduating without it.”

Trevor Husseman working at Daimler Trucks in Portland for his MECOP internship.
Trevor Husseman working at Daimler Trucks in Portland for his MECOP internship.

Trevor Husseman, an accounting and business information systems major, spent this past summer with Daimler Trucks North America in Portland.

There he worked on an internal application repository system to track the applications Daimler employees used, and helped integrate that with a system Daimler’s international operation was expanding.

“It keeps track of applications created within Daimler that people use on the shop floor, on their computers that we created,” Husseman said. “I worked with one of the engineers and actually implemented it into production.”

The opportunity to push something into the company workflow motivated Husseman, giving him a taste of what his career could be like after graduation.

“I learned to step up my work and my work ethic,” he said. “This is real life. This is going into production so it has to be perfect.”

This summer he’ll participate in his second internship, this time with Garmin in Salem.

Husseman said he already feels better prepared for starting his job search once he leaves Oregon State.

“It prepares you so much for your first real job, it’s invaluable,” he said. “You’re a year ahead of everyone else that’s starting.”

Looking back at his experience and ahead to his joining the workforce, he can’t imagine entering without his time with MECOP.

“I get a year of experience and two six-months of awesome pay, but really the work experience was worth it,” he said. “I think MECOP is just phenomenal and anyone who doesn’t do it is crazy. How could you not in this day and age when it’s so competitive?”

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Fuhrman brings recruiter’s knowledge to help students at Career Success Center

Early on in her career, Brandi Fuhrman realized that her favorite part in any position she held was helping her coworkers.

“I like feeling like I’ve been helping someone,” said Fuhrman, the new director of the College of Business Career Success Center.

“We’re all human, we all make mistakes,” she said. “If I can help someone by sharing about my mistakes or just observations as I try to help them through something and help them be better, that for me is really rewarding.”

As the new Internship and Career Services Coordinator for the Career Success Center, that’s Fuhrman’s main task, helping COB students not only connect with jobs and internships but preparing them for those opportunities and present themselves in the best way possible.

The Career Success Center helps students prepare for a job search and eventual career through information sessions with companies, professional development workshops to teach essential personal skills and other services such as job and internship listings, resume help and more.

Fuhrman is excited by the possibilities the center holds (she started officially Feb. 6) and is looking forward to adding to its offerings.

“Everyone has been extremely welcoming. The students have been great,” Fuhrman said. “I think it has the ability to grow quite a bit.”

A native of Southern California, Fuhrman came to Oregon to attend the University of Portland before coming to Oregon State for her MBA in 2003.

Most recently Fuhrman worked as a senior operations leader for Target in Albany, running the shipping department but also working as a recruiter and helping develop Target managers for more senior positions with the company.

“A lot of what Target’s culture is and what drew me to this job is development,” she said. “A lot of time was spent working with my direct managers and helping to develop them so that they can get promoted or help them become better leaders.”

She remembered one manager who needed work on interpersonal skills, but showed promise with more analytical tasks.

Fuhrman worked to develop ways for him to spark conversations with coworkers while also introducing him to company leaders who could help develop his skills with data and analytics.

“He was a huge asset to Target but maybe not in that role,” Fuhrman said. “He was probably your average manager, but I saw the potential. That was extremely rewarding.”

As a recruiter, Fuhrman represented Target at career fairs, mock interviews and other events, those same activities she’ll now counsel College of Business students in mastering.

“I was the person on the other side at the career fair, trying to tell you about Target, analyzing the student standing in front of me,” she said. “Now I’m on the other side trying to give them tips and pointers on how to be the person standing in front of the recruiter that when you walk away the recruiter is writing great things about you on your resume instead of putting it in the ‘no’ pile.”

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SIM Club gets real-world experience with Windows 8 code-a-thon

Brian Holmes, center, reacts as a problem is fixed while Microsoft Developer Evangelist Bret Stateham (standing) and JB van Hecke (left) look on.

Oregon State students JB van Hecke and Brian Holmes sat at their computers, working back and forth on the problems on the screens in front of them and the pizza in their hands.

“I know I’ll be up all night playing with this,” said van Hecke, a BIS major. “I’ll be cranking the coffee and Mountain Dew I guess.”

