Wake Forest Unveils New York Alumni Event

Fresh off the heels of a successful Wake Forest Connects event in Washington, the group is headed to New York City on July 12.

The featured panelists include:

• Allie Walker ('08), content research manager of PSFK and a co-founder of MADDEACS 
• Lauren Henn ('07), an account executive at Pandora 
• Lisa Whitaker ('06), an assistant manager at Cooper & Cooper Real Estate 
• William Sinclair ('07), a private banker at JPMorgan Chase

The New York Club promises a fun, valuable, and informative evening as it welcomes the class of 2012! They will have a young alumni panel with representatives from Sales & Media, Marketing, Real Estate, and Finance. The panel will be followed by a networking reception for all alumni with complimentary beverages and hors d' oeuvres.

Doors open at 6:30 pm with the panel discussion starting at 6:45. Networking will take place from 7:45-8:45. The event will be held at the Time-Life Building at 1271 Avenue of the Americas in midtown Manhattan. The cost is $15 per person. RSVP here.

Wake Forest Connects Gains Momentum

As we highlighted in a post last week, the DC alumni chapter recently hosted a Wake Forest Connects event featuring Dean Steve Reinemund. Wake Forest Connects, a group devoted to helping alumni develop networking contacts after graduation, is planning more events in Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas and New York.

The university just posted a press release on the group and the DC event. You can see it here, or watch the video below to learn more about this integral and evolving program. More than 130 people reportedly attended the DC event.

Learn More About Project Nicaragua

Curious about the Wake Forest University Schools of Business Project Nicaragua initiative? We just found a nice 10-minute video that should give you a sense of what the effort is all about.

Project Nicaragua from WFU Schools of Business on Vimeo.

Meet Wake Forest's Other Big Donor: Dave Wahrhaftig

As many of you know, Wake Forest is in the final days of a drive to secure 1,000 new donors by June 30. If successful, Mike Farrell (P' 10) and Dave Wahrhaftig (MBA '82) have agreed to donate $200,000 to the Wake Forest Fund for the Schools of Business. At June 25, the drive still needs 413 donors.

Most alumni know who Farrell is - his gift to the university is allowing the Schools of Business to proceed with building Farrell Hall. But who is Wahrhaftig? We decided to dig around to learn more about this particular donor. We found most of our information on the website for Kelso & Co.

Wahrhaftig is a principal at Kelso & Co., a New York private equity firm. The group focuses on making investments in growing middle-market companies. Since 2000, the average initial capitalization at closing of the companies in which Kelso has invested and taken an active role is about $550 million. Kelso is currently investing in its eighth investment partnership with $5.1 billion of committed capital.

Wahrhaftig joined the firm in  1987 after spending five years at Arthur Young & Co. where he was an associate director of M&A. While he went to Wake Forest for business school, he earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Western Maryland College in 1980. He also holds a Certificate in Management Accounting.

He is also a director atAugusta Sportswear, Nivel Parts & Manufacturing Co., and Renfro Corp. and is active in Kelso's investment in KAR Auction Services. He is also currently a trustee of Wake Forest and a member of the Board of Visitors at the Wake Forest University Schools of Business.

Wahrhaftig, who lives in Larchmont, N.Y., was also among a group of Kelso executives who survived the 2005 Teterboro air crash, where a chartered jet went off a runway, skidded across a highway and slammed into a warehouse during the morning rush.

Wake Forest Announces Entrepreneur Panel

The Wake Forest University Schools of Business will host an entrepreneur panel at its Charlotte campus on July 18 from 6-8 pm.

Westmoreland

Scheduled to appear on the panel are:

• Jeff Harris, partner/CEO, etain group
• Joseph B. Alala III, president/CEO, CapitalSouth Partners Funds
• Kim D. Westmoreland, managing director/director, KeraNetics
• T.J. Eberle, senior vice president, president of US ITS, hiSoft (and former CEO NouvEon)

We'll provide more details as they become available!

Wake Forest's Ellis Wins HR Award

Andrea Ellis (right), Wake Forest's director of professional and organizational development, received the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources 2012 HR Innovation Award for her role in creating the Professional Development Center. Ellis will received $3,000 to contribute to Wake Forest’s endowment or a scholarship of her choice.
The award honors human resource innovation, which can be technological in nature, based in process improvement, a novel partnership that advances the profession, or a new approach to an HR department’s current challenge. It must advance the human resource profession or contribute to the overall excellence of the profession.

Prior to the creation of the Professional Development Center there were limited opportunities for training and few options for professional development. Ellis began working to not only create more professional development programs, but also to centralize these programs in one location. The PDC debuted in March 2008.

