i mag spring2003.qxd - The Paul Merage School of Business ...

Graduate School
of Management
Spring 2003 • Issue 1
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Dr. Rosalyn Baxter-Jones
Health Care Executive MBA ‘99

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Focus
GSM Launches Center for
Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Students
They Douse Tech Brushfires
Community
All Hands on Deck
for MBA Job Placements
Leadership
A School’s Best Capital is Intellectual
Research
Risk and Success in New Ventures
Alumni
3 GSM Entrepreneurs and
Their Start-Up Companies
Alumni Network News
Briefly
Conferences
Kudos
Coming Up
GSM Events
Alumni Network Events
Cover: Dr. Rosalyn Baxter-Jones, Health Care Executive MBA ‘99
Photo by Dwight Vallely
i is published three times a year by the UC Irvine Graduate School of
Management, Communications Office, MPAA Suite 210, Irvine, CA
92697-3130. Contact the editor at (949) 824-6286.
Editor Linda McCrerey
Production Francine Matijak
Writers John Gregory, Imran Husain
Photography Dwight Vallely, Monty Ma, Wilson Kwong
Art Direction Dan LaBelle, LiveWire Media
Printing Lester Lithograph, Inc.
IRVINE FAMILY =
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Entrepreneurship and Irvine have been
synonymous words since 1849 when
Scot-Irish immigrant James Irvine
opened Irvine and Company, Wholesale
Produce and Grocery Mchts., in San
Francisco to cater to the gold rush business.
Perhaps the sign above his door
was too short to spell out “Merchants.”
As told by Joan Irvine Smith, his great-granddaughter,
James Irvine used the profits from
his store to create a partnership with three
wealthy sheep ranchers who bought large
parcels of real estate. Their largest was the
115,000-acre Rancho San Joaquin that
stretched from the coast to San Bernardino.
The UC Irvine campus sits on a portion of
the old rancho.
In 1868 Irvine built a ranch house on the
property – the first wooden home between
Anaheim and San Diego – that became his
family’s residence while he oversaw the
40,000-sheep operation. Irvine bought out
his partners, added cattle and hogs to the
livestock, created hay and grain operations
and was instrumental in expanding railroad
and steamship operations into what is now
Orange County. When he died in 1886, his
son, James II, learned the trade and later
formed the Irvine Company that became an
agricultural empire.

Dean’s Message
I am pleased to introduce our inaugural issue of our new magazine, i.
Together with our e-newsletter launched last summer, we hope to provide
more information to you in a way that is attractive and interesting.
The e-newsletter frees us from the cost and sloth of paper and lets you
click on those stories that grab your interest. To receive the e-newsletter,
please send your email address to gsmnews@gsm.uci.edu.
This magazine, i, will better present UC Irvine’s Graduate School of
Management to our own community and interested others. Each issue
of i will take an in-depth look at one facet of our intellectual community,
a format that allows us to better communicate the richness of the
extraordinary contributions of our students, faculty, alumni and supporters.
GSM is a collection of interesting people doing exciting things,
and we hope to give you a better feel for its richness in i.
First, about its name: i is a small word that represents some big features
of GSM. Of course, it represents Irvine. It also represents
innovation and ideas, information technology and intellectual capital,
initiative and inspiration; characteristics of our education, scholarship
and community. Thanks to Diane Forsman, visiting lecturer and
EMBA ‘97, and Brad Eisenstein, FEMBA ‘05, for submitting versions
of i as title suggestions.
This issue focuses on entrepreneurship and innovation. We announce
the launch of our new Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation,
and let you know about some of the programs, conferences and courses
we are conducting in the next few months. We also will share a small
sampling of the exciting entrepreneurial launches and innovations our
students and alumni have developed, and introduce some of the new
knowledge in entrepreneurship and innovation created by our faculty.
We hope you enjoy it,
Dean Jone L. Pearce
1

