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AlumniUNC Kenan-Flagler recognized the achievements of eight distinguished alumni during our sixth annual Alumni Association Awards on Nov. 5. The awards program honors alumni that have made outstanding contributions to UNC Kenan-Flagler, the business community and society. In upcoming events, Gwen Ifill, moderator and managing editor of "Washington Week" on PBS, will give the annual Weatherspoon Lecture Jan. 26 at 5:30 p.m. in the Maurice J. Koury Auditorium on the business school campus. She will address "Politics, Policy and Reality: What's Really Going on in Washington." If you plan to attend the lecture, which is part of our Dean's Speaker Series, please R.S.V.P. to . Parking will be available in the business school deck. If you cannot attend, a video will be available after the lecture on the UNC Kenan-Flagler Web site. You can view previous speaker videos.
With the holiday season upon us, check our online store
Jeff Terry (AB '78, MBA '90) Alumni News in This Issue
Items of Interest
Alumni Links:
Alumni NewsUNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School Honors Distinguished AlumniUNC's Kenan-Flagler
"As we strive to instill in our students the core values of excellence, leadership, integrity, community and teamwork, we hold up these eight role models who have successfully mastered them all," said Dean Steve Jones. "They are examples for the alumni who will follow." The 2004 honorees include:
Five distinguished alumni received Alumni Merit Awards:
Following his 1954 graduation, Weatherspoon served in the U.S. Navy. From 1956 to 1958, he worked in the Birmingham, Ala., offices of Procter & Gamble and then spent five years at WBTV television in Charlotte. In 1966, he became a partner in the real estate development firm of Masten, Faison and Weatherspoon. Along with his wife, Kay, Weatherspoon has been an active supporter of many programs of the university and the business school. Medlin is chairman emeritus of Wachovia Corp. During his tenure at Wachovia, the bank's assets grew tenfold, net income bettered that mark and share price almost matched it. Medlin was inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame in 1995. Financial World magazine selected him as the best bank CEO in the nation for 1993 and as the top bank CEO in the South for the 1980s. In 2002, he received American Banker's Lifetime Achievement Award. Withers is director of program development for a human rights organization, International Justice Mission (IJM). IJM investigates abuse and oppression, and combats bonded labor, illegal land seizure, police misconduct and forced prostitution worldwide. Before joining IJM in 2002, she served as a program officer for International Relief and Development. Locally, Withers helped launch Girls on the Run. Cockrell, a tax partner in the New York office of Deloitte, is vice chairman of the firm's U.S. board of directors and serves on the board of the firm's global organization. He is a lead partner of the firm's Special Acquisition Services (SAS) group, which is comprised of tax and accounting professionals located in New York, San Francisco, London and Frankfurt. He has been active in various civic activities, including serving on the council and executive committee of the University Club and as the New York area representative and second vice chairman of UNC's General Alumni Association. Wynn is president of Durham Technical Community College. He has enhanced accessibility of all educational opportunities offered by Durham Tech and has led the school in providing training and instruction in various high-technology areas. Wynn received both a master's and doctorate from N.C. State. He was the first African-American community college president in the North Carolina system and currently serves on numerous community and professional boards. Callinicos is corporate vice president of Microsoft's Worldwide Licensing and Pricing group. He oversees the development and support of Microsoft's licensing programs, product licensing and pricing policies. Serving on state and national boards, he has won a number of awards, including Ernst & Young Global Risk Manager of the Year in 1998. He is a member of Washington Governor Gary Locke's Council of Economic Advisors. Ackerman, founder and chair of a leading commercial real estate company, has left his mark on the Southeast with such projects as the Buckhead landmark of Tower Place in Atlanta and the Washingtonian Center in Gaithersburg, Md. Ackerman also is chairman of the board and founder of Ackerman Security Systems Inc., a residential and commercial security company. He serves on numerous boards and also founded the Atlanta Real Estate Apprenticeship Program for African Americans. Rendleman, a finance professor at UNC Kenan-Flagler, co-authored a paper that was the first to show that estimates of stock volatility could be implied from the prices of exchange-traded options. During the early to mid-1980s, Rendleman, along with co-authors Henry Latané and Charles Jones, published four papers on stock price reactions to corporate earnings surprises. These papers laid the foundation for a new literature in finance and accounting now known as "post-earnings announcement drift" and also were quoted by The Wall Street Journal.
Rendleman also is an accomplished composer. The North Carolina Symphony and South Carolina Philharmonic Orchestra, as well other groups, have performed his works.
