Wake Teams to Highlight Health at 2010 Elevator Competition

A pair of companies that focus on promoting personal well-being, health and fitness will represent Wake Forest University in the 11th Annual Elevator Competition.
Runners’ Base and Healthie presented their ideas to judges Saturday, Feb. 20, at the school’s 2010 Escalator Competition, a preliminary contest for the right to compete in the Schools of Business international Elevator Competition event, scheduled for March 26-27.
In all, eight teams – four competing in the Traditional business plan category and four in the Social Entrepreneurship track – took part in last weekend’s event.
Runners’ Base, which competed in the Traditional track, is a scientific and research-based market mapping and meta-site company that provides information to people looking for the best running shoes, based on personal biomechanics. Healthie, the winner in the Social track, was created to combat the national epidemic of unhealthy lifestyles. The winners will each receive $250, said Bentsen Falb, co-chair for the Wake Forest Elevator Competition.
Peppi Browne-Armstrong (right), the founder and CEO of Runners’ Base, holds a master’s of science degree in bio-medical engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“I am truly honored and excited to be chosen to advance beyond the Escalator Competition and to be able to represent Wake Forest University Schools of Business in the upcoming Elevator Competition,” she said. “I have already begun to solidify my presentation by addressing the issues raised by both the judges and the audience. I have some work to do between now and the end of March but I am looking forward to the competition.”
Hal Eason, founder and managing director Agilis Equity Partners LLC, judged the Traditional track competition with Ram Baliga, the John B. McKinnon Professor of Management in the Wake Forest Schools of Business.
“From what I’ve heard so far,” Eason told Browne-Armstrong after her presentation, “I want to hear more.”
Vincent Mac (left) and Jon Pinder, associate professor of management in the Schools of Business, judged the Social track portion of the Escalator Competition.
Mac said the presentation for Social winner Healthie was thorough and complete. “I thought they did a great job.”
Healthie is a comprehensive Internet experience that counsels people in the three key aspects of health. Through personalized workout intensifications, nutritional guidance and psychological support, Healthie succeeds in making goals attainable, say founders Brittany Bornhofen of Raleigh and Alexandra Paetow of Parkton, Md. Both are juniors at Wake Forest University.
“The presentation was a great opportunity to gain exposure to the atmosphere of the competition,” Bornhofen said. “We are excited to incorporate the feedback as we prepare for the Elevator Competition.”
“I would say that’s the biggest advantage of competing in the Escalator Competition is that we give students a chance to improve before they go to the actual competition,” Baliga said.
"Organizers this year made an effort to include more undergraduates in the competition,” Falb (right) said. He is optimistic the Wake Forest teams will do well in the Elevator event.
“A lot of the Escalator Competition is about giving some of the undergraduates competitors an opportunity to present their plans in a more formal setting to actual judges. For many this was the first time they have had this type of experience” Falb said, adding that those teams will have time to refine their business plans for the event in succeeding years. “Many have a good three years where they actually can go back and rework and retool, so they can be a little more competitive in the future.”
Teams in the 2010 Elevator Competition will compete for $100,000 in cash and prizes. The top finisher in the Business Plan competition will receive $10,000 cash; the highest-placing team that includes an MBA student will receive automatic entry into the Global Moot Corp Competition. The top Traditional Business Plan team will bypass the initial screening process with the Piedmont Angel Network, an institutional angel fund that invests more than $250,000 in early stage companies, and proceed to a member presentation to determine whether to proceed to due diligence. The Social Entrepreneurship Competition winner will receive a $5,000 cash prize.
The Elevator Competition, first held in 2000, allows students from schools around the world to test their skills at making the perfect “elevator pitch.” Teams perform a two-minute pitch (in an actual elevator) and, based on making it through that qualifying round, have the opportunity to present a formal plan of their business venture to a panel of judges.

~Article courtesy of the Wake Forest University Schools of Business website.

Wake to Host Inaugural Healthcare Conference

The Healthcare Club, in collaboration with the Wake Graduate Women in Business club, is sponsoring the first annual Wake Forest Schools of Business Healthcare Conference and Case Competition. The event is scheduled to for March 19-20.

The primary goal of the event is to provide students with opportunities to learn about the changing healthcare landscape through panel sessions, keynote speakers, and a case competition.

Speakers for the second day of the conference include Tony Atala of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Tim Bertram, senior vice president at Tengion.