Focus
Visit CEI on the Web at http://www.gsm.uci.edu/go/cei
GSM Launches
CENTER for
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
and INNOVATION
Some MBA students hope to never work for a large firm, unless it’s their own.
Now they can find, under one umbrella, the school’s rich variety of courses, activities and information
to prepare them for starting and managing their own companies. The Center for
Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI) launched in January. It is a central clearinghouse and
coordinating unit for the school’s myriad offerings for the budding entrepreneur and innovator
– programs, classes, research projects, speakers, activities and clubs related to starting a company
and developing new ideas.
“We are very excited about this new center, which begins as
a place to coordinate current GSM programs and services
in entrepreneurship and innovation, and to better link
GSM and the larger university and business communities,”
said Dean Jone Pearce. “This center will develop new educational
initiatives and community-GSM programs and
help to support faculty and doctoral student research on
entrepreneurship and innovation.”
Shaheen Husain is executive director, in addition to her role
as executive director of the Center for Leadership
Development. Professor Claudia Bird (Kaye) Schoonhoven is
faculty advisor.
For students, the CEI will manage two major extra-curricular
projects: the ThinkTank/GSM Campus-Wide Business
Plan Competition and the Irvine Innovation Initiative (I 3 ).
“We provide services to the community, too,” Husain said.
“The CEI acts as a clearinghouse for start-up consulting
projects where MBA students can help local entrepreneurs.
We invite the community to our presentations and workshops
and work with GSM’s Executive Education Program
to design custom courses for entrepreneurs and innovators.
“We also help support women entrepreneurs through
the Women’s Business Connection that works with the
GSM Women in Business Association. We hope to
make it easier to learn about the new work the faculty
are doing by posting research papers on the Web site.”
The goal is to develop the CEI into a self-sustaining
business unit at GSM, she added.
Classes in entrepreneurship and new ventures have been in
the GSM curriculum since 1993. Academic offerings in
2002-2003 include Professor Schoonhoven’s two classes,
Entrepreneurship and Business Planning for New Ventures;
Innovations start with ideas, says Shaheen Husain, executive director
of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Professor David Robinson’s New Ventures and Business
Strategy; Professor Eli Talmor’s course in Private Equity;
Professor Rajeev Tyagi’s New Product Development,
Professor Lisa Barron’s Negotiations, and Professor David
Obstfeld’s emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation in
his strategy course.
The idea for a central clearinghouse and coordinating unit
for all of the school’s offerings in entrepreneurship and
innovation came about inadvertently as Dean Jone Pearce
returned a phone call to a local business reporter asking for
comment on a corporate management story.
“The reporter said, ‘I don’t know you because I usually
cover entrepreneurship.’ I thought to myself, if the local
community doesn’t realise that our school is a leader in
entrepreneurship, we need to let them know in a more
visible way,” said Pearce.
One of the CEI’s main projects is coordinating the annual
Think Tank/GSM Campus-Wide Business Plan
Competition. Alerted by campus-wide emails and ads, more
than 160 undergraduate and graduate students from engineering,
information and computer sciences, medicine life
Shaheen Husain, CEI
Program Manager
Nicole Scarcello and
MBA interns Beau
Schindler, ‘03, and
Erik Edwards, ‘04.
sciences, social sciences, social ecology, management and the
arts teamed up to develop business plans. Executives from
local firms are leading a series of workshops to help the
teams hone their plans and presentation skills.
ThinkTank and its founder, Scott Blum, are funding the
competition with a $100,000 gift to the school. Business
development awards of $50,000 will go to the first-place
team and $10,000 to second-place team on May 31.
Another key project, the Irvine Innovation Initiative (I 3 ),
helps students get their businesses going by providing a
24/7 facility in the MPAA building. Thomas Eppel, assistant
dean of ITM and I 3 coordinator, is faculty advisor. “I 3
complements other curricular and co-curricular activities at
GSM that support innovation and entrepreneurship,” said
Eppel. “Local business leaders advise MBA teams as they
experiment with innovative business ideas.”
The CEI will work with the Entrepreneur Association, a
student organization that invites business leaders to the
school to answer questions and lead workshops. “These
events add value to the education process at GSM,” said
Don Phan, MBA ‘03, club president. –Linda McCrerey
3

Students
MBA students and TechRoom founders Katrina Snyder, front left, and James Coleman, front right, meet with their
staff technicians Jackson Luk, front middle, and in back row, Jason Ng, Rishi Patel, Mike Gleason and Brenda Kuk.

They DouseTECH
BRUSHFIRES
“My building’s on fire!” Those were the first words James
Coleman heard when he picked up the phone in his garageat
that time, the corporate headquarters of TechRoom, the
technical service firm he created with business partner and
FEMBA ‘03 classmate Katrina Snyder.
What the client needed while speaking on her cell phone
outside the blazing building was a major rescue mission:
save as much data as possible after the fire department
declared it was safe to enter the structure. “We waded
through water and ash to retrieve data,” recalled Coleman,
CEO of TechRoom, “then ordered new equipment and got
their company’s network up and running in a week.”
Just another week in the lives of two fully-employed students
who juggle the demands of their work, family,
schoolwork and their new enterprise. He and Snyder met
while attending their first GSM course in Fall 2001.
Appropriately, their first class exercise was deciding what to
do when surrounded by a raging fire in the Australian
outback.
Coleman’s vision of service excellence became a reality at
GSM. Coleman and Snyder were able to draw upon new
business skills acquired in their classes. Professor Claudia Bird
Schoonhoven advised their business planning; Professor
Imran Currim aided their marketing strategy; and Professor
Rick So helped them push the envelope in service operations.
They launched the company in Coleman’s garage in
November 2001. When summer approached, they bought a
little air conditioner they affectionately call R2D2.
Their goal was to avoid the stigma plaguing the tech industry.
“Technicians aren’t perceived as being friendly service
people,” Coleman explained. “We train ours to be customer
service experts. Each customer is viewed as a partner,
not as a transaction, and we retain that relationship long
after the job is done.”
TechRoom makes house calls and maintains a walk-in
service center in Newport Beach, where the team moved in
November 2002 on their first anniversary as a company.
TechRoom associates provide detailed written reports and
follow up on every service. The formula seems to be
working. The company has been profitable every month,
said Snyder, and has grown to eight employees.
“Our personalities are different and that works well in our
business,” Snyder said. “James leads TechRoom with pure
vision and passion.”
“And Katrina is much more than our CFO,” Coleman
chimed in. “She taught me how to balance my life and
business.”
The future? “We are becoming what Kinkos and Starbucks
are to their customers,” Coleman said. “You get reliable
service day or night.” –John Gregory
5

