Exciting News….

March 5th, 2007

Scott and I have fun news to share with all of you.  I wish we could have found the time to call/email each of you - but unfortunately, work gets in the way.  Scott and I got engaged last week. did a great job of surprising me (as you know - hard to do!).  We were in the middle of one of our regular runs to the golden gate bridge - as the sun was setting. We then left on Friday morning for Cabo, which was a wonderful weekend away together. Even better was that we didn’t have any cell service so we didn’t feel pressure to make a thousand phone calls! 

Thank goodness I had all that planning experience with the graduation events….now I feel armed and ready to plan our wedding! Just joking - the thought is overwhelming, which is why we aren’t even thinking about it yet.  We are just enjoying the engagement part. 

Anyway - we wanted to share the fun news with you all. Sorry again for communicating over the blog.  We look forward to finding a time to see everyone - hopefully before our May graduation!

Best,

Christine

Steve’s Graduation Speech

February 24th, 2007

Finally got it posted on YouTube. The sound quality isn’t great, but here it is for further amusement with the text posted below. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmJVoYystnQ

Welcome. Welcome to this celebration that represents the culmination of 19 months of studies in the Berkeley-Columbia program, and with it the graduation of our class from two of the most prestigious business schools in the world. This is a significant milestone to celebrate in our lives, our educations, and our business careers, but it took much more than the efforts of the 67 individuals wearing this quite fashionable graduation regalia that have made this celebration a reality. So on behalf of the class there are a few distinct groups who I would like to recognize for your many contributions. First and foremost, thanks to our families, spouses, and significant others for all of the sacrifices that you have made of your personal time and your priorities and for all of your understanding throughout the entire program. This was a major commitment not just for us, but for you as well, and your support and encouragement made it possible for us to succeed. We would have appreciated it if you could have taken Statistics for us, but that wasn’t exactly allowed within the Columbia honor code. Friends, thank you for your understanding of our absence over the last 2 years. And, on the rare occasions when we actually did show up, for enduring our stories about determining the optimal capital structure for a firm, our thrilling overviews on how to determine what will happen to an economy’s short term aggregate demand based on a change in monetary policy, and most importantly, our engaging tales of how we could apply queuing theory to shorten the line at Starbucks. To our colleagues, thank you for your extra efforts and diligence in making sure that our extended absences from work did not have an impact. You did such a fantastic job that we’re requesting that you continue so that we can now spend time working on our golf games. The administration, thanks first for gathering this amazing class, and for all of your hard work to make this program run smoothly year in and year out. And thanks for the smoked salmon on Saturday mornings – that was a nice touch. To the faculty, thank you for providing your knowledge and expertise, and for responding to all of Paul King’s late night emails when he was stressed out before Finals. If Don Sexton is here, we don’t thank you for that Stats final in our first term, but other than that we love you Don. Humor aside, to everyone who helped to make this experience possible for us, I would like to offer a sincere and heartfelt thank you. And on a personal, I would like to thank my classmates as well for making the BCMBA program a fantastic experience that I will cherish and draw upon professionally, and personally, for the rest of my life.

I mentioned before that this is an amazing class, and I truly mean it. A collection of amazing individuals who were able to come together to make this MBA program not just a great classroom education but a wonderfully rich and fulfilling experience. Within this small group of 67, we have fantastically diverse mix across professional experience, personal backgrounds, cultures, geographies, and more. Since we met in May ’05, we’ve each spent over 90 full days in each others’ company. We’ve each completed over 20 individual courses. We traveled in groups to India, China, England, Germany, South America, and yes, even Australia. We survived statistics. On top of this, during the program members of our class got married (not to each other), had children, changed careers, moved to different parts of the country, and more. Yet with all of this going on in our lives, we managed to come together as this amazing class gathered on stage. Numerous times throughout this program, we’ve had our professors express how much they enjoyed working with our class, and what a special group we were. A quick sidebar to Jenny Chatman – I‘m completely aware that I’m guilty of both the confirmation bias and the representativeness bias, but please indulge me just this once as I provide two examples.

