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Rady School Alumna Jan Tuttleman Given Distinguished Service Award

Jan Tuttleman (Flex ’06) was recently awarded the Anne Ratner Award for Extraordinary Leadership by the United Jewish Federation (UJF) of San Diego County. The Anne Ratner Award recognizes distinguished service, and was presented at the UJF Women’s Division Options 2008 luncheon, an annual event to celebrate Jewish women and their contributions to the community.

Jan serves in leadership roles for many organizations including the United Jewish Federation, the San Diego Jewish Community Foundation, the Burnham Institute for Biomedical Research, Vision of Children, San Diego Grantmakers and the Rady School Alumni Association. She is also the president of the Tuttleman Family Foundation, which is based in Philadelphia.

Jan is a business development and licensing consultant for Progenetor, Inc. and an angel investor in early stage life science companies in San Diego.

Congratulations to Jan on being the 2008 recipient of the Anne Ratner Award for Extraordinary Leadership!

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O’Donnell, Stein & Welborn Published in Economic Devleopment Quarterly

Rady 2006 classmates Niall O’Donnell, Greg Stein, and Robert Welborn recently collaborated on a paper with Beyster Institute Director Ray Smilor that was published in Economic Development Quarterly.  Nicely done, gentlemen.

Here’s the article abstract:

This article examines the drivers that have shaped a more proactive and entrepreneurial approach to the creation of high-technology centers through three detailed case studies of research universities: the University of California, San Diego; the University of Texas at Austin; and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, and Duke University in Research Triangle Park. The cases show the importance of committed leadership, the power of a mobilizing event, the influence of an organization that can effect change, the acceleration that can come from the arrival of key corporations, the value of compelling role models, the impact of financial resources, and the benefit of a tolerant mind-set. Above all, they highlight the critical importance of a research university that can serve as instigator; promoter; collaborator; and magnet for talent, technological innovation, and entrepreneurial activity.

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Rady Forms New Local Partnerships

Rady Marketing and Communication recently announced that the program has entered into two new partnerships with San Diego-based companies that share brand attributes of the Rady School.  First, Palomar Mountain Premium Spring Waterand Rady will partner to  provide speaker and special event bottled water under the Rady brand.  Palomar is the only pure spring water bottled in San Diego County.

Rady will also partner with Mission Playground, the San Diego apparel company founded on environmentally conscious and globally mindful designs, to design, develop and distribute a limited edition t-shirt and hooded sweatshirt to students and alumni.  More details of availability and ordering process will be announced later this month.

If you’d like to help in the selection of 4 designs for t-shirts and sweatshirts, please attend one of the following sessions:

Friday October 5th @ 11.45pm in the Library
Monday October 8th @ 12.00 in the Library
 

Kim Kennedy contributed this post.

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FT07 Time Capsule Needs Your Contributions

The Full-Time 2007 time capsule needs your contributions before mid-October, when it will be set into the ground alongside the Flex ’06 and ’07 capsules.  Time capsules for each class are placed in the pavers of Alumni Walk along the south side of Otterson Hall.  You have likely noticed the stone markers in the sidewalk heading west, one for each class.  The capsules undergo professional preservation in order to be reopened at a milestone reunion many years later.

All submissions to the FT07 time capsule should go to Nick Boyle ’07, our Alumni Board Advancement Chair.  The Flex ’06 capsule included news articles, hundreds of photos, a Motorola Razr phone, a power strip from the cells of Pepper Canyon, and other entertaining symbols of the class experience. 

Get your goods in soon!  The 3-class time capsule sinking will take place at the upcoming Octoberfest event with alumni and current students late next month.

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Harriss Promoted at HP

Catie Harriss ’06 has taken a new role at Hewlett Packard as the InkJet Systems Experience and Design Manager. Her charter is to work across all of the inkjet printer subbrands to develop and instill a repeatable customer experience-centric process for creating and developing new products and business models. In building this process, Catie is drawing upon many of the marketing and business strategy fundamentals she learned at Rady.

One successful implementation of the customer experience design process can be seen in the recent launch of Catie’s latest product, the HP Photosmart A826 home photo center. By designing with a laser focus on the busy, multitasking mom in the kitchen, Catie led the product development team to create what is being called “a true breakthrough in home photo printing” by industry analysts and reviewers.

In addition to applying her experience design process at HP, Catie provides strategy consulting in the areas of market segmentation, value proposition creation, and experience-based design to non-competitive outside companies. If you know of an organization who would like to refocus on the customer, energize their teams, and create breakthrough offerings, contact Catie at charriss@rady.ucsd.edu or 858-204-8314.