Community
All HANDS ON DECK
for MBA JOB PLACEMENTS
When the going gets tough, the tough join forces. That’s
GSM’s strategy for finding jobs for MBA students and
soon-to-be graduates. Although many of them aspire to
entrepreneurial futures, right now they need jobs.
Faced with a dismal job market, staff members from
many departments – MBA Admissions, MBA Career
Center, Student Services, Alumni Relations, Center for
Leadership Development, Corporate Partners Program,
Real Estate Program and Executive Education Program –
and community members are combining resources and
coordinating efforts.
Their mission: to encourage employers to hire the school’s
MBAs, who are among the best in the country. In the
process of seeking out MBA internships and career positions,
GSM is strengthening its ties with alumni and the
corporate community.
“This is a strategic alliance that benefits our school and the
corporate community,” said Judy Cottrell, assistant dean of
external relations. “By working together toward the goal of
job placements, we are creating the synergy that is the
mission of the Corporate Partners Program.” Ashwin
Rangan, chair of the CPP steering committee and senior vice
president/CIO of Conexant, and Chuck Martin, chair of the
Dean’s Board of Directors and managing partner of
VentureLab LLC, have been especially active in urging
members of their groups to hire GSM students.
In any MBA school, the most important job contacts are
alumni, said Sandra Findly, associate alumni director.
“Alumni have allegiance to the school and will help us.”
GSM staff members are making calls and visits to those
corporations with large numbers of alumni, including
Conexant, Disneyland Resort, Fluor, Allergan, Toshiba and
Boeing. These visits pay off on both sides, updating alums
on involvement opportunities with the school, such as the
Mentoring Program and guest speakers.
We hear that they want more continuing education events.
So we explain how their companies can benefit from our
executive degree programs – EMBA, HCEMBA and
FEMBA – and the Executive Education Program,” said
Findly.
Visit us on the Web at http://www.gsm.uci.edu
In a down economy and with stiff placement competition
from other MBA schools, it is imperative that GSM’s
diverse departments mount a collaborative effort, said
MBA Career Center Director Randy Williams.
Career positions are the other part of the school’s placement
campaign. Since 1990, about 75 percent of the school’s
MBA graduates end up working in Southern California,
and about ten percent in Northern California, so the school
focuses most of its placement energy on Orange County,
Los Angeles and San Diego, said Williams.
Besides making personal visits, the school’s staff is
sending postcards and emails and conducting advertising
and marketing campaigns. Every week the MBA Career
Center staff attends networking gatherings to meet
recruiters at economic forecast forums, marketing associations,
employment manager meetings and other events.
They are using the strength of the Dean’s Board of
Directors and Corporate Partners Program to encourage
firms to employ MBA students.
Williams is working with John Clarke, assistant dean and
CIO, to develop a new database and call report system integrated
into the school’s Intranet powered by Catalyst, to
help coordinate and track corporate outreach activities.
GSM students collect job information at MBA Career Fair.

Leadership
A SCHOOL’S BEST
CAPITAL is INTELLECTUAL
When Dean Jone Pearce announced that GSM has risen in
the rankings, Greg Battersby, FEMBA ‘04, responded with:
“No surprise there. Anteaters are terrific climbers.”
And climb GSM has. BusinessWeek’s most recent survey
ranks GSM’s faculty as fifth best in intellectual capital,
defined as the number of articles professors write for the
leading academic publications. That puts GSM faculty
ahead of such schools as Harvard, Pennsylvania’s Wharton,
Northwestern, Columbia, UCLA and USC, and trailing
only Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley and Duke in that order.
It’s not difficult to see why. GSM’s
faculty has been busy at the keyboard
writing articles and producing research
papers. Here’s just a sample of recent
publications:
• Margarethe Wiersema’s paper,
“Holes at the Top: Why CEO
Firings Backfire,” appeared in the
December issue of Harvard Business
Review. Boards of directors, she
wrote, “often lack the strategic
understanding of the business necessary
to give due diligence to the
CEO selection process.”
• A research paper in Information
Systems Research by Kevin Zhu and
Ken Kraemer concluded that while
e-commerce reduces costs for technology companies,
this Internet-based service actually increases expenses for
traditional manufacturing companies.
• Marta Elvira co-authored a paper, published in
Organization Science, which confirms that in certain
jobs, the more women there are, the lower the pay of
everyone in that job.
...GSM is one of only
11 schools in the
world in which all
faculty members hold
doctorate degrees.
– The Financial Times rankings
• Charles Shi, writing in Journal of Accounting &
Economics, concluded from his studies on the value of
corporate R&D that the risks outweigh the benefits
for creditors.
• Connie Pechmann, in the Journal of Consumer
Research, described the influences of both advertising
and peer-pressure on smoking among young high
school students.
• GSM’s professors are the editors of the leading scholarly
journals in their fields. For example, Claudia Bird
Schoonhoven is editor-in-chief of
Organization Science. Philippe Jorion
edits Journal of Risk.
The Financial Times rankings also
showcases GSM’s faculty intellectual
capital, reporting that GSM is one of
only 11 schools in the world (ranked
by the publication) in which all faculty
members hold doctorate degrees.
There are many other indicators of
GSM’s strength in the rankings.
According to the Financial Times, GSM
rose to 27th best overall MBA school in
the United States, up 18 places from last
year. Career progress made by GSM’s
alumni is third best in the country,
according to the Financial Times.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal concludes that the
school’s services to recruiters rank eighth best in the nation.
“And we expect to keep on climbing. This year we are
hiring outstanding new scholars. And our new Center for
Entrepreneurship and Innovation will help us to do a better
job of telling the world about all of the terrific work our
faculty are doing,” promised Dean Pearce. –John Gregory
7

