As a Flex MBA student, one thing that attracted me to participating in the Emerging Markets China course was being able to attend a class and network with the Full-Time MBA students.

We all have different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives to contribute and I was proud to be a part of a large ethnically diverse group representing the Mason School of Business abroad.

Like most people in our group, this was my first time going to China. I’ve traveled to many countries for work and leisure but China was a whole new experience. The flight to China didn’t seem like it was 15 hours long. I spent most of my time trying to learn “survival” phrases in Mandarin, getting to know everyone in the group, and chatting with strangers who were interested in William and Mary and our MBA program; more importantly, why we decided to go to China over spring break instead of somewhere warm!

When you speak with business leaders in India about their challenges today most want to talk about their challenges for the last 200 years first.  It is obviously a very rich culture and  recent history has not been kind to them.   How would Americans feel if our power was stripped for several centuries and then “granted”  back to us suddenly? The Indian people are fatalistic and forgiving.

Let me briefly reiterate what many of the business leaders we met on the EMBA international residency in India said about the beautiful, but complex Indian society. The great Indian enigma is before the British Colonial period, India operated on a feudal system where the land provided and your caste was absolute.  You did not question authority whether it be a ruler or your elders.  India skipped the industrial revolution and went straight to a global service economy.  Indian business leaders will tell you that it is difficult to innovate when you are emerging from a society where you do not question authority and you do as you are told.

At India’s premiere business school, the Indian Institute of Management, they are calling for a decade of supporting innovation to acclimate the culture to a global economy.  The problem is that India is providing world-class business outsourcing in countless verticals, including biotechnology research, software programming  and financial analysis.  They typically offer a low level of professional support — the grunt work if you will — at an attractive price to Western business.  What will happen in two or three decades when this wage arbitrage is squeezed? India must move up the value chain if they wish to sustain an economic growth rate of 8 percent.

When we visited Evalueserve in Delhi they acknowledged the value chain problem.  Their solution is an expansion effort to regions such as Eastern Europe and South America in order to put “boots on the ground.” Evalueserve understands that their clients eventually need to view their services as peer quality, and as such charge peer prices.

My first impression of India was that change is so rapid that it literally unfolds as you walk down the street.  After several days of visiting India businesses I began to wonder if India could move up the value chain.  India seems to embrace servicing global business in lieu of creating new business. Then on our final day we visited perhaps the most exciting business venture in India.

If you travel to Bombay, land of 21 million people, you will find an exponentially expanding cityscape. Towards the Northeast there is a neighborhood called Vikhroli, a hilly region of suburbs dotted with speculative business ventures.  In Vikhroli there are entrepreneurs operating out of garage-like facilities converted into commercial space.  You get off the bus and walk past one garage building office chairs, and another that’s refurbishing bicycles and scooters. If you walk up the hill a bit you come across the home office of  “Goli Vadapav No.1,”  where they have created “an ethnic snack chain offering the staple Mumbai street food vadapav in standardized, yummy, hygienic manner at economic pricing there by becoming an alternative to traditional fast food.”

The entire staff of Goli greeted us as if we were foreign dignitaries.  We walked past a few cubicles and were excitedly ushered to their boardroom where founders Venkatesh Iyer and Shivados Menon were eagerly waiting with the Goli story queued on a small computer monitor.  OK, so the boardroom was really more of a conference room meant for a 5 or 6 people and not the 25 we managed to squeeze in.  Yet the passion with which Venkatesh told the Goli story made everyone forget the tight quarters.

For the last five years they have experienced huge successes and huge setbacks and treated each of these as valuable lessons.  All of this is impressive, but their core values are what made me take notice. Please look at Goli’s Vision Statement as I think it is the most significant vision of any company I saw in India. The last statement is powerful, and I think is the true intent of the founders. The Goli founders are most concerned with creating jobs for any hard-working Indian that wants to commit to Goli.  Venkatesh and Shivados believe that by surrounding themselves with hard-working and smart individuals Goli will prosper.