At the culmination of Jenny’s Organizational Behavior course, she admitted that we were actually her favorite class. She also said that she doesn’t tell that to every class so we’re taking her word on it. She reflected that what set us apart was our respect for one another, collective sense of humor, and openness to take risks and to learn from them. For those of you who may be wondering what I mean by “taking risks”, I thought I’d provide a brief illustration. In one of our classes with Jenny, she led us through the Tower Building Exercise, in which we broke the class up into small teams with the teams competing to build towers out of colored childrens’ building blocks. With one small caveat – all of the builders were blindfolded. However, each team had a randomly selected ‘manager’ who was not blindfolded. I happened to be lucky enough to be one of those individuals. About halfway through the exercise I looked around the room we were in and I see all of my classmates - intelligent, experienced, successful, highly motivated individuals. I see them all blindfolded struggling to stack blocks on one another. And I thought to myself, “this is priceless – man, I wish I had a camera”. But then I realized that my objective was not to laugh at the expense of my classmates, but to use my benefit of sight to help lead my blindfolded team onward to victory. So I turned my attention back to my team and harnessing all of the leadership skills I had learned, started shouting “No, not the green one, pick up the red one. Pick up the red one.” Needless to say, we did not emerge victorious but this episode did provide a very “teachable moment”.

The second feedback example that I wanted to share is from Sarah Beckman, our Operations Management professor. As she was wrapping up the course, she said in a very heartfelt manner, that one of the things that set us apart as a class was that “you’re kind to one another”.

I found it interesting that the things that set us apart in business school, at two of the preeminent capitalist training grounds in the world, were qualities like kindness, respect and appreciation for different points of view, openness to taking risks, a sense of humor, humility. Not quantitative brainpower, competitiveness, strategic thinking, or communication skills. The latter were abundant in our class as they are in most, but the former attributes are what made set us apart as a class and helped make the Berkeley-Columbia program such an exceptionally enriching experience. They allowed us to open ourselves up to new ideas and perspectives, helped us to expose and explore our vulnerabilities so that we could learn more about ourselves as people and leaders, and enabled us to help each other not just survive, but thrive in this wonderful, challenging, stretching, stressful experience while leading full lives outside of it.

This was an experience of a lifetime, yet the true measure of the impact of our Berkeley-Columbia experience and the success of this graduating class lies in chapters still to be written. We’ve now the benefit of an unparalleled business education, an unbelievably strong network full of future potential, and the knowledge that we can each stretch ourselves farther than we may have ever thought possible. It is now up to each of us to harness our individual potential, and keep this class vibrant and strong, as we write our chapters, and not only thrive in our business environments, but help to shape them as leaders. These chapters will be as diverse as the members of this class and will require us to draw upon the expanse of our backgrounds, knowledge, networks, and our Berkeley-Columbia experience. Our chapters will be inexplicably intertwined as will be our professional and personal lives, but also interwoven amongst all of them will be the constant threads of challenge and rapid change in our business environments. And I will argue that the same attributes that set us apart and made us successful in the Berkeley Columbia program will continue to set us apart as business leaders and shape our organizations and business environments into ones which we are proud to lead. I look forward to playing my part in writing these unpenned chapters with you, the Berkeley-Columbia Class of 2006, and to continue to learn from you, to be inspired by you, and to grow with you through the rest of our careers and lives.

But for now, let’s all enjoy this moment and celebrate. Thank you all for being here and for all of your contributions that have led to this graduation.

Seth’s Farewell Commencement Address

February 12th, 2007

Farewell Commencement Address
Berkeley-Columbia MBA Program
Feb. 11, 2007
by Seth B. Rosen

I. Thanks
II. Eliminating Gender Bias for Professional Women in the U.S.
III. The “Anchoring bias” and “Man smart, woman smarter”

Opening

I’d like to begin by congratulating my fellow classmates on this wonderful day. You know, this auditorium has a special meaning for me. This coming August, it will be 20 years since I went to my first class at Cal as an undergraduate in this very auditorium. Later that same year, it was in this very room where the great guitarist Carlos Santana played free of charge on Cinco de Mayo. So it is a real honor for me now to be on this stage today and bid a fond farewell.

I. Thanks

But first things first. And first, I’d like to begin with some thanks.

We have an amazing class with a deep bench of capable leaders. This program was 19 months and I can say without a doubt that, even for the most experienced students among us, the first three semesters in particular were very, very difficult to manage. The folks in this program were, for the most part, balancing a full-time job, a family and school. Everywhere you look, someone was moving houses, getting married and having babies. Some huge percentage, including me, changed jobs during the program.

And through this, several distinguished people went “above and beyond”. Their contributions to the program were nothing short of amazing. I’d like to go through some of this now.

We had 4 elected class representatives: Nick Triantos, Prashant Padmanabhan, Doug Gordan and Steve Hartman. These guys were in the line of fire for any frustrated classmate who had a beef. Prashant and Steve did a great job getting us on base, and Doug and Nick brought us home.

