Afleveringen
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For the holiday season we are joined by MBA alumnus Michael Kremer, Vice President of Marketing for the American Concrete Pipe Association. In this wide-ranging discussion, Michael shares knowledge gained over a 20+ year career in marketing, and how luck played a part in his story. The role of luck in life and business is often overlooked or underweighted. Many fall victim to this fallacy - myself included. However, luck rarely arrives for those not prepared to see it or capitalize on it. That’s the role of strategy; to prepare for and navigate towards the range of opportunities most likely to present themselves. So, how do you prepare to meet luck with gratitude? Listen in.
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This month, Marty Friel joins us for our second Check In episode in this podcast series. Marty is a MS-EPA graduate and veteran financial advisor with Ameriprise Financial and his original episode aired on 3/9/21. In that episode, Aaron Pagel hosted Marty for a great conversation on how and why he pursued this career and what strategy is responsible for his success. Here we take the chance to review Marty’s progress and focus in on how growth, and the challenges that come with it, have impacted his work. Marty gives us some sage perspective on how he manages growth and updates on what advice he might give others seeking to join him in his chosen field. It’s full of great knowledge and wisdom from someone who has been in the arena for quite some time.
Give it a listen.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Edith Freeze is a Community Scientist at Northwestern University's Fienberg School of Medicine and a fierce champion of environmental rights. Her career is the product of endless curiosity, a thirst for education, and hustle. Her passion for environmental issues comes directly from her experiences growing up in Ecuador and a reverence for her Andean Indigenous roots. This double demon joins to explain how she balances her work as an empirical researcher in healthcare with her long-standing advocacy for environmental rights. These two parts both complement and overlap each other and allow her to make contributions is ways that may not be possible without traveling her unique journey.
Give it a listen.
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Josh Dickey is an experienced finance professional, DePaul MS-EPA alumnus, veteran of the Federal Reserve in Washington DC and our guest this month. Josh has great stories to tell about his career, time at the Fed, and current work at the fuel cell manufacturer Hyzon Motors. Hyzon focuses on producing zero-emission heavy duty trucks; a nascent market with huge potential. Like many new markets, though, the path ahead isn’t always crystal clear. How do you get where you want to go, when the destination doesn’t exist yet? Hyzon has a solid strategic plan to build around its core fuel cell technology & expertise that maintains flexibility, leverages strong IP, and fixed costs, and can provide significant scale economies if or when this market blooms.
Listen in to hear how they’re doing it.
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Our guest this month is Nuna Becic. Nuna is the embodiment of resilience, effort, and passion! Qualities earned from life experience as an immigrant, mother, MBA, and marketing professional. She currently handles strategic alliances at Logitech and has an interesting story of getting there. This story includes terrific role models, some luck, and a lot of hard work. A LOT! Her current role uses her business strategy concentration to help Logitech create mutually beneficial strategic alliances that open new markets, leverage firm advantages, and efficiently fill market gaps. Any business alliance brings risk, but Nuna serves as a point of continuity to maximize the benefits while minimizing any risk. Listen in to hear how?
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2024 summer break brings our first guest with a B.A. in Economics Ryan Polak. Ryan is Associate Director for Purchasing at Bell Flavors & Fragrances; a developer and manufacturer of ingredients in many consumer products who sits in the upstream market of the consumer product makers. Clients rely on Bell’s scientific expertise to be successful, and their food scientists rely on Ryan to deliver raw materials at scale and on budget. That requires him to constantly gather market intelligence on who has what, where, how much of it and at what price. Unfortunately, there isn’t just one answer to that question and that keeps him very busy. Listen in to hear how.
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June is part 2 with Luke Balderson and a great discussion on leadership and organizational culture. We explore how Luke made the connection between these two interdependent concepts and how they create sustainable business success. The servant-based leadership model discussed here begins at the top and requires discipline to scale and maintain. However, done well, this model, of selflessly developing and enabling talent, creates a self-sustaining culture in its likeness and the benefits are significant. These human and organizational benefits become assets that, from a resource-based view, provide a competitive advantage hard for others to overcome. Treat your people well, I think I’ve heard that before?