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5th Annual Classic Cars for Classic Kids

Students, faculty, staff and alumni of the Rady School are invited to attend the 5th Annual Classic Cars for Classic Kids to benfit the Preuss School at UCSD.  The event will be held on Friday, October 26th at Evan’s Garage, a family-owned museum featuring a world class collection of classic cars and antiques.  For more information please contact Maryann Lapthorn at mlapthorn_at_ucsd.edu.

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Ravi & Swapna Adusumilli Welcome Baby Girl

Ravi Adusumilli ’07 and his wife Swapna recently welcomed a new member to their family. Ravi, who has returned to work at HP, offered the following update about her birth:

Sanvi

Our little princess “Sanvi” was born on July 3rd at 11:27 PM. Sanvi showed up almost 2 months earlier than expected. Until then, both parents were proud of their timing that Sanvi would arrive after graduation allowing her dad to focus on his MBA. But Sanvi had other ideas and came early in order to see her dad graduate.

After spending about 3 weeks in the hospital, Sanvi is now home, weighs about 6 lbs and is growing well. She sleeps for most of the day but likes to keep her parents up all night.

– Ravi & Swapna Adusumilli

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Rady Career Survey: Critical Note for ’07s

2007 Rady grads!  The career connections office needs your participation to complete the ongoing Post-MBA Employment Survey.  This is an official instrument used to measure career placement and related metrics.  It’s also a chief tool for school ranking, accreditation, etc. and is audited by accounting professionals — not your typical pesky survey reqeust.

It is therefore critical that 2007 class members update their surveys.  Please use this link (also provided above) to keep the program up to date on your career activities.  Use your usual email log in to access the survey — it takes just minutes.

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RSB Plans for Fall Return

Pritchard

The Rady Student Association and its leadership, the Rady Student Board, have been actively ramping up for their return to campus next month. The Wire caught up with RSA CEO, Jasmine Pritchard ’08, to download the latest news.

Wire: What has the RSB been up to this summer?
Pritchard: RSB members have been busy. For example, Lisa Larson has been driving the student-led portions of Pre-Term. Janet Ireland has been leading a committee of FT08s who are planning the first MBA Auction (during which teams of FT08s will be auctioned off to local businesses for 20 hour projects) and an elevator pitch competition to build momentum leading up to the event.

RSB members and Rady club leaders will also be taking part in a Leadership retreat at Otterson Hall to build leadership skills and provide an opportunity for everyone to prepare for our welcome of 09s.

RSB members have also been responding to student feedback: Janet and I have both met with Robin to address some concerns we have heard about students’ career preparation, and Josh has compiled the results of the L2M survey.

Finally, RSB members have been representing the student body on a number of committees: Pete has been working with IT on Community improvements and Jasmine has been working with the Student Culture taskforce to bring a little more fun to Otterson Hall. Speaking of fun, Normi has planned a variety of happy hours where the FT and Flex classes have had a chance to mingle at our new local pub, Estancia.

W: What are you looking forward to most about the 3rd year of the RSB?
JP: I can’t help but look forward to welcoming all of the incoming students to Rady and to Otterson Hall. The student board has made great progress in the past two years and a lot of the foundation is in place. This will be the year where the fruits of that labor start to really hit the prime time: the MBA Auction, the much-anticipated happy hours, and the Storm Ventures course.

W: Where are you hoping to have the greatest impact?
JP: With the new building finally opened, I think the most immediate progress is going to be felt on the student culture front. You can’t help but feel like you’re in a world-class institution when you enter Otterson Hall. We’ll set the tone with PreTerm and a welcome back event for the 08s. And the RSB will continue to nurture this developing culture throughout the year with innovative events like the MBA Auction, as well as with biweekly happy hours (which we’re calling ‘Business Casuals’ after a suggestion from FT08 Shang). The happy hours will be a chance for everyone in the Rady community – FT and Flex students, alumni, faculty and administration – to catch up with one another and build relationships.

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Rady Takes Innovative Step with Trumba

In coordination with Rady Development and IT, the Alumni Board has selected Trumba to provide calendar software to alumni and our related audience.  While this will not replace the current Microsoft Exchange platform used within MBA programs, it will provide a state-of-the-art, brand agnostic sytem for Rady.  This means full interoperability with calendar systems from Google, Yahoo and others. 