Now, in addition to these four individuals, I am not sure if everyone is fully aware of the large numbers of unofficial leaders who stepped up to the plate, shouldered extra responsibilities, and hit it out of the park in terms of the impact their contributions made.

One great example is our Speaker Series. Christine Leung, Yanush Cherkis, and Virginia Rath spearheaded this effort and brought in several amazing speakers. They got critical help with panels, speakers and visits from Chris Howard, John Reichsteiner, Keith Brisack, and Brad Cameron. The unofficial award for bringing in the Best Speaker goes to Rose Duignan who arranged for her former boss, George Lucas. (It was a particularly special event for me because I am such a huge Star Wars fan.)

Virginia, Yanush and JoAnne Fitzwater all helped get gifts for different folks who were getting married or having babies or being promoted. And on our trips to New York to attend classes at Columbia, Virginia, Suzy Lahey, and Swati Gokhale were critical to organizing dinners with professors and among groups of students. On the topic of nice dinners, we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to John Tallichet who has hit some key homeruns, including a great dinner last night. Also, Christine organized a fun student dinner in Napa, and thanks to Rose for some great Dinner Source catered events.

A few weeks ago, when the program ended in December, we had a fantastic party and it really reflected a tremendous amount of work by a large group of people. Many of the same names of these generous leaders keep coming up: JoAnne, Yanush, Christine, Virginia, Doug, Nick, Steve, Swati, Suzy, and John, plus Braden Robison and Gayleen Dent.

Please join me in thanking each and every one of these great leaders as well as others I may have inadvertently left off the list. (applause)

Our class also benefited from a great group of dedicated Haas and Columbia staff who worked well with us to continue to improve this program. Specifically, I wanted to thank Ethan Hanabury, Troy Eggers, Kimberly Scarborough, and Nicole Margolit from the staff at Columbia and Yen Tran, Jennifer Brandon, Paul Lee, and – last but by no means least – the program’s capable and unflappable Executive Director, Robert Gleeson. (applause)

Many (but not all) of us benefited from our employers helping with time off, reduced expectations, and a few even got their bills paid. I know I owe a huge thanks to Lawrence Berkeley Lab and to my managers Viviana and Cheryl who supported me throughout this program. So, to our employers and our managers, we say thank you as well.

But most of all, our class benefited from our families. Without your sacrifices, we could not have made it through this program. I know that I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my mom and to my wife Molly and my two children Caleb and Ellie who essentially sacrificed their husband and father at the altar of academia every morning and night for 19 months.

On behalf of all my fellow classmates, I want to thank you, our friends and family, who have sacrificed so that we could be here today. (applause)

II. Eliminating Gender Bias for Professional Women in the U.S.

Now when I was considering what topic was worthy of talking about today, I went through a long list. Its become a joke amongst my classmates that I am somehow “the women’s rights guy” but it is an issue that I feel is one of the most important issues facing our country today.

I got this reputation because I would ask visiting CEOs how they thought we could better incorporate professional women into the upper echelons of business,
without forcing a woman to choose between being a good mother and being a successful professional.

I saw this news piece recently:

“The flood of women into the job market fueled economic growth for decades. The recent dip in women’s participation has started to limit the country’s potential for further growth, according to a report by the White House Council of Economic Advisors. The Council says [not me!] that when droves of women leave the workforce, it bleeds American businesses of some of their most highly educated workers, since women now account for 56% of the students enrolled in colleges and graduate schools.” (from The Week, Jan. 24, 2007)

Now, this is a really important point. Women’s rights have increased dramatically, and their participation in our economy has increased, but our business norms and practices have not kept up. Instead, we have a business world that effectively treats child birth almost like a disease, and it essentially ignores the demands of child rearing altogether.

When I worked at Siebel Systems, the only reason I was entitled to my 1 week of paternity leave was because I negotiated it into my offer when I was hired. I was afforded essentially no accommodation for helping to raise my family. And that is why I left.

Typical stock option vesting practices are another good example. For a couple where both work at the same company and both receive the same stock options, if that couple together decides to have a child, the women’s stock options will stop vesting during her maternity leave but the man’s options will not. As if the women “elected” to have the baby and the man did not?

These disparities are easy to explain. They arise because our economic system, our business culture and norms, were all developed by men at a time when women were completely locked out of the system.

Today’s reality is that many women are being forced to choose between being a good mother and being a successful professional, and many of these are choosing to be good mothers.

The challenge for us is not to convince them otherwise. Rather, our challenge is to change the rules of the game so that this untenable choice need never be made.