Through the PDC web portal, professional development activities and programs for both faculty and staff are marketed through a single location, generating community across campus, decreasing duplication of efforts, encouraging collaboration between departments and reducing costs. The PDC has filled 40,000 seats with faculty, staff, students and community members; held 4,200 classes and events; and marketed 100 conferences.

Wake Forest in Quotes

In our latest offering, we are looking around for the best quotes from Wake Forest faculty. Regularly, we will provide those quotes and links to the stories where the faculty were featured, saving you time and still showing you the university's academic reach.

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"These companies have hesitated for as long as they could to raise prices in response to tax increases. Someone had to go first. They couldn't hold on anymore. Their profits were going down too much and they're going to start cutting labor, start firing people unless they raised prices a little bit."

~ Sherry Jarrell, professor of finance and economics, on News 14 Carolina

to discuss cigarette companies raising wholesale list prices

"Over past few years it's become difficult for small businesses to get loans, so they've had to find other ways to access the resources they need to grow."

~ Pat Dickson, entrepreneurship professor, discussing

small-business alliances in the Wall Street Journal

Roehm

Major metro markets such as Charlotte, "can be more expensive in terms of gaining a sizable share of voice. Being heard above the fray is going to require a bigger budget commitment. The same number of media dollars may go farther in a smaller market, especially if it is less crowded."

~ Michelle Roehm, marketing professor, discussing Lowes Foods'

pulling out of Charlotte, in the Winston-Salem Journal

"Besides the imagewear concerns in general, Europe obviously is deep in economic turmoil. It's a big source of uncertainty and volatility for many companies, whether U.S. firms or even European firms themselves."

~ Mike Lord, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship, discussing Hanesbrands'

decision to sell European division, in the Winston-Salem Journal

Dean Reinemund Shares His Vision With DC Alumni

By Buck O'Leary

Dean Reinemund outlined his vision for the Wake Forest University Schools of Business at a well-attended alumni event in Washington, DC, on Wednesday night.

Reinemund, joined by Andy Chan, the university's vice president for personal and career development, met with about 40 business-minded Deacon professionals off all ages and walks of life. The alumni had ambled over to the offices of law firm McGuireWoods.

  

Dean Reinemund eloquently presented his thoughts on the future of the graduate and undergraduate business programs and fielded a series of questions from parents, alumni and current students. He lit up when touching on the recent successes of the MA program, where the class size has increased tenfold, from 12 students at its creation to more than 120 in 2012. He described Wake Forest as the ideal place for liberal arts students to “find their fire.”

While the main goals of the fledgling MA program are diversity and job placement, Reinemund added that he was thrilled with the progress the program had made in a short amount of time.

Reinemund frequently reiterated that he believes anything less than a 100% rate of employment amongst Wake Forest business school grads is unacceptable. He spoke briefly about the advantages of combining the undergraduate and graduate business schools, at one point remarking that “the business school merger was done to make two good schools into one great school.” 

Wake Forest is also committed to improving the rankings of its undergraduate and graduate programs. “Our biggest challenge with the undergraduate business school is that students think it’s too tough," he said. "We’ve taken several steps to correct this problem which will hopefully have a meaningful impact on future classes.” 

Reinemund also discussed progress with the construction of Farrell Halland the uptown Charlotte campus, both of which he believes will set new standards for business school campuses aesthetically, functionally and technologically. He expressed confidence that Wake’s business programs will continue to climb in rankings. In the next five years, he believes it is well within reach for the undergraduate business school to be ranked in the top 10, the MS program to crack the top 5 and for the MBA program to break into the top 25. 

"Rankings are like market share; it’s important to have positive momentum," he said. “It’s important to us to make the high cost of education worth it."

Chan spoke about advancements in Wake Forest’s office of personal and career development. He said one of the great challenges for his office is to get students to start thinking about career development earlier on and to avoid a deluge of students scrambling to Career Services in January of their senior years. "What we’ve been wondering is how do we develop a system that helps kids think of their career trajectory earlier?” 

Chan also discussed the emphasis that Wake Forest has placed on Career Services in recent years, increasing staff in the office to 30 from seven, and adding several courses to teach relevant skills needed to excel in a tough job market. Though he conceded that some of the staff is temporary and that the school will need to raise more money to continue these efforts. He encouraged alums and students to join Wake Forest’s Career Connectors group on LinkedIn, which contains more than half of the student body and is being used to place students and recent graduates. 

All in all, it was a fun and informative evening. We can only hope that DC will have another opportunity to host Reinemund and Chan.