This year’s case competition sponsor is Keranetics, a local healthcare firm specializing in developing and commercializing keratin-based products for use in areas of regenerative medicine and trauma use. We are currently seeking out students from the Wake Forest Schools of Business who are interested in participating in the case competition. Each team must have 3-4 members. If selected as the final winner they will receive a $5,000 cash prize. If you are interested in participating, please either contact Peppi Browne-Armstrong at peppi.brownearmstrong@mba.wfu.edu or visit the conference website to submit your team information.

Additionally, we will be sending out an email soon after Spring Break to recruit volunteers to help with specific tasks throughout the weekend. If you are interested in volunteering for the event (which can be a great resume builder), please email Peppi to let her know of your availability. We are very excited that this is the INAUGURAL YEAR for the healthcare conference/case competition and look forward to a successful and engaging weekend!

Staying Focused

If you have been lucky enough to see any of the Olympic coverage this week you have had the opportunity to watch some remarkable athletes pursuing their passion. One thing they all have in common is focus. You hear this word again and again from the commentators, coaches, and the athletes. The focus on making their country's team, participating at the highest level, and hopefully winning a medal has given direction to their lives. To help them attain their dream they have connected with the right people to help them - coaches, trainers, choreographers, and sports psychologists.

In your job or internship you also need to be focused, directed, and connected. Focus means knowing what you want. What is your preference for functional area? For example, is it marketing, finance, or operations and not simply "business"? Can you name the industry or industries you are targeting and within each the top three to five organizations for whom you want to work? What are the job titles specific to your function, industry, and company?

Armed with this knowledge you now have a razor sharp focus on your goal. Knowing your goal will give direction to your search and allow you to make the connections with people who can help you. Consider the difference between an individual who says I am looking for a full-time job in finance compared to an individual who says I am looking for a job as a credit analyst in the financial services industry, specifically banking. My goal is to stay in the southeastern United States and my top three organizations are Wells Fargo, SunTrust, and Bank of America. Which individual will get connected sooner?

If you are feeling more like the first individual than the second, we suggest the following:

• Connect with your career coach
• Review your marketing plan and make any necessary adjustments
• Complete a "Desired States" goal sheet (your coach can help you with this)
• Utilize online resources like WIN, CareerShift and LinkedIn to build your contact base
• Conduct research on your targeted position, industry, and company to make sure that you are a good fit

Becoming focused, directed, and connected will help you achieve your best career search performance ever.

~Beth Burdick, Career Management Center

Date Auction a Success!

Thank you to everyone who came out to support this year's Date Auction, with 100% of the proceeds going to Red  Cross relief efforts in Haiti. We had more than 100 students from the Business and Law schools attend to bid on 20 dates.

All together we raised more than $2500 with the highest bid of the evening totaling $230!  Hugh Gwen, a local representative from the Red Cross who stopped by to thank the participants, found the event enjoyable.  He said that the relief mission in Haiti will take years and that it will be a multi-agency effort.

Once again, thank you for showing your support for this cause. A big thank you Natasha Gagger for helping me organize the event. And a round of applause goes out to the auctioneers: Sara Kyle, Justin Parker, Abbi Kuch and Kathleen Ketchum. To all the participants, thank you for your bravery and willingness to donate a date for a good cause!

If you were unable to attend last week’s event, but would like to contribute to WGWIB's donation to the Red Cross, please see me by March 1. All checks must be made payable to "WGWIB.”

~Ahkesha Murray

A View from Abroad – Project Nicaragua

The Wake Forest University Schools of Business are fortunate to have an abundance of great students taking to the Internet to blog about their experiences. I was recently looking at the blog for first-year full-time MBA student Sandie Taylor (right) and came across an interesting discussion of her recent trip to Central America as part of Project Nicaragua.

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Here is one great snippet from her post:

“My hope is that the entrepreneurs realize how much we, the students, are gaining from our experiences with them. It’s not all about us helping them improve their businesses, it’s about the entrepreneurs showing us the issues they face as they do business in a developing country and learning how their culture affects their values and how they run their companies.”

Visit Sandie’s blog to read more about her experience or visit the Project Nicaragua blog.

For those interested in knowing more about the program, click here to see a video from the 2009 trip.

“You Need to be Passionate”

Here is the second half of an exclusive series of Clay Presley's recent visit to the Evening MBA program at Wake Forest University. This particular segment takes a closer look at how the president and CEO of Carolina Pad (left) approaches running the Charlotte company that he helped reinvigorate five years ago with a significant strategic shift.