The pair was part of a group of 17 Oregon State students to participate in a Windows 8 Code-a-thon Friday in Bexell Hall, hosted by the OSU Students of Information Management (SIM) Club.

Students received instruction from a pair of Windows developers in the new Windows 8 app environment and the staple of any good code-a-thon, a free lunch.

The day grew out of a request OSU Instructor and Weatherford Faculty in Residence Michael Curry received from a group of students in his coding class fall term who were interested in turning those skills into a business.

“[They] expressed a desire to be entrepreneurs, so I agreed to help them out,” Curry said. “The goal was the build a business around these apps.”

Curry contacted Microsoft, which provided equipment, instructors and even an xBox 360 to hand out to the team with the best app at the end of the day.

Microsoft developer evangelists Bret Stateham and Jeremy Foster, a former high school teacher himself, gave students a quick overview of Windows 8 app development before leaving the afternoon open for groups to work on their own projects.

Foster said the code-a-thons help get new apps into the Windows store immediately but also introduce new talent to software development and the Windows platform. In addition to Corvallis, Foster was visiting college campuses in Eugene, Bothell, Wash., and Boise, Idaho.

He said college students often have the enthusiasm and most importantly time to get into the new concepts quickly.

“It’s something where college students tend to have the time,” Foster said. “They have heavy course loads but maybe some time in the evening.”

Which was exactly when van Hecke and Holmes were planning to dive into the Windows 8 platform more.

“If I get a game done today that’ll be good, but it’s a great tool,” van Hecke said at the lunch break.

Overall seven new apps were added to the Windows 8 store. Van Hecke and Holmes ended up completing a traffic jam app during the session, winning the xBox. Runners up were Darlene Veenhuizen and Trevor Husseman, who created an apple catching game.

Curry said those apps are tangible benefits students can show as they compete for jobs and internships.

“We’re trying to make opportunities,” Curry said. “It’s not just the classes that get them the job, but the projects they can work on outside that get them the job.”

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Weatherford Award ceremony shows entrepreneurs come from all walks of life

Thursday night Oregon State University MBA candidate Dale McCauley told the crowd at the 2013 Weatherford Awards in Portland how he got started as an innovator.

“When I was 4 years old my parents gave me a tool box. With real tools,” McCauley said. “Nothing with bolts was safe.”

It was a fitting start to an evening honoring entrepreneurs and innovators, those who saw the tools they had at their disposal and found a way to change the world, or in the case of 4-year-old McCauley, his mother’s Cuisinart.

McCauley is also a key part of the Austin Entrepreneurship Program, which sponsored the awards and is housed in Weatherford Hall. The program, supported by a gift from Ken and Joan Austin, helps expose current Oregon State students to the ideas and practice of entrepreneurship and teach the next generations of business visionaries.

One of the first students to come out of the program was Alex Polvi, who was honored with fellow OSU alumni Dan Di Spaltro and Logan Welliver for the their startup, Cloudkick.

“We had no clue what we were doing,” Di Spaltro said.

“We had some clue,” Polvi interjected.

“No clue.”

Di Spaltro spoke of the trio’s defining ideas of humor, trust, determination and keeping the operation lean.

“We had a team in it for the dream, not the paycheck,” Polvi said.

Also honored was Dr. Albert Starr, who helped develop the first artificial heart valve while working at what is now Oregon Health and Science University in 1958.

He said one of the keys to innovation is confidence, having the strength to push ahead even when the outcome is uncertain.

Starr remembered the first time OHSU approached him about cardiac surgery, something he hadn’t trained for specifically.

“He said Starr, can you do this type of surgery?” Starr said. “Of course.”

While Experian CEO Don Robert is confident in his business life, he was less so when he received the letter informing him he was a 2013 Weatherford Award honoree.

He called College of Business Dean Ilene Kleinsorge to let her know she had the wrong guy. He was the CEO of the world’s largest credit services company, not an entrepreneur.

“She told me maybe we have the wrong guy, but we’ve got the right company,” Robert said.

That he agreed with. Experian thrives on institutional innovation, Robert said, with much of the company’s business coming from products that didn’t exist five years ago.

“The job of our management team is to not screw that up and get in the way of good ideas. I will take the credit humbly for not screwing it up.”

