Members of the Executive M.B.A. Program's sixty-third class talk
about why they came to Chicago, what has changed in the five years
since graduation, and how the M.B.A. experience affected how they
think about careers, business, and success.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT the Executive M.B.A. Program that acts as a catalyst
for change and prompts people to reevaluate the direction of their
lives? Possibly it is the meeting of the minds–a dynamic, intense
coming together of individuals with a wealth of experience from
nearly every industry and every region. Perhaps it is the timing–the
average XP student has nearly two decades of experience–that provokes
deep consideration and reevaluation of life goals. Whatever the
reason, many people leave the program with new knowledge and connections,
ready to move to a higher level, strike out on their own, or redefine
their existing roles. No matter which path they take, alumni agree
that the XP experience cast their careers in a new light and helped
them realize where they were–and where they wanted to go.
‘Understanding where I fit in’
Juan Carlos Bosacoma was a technical project manager at Quaker
Oats when he enrolled in the Executive M.B.A. Program. “I wanted
to move into line management or become more directly involved
with business management,” Bosacoma explains, “and I thought an
M.B.A. would provide the tools to get there.”
Once at Chicago, Bosacoma made valuable contacts, broadened his
understanding of management, and gained new skills. He also got
more than he bargained for. “While in school, I gained a business
understanding of where I really fit into my organization,” he
says. As a technical expert in a marketing-oriented company, he
realized that he might never be given the opportunity to pursue
the business responsibility he desired.
“In a consumer-driven organization like Quaker, overall business
management and financial accountability falls within marketing.
Tech work is staff work that supports marketing. That’s not to
say it’s not important, but it is support work, rather than line
management, which is what I wanted to do,” he says. “XP opened
my eyes to where I fit into the organization and where I was going.”
He began to contemplate his next step, deciding where to focus
his energy to gain more responsibility while using his vast technical
know-how. Because Quaker provided financial support for the program,
Bosacoma felt compelled to stay with the company following graduation.
“There was no formal obligation, but I wanted to be there for
at least a couple of years. The company invested in me, and I
wanted to give something back,” he says. About a year after graduation,
he opted to take a severance package during what he termed a “well-timed
downsizing.” In fact, it was so well timed that he received his
pink slip in the morning and attended an Internet conference that
afternoon. The conference solidified his decision to join forces
with his brother, Nelson Bosacoma, XP-66 (’97), to start his own
business. Bosacoma now runs U.S. Host, Inc., a Chicago-based firm
that provides Internet access, Web hosting, and Web site and database
development.
While Bosacoma isn’t alone in his career-altering experience with
the Executive M.B.A. Program, the reasons for attending the XP
are almost as varied as the students who apply, and the results
are different as well. Unlike campus students, who are an average
age of twenty-eight and enroll in business school shortly after
completing their undergraduate studies, XP students bring an average
of eighteen years’ experience to the table. And while many campus
students want an M.B.A. to help build budding careers, many XPs
have already achieved some success. Instead, they find themselves
at a crossroad asking, What’s next? Where can I go from here?
What more do I want out of my career?
The difference between success and excellence
David Burnett, M.D., had been working in medical administration
at the University of Nebraska Medical Center for four years when
he decided to apply to business school.
“I was running multimillion dollar subcomponents of the institution,
while all the time I had this gnawing feeling that I didn’t know
what I was doing,” he says. “I just didn’t have a good foundation
in what I was doing. Even though I was perceived as very successful,
I knew I wasn’t excellent. There’s a difference between success
and excellence.”
It was Burnett’s desire to excel as an administrator, to surpass
conventional definitions of success, that led him to the GSB.
“I used to say that I was at a meeting once and I was the only
one wearing a suit and that’s why I got picked to do management
tasks,” he says. “But I had been [in management roles] for several
years, and I realized I was flying by the seat of my pants. And
management in medicine is often like that. Somehow there’s this
idea that ‘he’s smart, he went to medical school, anybody can
do it.’ That’s just not the case.”
When the opportunity arose for him to take a position in Chicago,
he negotiated participation in the XP as part of his recruitment
package. He said he purposely selected a general program–rather
than one that focused on medical management–because he wanted
exposure to people in the nonmedical world. Five years after graduation,
he is still with the same company that put him through the GSB,
University Health System Consortium.
“I really thought that I would be here for four or five years,
I would get my M.B.A., and then move on to something else, that
this was just a stepping stone,” Burnett admits. “But as it turned
out, there just ended up being so many opportunities [internally]
that I was able to realize once I acquired this business insight.
The strategic business unit I run for this company has grown by
leaps and bounds. When I started there were four people in the
unit; now we have about forty.”
Increasing credibility
Tim Bergin had five years at Leo Burnett under his belt and was
working in database marketing, a department he helped create,
when he decided he needed a new challenge. “At the time my job
and the scope of my responsibilities at work were not really going
to increase or change that radically in the foreseeable future,”
he says. “I guessed that as I progressed with my professional
career at Leo Burnett, it would behoove me–and in fact be essential
at some point down the road–to have more solid grounding in the
fundamentals of business. And that spoke to an M.B.A. for me.”
Bergin expected the XP experience to be a springboard from which
he would leave Leo Burnett. “I was half expecting that when I
got the M.B.A. I would be poised to move, to get another job,”
he says, recognizing that many companies may be wary of sponsoring
an employee’s executive education for that very reason. “There
is definitely a fear that if a company helps you out, that you
will get this credential, make contacts, and then leave. For me,
the opposite was true,” he says. “I realized that there were ample
internal opportunities to apply my newfound knowledge and make
my current situation better. I think many people recognize that
if they’re already with a good company, they have a better opportunity
to expand their career and put to use what they’ve learned much
more quickly and readily by advancing within that firm.”