Research
RISK andSUCCESS in
NEW VENTURES
Every year more than a million people take action to start a
new business. Only half of these nascent entrepreneurs
actually found a company and of those who do, more than
half of these new ventures fail to survive for ten years. Of
the five million firms in the United States, 98 percent
remain relatively small with modest revenues and fewer
than one hundred employees. This was true even during
the extraordinary boom times of the late 1990s.
While much has been written about new ventures, we still
don’t have a good understanding of why only two percent
of all firms founded in the U.S. ever reach substantial size
or why most startups have relatively short lives. Why do
most new ventures fail to grow into success stories like
Orange County’s Broadcom, San Diego’s Qualcomm or
even the ubiquitous Microsoft?
To learn more about the liabilities of newness that new
ventures face, my colleague Kathleen M. Eisenhardt and I
studied more than 100 new technology-based ventures in
the U.S. We started our study in 1977, shortly after a new
federal law eased investment restrictions on institutional
investors and just as billions of new investment dollars
were being pumped into the U.S. economy. We traced
their histories from date of incorporation through 2002, or
death if they failed to survive. We came to several conclusions
about the liabilities that new ventures face.
First, the entrepreneur who goes it alone is a form from the
past. Most contemporary ventures are founded by a small
team of entrepreneurs – anywhere from two to seven individuals.
Firms founded by the “lonely-only” entrepreneur
had grave difficulties.
Second, new ventures are typically organizations of strangers
who do not know how to work with one another, and as a
consequence, are inefficient and slow to respond to business
problems. Compared to older competitors, new ventures
must invest enormous energies to build highly functioning
organizations of capable and cooperative employees. Modes
of collaboration have yet to be worked out and the relative
status of members may be ambiguous. Problems can unset-
By Claudia Bird Schoonhoven
tle the best of us and may result in conflict among employees.
Fighting fires detracts from quickly establishing
systems and procedures, routines for operating, agreements
about how to handle conflict and stabilizing ties to customers.
Meanwhile, older and well-organized competitors
already have efficient links to suppliers, customers, regulators,
and other key stakeholders – they know whom to call
and how to get action.
Third, new ventures lack both legitimacy and reliability.
Potential customers have little basis for trusting new companies
because of their short operating histories and thus buyers
are hesitant to order from new ventures. New ventures must
earn the recognition that they are legitimate business entities
and this only evolves with the passage of time. Older organizations
have earned the trust of their customers by reliably
providing goods and services in a timely manner.
Fourth, new ventures lack sufficient human and capital
resources. There are always more problems to address than
there are employees available to handle them and the mix
of expertise may not be adequate to resolve the multiple
challenges. Obtaining capital from strangers – whether
they are wealthy individuals or organized venture capital
firms – is a non-trivial undertaking. Inadequate cash flow
obviously impairs the venture’s ability to hire additional
expertise and to invest quickly in sufficient research and
development.
Fifth, new firms that are science-based have an additional
liability of newness. Many of the science-based companies
we studied did not successfully reach the point of producing
their first working prototype. As a consequence, it is
difficult for them to predict how long it will take to
produce an innovative product because research itself is
fraught with uncertainty. Creating a stable prototype
delays the time to market, eats resources and draws down
available cash.
The results of our study of more than 100 micro-electronic
ventures revealed that entrepreneurs can take actions to
ameliorate start-up liabilities. The following recommenda-

