One great thing about Chicago Booth is our expertise across a variety of business fields and functional areas! At the Booth Kilts Center for Marketing, our faculty and students are consistently working to innovate and lead in this dynamic marketplace. Our unique cross-disciplinary approach to marketing is driven by data and drawn from the fields of economics, sociology, statistics, and psychology to develop holistic, practical strategies that garner results! Watch Professor Pradeep Chintagunta talk about what sets Booth students apart. http://www.chicagobooth.edu/macb/teaching/chintagunta.aspx

Booth has started a new series called The Big Question. Our colleagues who publish the faculty research magazine Capital Ideas are now bringing you more Booth Thinking via this video series.

The videos feature some of Booth's rock star faculty discussing the same big issues students get to discuss with them in the classroom.  Check out the latest edition of The Big Question – featuring Booth professors Luigi Zingales and Haresh Sapra on YouTube.

The Admissions Team is always looking for ways to give prospective students a peek into what life is like at Booth.  This is more than peek - enjoy!

Katie Coogan

Assistant Director of Admissions

We frequently hear that Booth is quantitative. I prefer the word empirical. We like to know that answers come from data that has been put to the scrutiny of some scientific methods and free from bias.

In light of that statement I hesitated for the longest time posting this article, which might only serve to enforce the quantitative belief, with that said, if the shoe fits... So, I present an economic look at amore; happy Valentine's to all http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Family/lovespaghetti.pdf

A brief synopsis minus the formulas courtesy of Professor Mike Gibbs: "If Romeo likes spaghetti, then holding Juliet's spaghetti consumption constant, he would prefer an increase in his spaghetti consumption. But if Romeo and Juliet love each other intensely, it may be that, holding Juliet's utility constant, he would not want an increase in his own spaghetti. If Juliet's utility is to be held constant when Romeo gets more spaghetti, then she must be given less spaghetti. But Romeo loves Juliet and wants her to have more spaghetti. Indeed in the case we are considering, Romeo's marginal rate of substitution between spaghetti for Juliet and spaghetti for Romeo exceed's Juliet's marginal rate of substitution between spaghetti for Juliet and spaghetti for Romeo. Therefore, when Romeo gets an extra inch of spaghetti, taking enough spaghetti away from Juliet to leave her no better off than she was before will make Romeo worse off than he was before he got the extra spaghetti."

George Andrews
Associate Dean

The city of Chicago.  Chicago Booth.  Entrepreneurs.  All are tied together.

Do you consider yourself well-read?  Are you a Chicagoan who loves reading about our great city?

I hope you saw the article about Chicago Start-Ups (and their connection to Chicago Booth!) in the Chicagoist.com posted last month.  Kate Volzer is a current Chicago Booth Evening MBA student who is targeted to graduate in the year 2014.  This is plenty of time for her to keep her new business going while working full time as well and while taking in all that Booth has to offer.   
 
From the article:

Kate Volzer, a current MBA candidate at Booth, co-founded VisitCoordinator to solve some of the travel-planning headaches she experienced as an admissions counselor at the University of Chicago. She was particularly inspired after an entrepreneurial selling lecture with Craig Wortmann last year.

“Literally that day I went home and called my brother and said ‘do you know how to build a website?’ It was a little more impulsive than I think most people are,” said Volzer.

From there, Volzer didn’t have to look far outside of the Booth community for advice as to where to go next. She sat down with a group of experienced entrepreneurs, including Amanda Thompson, a fellow MBA candidate, to determine whether her idea was realistic, and came out of that conversation with a fundraising goal.

“With the Booth community in general, you talk to one person and end up with a list of 10 more people to contact.”  Said Volzer

Kate is pursuing concentrations in Entrepreneurship and Finance and plans to study abroad through Booth’s International Business Exchange Programs (IBEP).

Also in the article, keep an eye out for Bob Gillespie, a Chicago Booth Evening MBA alum who co-founded his company, InContext Solutions, in 2009, during his time at Booth and is now working on his new venture, SwiftExpo. 

We invite you to learn more about The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.  

Gretchen Cooper
Director of Admissions

Many of you may have heard one of our student stories about Jeff Davis, from when he was a Chicago Booth student.  Well, we have an update for you now that Jeff is an alum!

As a reminder, when Jeff entered the Evening MBA Program, he was a Healthcare Sales Representative at Pfizer Inc., and before this, he spent time with Molex and NASA.  We have always said that Booth students come from all walks of life and/or all walks of space! 