Is India a country that will only service first world markets or is it destined to become an economic Superpower by 2050? I cannot provide a final assessment at this point.  My classmates and I will continue to debrief the trip until we graduate in August., but if the Goli Vadapavs of India continue to develop and entrepreneurial spirit is incubated, I believe that India will become a Superpower.  All in all, I have never learned so much in a two week period as I did on this venture.

I am grateful to Assistant Dean Prabhu Aggarwal who poured his heart into this experience.  His efforts granted us many opportunities for very candid sessions with India’s business leaders.  Prabhu is one of many fine faculty members that have made the EMBA experience exceptional.

Dean Larry Pulley reflects on Commencement Day and offers a heartfelt thanks to all new graduates.

“Thank you to our graduates for the incredibly remarkable role that you are playing in our progress, in our successes as a business school.”

The Mason School’s EMBA class of 2011 landed in Delhi, India late Wednesday night after about 24 hours of travel from Williamsburg.  Our jam-packed itinerary has provided many experiences since then that I will write about at some point. For now I will try to provide a summation of my first impression of India by using to subjects that are very well known in the US; Walmart and the Taj Mahal.

The gracious folks at Walmart India hosted us on Friday.  We met their management team which included an Indian marketing specialist, a Mexican operations specialist, and guy from Arkansas who is implementing Walmart’s private label.  They are faced with many challenges, mainly in the supply chain arena.  They tried to explain to us how difficult it was to keep fresh produce and meats stocked in a country with:  1) a nascent highway system, 2) where 40 percent of all produce is wasted, 3) and cold storage of food is a new concept.  To be honest, we had trouble conceptualizing how difficult these challenges were.  That was until we took a five hour bus ride to Agra the following day.

Agra is about 180 kilometers (110 miles) from Delhi and a similar trip from a major US city to a smaller US city would take about 2 hours, even with traffic.  Our travel time was 5 hours.  The highway system in India is sporadic at best.  There are few traffic lights and traffic laws are not enforced. There are 31 states in India so vastly different that it is really more like 31 separate countries with a loose federal government.  Anytime you take cargo from one state to another you are taxed.  So a Walmart delivery that starts in Bangalore with a load of grapes or rice might be taxed 4 times, pass through several middlemen, while 30 percent of the cargo spoils during a 4 or 5 day trip to Delhi.  It does not help that there is no such thing as an 18-wheeler in India.

Walmart does not actually have retail stores in India, but rather has entered this market through a partnership with a company called Bharti which is actually known for its cell-phone services. This was necessary because of complex regulations.  The viability of these retail stores is in doubt because of the supply chain issues.

Walmart has had success with their Indian equivalent of the Sam’s Club.  Unlike Costco and Sam’s in the US, these warehouse clubs are not available to the general public but rather only to licensed vendors.  Walmart is doing well in the wholesale market because regulations allow direct-to-store deliveries in this type of store and they can avoid middlemen.  The Indian government is under pressure from just about everyone except middlemen to loosen regulations on interstate commerce and expedite the completion of an India-wide highway system.  Most of us felt Walmart is biding their time and getting a feel for the land when this opportunity arises.

Our trip to Agra took us to India’s most famous site, the Taj Mahal.  It is more beautiful than any description I have ever heard or any picture I have ever seen.  The ironic juxtaposition of a Wonder of the World and the extreme poverty we witnessed en route was not lost on the group.  Along the streets of India trash is piled upon trash and sewers flow next to drinking water. Many homes in the countryside are thrown together with loose timber and tarps.

But what is most troubling is that wherever you go you find people sitting around as with no purpose and nowhere to go.  We were all very impressed by the Taj and glad to have seen a bit of rural India, but after an 18 hour day trip the group was exhausted and many were beginning to develop “Delhi Belly,”  including myself.  Our guide told me that there is a local saying directed towards tourist: “You should try everything in India… once.”

Andrew Ross Sorkin begins by asking the audience where they were at 2:30 a.m. on September 20th, 2008. That was the day he realized the financial crisis was much worse than he originally imagined.  Rushing home to share the news with his wife who, like many of us, was in a deep sleep – Mr. Sorkin realized he must put pen to paper and write a book about what was happening.

On Thursday April 21st, 2011, Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times writer and bestselling author of  Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves spoke to William & Mary MBAs, faculty, partners and members of the local Williamsburg community at the historic Williamsburg Inn.

