Park Fellowship Alumni Dinner in NYC

March 13th. On the bus to New York City for the annual Park alumni dinner. The Park alumni meet every year in New York City to do a service project and share dinner. Just a quick up and back. We left at noon today and will be back by 1pm tomorrow. Ah, the life of a jet-setter.

Mid-Term Business Plan Presentation

March 12th. This Friday, my group presented the current status of our business plan start-up to a panel of two professors and a Cornell entrepreneur. We are working on a Cornell technology that can be used to measure the health and production of grape vines - to help vineyards that grow wines.

Although we had a deck of slides, this quickly turned into a typical VC pitch, in that we made it through barely one slide before we had a barrage of questions about our plans. It quickly turned into more of a conversation than a presentation – which is fine by me.

The liked our idea so I’m happy...

Leveraged Buyouts Class

March 7th. Spent the entire weekend (Saturday and Sunday from 9-5!) in a leveraged buyouts class. We focused on building LBO spreadsheet models and understanding how doing a leverage buyout would impact your balance sheet. Was taught by an instructor from Wall Street Prep. Very practical training for the spreadsheet inclined.

SGE Club Retreat

February 28th. The officers of the SGE Club and the different Affinity Groups met at Mark Milstein's house this weekend to talk over our agenda. Mark heads the Sustainable Global Enterprise Program at Johnson with his wife Monica Tousnard.

We talked about goals for the upcoming year and ways to improve. We split into three groups to work on different areas.

We had a potluck lunch that was fantastic too...

Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital Club

February 15th. I am an officer in the EVCC club. I was elected to handle the Entrepreneurship@Cornell symposium. E@C is a big three day event held in April that brings together the entrepreneurship community from across Cornell - current and past. Johnson is responsible for putting on four panels. The EVCC club handles two and the SGE (Sustainable Global Enterprise) Club handles another two. Our panels are "Bootstrapping" (how to start a company with just your own personal resources) and "Young Entrepreneurs." The SGE Club is doing a panel on "Sustainable Investing" and "Turning Rubbish into Products."
We finally agreed on a theme that encompasses all of these items: "Beating the Odds: Big Payouts from unconventional Strategies". Next up is doing the marketing for our panels and the conference as a whole.

Reaching Out MBA Conference

February 7th. Continuing my LGBT interest, I spent the weekend in Los Angeles with Reaching Out (www.reachingoutmba.org). Reaching Out is the annual national conference for LGBT MBA students. We meet every October. Last year's conference had about 1000 participants (60% MBAs & 40% alums/professionals). Every year they have a major job fair with all the big banks, consulting firms, and marketing firms that typically hire MBAs.
I am one of the organizers of next year's conference that will be held in Los Angeles. We spent the weekend hearing from last year's organizers and also from the Board which consists of organizers from other years. The conference started in 1999.
I am on the sponsorship committee and we are looking to raise about half a million dollars to run the conference.

Out For Business (LGBT club at Johnson)

February 1st. I'm one of the new co-Presidents of the Out for Business group which is the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgendered) group at Johnson. We've got a solid group at Johnson between those that identify as LGBT and supporters.

At the first meeting of 2010, we decided that we were going to work on a number of items including: 1) hosting a Sage Social, 2) running a panel discussion of specific LGBT issues and how they relate to the business world, 3) rework the website, 4) bring in the Industrial & Labor Relations School grad students and Hotel School grad students into our club, 5) Find some way to connect with Alumni and 6) working on incorporating a checkbox option on the application where applicants could self-identify as LGBT.

We had about 10 people at our first meeting and another 5 to 6 that said they would like to be there. I've also met with an ILR grad student and a Hotel grad student who will be attending in the future.

Entrepreneurship & Private Equity Immersion (EPE)

January 30th. I worked on political campaigns before coming to business school. I really enjoyed all the aspects (and the excitement) around beginning a new organization, raising money, and turning an idea into a living and breathing campaign. I came to Johnson to learn how I could do this in the business world.