Not only did Burnett benefit when Bergin stayed on after graduation;
Bergin says the company gained advantages from the start. “The
company benefited from the program almost immediately because
most of the projects and cases and things we were doing were readily
applicable to my day-to-day activities,” says Bergin, who is now
senior vice president at Leo Burnett. “They were getting value
while I was at the school as well as over the long term.”
Like Bergin, financial adviser Rosa Ebling is with the same firm
today as when she began the XP. Ebling joined William Blair &
Co. as a sales assistant, worked her way up, and had recently
acquired her own client base when she began exploring the XP.
With a nonfinancial background and degrees in French, biology,
and counseling psychology, she wanted to learn the theories behind
financial management. Getting an M.B.A. would give her more credibility
within the firm and with prospective clients and teach her more
about how the business worked.
“In this business, my potential is really in my own hands,” says
Ebling. “I had no thought of leaving Blair, I just thought I would
do something more –attract different clients, grow my business–with
an M.B.A.”
She applied to Chicago with encouragement from her husband, Louis
Ebling III, ’80, who told her she should go to the GSB “or nowhere
at all.”
While her time at the GSB confirmed her choice of career and employer,
the biggest change brought about by her Chicago experience was
a new way of thinking. “When I was doing the program, I was really
thinking out of the box more,” she says, noting that her production
level has quadrupled in the past five years. “I also feel I can
attract bigger clients, money-wise.”
What exactly was it about the XP experience that prompted this
new way of thinking? “I had never before been exposed to so many
different people from different areas,” she says. “Every time
we had a problem [in class], they would take their own slant on
it based on their industry, their experience, their previous education.
It really opened my mind.”
Getting off the corporate ladder
While for some XP alumni the definition of success involved seizing
more responsibility or rising in the ranks, others followed a
completely different path and decided to strike out on their own.
Wai Cheong Yeong is one such alumnus. His interest in obtaining
an M.B.A. through the Executive M.B.A. Program came when he made
the decision to embark on an entrepreneurial venture after twelve
successful years performing money management and investment banking
in large institutions.
“Prior to that time, success to me was defined as climbing the
corporate ladder, earning a large year-end bonus, and moving in
the general direction of being a head honcho in a large institution,”
Yeong recalls. “XP provided a deeper insight into how a business
works, the drive toward increasing shareholder value, and reinforced
my idea that the ultimate payoff in business must lie with being
equity stakeholders. I am now much more committed to remaining
an entrepreneur and building wealth through equity ownership.”
Yeong says he approached the XP from the perspective of a “jittery
new entrepreneur” hoping to gain insights into American business
while tapping into a new network. “I thought, ‘Will I make it?
Will I have to go back to being an employee? Will I lose all my
money?’ In this context, I thought XP could provide new insights
and reduce my chance of failure,” he says.
The XP lived up to Yeong’s expectations. The partnership he started
during the program went through a number of corporate changes
before entering into a joint venture with a public company in
Britain in 1997. The firm is now minority-owned by the British
company with Yeong and his partners taking a majority stake. They
are all involved with
the global money management business with offices in five cities
in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Building strength and finding home
In a world of increasing mergers, the corporate climate can turn
on a dime when a company changes hands. Such was the case for
Eric Goodbar when the private security options trading partnership
he worked for was bought out by NationsBank. The change of ownership
radically altered the workplace of the small firm where he had
spent roughly a decade. “It was a fun company to work for with
a relaxed, informal work atmosphere,” he recalls. “We had no corporate
clients, and it was kind of eclectic, a lot of intellectual discussions
going on, a very broad range of backgrounds.” Then came the purchase.
“You have one of the world’s largest banks coming in and buying
this little options trading firm, and I started thinking, what
tools do I need to do battle on this very large corporate terrain?”
Goodbar had considered the program before, but the NationsBank
purchase was the clincher.
“I thought that if you had people who knew the options side of
the business and knew all the aspects of dealing with a modern
day corporate client, you could get some real synergies going,”
Goodbar says. “I really wanted to find a way of looking at things
that would help solve the problems of the corporate clients from
NationsBank.”
Goodbar says the program prepared him to deal with the firm’s
new environment, but his time at Chicago made him hungry for something
new: striking out on his own.
“What ended up happening,” he says, “which is probably one of
the dark secrets of the Executive Program, is that once you get
in, you find that a third of the people who are there are self-made
entrepreneurial individuals. You get into discussions with these
people and find out how much fun they’re having, how well they’re
doing, and you kind of get the bug.”
Goodbar spent several postgraduation years at a money management
venture he began with a colleague from NationsBank. He and his
partner raised some money–“not nearly enough to cover overhead”–and
eventually disbanded a year ago.
“You really don’t appreciate how much risk is involved, how much
luck is involved in a start-up business,” he said. “There are
a large number of success and failure stories that go untold.”
Goodbar is now director of research at Eclipse Capital Management,
Inc., in St. Louis, a global money management firm with an “entrepreneurial
feel.” When asked if he had returned to the type of firm from
which he began, Goodbar concedes that there are similarities but
stresses the importance of the journey and his personal evolution.
“I’m not so sure you could say that it’s full circle. It’s possible
that some of the things I was missing when I left my first job
I’ve searched for and since found,” he says. “As you go back and
forth between different jobs and different modes, you end up finding
one that you’re more comfortable with and you realize that you
had to cycle out of it in order to build strength and find home.”
–M.M.B.
–Tim Bergin, XP-63 (’94)