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We had a great opportunity to meet Clay Presley, the president and majority shareholder for Carolina Pad, in our Managerial Accounting class on Feb. 15. When Dr. Bern Beatty sent an email over the weekend that Presley would be talking to our class, my initial reaction was that I was going to sit through a presentation steeped in financial statements and accounting methodology. The minute that Presley began speaking, I knew my assumptions were wrong.

The discussion on how he got involved with Carolina Pad was very captivating. The company was started in 1945 in Charlotte, offering commodity school supplies such as notebooks, paper, and pencils. When Presley joined the company in 2000, he began changing the organization to evaluate existing infrastructure and developed strategies to take Carolina Pad to a new level. A cornerstone of this evolution involved the incorporation of fashion designs in their products, which transformed the stationary industry.

The road for Presley was not easy. He faced failures, such as having to issues corrected financial data to the company’s bank during his first year as president. (He came out $800,000 short from his initial stated loss of $500,000.) Rather than giving up or making excuses, he had a plan for the bank to review his proposal on how Carolina Pad will increase profits the next day.

“That failure of mine to make money was really the key to the beginning of our success,” he recalled. “I felt like I was totally out of control" with the ledger discrepancy that caused the financial issue, he said. “I was so mad.”

Carolina Pad's success relies on two main qualities: trust and passion. The organization has developed a strong relationship, full of trust, with their key partners, such as banks, employees, and vendors. For example, when a vendor needed monetary assistance, Presley readily provided support, which strengthened their relationship. They also operate in an open management format, where all employees understand the company’s mission statement and the financials. In terms of purpose, the organization is built around passion. “If you are passionate about something, you see risks as opportunities.”

Another quote from the presentation hit the heart, “You need to be passionate about believing in yourself,” he said. Often, I wonder if we are really following our passion, or are we taking the safe road because we are afraid of failure. Why do we tend to fog our minds with the fear of failure, which inhibits us to see the endless possibilities that our passion could lead us?

~Bobbie Shrivastav

“A Feeling Beyond Fear”

On Feb. 15, Clay Presley, the president and CEO of Carolina Pad, visited the Evening MBA program at Wake Forest University to discuss how he turned the Charlotte business around. He also shared his experience as one of the 155 passengers aboard the US Airways Airbus that plunged into the Hudson River just over a year ago.

This is an exclusive two-part series, beginning with Presley’s firsthand account of the Jan. 14, 2009, emergency landing and how it impacted and changed his professional perspective on topics such as the economy and succession planning.

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“The initial thrust of acceleration was like any other flight,” Presley began. “But 90 seconds into takeoff there was this boom and the plane just stopped.”

Initially passengers were quiet, looking around, before the smell of smoking geese (later determined as the cause of the engine failure) filled the cabin. “I heard a muffled sound,” he added. Chesley Sullenberger III, the pilot who would later be known as Sully, told passengers to brace for impact, though the plane never experienced any detectable jerking.

“I took out my Blackberry and quickly emailed my wife to tell her that I loved her,” Presley said. “It only took a second to realize what was really important in life. The material things were so far removed from my mind.”

Impact delivered a series of “bam” sounds accompanied with a hit that resembled “a very hard car accident” as the lights went out. Presley, who had forgotten to put on a floatation device managed to find his way out of the cabin, inching his way out to the tip of a very slippery wing. Others followed, with some diving in the near-freezing water and others trying like Presley to balance themselves as the plane drifted across the Hudson. “Always read the safety card,” he recalled.

Presley followed this account by sharing his takeaways from the experience. “I dealt with conflicting feelings of gratitude and fear,” he said. Pausing briefly, he added: “It really is a feeling that’s beyond fear.”

In the past year, Presley has been able to see Sully, including a meeting in San Francisco. The executive had nothing but praise for the pilot, not only for his handling of the incident but for his agenda and poise in the year that followed. “Sully told me to keep one thing in mind,” Presley said. “This attention will only last for a limited time, so we must do all the good that we can in the time we are given.”

How has the experience changed Presley as a CEO? “I am more candid in my evaluations of people,” he said, realizing that it benefits the company and the employee to provide a candid assessment of performance. “After I got back, I also realized the need for succession planning,” he said in response to a question. “That is going on right now.”

Clay Presley with Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger in a photo found at the Charlotte Talks blog.