Before his talk, Mr. Sorkin attended a luncheon where W&M MBAs had the chance to talk with him candidly. Our discussion about the leadership succession plans of Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett were of top interest.  Particularly because Mr. Sorkin will moderate the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder’s meeting on April 30th in the massive Qwest Center in Omaha, NE.

When asked about Mr. Buffett’s heir apparent, David L. Sokol, Mr. Sorkin admitted a number of the 35,000 shareholders who will attend the event expressed interest in discussing Mr. Buffett’s successor. Mr. Sorkin shared with us that as the moderator, he’ll ensure a discussion about Mr. Buffett’s succession plans will receive attention for at least 20 minutes during the 6-hour meeting.

During his lecture, Mr. Sorkin stood personable, poised and confident as he told us the story of an informant he met only after the book was released.  This gentleman shared with him how Mr. Timothy Geithner, then U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, tasked him with forecasting what unemployment would have looked like had there not been government intervention. 24.6 percent was the figure he came up with.

Mr. Sorkin’s talk highlighted a number of additional insights including his expectation that because of apprehension on the part of lenders, consumers are avoiding debt – the primary driver of financial crises. Further, without large amounts of outstanding debt, our economy should be crisis-free for at least another seven years.

Lunch with Mr. Sorkin was another example of how my MBA experience has extended beyond the classroom. Hearing first hand from a noted expert on the reasons for, as well as the far-reaching implications of, the crisis was riveting particularly because the discussion mirrored many I’ve had with classmates. As I look to begin my post-MBA career in just a few short weeks, I can’t help but reflect on how I’ll miss classroom discussions on relevant topics like this.

But thanks to Mr. Sorkin’s continued search for the truth and commitment to keeping the public informed, I’ll never have to look very far for inspiration.

In addition to the joy of being a Mason MBA student, I have had the privilege of being active in my community. In the 2010 fall semester, I received a notice from Assistant Dean Jim Olver about available board positions at the Historic Triangle Senior Center (HTSC), here in Williamsburg.  I had been looking for an opportunity to serve my community and give my time at Mason more meaning. As someone interested in the intersection between for-profit business and non-profit organizations, I also wanted to  learn about how companies can become better corporate citizens by assisting non-profits to fulfill their missions.

Since being accepted to the board, I have had the opportunity to use much of what I learned in my classes at Mason. As a member of the board, I have had to rely on what I learned in Dr. Brad Lindsey‘s Financial Accounting class to review yearly budgets and financial statements. As secretary to the board, I have also practiced the communication skills I learned in Dr. Robert Stowers‘ class on Management Communications.

Though the Mason MBA program provides the strong analytical foundation required for every professional, it also give students the soft skills that make true business leaders. As a Masonite, I have had several opportunities to contribute to my community. However, few have been as enriching as the chance to use what I learned in Dr. Ed Felton‘s class on Ethics. As a member of the HTSC board, that class has enhanced my decision-making context, emphasizing a duty to act in the interest of the disenfranchised seniors in Williamsburg and James City County (JCC).

In the JCC FY2012 budget, the HTSC was set to lose its operational space, as well as a substantial amount of its funding, which were both provided by JCC. The reasons for the cuts were to eliminate HTSC’s “unfair” advantage over other non-profits, and to reallocate the funds to “better use.”  I recently spoke about HTSC at one of the regular meetings of the JCC Board of Supervisors.

At the meeting, there were many impassioned comments about the need for the HTSC and the services it provides to Williamsburg’s seniors. Many comments highlighted HTSC’s vital role in aiding interactions among seniors, providing transportation assistance through its RIDES program, and hosting services that enhance the well being of the senior population in Williamsburg. Using the invaluable lessons I learned from my classmates in the Ethics course, I called on the JCC board to consider the context of its decision to essentially decimate the HTSC and leave our seniors without a valuable community resource.

At the close of the public comments section of the JCC meeting, three of the six supervisors asked for further review into the budget cuts, expressing significant concern about withdrawing support for the HTSC. As of today, the cut to the HTSC’s 2012 funding from JCC has been reversed, and our seniors can continue to thrive.