tions, while hardly an entrepreneur’s operating manual,
have value in the early stages of founding a new company:
Create a heterogeneous top management team. Variations in
functional backgrounds, years of industry experience, educational
background and managerial experience provide
depth that can breed success for the team at the top.
Entrepreneurs who come from a small nucleus of other
firms bring a broader range of contacts on which to build a
network of supporting people and organizations. Mixing a
few gray beards with recent graduates who have cutting
edge technical expertise can have its rewards.
Hire some non-strangers. All members of a founding
management team need not have worked together in the
past. However, some overlap in former work settings
increases the likelihood of creating a team of entrepreneurs
who know one
another, understand differences
in temperament and
work styles and trust one
another.
Hire disciplined, talented and
responsible employees. This
prescription sounds like a
human resource no-brainer,
however it is amazing how
many entrepreneurs fail to
build a strong organization
of employees. The success of
a new venture depends on
hiring employees who take
initiative, are alert to the
appearance of novel problems,
and who take
responsibility to get the job
done.
Professor Claudia Bird Schoonhoven
Minimize what you are inventing
anew. If you try to create all elements of your new
organization from scratch, the degree of novelty is likely to
be overwhelming and take a great deal of time. Mimic or
adopt organizational practices and routines you or others
have had good experiences with in the past. Hire people
to complement your own areas of inexperience.
Adopt modest rather than highly novel levels of technology and
innovation for your first product. Highly innovative products
eat R&D time and money. It is difficult to accurately
predict when highly innovative products will emerge ready
for the market place because the development time is
unknown. Reserve your knock-’em-dead innovation for
your second or third product, introduced once you have a
stable income stream from the first product. Plan for
product families from major innovations in which you can
leverage your initial R&D and the associated core technical
competencies you have built organizationally.
Choose products and markets carefully. Aim at first for a
niche market with growth potential in which customers
are not excessively loyal to existing competition. While
emerging markets may hold substantial potential, it is difficult
to predict when the market will actually emerge
full-blown.
Choose your geographic location carefully. Locate in regions
that are dense with other business organizations, giving
you proximity to sources of industry and business experience,
to knowledgeable investors, and to a sufficient pool
of employees to grow the new venture.
Create alliance partners carefully. Such alliances enhance
your new venture’s legitimacy. Your association with known
firms through technology
licenses, joint product development,
marketing or
manufacturing alliances signals
that you are also trustworthy.
Having partners may also
allow you to earn while you
learn, giving you more time to
develop your internal capabilities.
Consider partnering with
firms that have established customer
relations and
distribution arrangements in
an existing market, developed
technologies and stable production
systems. Otherwise,
building capability and legitimacy
take time for the new
venture to develop.
With knowledge of what the
liabilities of newness are, entrepreneurs
can improve the odds of surviving, prospering and
perhaps even taking their ventures public.
Claudia Bird Schoonhoven, known as Kaye, is professor of
organization and strategy at the University of California,
Irvine Graduate School of Management and editor-in-chief of
Organization Science. Her research focuses on the evolutionary
dynamics of technology-based firms, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
She is currently investigating the influence of
strategic partnerships on new venture outcomes and the effects
of entrepreneurship on the creation and evolution of industries.
She is co-author of The Innovation Marathon: Lessons from
High Technology Firms (Basil Blackwell, 1990; Jossey-Bass,
1993) and The Entrepreneurship Dynamic in Industry
Evolution (Stanford University Press, 2001).
9

Alumni
The stereotype is of business school graduates putting their
degrees to work in large, established corporations – but
plenty of GSM graduates have created new businesses for
themselves. Three alumni – Rosalyn Baxter-Jones, M.D.,
MBA ‘99; Peter P. Cullen, MBPA ‘82; and Jim Berens,
Ph.D. ‘95 – recently started their own companies. Their
stories provide a glimpse of the opportunities and challenges
that GSM entrepreneurs encounter.
“There’s no way I would have
started a company without my
Health Care Executive MBA,”
said Rosalyn Baxter-Jones. With
the degree, she started not one,
but two companies.
3ENTREPRENEURS
Baxter-Jones’ businesses draw on
her medical background. Before
earning her MBA, she was in
private practice as a gynecologist.
During an exam of a pregnant
patient, she wanted to measure
the cervix length, but had to wait
five days for results of an ultrasound.
Frustrated by the delay –
and hoping to save her patients
time and money – she invented Dr. Rosalyn Baxter-Jones
and patented a device to measure
the cervix. This innovation allows the early identification of
risky pregnancies, allowing intervention that saves lives and
babies’ health.
In 2000, Baxter-Jones formed Irvine-based Cervilenz and
started marketing the device. Thanks to good results from
clinical trials on 200 patients, four marketing and distribution
companies are considering partnering with or buying
out Cervilenz.
“I never expected to start my own company,” Baxter-Jones
said. “I intended to apply my MBA in my own practice or in
managed care. But I kept an open mind, saw an opportunity
and developed a solution.”
Visit us on the Web at http://www.gsm.uci.edu
GSM
and their start-up companies
In 2002, she incorporated her second business, NOVAStar
Biosystems, Inc., based in Carlsbad. She is raising capital to
develop wireless bio-sensor monitoring products.
In getting Cervilenz off the ground, Baxter-Jones faced three
key challenges. The first was helping potential investors
grasp the value of her medical device. “It’s a new idea, so
people don’t always get it right away,” she said. “But the clinical
trials have proven that it works and is very useful.”
The second big hurdle was raising
capital. “You have to be patient
and persistent,” she said.
Although it’s difficult to raise
funds in today’s economy, Baxter-
Jones reassures aspiring
entrepreneurs that things will turn
around. “Keep knocking on
doors,” she said.
An MBA classmate, Fritz Heirich,
put her in contact with Palmer
Ford, a venture capitalist. He
proved invaluable when it came to
her third major task – assembling
a strong management team. “If
you find a good mentor,” Baxter-
Jones said, “bring him on as a partner
or shareholder. It pays to have an experienced business
person with you.”
It also pays to network. After speaking at the last HCEMBA
alumni forum, she was contacted by Lindy Yow, MBA ‘00,
who now works with Baxter-Jones as director of product
programs. “The networking opportunities available through
GSM are excellent,” Baxter-Jones said.
After earning his master’s degree in 1982, Peter Cullen
became a CPA. He worked for nine years as a Big Five
public accountant, then spent 10 years in private industry.
When Cullen and two partners, Rachel Owens and Bill
Sornstein, started Core Performance Consulting, LLC in

