Five Pleasantly Surprising Facts about Life at Chicago Booth

My name is YaoYao Wang and I’m a first year MBA student at Booth, originally from Los Angeles, California. Prior to business school I worked as an Operations Manager at a health products startup while being the CMO of a volunteer-run nonprofit. Outside of work and school, I love playing badminton, cooking, and Yelping. Follow me @yaoyaowang where I tweet about all sorts of business school fun.

In just a few short months as an MBA student at Booth, I’ve learned a few valuable lessons and pleasantly surprising facts.  I share my Top 5 with those of you considering an MBA at Booth. Hopefully my lessons will provide insight into the wealth of opportunities at Booth, as well as the best way to navigate your decision-making to get the most out of your experience.

1. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

No, I’m not actually referring to Newtonian physics here. As a business school student, you quickly learn to manage your time very well; and often, what you’ll find is that you can’t add events to your calendar without taking something off. Planning your career, networking, learning in business school? I’ve quickly learned the key to success is actually all about mastering the art of making tradeoffs. If you can’t decide which amazing classes, student clubs, and recruiting opportunities to sacrifice over others, you’ll get great guidance from Career and Academic Services. And since this is Chicago Booth, home of brilliant professors and Nobel prize-winning economists, concepts like opportunity cost and marginal utility will creep into your daily vocabulary before you even know it, and will help you make these tough decisions.

2. Use your pre-MBA summer wisely.

Once school starts you will have 20 million events and deadlines on your calendar (Legal disclaimer: OK, maybe not literally 20 million events and deadlines, but there are tons of opportunities here!). If you can, take time before Booth to travel, spend time with family and friends, work out, eat healthy, and sleep.

See if you still know how to study. This sounds pretty basic but you’d be surprised at how many of us realize that being in the workforce for a few years has made us forget how to be students. A great way to regain your learning skills would be to take an online class or even a local language or art class.

3. Second years are to first years like sliced bread and zippers are to humanity.

A third thing I didn’t fully understand before starting Booth is the tremendous value that second year MBAs add to the business school experience. Their willingness to help knows no bounds. Got questions about internships, careers, resumes, interviews, classes, housing, transportation, or what to wear in the Chicago winters? Second years will help you with that. I always find myself shocked with the amount of time second years put into planning events that improve first years’ business school experience, whether it be Random Walks, LEAD, student groups, school-wide events, company presentations, workshops, social events, trips, or mixers. If you ask them why, you’ll get a shoulder shrug that downplays their involvement and the usual, “the second years were there for us when we first got here.” You’ll see this sense of paying it forward permeating the Chicago Booth network from the first years all the way up to the alumni.  

4. There is such a thing as free lunch.

In the form of Lunch ‘n’ Learns, that is! Career Services and the career-focused student groups host prominent companies from various functions and industries to recruit MBA talent and these presentations often come with free meals! Though I’ve enjoyed not having to buy lunch my first quarter because I’ve been to so many events, the real “free lunches” are the valuable interactions Career Services has facilitated with Booth alumni from companies large and small. Through presentations of mini case studies of recent challenging problems they’ve faced or explaining their company culture and values, I’ve found it invaluable to learn about fit and culture at companies I’m interested in. It’s a two-way street, because as much as companies are recruiting us, we are also scoping them out to make sure we might enjoy our time there as an intern or full-time hire. Additionally, Career Services has been really helpful in working with us to make sure we have a good sense of our career goals and personal needs to get the most out of these events and interactions.

5.  Any interest or hobby you can think of, it’s probably here.

We have an amazing array of student groups solely focused on fun, hobbies, diversity, and interests. Food, wine, boxing, rugby – you name it, we’ve got it. Clubs are a great way to meet new friends who may not be in your classes or recruiting for the same career path. In addition to the extensive list of student groups people are constantly organizing informal events.

I could easily go on and on about the wonderful experience that Chicago Booth has been for the last two and a half months (that’s right, we’ve only been here for two and a half months!) but, there’s no blog or list that could tell you what it’s really like at Booth. For me, speaking with current students and alumni at locally-hosted Booth events and visiting the campus really helped me decide that Booth was the right place for me. As a prospective student, I met so many great people with diverse backgrounds and fascinating life stories, and I’m enjoying getting to know them now as my peers and classmates.

I look forward to seeing you at an on-campus event and welcoming you to our school!