I am grateful for the skills I have learned at the Mason MBA program. Specifically, I am thankful for the opportunity to use what I have learned, to advocate for those less powerful.

My experience in Mason’s Leadership Advantage program has refined my personal leadership brand, presenting myself as someone who is always prepared to be a value creator.

When you are zipping down the highway doing 100 it is difficult to know how much of the surrounding scenery you are taking in. Such is life as an MBA student.  Time moves quickly at the Mason School of Business.  One warm August morning you are sitting in a financial accounting class, your head spinning, the next thing you know its March and you are prepping John Strong’s finance final.

With so much going on, it was difficult for me to gauge how much I had actually learned. That was until the Cash for Clunkers Simulation.  The Mason School’s Leadership Advantage professor, Dr. Allen Slade put together an incredible simulation that incorporated all of our learning from the whole year:  accounting, finance, marketing, organizational behavior and leadership.

Each team was assigned to run a business responsible for recycling certain parts of a car.  My team was responsible for buying and recycling batteries.  Other teams’ businesses were to buy wheels or chassis. Each member of the team was assigned a specific role: President, Director of Marketing, Director of Finance, Director of Operations, or Director of Purchasing.  My role was that of Purchasing.

In the morning we received a packet containing the specifics of our roles and the cost structure for our business.  We then took some time to run the numbers and develop a strategy before we had to present it to a “board member,” a role played by one of W&M’s fantastic Executive Partners.

As Director of Purchasing, I made my way to the auction block to bid on clunkers.  Within a matter of minutes things started to get hectic. Everyone was yelling out bids and using hand signals to communicate with buyers and sellers.  It felt like we were in the middle of a trading floor.  After purchasing the “clunkers,” we disassembled them and sold the spare parts to other companies.   We also bought batteries from other companies that we recycled for a profit.

After one round we started to get the hang of things and by the simulation we were pros. By the end of the day my team had successfully incorporated something from each course we had taken.  I learned an important lesson, that even moving at 100 mph I was not only absorbing the scenery, but I had learned many new skills that I could apply in my life after Mason.

One of the unique benefits and strengths of the Mason School is the richness of its guest speakers and wisdom and insight they provide to our student body. On Thursday, March 24th,  I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Bernard Kinsey and the Kinsey family, social entrepreneurs and avid collectors of African American art. The Kinsey Collection featuring American historical artifacts is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History until May 3, 2011.

While I was certainly impressed with the successful career Mr. Kinsey had with the Xerox Corporation, economic redevelopment in Los Angeles, and his achievements as an international consultant, that is not what captured my attention.  Instead, I took away a different perspective on leadership from his visit. When asked what we should call him, he insisted that we refer to him as “Bernard,” and so, for the remainder of this post, I will.

On the morning of Bernard’s visit, about seven undergraduate and graduate business students, myself included, enjoyed a breakfast with the Kinsey family at the Plumeri House to share our professional backgrounds, personal interests, and future aspirations. One of the first things I about Bernard was his genuinely personable, yet purposeful nature.  I quickly understood that for Bernard, collecting historical treasures and giving direction and guidance to up and coming leaders is at the forefront of his mind.

He did not just break bread with us, but he also encouraged us to explore our unique talents and histories in a way that will make us stronger leaders. Bernard’s personal conviction is infectious and it inspires me to explore the social and professional causes I value and how I can pursue them with enthusiasm throughout my life. In my professional career, I would love to wake up every morning with a zest for the day’s work much in the same way Bernard Kinsey and his family do every day.

One of my all-time favorite axioms is, “People will strive to be what they often can see.” Personal images are powerful and Bernard and his family are without exception in this regard. Their love and foundation of family, education, history, and art spoke more to their societal impact than possibly any of their academic or professional achievements. What’s more important is that same tradition is being passed down through to their son Khalil, and on to future generations that will follow him. As a member of a family business myself, I can appreciate Khalil’s inherent desire to want to protect and preserve his family’s work, and I have no doubt that he will.