Trumba uses embeddable widgets to extend calendars onto any web page, a feature that will be used heavily in upgrades to the alumni website.  The company was founded by the creators of Visio and PageMaker with venture backing from the likes of Kleiner Perkins and others.  Rollout is expected to begin shortly after the agreement is finalized this week. 

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Dean Sullivan Refreshes Linkage to Ethiopia

This summer, Dean Sullivan spent over a week in Ethiopia visiting the community that he called home for many years.  In this special conversation, the Wire caught up with him to hear more about his experience and explore the linkage between Rady and East Africa.

Wire: I understand that you returned to Ethiopia this summer. Can you talk about the nature of this trip and how you spent your time? 
Dean Sullivan: My wife, Julie, and I went to Ethiopia this past July.  As some of you know, I lived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for nearly seven years, two of them as a Peace Corps volunteer.  I adopted two children from Ethiopia – both of whom are now adults living in the States.  This trip was to revisit a part of the world that had an immense influence on me.  More importantly, it was to show Julie this important part of the world. 
     We spent about nine days in Addis Ababa.  We had meetings with leadership at Addis Ababa University, the new head of the Peace Corps, the entire workforce of Project Concern International (headquartered in San Diego) and with Catholic Relief Services. And very importantly, we visited with the siblings of our adopted children.  This was both valuable and enjoyable.

W: What has changed about life on the ground in Ethiopia since you served there in the Peace Corps? 
RS: Addis Ababa has grown immensely.  Ethiopia is still among the poorest nations in the world, with every imaginable health and  economic concern.  While there is political stability at this time, there still is political tension that permeates the population.  Ethiopia is a nation with tremendous potential – it needs help along many dimensions to realize this potential.

W: What role does Ethiopia, and your experiences there, play in your thinking today?
RS: Ethiopia provided me with my first opportunity to be a volunteer, a community activist and an academic.  It was that juncture in my life that defined what I do today.

W: The Rady community has a number of linkages to Africa. What opportunities do you envision for students and alumni to impact this part of the world?
RS: Ethiopia needs hope as well as help.  It represents a part of the world where we as individuals and as a community can really impact lives.  There are a number of possibilities for the Rady School.  An example is a startup pharmaceutical company producing generic drugs for malaria, HIV/AIDS and more.  This new company has a facility in place and is producing products.  But it needs help in raising capital, in distributing and in achieving necessary regulatory approvals.  This would make a superb set of independent studies.  There are many fronts for engagement.

Below, Dean Sullivan poses with the natural family of his adopted children in front of the house he helped build 30 years ago.

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Catherine Mi Takes on Tomorrow, Travels World

Mi

Catherine Mi ’07 is an embryologist at the San Diego Fertility Center and the founder and CEO of Fertility Tomorrow, an organization that provides education and guidance to women regarding fertility and egg preservation.  The Wire caught up with Catherine just before she departs for month of enviable travel.

Wire: How has Rady impacted your job function and success?
Catherine: Rady has enabled me to understand projects from a management perspective and given me the resources to take a broader view of why a particular project may be beneficial to an organization’s long-term objective. Whether I am using the tools I learned from Quantative Analysis to prepare a research paper, examining how the implementation of a particular strategic plan will impact the success of the company, or managing a team with approaches from Mabel’s Leadership class, I am better prepared to face the everyday challenges of my career.

W: What class (or classes) do you retrospectively view as most valuable?
CM: The capstone of the Rady MBA Program, Lab to Market, was a truly invaluable experience in my MBA journey. Through the series, I was able to research and analyze a business opportunity that has since become Fertility Tomorrow, a company dedicated to offering women the education to understand their reproductive options, specifically fertility preservation and egg freezing. Lab to Market taught me the essential steps in evaluating a market need, assessing operational and marketing challenges, creating a business model, and perhaps most importantly, writing a successful business plan.

W: What are you reading these days?
CM: Amazingly, I have actually found time to start reading again! I’m about halfway through Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. It’s a memoir about her spiritual journey across the globe to seek out herself and all that she is truly passionate about. Through her travels, she is immersed in the culture of each setting — pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and divine transcendence on the island of Bali. It’s a wonderful read and is a great reminder of the importance of maintaining balance in and finding passion for life.

W: Any updates in your family or personal life?
CM: My husband and I were married last August between Summer and Fall quarter, so we’ll be celebrating our first anniversary just after graduation! Since he also recently finished his Master’s program (Public Health at UCLA), we’ll finally get to spend some more time together. In the next few months, we’ll be headed to Napa, Costa Rica, and Cambodia to make up for all the weekends that have been dedicated to school!