I am part of the Entrepreneurship and Private Equity Immersion (EPE). So far, I couldn't be happier. Our coursework focuses around Prof. David BenDaniel and Prof. Steve Gal's Business Plan class where you are asked to create either: a) a business plan for a new company or b) a buyout plan for a current company. So far in the class we have discussed how to create a start-up, distressed companies, and leveraged buyouts. Our other coursework is a mix of finance and strategy classes - including "Strategic Alliances" and "Financial Modeling." I'm taking a brand new course also taught by Prof. Gal titled "Entrepreneurial Marketing." Lastly, I am taking a class called "Entrepreneurial Executives" with former Johnson alum, Jason Hogg, who recently sold his business to American Express for $300 million.

There is a wealth of opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship at Johnson (I am less knowledgeable about private equity resources but can connect you with someone if you need that information.) Entrepreneurship@Cornell is a campus-wide initiative that in many ways is headquartered in Sage Hall and at the Johnson School. Prof. Zach Shulman is leading a series of 10 lectures this spring focused on how to start a business -- "The Start-up Series" -- that breaks down the different components of beginning a business into smaller lectures. Some of the lectures are focused on Idea Generation and Validation or on Intellectual Property issues or on 10 things that kill a new company. It is a practical and hands-on series of classes. Beyond coursework there is: Big Red Ventures (venture capital fund run by Johnson), Big Red Incubator (which is a small business consulting shop run by Johnson students), the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club, trips to local start-ups including Kionix, CCTEC mixers, and the Entrepreneurship@Johnson symposium in April. Whatever you are looking for, you can find it at Johnson and at Cornell.

CCTEC

January 18th. I came straight from India back to Ithaca. After 5 days of recovery, I spent this week visiting all of the representatives at CCTEC (Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise and Commercialization) looking at potential ideas for starting a business. CCTEC is a Cornell run entity that patents all of the technology created at the university and tries to commercialize it - either with entrepreneurs or selling the technology to bigger companies. All the reps have been great and spoke about some of the promising technologies that they have that might fit my background.

I'm also fishing for ideas for my Business Plan class where we have to create a start-up.

(sorry for all the catch-up blogs, I really do enjoy writing them:) )

FROZEN ASSETS

On Sunday, the ladies of Johnson ("Frozen Assets") took on the Faculty and Staff in a display of terrible but hilarious hockey. Next up, the men of Johnson dress in drag and take on the "Frozen Assets." Looking forward to participating!!

DIWALI

Last weekend, the Indian students put on an AMAZING two hour play ("My Big Fat Johnson Wedding") that included no less than 7 dance sequences in true Bollywood fashion. We had a packed house for the show.

The plot was an Indian student's journey from his home country to Cornell to an eventual wedding. Required jokes about Indian GMAT scores, IT backgrounds, slacker Americans, and ridiculous parents were included. A bunch of first years participated (including my fellow blogger Ekta who choreographed two numbers). I don't know how they had any time to practice... what am I doing with my time is what I was left thinking....

DIVERSITY CONFERENCES

I spent the weekend of October 16th-18th at the Reaching Out MBA Conference in Atlanta. This is the annual LGBT (gay and lesbian) diversity conference. Tons of fellow LGBT MBA students (over 600 I think) and over 50 companies attended. We had a group of 4 people from Cornell attend.

There are several other diversity conferences: Black MBA, Hispanic MBA, and the new Asian MBA conference. As strange as it may sound, if you are not affiliated with one of those groups (you are a straight white guy for instance), you can still attend if you would like to meet a recruiter from a company that does not come to campus. The Career Management Center actively encourages people to attend. Often, people come home with job offers. I had three interviews for a summer position while I was in Atlanta. That said, I would say there is a bit of "unease" with people attending who are not really part of that diversity group. Just be respectful and reach out to the people there. At the end of the day, everyone understands that we are all looking for a great job.