Alum's McNeil Team Wins An "Oscar" of Direct MarketingKevin Davidsen (MBA '02) and his team at McNeil Consumer and Specialty Pharmaceuticals won what the Direct Marketing Association calls "the Oscar of direct marketing" - a 2004 Echo Award for the Concerta "I See Success" campaign.
Davidsen and his team won a silver award in the consumer pharmaceutical/health care category for their integrated, multi-media campaign. There are four levels of awards: diamond, gold, silver and bronze. There were no gold or diamond awards given in this category in 2004. "One of the nice things about the Echo Award is it recognizes the strategic philosophy, the creative execution and the business results. It's challenging to come up with good strategies, but the real challenge is to successfully execute them in a meaningful way for the consumer." Additionally, the direct mail component of the campaign was recognized as one of the top five direct mail campaigns by DTC National, a leading source of best practices, knowledge and insights for pharmaceutical marketers. Working on Concerta taught Davidsen a lot about recognizing the value of retaining customers. "One of the things I learned at UNC is that companies often spend more effort and resources trying to attract new customers and not as much time is spent on retaining current customers or converting current prospects," Davidsen said. "I wanted to create a campaign that would make us a leader in the industry in capitalizing on customer assets. We had an incredible database of people who had reached out to us and opted-in to receiving information from us, but we didn't systematically communicate with them. The first thing we did was to design an automated process so that new customers and prospects received a series of automated, highly customized messages based on their current form of therapy, psychographic segmentation and demographic profile." As the team built the communication infrastructure for the campaign, they established a platform where everything focused on "success with ADHD." "There were so many negative things associated with ADHD, and consumers were telling us that small success meant everything to them," Davidsen said. "We wanted to recognize those successes and created a $275,000 scholarship contest as a component of the Concerta campaign. What was really rewarding was seeing some of the scholarship applications," he added. "People talked about their success stories and how they were succeeding with a disability and about the positive things that can come from that experience." Motivation is a subject that Davidsen knows well. After receiving an undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in 1994, he spent almost two years backpacking through Africa and Asia and used his travel stories as a way to motivate other young adults to realize their dreams. The book he wrote about the journey, "600 Days: A Motivational Adventure to 30 Countries," is used in college leadership classes. Davidsen worked for Fidelity Investments in Boston before coming to UNC Kenan-Flagler for his MBA. He interned at McNeil on the Children's Tylenol and Motrin brands, and upon graduation, started at McNeil working on Concerta. Recently, he's shifted gears and is now a senior associate marketing manager on the SplendaŽ brands.
For more information on the campaign, visit www.concerta.net
Effective Networking Networking was the focus of a special panel discussion Nov. 17, hosted by UNC Kenan-Flagler. About 70 people attended the event, representing current MBA and Executive MBA students, local alumni and members of the faculty and staff. Panelists were Steve Jones, dean of UNC Kenan-Flagler; Ed Pringle, a member of the UNC Kenan-Flagler faculty and a former management consultant; Thomas Roberts (MBA '01), vice president of private banking for Citigroup; and Rob Penton (EMBA '04), vice president of loss mitigation for Genworth Financial. The panel provided excellent tips on effective networking, such as: Networking is about relationships, and relationships must be built. Don't call or e-mail a new contact and expect the person to bend over backwards to help you immediately. You must give the person a reason to help you - establish that you are a person of trust, integrity and capability. If your contacts are going to refer you to other people in their company, their credibility is on the line. Don't expect them to risk their credibility on someone they don't know. Keep the relationship going. Some people stop networking with a contact because they run out of things to say. Make a point of reading relevant business magazines or industry publications and checking for articles about companies that interest you. Send a link or copy of an interesting article to people you want to stay in touch with, and briefly re-state your interest in the company or position. Sending occasional e-mails that don't require a response as reminders of your interest cannot hurt. Network with professional organizations. If you are targeting a specific industry in your job search or a career change, identify some of the major professional associations in that industry. Find out about upcoming local, regional or national meetings or conferences that may be taking place in your area. Attending these types of meetings can help you learn more about major trends or new developments in the industry, identify key players in the association and greatly expand your contact base in the industry you are targeting. If a person with whom you network refers you to other people in the company, don't forget to contact them. The "Networking Hall of Shame" is littered with stories of people who were referred to decision makers in a company of interest only to never contact them. Don't put one of our alumni (or anyone) in the position of having to explain to his/her boss or manager why you didn't have the courtesy to call after your networking contact had referred you and asked the person to be receptive to your call.
For more hints on networking, contact me at or at (919) 962-5608 if you have any questions.
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Copyright © 2004 by UNC Kenan-Flagler. All rights reserved. |
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Alumni