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For May, we begin a two-part interview with Business Strategy & Decision Making alumnus Luke Balderson. This part 1, dives deep into Luke's multidecade career in the far reaching and fascinating industrial gases industry. Luke is a composed, experienced, and highly capable executive in a sector that demands clear thinking and strategic insight. These skills were honed by a remarkable father, a natural inclination to listen and learn, and an education that enables him to synthesize information into a strategic framework. Success in business necessitates understanding the value proposition for your customers, employees, and suppliers, and this can only be accomplished through curiosity and active listening! Interested? Give it a listen.
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For Episode 51, MS-EPA graduate Roxy Kozyckyj joins us. Roxy is Senior Director, State Government & Regional Affairs for the advanced medical technology association AdvaMed and has spent most of her career in healthcare policy, from advocacy, to intern, to analyst, capitol hill fellow, and finally lobbyist. This experience gives her the ability to see how policy goals that serve everyone, require working, step-by-step through the interested parties. Roxy openly admits game theory plays a role in her work and backward induction seems to fit well. Think of it this way, start with a policy goal, navigate backwards solving each preceding step, the resulting path theoretically achieves the desired outcome. Sounds strategic to me. Give it a listen.
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It’s the end of winter term, and we’re talking insurance; you’ll be surprised by what you hear. Andrew Zarkowsky, MBA 2018, is Technology Industry Practice Leader for the insurance giant The Hartford and specializes in underwriting technology firms. In this episode, Andrew explains what’s unique about insurance for technology firms and shares how today’s insurance companies rely on technology, data, and research to forecast risk and prevent client losses. Andrew also has an interesting story to tell about his MBA journey and the value of pacing while pursuing your MBA. It’s a story of balancing life, school, and work, and simultaneously super charging you’re learning. It’s a great strategy for anyone who wants to make the most of your learning. Give it a listen.
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For February, we host yet another successful woman from the economics department’s graduate program, Mollie Markham. After a brief learning experience pursuing politics at the front lines in DC, she discovered what she doesn’t want in a career. Fully embracing that lesson and, with some great counsel from family, she entered DePaul’s graduate program. The rest is or will be legend as Mollie is now a Program Specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Her timing could not have had better, as she entered this role at the start of one of the Feds biggest developments in 50 years; the building of a new instant payment system called FedNOW. Happy, successful, and working on really cool stuff. That’s the recipe for a good life right there.
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To kick off 2024, we begin a new, and perhaps recurring version of this podcast called Check Ins. Here, we’re going to welcome back previous guests to update the topics we discussed in our original interview. For our inaugural episode, we welcome back Dave Ziegelski. Dave is Vice President of Information Technology for National Material L.P.; a partnership of over 30 business units in steel, metals, and related operations that is now one of the largest suppliers of steel in America. That is a high-profile role where there’s a lot at stake. Dave, though, has a way of boiling down the complex into simply, straightforward tasks. To me, a sign he’s not only very good at what he does, but likely a very good person to work with. Give it a listen
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For December we offer part 2 with MBA alumnus, and rail industry veteran Marcin Taraszkiewicz. In this episode we talk about trains, trains, and more trains. Yes, Marcin plays with big toys on big projects, but his work really exists at the nexus of rail technology and client goals. His industry recognized expertise helps clients navigate those often-competing forces towards better project outcomes. These large projects tend to have a host of competing stakeholder interests, and things can get complicated fast. Luckily, markets respond quickly to public priorities and, consequently, there’s some cool stuff happening in rail technology.
Big trains and cool technology, what more do you want!? Listen in.....
