School Notes: School of Management
January/February 2009

Technion and Yale SOM partner to research counterterrorism

A three-year partnership between Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the Yale School of Management will bring together top researchers to explore strategic, tactical, and operational problems arising in the areas of homeland security and counterterrorism, with the intent of developing new tools for decision-making and policy analysis. The initiative is made possible by a gift from Daniel Rose ’51, chairman of Rose Associates Inc. Two of the principal investigators -- Edward Kaplan, the William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Management Sciences at SOM, and Boaz Golany, the Dean and Samuel Gorney Professor of Engineering in the William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion -- recently described how they apply the tools of operations research to security problems, in an interview available at mba.yale.edu/kaplangolany.

SOM student wins major business competition in India

Roberto Jimenez ’09 recently won a grueling three-day-long contest to find India's "next CEO." The Numero Uno competition, held October 10-12, 2008, in Bangalore, pitted 20 top students from Indian business schools plus three international students against each other in a series of trials of leadership, strategy, finance, entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, athletics, and presentation skills. Jimenez spent the fall studying in India as part of SOM's international exchange program. "The fact that I won this competition is another example of how the new SOM curriculum is preparing us in a well-rounded manner," he said. "It is teaching us to think like a CEO, with a clear view from the top."

Symposium honors business leaders

Five graduates of the Yale School of Management who had followed divergent career paths returned to SOM to address students about how their SOM experiences helped shape their careers, as part of the Donaldson Fellows Program. The five alumni were nominated by their fellow graduates and selected by a committee of faculty, students, and staff based on how they exemplified the school's mission to educate leaders for business and society. The fellows were Adam Blumenthal ’89MPPM, managing general partner, Blue Wolf Capital Management; Laszlo Bock ’99MBA, vice president, people operations, Google Inc.; Andrea Levere ’83MPPM, president, Corporation for Enterprise Development; James Levitt ’76, ’80MPPM, director, Program on Conservation Innovation at the Harvard Forest, Harvard University, and president, Levitt & Company Inc.; and Elizabeth Serlemitsos ’93MBA, chief advisor, National AIDS Council, Zambia. Over two days, the fellows met with student groups, recorded interviews, and participated in a panel discussion that all first-year students were required to attend. Learn more at mba.yale.edu/alumni/donaldsonfellows.