Why do I care so much about this issue? One key reason is because I am patriotic and because I believe that our nation’s greatest days lie before us.

I believe that the long-term success of our great nation depends less on the power of our military to project force, and more on the power of our collective intellects to be free to innovate. Over the long-term, I believe that the United States will prevail over other nations who stifle the economic opportunities of women or who openly repress their freedom, whether in the name of religion or tradition.

If businesses in the United States can find a way to treat child birth and child rearing as a natural piece of our economic system, rather than some inconvenient event that must be suffered through, then I believe that this will have a dramatic and positive effect on our nation’s productivity, our standard of living and our long-term competitiveness in the world.

While every family is and should always be free to make their individual choices as to what is right for them, for those families who have two capable parents both of whom wish to succeed as both parents and professionals, our society continues to suffer from a marked bias that places the interests of men above those of women.

It is so important to deal with this issue now. In addition to the global business competitiveness of the U.S., we have so many huge problems facing our society today. Global warming. Iraq. The Middle East. Healthcare. So many problems and I don’t know the right answers. But what I do know is that, the more of us, men and women, who work to innovate and to figure out the answers, the more likely it is that we will find them.

Here in the United States, we are well situated to take steps and make changes to ensure that the “genius of women” is capitalized upon every bit as much as the “genius of men.”

My friends, it is you here today who have both the opportunity, and the authority, to help our nation realize this dream. It is each of us who can work in our own companies, communities and families, who can work actively, incrementally, and methodically to change the rules of the game and to create a truly level playing field for both women and men.

For the sake of our nation and for our families, I ask you to join me in this effort to help rid our business world of gender bias and to find ways in your own personal and professional lives to take new steps and adopt new attitudes so that our daughters do not have to face the same untenable choice that our wives and mothers were forced to make.

III. The Anchoring Bias and “Man Smart, Woman Smarter”

Now, that’s a very serious and lofty mission which will take many steps and many years. So I thought we could start with an action that we could all take here together today.

Our dear Professor Jenny Chatman of Haas taught us quite a bit about the idea of unconscious bias and how bias is actually hardwired into our brain. Take the so-called “anchoring” bias. The anchoring bias is the peculiar fact that an individual tends to get locked into an initial position and then, once anchored there, fails to adjust his or her position even as new information is presented.

So, applying these teachings to what I was just talking about…if we believe that men and women should be equal and if we acknowledge that we have had thousands of years of men essentially being considered “smarter” than women, with more opportunities than women, then the “anchoring bias” teaches us that we naturally, subconsciously, are “anchored” to the idea that “men are smarter,” even if we consciously accept that men and women are intellectual equals. To unearth and defeat our bias, this research teaches us is that we must over-adjust.

Now, at this point, I would like to ask the women in my class to join me here on stage here if they are so inclined. It would be my honor and I hope at least a few will accept to join me in leading us all in a little bias-elimination session… …Berkeley style.

To overcome the anchor that “men are smarter,” its not good enough to proclaim that men and women are “equal.” To achieve equality, we must adopt a position, if only to unrest our own individual bias, that “women are smarter.”

That’s right, the “women are smarter.”

Now join me in saying it three times: “That’s right, the women are smarter” and then the fourth time we say “The women are smarter, that’s right.”

Join me and the wonderful graduating women of the Berkeley-Columbia MBA class, and put your hands together and join us in a highly unconventional exercise…

{start rhythm clapping}

Now everyone keep going with the clapping and join in when I get to the chorus…

***
“Let us put men and women together, and see which one is smarter,
Some say men but I say no, women run the men like a puppet show,

[bridge]
It ain’t me, it’s the people who say, men are leading the women astray
And I say, it’s the women today, smarter than the men in every way

[chorus]
That’s right the women are smarter,
That’s right the women are smarter,
That’s right the women are smarter,
The women are smarter, that’s right.

Ever since the world began, women been imitating the ways of men
But listen cause I’ve got a plan, give it up, just don’t try to understand.

[back to bridge & chorus]

****

Now I do not mean to say that men are inferior to women; the point is that
we need to all be treated fairly while taking into account our biological differences,
so that we can all truly benefit from having “all the brains in the game.”

Thanks very much. Congratulations to all my classmates and best of luck!

“Man Smart, Woman Smarter” Song & Lyrics

February 12th, 2007

Hi all and congratulations again!

Some classmates (or their parents or guests) asked me after the graduation about the song I was (making an attempt at) singing: “Man Smart, Women Smarter”. Below are the lyrics, a YouTube live performance (8 min.), and [supposed] song’s background.