Peter Cullen, right, and his Core Performance partners Bill Sornstein and Rachel Owens.
2002, this combination of public and private experience set
the company apart from its competitors, as did its range of
services.
“Core Performance is innovative in that it’s a multidisciplinary
firm,” Cullen said. “We can meet more of our clients’
needs: accounting, tax, financial planning, raising money
and making the most of online financial tools.” The Santa
Ana-based company focuses on small businesses. “We’re
entrepreneurs ourselves, so we know what it’s like to manage
cash flow with limited resources.”
Cullen said his MBA provided a solid foundation for
success. “Finance classes gave me the tools to break down
financial statements – which are key in my business. Jone
Pearce’s organizational behavior class taught me how to work
with people and be a good manager. These are things I still
think about every day.” And Judy Rosener encouraged him
to view everything with a critical eye and question accepted
wisdom, he said.
Cullen remains active with GSM, serving on the Alumni
Network board of directors and mentoring student participants
in I 3 , the Irvine Innovation Initiative. He also serves as
an advisor and has taught a course for the ThinkTank/GSM
Campus-Wide Business Plan Competition. Last year’s
second place winner, the Orbidyne team, found Cullen’s
advice so valuable that they brought him on board as CFO.
One key lesson Cullen imparts to aspiring entrepreneurs is
to focus on the return to investors. “Pay attention to your
cash flow,” he said. “If you don’t establish a business with an
eye to return on invested capital, you can’t attract investors.”
The right positioning – an initial challenge for Core
Performance – is also essential. “Although we had a lot of
ideas on how to go after the market, we had to focus on our
core competencies, which deliver the most value to our
clients,” Cullen said.
Jim Berens earned a Ph.D. in finance. In 2000,
he and three colleagues – Ph.D.s all – left an
investment firm to start their own company:
Pacific Alternative Asset Management Co.
(PAAMCO), based in Irvine.
“We brought together hedge fund investing and
institutional investing,” Berens said. Before
PAAMCO opened its doors, only a few leadingedge
institutional investors had dabbled in hedge
funds, which are like mutual funds but provide
greater flexibility for investment management. By
applying institutional standards to hedge fund
investing, PAAMCO made these funds more
appealing to institutional investors. Today the
firm has $2 billion of assets under management,
serving some of the most prominent pension
plans, foundations and multinational banks.
Berens said the Ph.D. experience has been very helpful in
managing hedge funds. “The technical training certainly
helps. My Ph.D. work was like economics and applied math
all rolled into one – like some of the hedge funds I manage.
But even more important is learning how to think about the
world carefully, skeptically and agnostically. Question everything
to make sure it makes sense,” he said.
Before focusing solely on his business this year, Berens maintained
his ties to GSM by teaching an investments course for
EMBAs from 1995 to 2002. One of his partners, Judy
Posnikoff, is an adjunct faculty member at GSM. Their firm
has hired UCI graduates and other GSM alumni, including
Kemmy Koh, MBA ‘01.
Berens spoke from experience. PAAMCO gained most of its
new clients in its third year of operation. “Even though you
will get anxious, don’t quit right before you experience
success,” he said. “You never know when your business will
take off,” he said. –Imran Husain
Jim Berens
11