The Faces of Follies: A First Year’s Inside Look

With auditions this past week (and a fun karaoke event last week to get the Booth community excited), the Harper Center has been abuzz about Follies. With a multitude of ways for students to get involved, whether it's singing, writing, dancing, or producing, Follies is an excellent way to showcase the talent we have at Booth (and we have fun doing so!). Check out footage from last year's show on the Follies YouTube channel.

Dana
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Follies. It’s an essential part of the business school experience. This is the annual extravaganza of musicals, skits, dance numbers, scripted videos and anything else that will entertain an audience of razor sharp tongue-in-cheek business school students. At Booth, the show is set for May 10th, which gives us all enough time to properly reflect on what makes us unique, and sometimes tragically funny, to an outsider looking in. This is one of the biggest events on campus that fully engages both the first- and second-year classes; for the second-years, it is a sort of farewell ode to the past 2 magnificent years, and for first-years, it is a milestone celebration of endurance. For everyone, it is the chance to prove to the people you rubbed shoulders with in crop circles or sort of met on the Metra that you have real talents (being a Powerpoint deck master doesn’t count).

I am a first-year who was lucky enough to get involved with Follies from the very beginning. I was first introduced to Follies during Admit Weekend, and being a big fan of musicals and improv, I knew this was something that I wanted to be a part of. As far as I know, Follies is the first student group to recruit for first-year co-chairs, and the first-year co-chairs were already actively involved in the planning and coordination of the show as early as the beginning of the winter quarter. The content of the show is written by a group of students, which collectively form the Creative Team, who meets biweekly to brainstorm ideas and performs scripts out loud. Over time, an overall theme emerges, and it always highlights an irony or dynamic within Booth that everyone recognizes. This year, the theme, or title of the show, is still kept under wraps, but rest assured that no matter what the theme is, hundreds of Boothies will unite for one hilarious night to poke fun at ourselves and our experiences.

Together, the team of 7 first- and second-year co-chairs manages not only the creative process but also the mountain of logistical, financial and marketing aspects of the show. We have some support from the Graduate Business Council and the Booth administration, but we need to make sure that we are getting sponsorships and driving ticket sales proactively. More importantly, we need to manage the sheer number of people involved in the show, from actors and dancers to the writers and technicians. I’m looking forward to being on the other side of the judging process during auditions when dozens of Boothies hoping for a break in Hollywood (that’s Plan D after banking, consulting and entrepreneurship) will give their best shot at Follies stardom. Since this is an entirely student-produced and student-funded show, spring quarter will be extremely busy with coordinating marketing and selling efforts and making sure that everything and everyone is set for the big day. After all, we have to uphold our high caliber reputation among the top-tier business schools not JUST in academics but also when it comes to bringing down the house with a well-timed musical parody.

The Importance of Leadership Opportunities at Booth

In my first two posts I wrote about the diverse academic and professional opportunities available to Booth students and discussed the work of the Graduate Business Council (GBC), Booth’s student government. In this post I explore the long-term professional value of leadership positions.

Donnie Phillips, President, Graduate Business Council

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Looking back on my year as GBC President, I am very proud of the accomplishments of the 45 GBC members I work with closely. We have, among other things, institutionalized new cohort programming, facilitated more robust relationships with alumni, successfully advocated for technology upgrades, and made the GBC more accessible to the student body.

However, upon deeper reflection, there were more important, long-term lessons I learned during my term. Here are three examples:

1. Teamwork: In contrast to my first job in investment banking, where the focus was often on individual achievement (even in team-based settings), in my post-Booth jobs, I will be judged by the successes of the teams I manage. I view my GBC work as a successful “pilot” – it was the first time I was truly responsible for a large group’s output – and I believe it has increased my readiness for professional management.



2. Learning to Surrender: While I used to judge my success by the quantity and quality of my accomplishments, this position has taught me that it is harder, but more important, to sometimes say “no.” Whether it is empowering others rather than doing something on my own (i.e., saying “no” to myself) or convincing someone else that their idea is not feasible (i.e., saying “no” to others), these are hard conversations to have. It’s important, however, to start having them in a low-risk environment like Booth.
   