I had a great time yesterday, I hope you did too, and it was a pleasure seeing everyone and their families and friends.

Seth

– Lyrics –

Let us put men and women together
See which one is smarter
Some say men, but I say no
The women got the men like a puppet show

Believe me, it’s the people that say
That the men are leading the women astray
But I say that the women today
Are smarter than the men in every way

Chorus
That’s right, the women are smarter
That’s right, the women are smarter
That’s right, the women are smarter
The women are smarter than the men today

[NOTE: at our BCEMBA graduation, I skipped this next verse and skipped over to the last verse:
Little boy sit on the corner and cry
Big man come and he ask him why
Says I can’t do what the big boys do
Man sat down and he cried too]

It ain’t me, but the people who say
That the men are leading the women astray
But I say that the women today
Are smarter than the men in every way

[chorus]

Ever since the world began
Women been imitating the ways of men
But listen cause I’ve got a plan
Give it up, just don’t try to understand

– Live Performance –

8 minutes of the Grateful Dead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUsjR4FSgSQ

– [Supposed] History —

from http://www.calypsoworld.org/noflash/songs-6.htm

“Man Smart, Woman Smarter,” composed by Trinidadian calypsonian King Radio, is one of the best known of all calypsos. Radio originally recorded it in 1936, during his first trip to New York . The song offers wry commentary on the battle between the sexes, one of the eternal themes of calypso. Audiences throughout the world have applauded Radio’s assertion:

I say, it’s the women today
Smarter than the men in every way.

“Man Smart, Woman Smarter” was the first calypso recorded by Harry Belafonte—on a single in 1952. It was also one of the two calypsos that Belafonte included on his million-selling Calypso album (1956). The song became so popular during the 1956-57 American calypso craze that Lucy, Desi, Fred and Ethel even sang it during an episode of the I Love Lucy television show.

Since the 1950s, artists have performed versions of “Man Smart, Woman Smarter” in musical styles ranging from rock and country to zydeco and reggae. Chubby Checkers, Joan Baez and the Grateful Dead are a few of the many musicians who have interpreted the song.

Added Sharavisms back to our site

February 12th, 2007

I was just going through old school emails, and once again found the list of Sharavisms. They gave me enough of a laugh again that I thought they’d be worth posting in a permanent page. So, just take a look at the right at the “Pages” section of this site, or just click here for the list of Sharavisms

Vegas Visits (including Dr. Lin)

January 15th, 2007

Hello classmates. I am meeting Dr. Lin and Jana for dinner on Thursday the 25th here in Las Vegas. If anyone is in town and would like to join, please don’t hesistate to give me a call.

Greg is coming this coming weekend and Nick the following week. Everyone, please reach out if you are in town.

I also enjoyed dinner last week with Yvonne and Sidhartha at The Venetian. Yvonne was a MOST gracious hostess (Thanks Yvonne)!

Talk to you all in a few weeks when we become officially pedigreed.

Mark

Eric’s Book - reviewed on Marketplace (Public Radio)

January 5th, 2007

Eric’s book was reviewed on Marketplace: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/01/02/PM200701025.html

Eric was not the one interviewed, it was his co-author, David Freedman. Still interesting stuff.

We Made It!

December 12th, 2006

Huge congrats to everyone.  Now that we’re two days out, I can definitely say that the feeling is surreal.  Not sure about the rest of you, but everyone treats me completely differently now that I’m a graduate.  Just kidding, but it still feels nice but strange to be all done.  Great seeing everyone at the Townhouse on Saturday night and look forward to seeing all of you back at graduation in Feb!  Now off to write that speech thing… 

Oh, and on the note of a real update, I actually managed to change my job once more to make it twice in the last two months.  A few of you know I was working on this, but I’m now in charge of text advertising on eBay, a change from my last job in “advertising infrastructure”.  Thus I’ve managed to make the switch from techie (no offense, Whit ;-) to actually having revenue responsibility.  And I actually used some specific learnings from both Abrahamson and Jenny Chatman to make all this happen - I have to admit, the Congruence Model actually made it to the whiteboard today.   Anyway, enough about me - look forward to seeing all of you in Feb!

Cool! We have a blog.

December 11th, 2006

I missed you guys last term. Hope to see you all soon.

Photos? You want photos?

December 5th, 2006

Class PhotoYanush was good enough to post some photos at Zenfolio. Here’s one great pic of our whole class, mostly so I can make sure we can upload and post photos in the blog…