The final honoree of the evening was Oregon’s first and still only woman governor, Barbara Roberts.

“Some of you are wincing to think about innovation in government,” Roberts said. “But in Oregon it does and has happened.”

Roberts mentioned Oregon’s vote by mail system, the Death With Dignity Act and a number of other legislative firsts which show Oregon’s pioneering character.

“I am a descendent of Oregon Trail pioneers,” she said. “You don’t stop. You don’t turn back.”

Roberts left the stage with a line from her inaugural address (“Not everyone gets to say that,” she added with a laugh).

“Each generation has but one chance to be judged by future generations,” Roberts said. “Now is out time. Let us be worthy of their judgment. ”

 

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What will happen to Bexell’s wood murals after Austin Hall?

Wood work mural in Bexell Hall

The Daily Barometer had a great story looking at the origins of the Bexell Hall wood murals, which line the entrance to the hall.

The murals date to the 1930s and depict a number of people important to the history of Oregon State University and the state of Oregon itself, including John Andrew Bexell himself.

After posting the story on Facebook, though, we got a question not about the murals’ past but their future. A commenter was curious what happens to the murals after the College of Business moves to Austin Hall in fall of 2014.

We got in touch with Malcolm LeMay, Director of Operations for the college, to see what’s planned for the murals once the College of Business moves on.

“The murals belong to Bexell and will not be moved,” LeMay said.

Oregon State doesn’t see buildings belonging to an individual college, as programs change names and locations quite a bit. With that in mind, the murals will stay put.

And that will give College of Business faculty, staff, students and alumni another reason to come back and visit Bexell from time to time.

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2013 Weatherford Awards: Cloudkick

To celebrate the 2013 Weatherford Awards, we’re profiling each of the honorees here at the College of Business blog. Today are Dan Di Spaltro, Alex Polvi and Logan Welliver, the founders of Cloudkick. For more information about the awards and links to other honoree profiles as they’re posted, check out our introduction to the series.

For Alex Polvi, entrepreneurship comes down to one simple phrase:

“Just go for it.”

That’s exactly what he and fellow Oregon State alumni Dan Di Spaltro and Logan Welliver did after graduating from OSU.

In 2008, the trio moved to Silicon Valley and created Cloudkick, a startup dedicated to helping customers better manage their cloud computing resources.

Exactly two years later they were finalizing the sale of the startup to Rackspace, the second-largest cloud-computing company in the world.

All three took a risk, driven by a desire to do something they loved with the skills they had acquired at OSU. Now, just more than five years removed from graduation, the group has cemented their reputations as innovative entrepreneurs.

The story of Cloudkick began before OSU, when Polvi and Welliver met growing up in McMinnville, Oregon.

At OSU Polvi studied computer science, where he met Di Spaltro, while Welliver pursued graphic design.

Polvi says working in the Open Source Lab at OSU gave him the skills he needed to land internships with Mozilla and Google and eventually his first job out of school.

After graduating, Di Paltro and Polvi moved to San Jose, California. A year out of school the pair decided to start a new venture, and Polvi called Welliver to join them.

“It sounded like a good opportunity, and I knew Alex well enough to trust his nose for business, so I flew down to San Jose to meet with him and Dan,” Welliver remembers. “After that meeting, I closed up shop in Portland and moved down to San Jose to give it a shot.”

Di Spaltro and Polvi created the technical aspects of the project while Welliver used his graphic design talents to make the final product visually appealing and intuitive for users.

After participating in the Y Combinator accelerator program in 2009, the company launched and started its ascent in the cloud-computing world.

Less than a year later the company had grown to 12 employees — including six OSU alumni.

In December of 2011, Rackspace acquired Cloudkick, capping an amazing journey for the startup and its three founders.

Looking back, Polvi says the group had its share of luck, but they made it possible by following their passions and starting something of their own.

“Just the fact that we started a company in the first place positioned us to have 20 times more luck than someone who didn’t,” Polvi said.

Welliver said his main piece of advice for students and young entrepreneurs is to start working on what they love now instead of waiting for more favorable conditions.

“If you’re truly passionate about something, start working on it today,” Welliver said. “I hear too many people endlessly pitching ideas instead of building them. Executing a poor idea has infinitely more value than postulating you have a great one.”