Alumni
ALUMNI NETWORK NEWS
CareerTools Helps Alumni
Search Jobs, Access Resources
GSM Alumni Network and the MBA Career Center have
formed a partnership with ExecuPlanet to provide all GSM
alumni with access to CareerTools, an internet-based service.
“It’s not just another Internet job site, it’s a very comprehensive
job search and career management tools site with
access to local Lee Hecht Harrison offices, the largest corporate
career services and outplacement firm in the world,”
said Randy Williams, director of the MBA Career Center.
The goal is to help alumni minimize the anxiety and stress of
searching for a new job, changing careers or managing current
careers. Alumni who want more personal attention can access
job search workshops, executive coaching, career assessments,
resume-writing or interviewing assistance and more.
“It’s a sure way for GSM to know that our alumni will receive
the attention they deserve to keep them focused on their
career goals,” said Sandra Findly, associate alumni director.
Alumni can access this valuable new tool on the passwordprotected
GSM Alumni Network Database site at
http://www.gsm.uci.edu/go/alumni. For more information,
contact the Alumni Relations office at (949) 824-7167.
Networking in Seattle
Alumni in Washington state attended an evening reception sponsored by
the GSM Alumni Network in December. Susan Moe, ‘00, helped coordinate
this event and other regular communication and activities in the
Seattle area. Dean Jone Pearce attended and addressed the group on
current events happening at the school. All attendees are pictured here
with Dean Pearce (second from right, middle) and Sandra Findly, associate
alumni director (second from left, middle): Ed Brovick, ‘87; Kent
Byers, ‘95; Dave Dew, ‘00; Joseph Faltermeier, ‘91; Donald Frueh, ‘95;
Judith Harris, ‘92; Phil Hanson, ‘90; Donna Hawkins, ‘98; Derek
Howison, ‘00; Sean Jazayeri, ‘82; Alok Kapur, ‘00; Josh Levine, ‘01; Susan
Moe, ‘00; Jason Olbright, ‘98; Brian Rowe, ‘99; Breton Stewart, ‘95.
Class Notes
1980s
Chris Lawson, ‘81, recently published his book, “The Art and Science
of Oracle Performance Tuning.” Chris is a database consultant and
writer in the San Francisco area where he lives with his wife and two
daughters. He is also the editor of the online magazine, “The Oracle
Magician.” Gerry Gallagher, ‘86, sold his company of 16 years to
embark on a new entrepreneurial venture starting GMS Productions, a
video production and multimedia development and marketing consulting
company. Hyunjun Kim, ‘87, runs Delma International, importing
cosmetics and personal care products for distribution in Korea. Kathryn
Busch, ‘88, joined US Bank in December as the new district manager
for in-store branches for California and Arizona. Robert Greer, ‘88,
joined the law firm of Dubia, Erickson, Tenerelli & Russo, LLP as the
lead attorney for the firm’s business and transactions practice. Leslie
Daff, ‘89, is an attorney in the Irvine office of Best Best & Krieger LLP,
specializing in business and estate planning, probate and trust administration
for business owners and individuals. He is co-author of “Estate
Planning Considerations” for the California State Bar publication,
Business Buy-Sell Agreements.
1990s
Carol Ann Gorden, ‘91, is currently working for Avnet Hallmark in
Tempe, Arizona. Russell Winter, ‘92, is involved in a startup as vice president
of corporate development for Sidestep, a leading online travel
search engine. Marcia Frideger Ph.D., ‘93, is chair of the Department of
Business at Holy Names College in Oakland. Koert Takkunen, ‘93, is
working for Nobel Biocare, a Swedish medical device company, covering
the San Diego and Orange County territories. Kenneth McFarland, ‘94,
is senior vice president & CFO of Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.
Kristi Lewis Tyran Ph.D., ‘96, gave birth to Serena Geneva Tyran in
November. Laura Rhyne, ‘96, was promoted to associate director of
product marketing for Verizon Wireless, responsible for wireless voice
and data products in the 12 Western United States. Patrick McGaughan,
‘97, announces he and his wife Cynthia recently moved to Aliso Viejo to
make room for their new addition to the family, Terrence Joseph. Eric
Cooper, ‘98, and Milagros Recavarren, ‘98, will be married in Lima,
Peru in April. Kathleen Suler, ‘98, territory business manager for Bristol
Myers Squibb, relocated from New Jersey to Southern California and is
now based out of Laguna Beach. Veronica Chestnoy, ‘99, married
Donald Taylor in Monterey. Vince Hamamoto, ‘99, and his wife are
expecting their second child in May. Masa Yamada, ‘99, has moved back
to Tokyo and is working at A.T. Kearney.
2000s
Craig Dalton, ‘00, is back to work as director of business development at
Proteus after battling cancer. Craig has been working with the Team in
Training Program of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to motivate
neophyte athletes to achieve their goals. Joannie Fu, ‘00, has recently
accepted a new position within Intel Fab Sort Materials Operations,
Organizational Operations groups, as a program manager leading Intel’s
supply-side eBusiness Auction and ERP programs. She will be relocating
to Intel’s Santa Clara headquarters this June. Rick Scrimger, ‘00, was
promoted to marketing manager with Roland DGA Corp. in Irvine overseeing
marketing, product management and tradeshow functions. Bill
Cressman, ‘01, is pursuing another master’s degree in computer science
at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C. Kathy Li, ‘01, and
Christian Winters, ‘01, married in September. Thomas Woo, ‘01, was
promoted in October from products division manager to director of
supply chain management for KURE Engineering Ltd. in Tokyo, Japan.
Bryan Bowers, ‘02, has started his own information technology consulting
firm, Bowers Technologies, Inc., with his previous employer among
his new clients. Paul Lin, ‘02, is involved in a startup company, designing
wireless communication integrated circuits.