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November begins a 2-part podcast with MBA alumnus Marcin Taraszkiewicz from the global design & engineering firm HDR. In this part 1, Marcin explains how he went from a design focused engineer to senior leader for large, multidisciplinary transportation projects. A transformation that took time, some failure, learning to ask questions, and how to value those answers. He gives some great examples of how being open to learning, by whatever means, he developed skills and interests that he didn’t know he had or even wanted. The lesson is that even perfectly designed plans, developed in a vacuum, are often useless without the input of all the stakeholders involved. If that isn’t strategic, I don’t know what is. Give it a listen.
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October brings in MBA alumna Alla Antonov, to discuss her role as Principal Advisor, Commercial Strategy at the mining giant Rio Tinto. Alla specializes in Rio’s borates market. Rio, though, is a global, diversified firm with many products and an interesting business structure of four distinct operational entities and a single commercial team, Alla's home, serving as its primary market interface for all products. This is a great business with competitive advantage and high returns to capital. A nice place to be for any firm but the question then becomes what are you going to do next? Rio Tinto isn’t standing idle. They’re innovating for efficiencies, embracing technology to lower environmental impacts and continuing to explore the world for the resources it needs.
It's a good story and you should hear it.
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Let’s welcome strategy alumnus Howard Gilman to the podcast. Howard currently serves as Lead Deal Desk Strategist for LinkedIn’s Sales Solutions group. LinkedIn, as a firm, is many things though; software company, social media platform, hiring & recruiting services, and more. So, what’s the product, and who’s the customer? Well, it depends. For Howard’s group, it's firm’s looking for market intelligence to grow their business but what about the others? Such is the nature of a multi-sided platform. A business model that seeks to create value for distinct groups interacting across a core technology platform. LinkedIn has built a very elegant and focused version of this model. What to know more? Keep Listening!
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For August, MS-EPA alumnus Jason Knoespel joins us to discuss his work as Managing Director, Client Analytics at Evolent; a provider of technology, reporting, and intelligence services designed to increase efficiency & patient outcomes for its healthcare partners. Jason talks about his current work, new developments in value-based care, information sharing and big data, and the potential of non-traditional health determinants. Evolving markets do make strategy challenging, but Evolent recently showed its strategic guile by refocusing into value-based, specialty care. Indicating this market could be engaging in value addition; a concept where firms focus on separate & distinct segments and increase value for everyone.
A rare economic win/win? Listen in.
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In our July episode MBA alumna Amy Wilson joins us to discuss her work at the market leading cloud services provider Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amy sells AWS offerings to state and local governments that operate in Windows environments. In this increasingly competitive industry, there are reasons why this segment would seem difficult to crack; even for AWS. So how do they overcome these difficulties? Using the strategic principle of looking ahead and reasoning back. AWS looked ahead to each stage of client interactions, anticipated obstacles (perceived or real), and designed optimal responses to reinforce their market leading strengths. Leading with your strengths, I like that! You should give it a listen.
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This episode welcome’s strategy alumnus Dain Rideau. As a Product Manager for autonomous vehicle developer Torc Robotics, he works on connecting vehicles to information. Torc, a subsidiary of industry leading OEM Daimler Truck, focuses on self-driving trucks and while this space is filled with strategic uncertainty, this OEM partnership is a strategic marvel. Why? During uncertainty, a leading firm’s priority is to protect its position. This partnership allows Daimler to participate in the advancement of autonomous technologies in its own vehicles. Simultaneously protecting its position and embracing the change, whatever that looks like. Smart! Listen in.
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This month we meet Liam Bruno, a Double Demon currently serving as Senior Manager for Procurement at Walgreens. Liam’s focus is on integrating ESG into day-to-day operations. ESG is, of course, well established and proven to create value when executed well, but there are many obstacles. Still, forward thinking firms like Walgreens are widening their definition of stakeholder to include social and environmental interests; seeing the potential payoff of cooperation between this wider interest group. In essence, Liam’s role is seeking, what economic theory calls, a Pareto optimal solution, where all these interest groups are served while taking away from none. How does he do that? Listen in.
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