CAREER FOCUS

Career focus is huge at business school. You will meet with the Career Management Center staff during Orientation and your new career work group (a group of students interested in your same career led by second years) within the first couple weeks of school. Also, the recruiters start arriving a month after school begins. If you are even the least bit unsure of what career you wish to pursue, I would suggest spending some significant time over the summer investigating careers. Great resources are the WetFeet and Vault Career Guides. They break down the different functions, jobs, and show you what your daily life will look like. You also need to be drop-dead honest with yourself. Do you want to work 100 hours a week? Do you want to travel 4 days a week? What impact will those choices have on your life? Cornell gave us a free subscription to CareerLeader which is a diagnostic test -- similar to Myers Briggs but focused on business school careers.

I wanted time to explore different careers, be thorough, and make sure I was making a good choice. There just isn't the time, unfortunately, to do that. If you can narrow it down, you won't run yourself ragged at company briefings and cocktail hours.

FIRST HALF FINALS

Wednesday, October 14th (I'm doing some catch-up blogging -- apologies for the delay -- I'm keeping them chronological though)

So after three intense days of finals, we are now officially done with the first half of this semester. We started on Sunday (Sunday!) and had the next two finals on Monday and Tuesday.
This first half-semester has been a whirlwind.

I think everyone would agree that the intensity has been extremely high. You first have to cope with getting into the school mode and getting adjusted to a new location. Then you have the student clubs, school activities, workshops, symposiums, lectures, etc, etc. You are also knee-deep in career activities.

Plan on working 10-12 hours a day and spending a chunk of your weekend on school. We only had class on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday but it always seemed like my Wednesdays and Fridays were the busiest. If you are coming with a significant other or have one back home, you should have a long talk about what this semester is going to look like. That said, it's all really interesting and fun. Completely worth the time -- just busy.

Hello! (and how I got to Cornell)

Hello everyone!! Apologies for starting a bit late -- it's proven to be a busy semester.

I'm guessing that you are in the process of thinking about if you should apply to business school or where to apply to business school. I did a lot of research and reflection that I thought might be helpful - so I'll start there.

When I was researching business schools, my first default approach was to look at rankings. I think that is inevitable for most people. I started there and then added where I wanted to live. City + Rankings = Perfect School.

This process did not really seem thorough enough for what I was going to be investing in the decision. I decided to dig a bit deeper and to visit a couple of very different schools to see if I could make some educated guesses about all the schools. The visits were huge for me. I started to see that there were some other really important factors for me.

One was class size. I felt that the people I was going to meet at business school were going to be my biggest take-away. I would know these people for a long time. I wanted to be in a school where I could really know them. For me, this meant that I wanted to be in a smaller school.

Two was academic focus. After spending time reflecting, I knew I wanted to learn more about marketing, sustainability, and entrepreneurship. I then spent a lot of time digging into the programs, the activities, the centers, and talking to people that worked in all of these.

Three was culture. It is interesting how much you can pick up by interacting with a couple of students and visiting the school. I wanted to go to a school that was cooperative, supportive, and fun. This is where I knew I would have the best experience over my two years.

My very small recommendation is that you spend some time thinking about where you are truly going to be happiest and be most successful. You can get whatever job you want at any of the top schools – so do not worry about that. And after your first job or two after business school, all they will look at is your experience.

Just my two cents. :)

Adam

Welcome, Adam Conderman

I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida and graduated from the University of Florida majoring in political science and international studies. I spent a couple of years in Washington, DC working for a political affairs and public relations firm before leaving for a Rotary Scholarship to Ecuador. I lived in Ecuador for 6 months and traveled for another 6 months around South and Central America. Coming back to the US, I jumped from the corporate side of political affairs into the campaign side. I moved to Miami where I worked as a political fundraiser for a series of campaigns including: Florida Governor, US Congress, Florida Attorney General, and a statewide ballot initiative. I also spent a year in Liberia working for the United Nations on their 2005 national election. I chose the Johnson School because I wanted to be in a place where I could build strong relationships with my classmates and have an incredible network of friends when I leave. Career-wise, I'm interested in marketing, entrepreneurship and sustainability.