What attracted Jeff to Booth was not only the fact that, as part of the Evening MBA Program, he could continue working and continue to accelerate his career in the healthcare industry, but he would also be able to partake in the most flexible and diverse curriculum of any business school in the world. Also, a differentiating factor from other business schools, Jeff was able to participate in two experiential learning courses - Marketing Research and Consumer Behavior - where he worked alongside two real companies, Watermelon Express and Lifetime Fitness.

Wanting to stay in the Pharmaceutical/Biotechnology/Healthcare industry, Jeff planned a career move during his time at Booth, involving not only changing job functions but also locations.  At the time of graduation, Jeff had secured a job with Genentech, in a post-MBA rotational program, starting within the Marketing - Brand/Product Management Group, at their home office in San Francisco.   His first rotation was as a product marketing manager on the Activase® Brand Team, a product used for stroke to help patients recover from physical/neurological disability and after 7 months months Jeff will be moving into the e-Marketing group working on the digital strategy from 2013-2015 for managed care and patient access for the bulk of Genentech’s portfolio of drugs.  Learning the digital strategy behind big name brands is a big step for Jeff and one that could not have happened without Booth courses, especially the marketing management, entrepreneurial and finance classes. 

During his time at Booth Jeff was the President of the African-American MBA Association, as well as part of the Booth Consulting Club, Booth Marketing Club, Chicago Booth BioPharma and the Wine Club.  He has taken this high level of activity to the West Coast and has spent much of his free time exploring opportunities to get involved with the Bay Area Alumni Club.

With an undergraduate degree from Purdue University - College of Engineering with a major in Mechanical Engineering and a Chicago Booth MBA with concentrations in Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Finance, Jeff is well educated and has the drive to continue on this successful career path.  Our Admissions Team looks forward to seeing Jeff on Tuesday, February 5th for the Chicago Conversations Event on Social Enterprise in San Francisco.  Prospective students are welcome to join us!  Just register at the link.  We may be able to meet some of Jeff's friends too!

Gretchen Cooper
Director of Admissions

I first connected with Peter Gansler while he was a prospective student living in Amsterdam and working for adidas International. As I learned about Peter’s background and goals with his MBA, one topic was consistently part of the conversation, his love of soccer. Peter played soccer while he was a student at Notre Dame and went on to play at the professional level in both Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Munich, Germany.

His love of soccer carried over into his professional life and he developed a career in sports marketing. Peter held a variety of sports marketing positions for adidas America and adidas International. While he enjoyed these positions, Peter knew he needed to pursue an MBA at Chicago Booth to take his career to the next level. Eleven months after graduating from Chicago Booth’s Evening MBA program, Peter landed his dream job.

Peter was recently named Commercial Director/CMO of Vitesse Arnhem, a top professional soccer team in the Dutch Eredivisie, which is the top league in the Netherlands. According to Peter, “It's a dream opportunity and would not have been possible without Booth.”  Read the press release here. note: It will first appear in Dutch. To translate to English click the British flag at the top left corner of the page.  

As Peter told me about his new position, I was curious to know how particular courses and faculty influenced his transition. “Professor Ram Shivakumar’s Competitive Strategy course was a turning point for helping me go from a street-smart marketer to a strategic management professional.  His methodical approach and analytical frameworks continue to influence me daily and are already being implemented.  Even just simple things such as: What do we want to do?  How are we going to do it?  And most importantly - why is it going to work?”

Another faculty member who impacted Peter was Professor Marvin Zonis, who taught leadership courses at Booth. “I was fortunate to have him for his last class at Chicago Booth, and I will always be better for it.  His lessons regarding leadership are many of the things I hope to bring to this emerging soccer club in the Netherlands, but more importantly impart to the leaders within the organization.”  

Finally, Professor Nicholas Epley offered Peter “an enlightening dive into human behavior and taught with infectious passion.  I hope to bring the same passion to the team here at Vitesse Arnhem.  I talk about the negativity bias every day from his class.  I notice things I didn't notice before about people, consumers, human behavior, etc.”

Peter had a transformative experience at Chicago Booth. His experience in the MBA program combined with his passion for soccer and sports marketing enabled him to score his dream job. We are honored to have Peter Gansler as a part of our alumni community.  

Kara Northcutt
Associate Director of Admissions