Our ninth MBA Opening Residency has ended and 42 new students begin classes this week. They’ll start the semester with terrific memories of a very intense yet enjoyable period spanning ten days. The residency concluded with team presentations to executives from Owens & Minor, which served as the case study this year. Details on the final presentations can be found in coverage by RichmondBizSense.com here: http://bit.ly/to7kx.
The winning team of five students included a pair who are commuting from Charlottesville to attend The Richmond MBA. Louis Fierro is a manager of editorial operations at Lexis Nexis there and Barbara Wiggins is a clinical assistant professor in internal medicine at the UVa School of Medicine. Their teammates were Jason Repak of Rolls-Royce, Eric Boe of KBS, Inc. and Alex Solomon of Compass Energy. All are to be congratulated on an outstanding analysis and presentation.
Several faculty members provided insight that guided our students’ exploration. Kent Monroe (pricing), Doug Bosse (strategy), Marshall Geiger (accounting), Roger Schnorbus (strategy) and Steve Thompson (operations and technology) led discussions during the residency’s first weekend at the Jefferson Hotel.
We will begin work on next year’s residency in mid-September. Markel Corporation has already agreed to serve as the case study.
On Tuesday, August 11th, the Women’s MBA Association hosted an enjoyable networking evening for the incoming female MBA students at my house. About 25 current and incoming female MBA students, as well as a few recent graduates, came to meet the new students, share their experiences in the program, and have an opportunity to network with one another. Although the group is only about eight months old, participation in our events continues to grow and we look forward to making this welcoming event a tradition!
The Robins School of Business Women’s MBA Association was started last winter after a lot of discussion around the challenges that women face in the workplace and how to best support and educate one another as students and alumni of the MBA program. We understand the power of learning from one other’s triumphs and mistakes and the benefit of having strong, intelligent female mentors to look up to in the business community. The mission of the Women’s MBA Association is to be a resource for female MBA students and alumni; we will serve as a forum to empower one another and address issues facing women business leaders through networking, speaker series and mentoring. We will accomplish our mission though quarterly speaker series on a variety of topics, dedicated social and networking events, as well as school-sponsored recruiting events for potential students. Our next event, a speaker series on “Changing Careers” will take place on Sunday, September 13th from 2-4pm. Our speaker series are open to all current female MBA students and alumni, prospective MBA students, female faculty and staff, and other invited guests from the community. Please contact me for more information: meg.standing@richmond.edu.