Briefly
CONFERENCES
Manufacturers Share Best Operations Practices
GSM operations and decision technologies faculty teamed
with McKinsey & Company and the California
Manufacturing Technology Center to sponsor the first
annual West Coast Operations Executive Forum.
Manufacturing executives from aerospace, medical devices,
automobile and apparel sectors discussed challenges and
shared knowledge about successful operations management.
Jeannette Song and Rick So, professors of operations and
decision technologies, organized the event.
Health Care Reform Unlikely Any Time Soon
Health care reform makes for heated rhetoric and complex
legislative proposals, but meaningful new laws are unlikely
during this Congressional session, said speakers at the 12th
annual Health Care Forecast Conference. Washington policy
experts expressed doubt that health care reform legislation
would be enacted in this Congress, a view shared by
keynoter Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise
Institute. The conference was organized by Paul Feldstein,
professor of health economics and Robert Gumbiner Chair
in Health Care Management, and Margaret Wong, director
of health care special events.
White Collar Crime: When Good People Go Bad
Crime doesn’t pay, says a former CFO who served five
years in federal prison for fraud. Addressing GSM’s
Corporate Partners, Mark Morze advised them to leave any
job, no matter how well paying, if they discover fraud at
work. “It simply isn’t worth it,” he said. “When I went to
prison, my net worth was over $4 million. When I got out
of prison, five years later, I was worth $11.75.” Morze now
lectures and consults for the FBI and businesses on the
detection and prevention of white collar crime. Other panelists
were Yvonne Dutton, former assistant U.S. attorney
and Robert Cunnane, FBI special agent.
Knowledge Conference Builds On Last Year’s Success
To further research into how organizations build and move
knowledge, GSM will co-sponsor with MIT Sloan School of
Management and CRITO the second UCI/MIT Knowledge
and Organizations Conference, set for June. Many of last
year’s attendees are expected to return, including Yrjo
Engestrom, UC San Diego; Paul Adler, USC; Beth Bechky,
UC Davis; John Seeley Brown, Xerox Palo Alto Research
Center; Michael Cohen, University of Michigan; Deborah
Dougherty, Rutgers; Andrew Hargadon, UC Davis; Jean
Lave, UC Berkeley; Sim Sitkin, Duke; Sid Winter, Wharton.
Organizers are David Obstfeld, assistant professor of organization
and strategy, GSM, and Paul Carlile, assistant
professor of organizational studies, MIT.
KUDOS
Ken Kraemer, professor of MIS and director of CRITO,
received a $40,000 research award from IBM to study the
global outsourcing of knowledge work – activities such as
product design, engineering, logistics, software development
and call centers – in the computer industry. He will develop
a framework that business executives in the computer and
other industries can use to make decisions about global outsourcing
to their own subsidiaries or to outside contractors.
Margarethe Wiersema, professor of organization and strategy,
authored “Hard Times in the Executive Suite,”
European Business Forum (Winter 2002/03) and “New
CEOs and Corporate Strategic Refocusing: How
Experience as Heir Apparent Influences Use of Power,”
Administrative Science Quarterly (December 2002).
Judy B. Rosener, professor of business and government, has
joined the board of directors of TechVentures Network, a
private-public partnership that provides funding, strategic
counsel, and access to global markets for domestic and
international clients.
Entrepreneur magazine has notified GSM that the school
made the grade as a regionally recognized, comprehensive
program in entrepreneurship. The magazine’s April issue
will contain their first annual report on undergraduate and
graduate/MBA programs in entrepreneurship studies in the
U.S., designed to help prospective students select where to
apply. GSM’s exact ranking will be revealed only when
Entrepreneur hits the newsstands.
13

GSM Events
April
17 GSM Executive Speaker Series, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., UCI Student
Center. David Pyott, Allergan chairman, president and CEO. A
Center for Leadership Development event. Open to public. Contact
Stephanie Gaumer, (949) 824-2728, sgaumer@uci.edu.
22 Real Estate Program Breakfast Series, 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.,
Beckman Center, UCI. Open to public. Contact G. Chris Davis,
(949) 675-0603, gdavis@gsm.uci.edu.
29 Orange County Executive Survey Breakfast Meeting, 7:30 a.m. to 9:30
a.m., University Club, UCI. Professor Dennis J. Aigner will present
results of the 2003 survey. Open to public. Contact Aigner at
djaigner@uci.edu.
May
16 3rd Annual Marketing Conference, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., Irvine Hyatt Hotel
and Resort, Irvine. A Marketing and Strategy Association event. Open to
public. Contact Sandy Chang, (619) 840-8845, schang04@gsm.uci.edu,
or Tosha Clements, (714) 420-4266, tclements04@gsm.uci.edu.
June
14 Commencement
University of California, Irvine
Graduate School of Management
Irvine, California 92697-3130
25
Coming Up
Alumni Network Events
For information, contact the Alumni Relations office, (949) 824-7167,
gsmalum@gsm.uci.edu.
March
20 West Los Angeles Mixer, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., home of alumna Jennifer
(Feldstein) Stackle, ‘99, in Brentwood. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks provided.
Contact Stackle, jfstackle@yahoo.com.
27 Seal Beach Mixer, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Spaghettini Grill & Jazz Club.
Easy to get to from LA & OC, off I-405 at Seal Beach Blvd.Contact
Ed Thomas, ‘99, ethomas99@gsm.uci.edu.
April
3 April Mixer Featuring Consulting Industry, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.,
Steelhead Brewery patio, Irvine. Appetizers provided, cash bar. No
RSVP necessary.
12 C4C Weekender Alumni Mixer, 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Location TBA.
Alumni invited Friday evening for mixer to kick off annual C4C
Weekend at Stanford Univeristy with Dean Jone Pearce.
May
1 May Mixer Featuring Finance Industry, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Steelhead
Brewery patio, Irvine. Appetizers provided, cash bar. No RSVP necessary.
16 Alumni Network Annual Dean’s Dinner, 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., home of
Dean Jone Pearce. Members only, by invitation.
June
Contact Us
Development & Corporate Relations Judy Cottrell (949) 824-6418
MBA Programs Tenley Dunn (949) 824-4622
Ph.D. Program Wendy Gillett (949) 824-8318
Executive Education Don McCrea (949) 824-4951
Faculty Information Deborah Heck (949) 824-7824
Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation Shaheen Husain (949) 824-7311
Alumni Relations Sandra Findly (949) 824-7167
Communications Linda McCrerey (949) 824-6286
5 Class of 2003 Graduation Mixer, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Phinneas Banning
Alumni House, UCI. Join us in welcoming graduating Class of 2003
as newest members of Alumni Network.
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