Bernard Kinsey and his family brought a great perspective to the Mason School, and I am sure he invoked a lot of internal thought and self- reflection in my classmates, faculty members, and other campus colleagues. But that is the benefit of our business school here at the College of William and Mary. I will never forget Bernard Kinsey’s visit to the Mason School, and I hope to experience more of his family’s private collection of art at the Smithsonian National Museum very soon.

Thank you, Bernard, for sharing your thoughts with us and being an example of excellence that we can emulate and strive to achieve.

I am enjoying being part of my MBA class. As a global citizen and a Middle Easterner, I felt compelled to share with my class and school some insight on issues of the day.

With the help and support of students and staff, the MBA Association, International Student Association and The Wine Society, I started arranging a panel, titled “Current Turmoil and Future Prospects.” My goal was to analyze the Middle East current events, dissecting the multiple layers, understanding their complexity.

The panelists — Mason Professor Deborah Hewitt, Adina Friedman, a visiting professor of Government, Chadia Mansour, an Arabic instructor and Tamara Sonn, a religious studies professor  — addressed the events from the perspective of the locals in Tunis. Also addressed were the cultural religious background in a very intense intellectual depth, a political perspective with the US influence in the region, and  a business and macroeconomic perspective.

What I learned from the amazing panelists was invaluable, and as the planner of the event I also gained a lot of experience of arranging an event of that magnitude, directing the flow of conversation and dealing with all the logistics associated.

I also discovered the amazing pool of talent and knowledge outside the business school by reaching out to different departments.

The Kenan-Flagler Marketing Case Competition sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline was a sweet time. Competitions like this are great events that can be a big part of any student’s MBA experience. I think sometimes we all get a little bogged down with the requirements of the program and forget that what we do here is preparation for our work outside of Miller Hall. Case competitions are a great way to carry our energies and talents out of Williamsburg and into challenging situations with students from other schools to tackle real professional problems.

At the UNC event, each Mason student was placed on a team with three other students from different MBA programs. We didn’t have any information on the case until the morning of the competition. All teams were given six hours to dissect the case and present a solution, in PowerPoint, to one of three panels of employees from GlaxoSmithKline. During our preparation, each team was assigned a fifteen minute block of time to ask the professionals from GSK clarifying questions.

The case was murky and ambiguous, and fifteen minutes was not even close to enough time to get the answers we needed. This was by design, so our challenge would accurately represent the difficult problem that GlaxoSmithKline faced with the marketing of a prescription drug for post-op patients of bowel resection surgery.

The craziest obstacle from my experience was finding a solution, with three strangers, for a really hard problem in just six hours. There was no time to get all warm and fuzzy with my teammates. We will all face this in our careers, and the competition was a nice lesson in strategy and execution under pressure.

At first, it was difficult for me to influence the direction of my team. I cannot say for sure whether this was because I came from William & Mary and was working with students from UNC, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie Mellon. I chose to change my focus to active listening as they dove into ideas and proposed actions. Eventually, after I watched them go in circles a few times, I spoke up.

I was able to influence our solution by correctly framing the problems of the case and illuminating what was valuable to each stakeholder, a couple of things we toss around quite a bit here at the Mason School. Even after this, my team was still unsure whether “value propositions” and “reasons to believe” were presentation material, and they hid my slides just minutes before our first presentation (without my knowledge). I know, not cool.

But, redemption is ours. Almost the entire set of questions from the judges’ panel focused on material beyond our numbers and financial model. I was able to navigate the difficult questions from the judges and gain the respect of my team. Needless to say, my slides made it back into our presentation for the final round.

I guess one lesson for me was that it will probably be initially difficult for us as we move on and work professionally with people from top-20 MBA programs. The members of my team at the competition were incredibly bright and talented, and they  all played a big part in the winning effort.

But as students of the Mason school, we share in what I believe is a unique approach towards solving professional problems. Over the course of my first year I have gradually internalized a way of thinking and learned A LOT about what it means to be a good team member. So while it was nice to win, and kind of awesome to take a picture with a jumbo check, the best result of the experience was a renewed confidence in what we are doing here at William & Mary.

My team’s winning solution had a lot of Mason influence built into it. I consider it a validation of our underrated program, and a reminder that we can hang with anybody out there. So, if you were thinking about entering one of these competitions…go for it.