   
3. Motivation/Persuasion: As President, there are many different constituencies I work with directly and indirectly including five other executive board members, 40 GBC reps, 1,150 MBA students, 205 faculty, 450 staff members, and Booth as an institution. Getting multiple constituencies on the same page is not always a straightforward undertaking but learning how to appeal to their varying interests has been a very rewarding lesson.

While this story is my own, I believe there are wide applications to the myriad of other positions available to students, with similar experiential leadership lessons. Some examples:

Admissions Fellows - Learning to Build a Team: How to hire properly and form a stellar team is not something taught on the job. How do you assess numerous people on dozens of subjective and objective characteristics, many of whom are quite qualified in different ways? By reviewing applications and interviewing candidates, Admissions Fellows play a crucial role in shaping each new class and, through that process, are able to learn richer skills.

Club Co-Chairs - Running a Small Business: Members of Booth’s 75 clubs, especially those of the professional groups, are very much like customers; they pay annual membership dues and have high expectations for the lunch ‘n learns, conferences, and career training the groups provide. Additionally, most clubs raise money from corporate partners, which can be akin to fundraising from an outside investor.

Career Advisors - Tactical Mentoring Career Advisors are a group of 40 second-years who help first-year students navigate the recruiting process and advise them on everything from writing cover letters to networking. While traditional mentors are often very senior professionals, these students are able to give actionable advice to other students and aid them in their job search.

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Harry Davis, one of the most popular and longest-tenured Booth professors - this will be his 50th year as a faculty member! -, wrote an oft-cited paper on management education when he was Booth’s Deputy Dean of MBA Programs. He wrote:

“Business schools enjoy advantages in three areas that are critical to learning from experience: experimentation, feedback, and practice. Schools can function as laboratories in which students experiment and practice action and insight skills without downside risk to their careers. In addition, fellow students, faculty, and staff can provide frequent feedback, untainted by the personal or political factors within an organization. Finally, an educational setting provides time and opportunities that are difficult to find in a job: To practice skills explicitly, to reflect on levels of achievement, and to spend time remedying deficiencies that would be difficult to examine in actual job settings.”

Looking back on my year as Student Body President, these comments resonate with me deeply. While successfully executing on various initiatives was important, the bigger lessons related to what I learned about my leadership style, the management skills I have experimented with and refined, and the feedback and guidance I have received from the dozens of people I have worked with closely. Most importantly, I am glad to have gone through this experience at Booth - in a low-risk environment - rather than in the “real world.”

As prospective students, you should think about what areas of your leadership style you want to work on while in school and seek out opportunities accordingly. So ask yourself, “What do I want from my Booth experience outside the classroom?”

Meet The A-Team!

The A-Team is a group of highly trained operatives executing on a critical mission: planning the best weekend of your life. Ok, maybe I exaggerate, but Admit Weekend is a truly fun, incredible and memorable time. While hundreds of students come together to make Admit Weekend happen, a select group of 22 first year students, known as the A-Team, work behind the scenes for months to plan every detail of the weekend, from neighborhood tours throughout Chicago down to the music that will play during the weekend. Today, three A-Team members share how they’ve been involved.

Beth
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Kate Hui, Friday Night Dinner Co-Captain

After attending my own Admit Weekend, I knew that this was an event that I wanted to be a part of, and I found the perfect role as a Friday Night Dinner Co-Captain. Being a foodie from Chicago, I was really excited about the opportunity to showcase Chicago’s food scene, and using that as the backdrop for Admits to get to know both the Booth community and the city. Chicago is usually known for its hot dogs and deep dish pizza on one end and once-in-a-lifetime experiences like Alinea at the other, so I loved the challenge of finding interesting restaurants “in the middle” that are just as worthy of Chicago’s food fame and great for a relaxing evening out with a group of 20 friends!

Enjoying Korean BBQ in Chicago!

Chris Lewis, Trivia Event Captain

Working on the Admit Weekend Planning Team gives you the chance to impact how literally hundreds of admitted students and their partners perceive the Booth community. While our team of students works closely with Admissions, we are given a tremendous amount of leeway to inject our own creativity. In my case I’ve spent the last few months designing an interactive trivia game about life at Booth, from concept to execution. The game is meant to be lighthearted, and to that end I’ve scoured the ends of the internet to include some funny (but tasteful) pictures of faculty members and classmates.

Parvathi Suresh, Photography and Social Media Captain

It's been a wonderful experience being a part of the A-Team for Admit Weekend. Being the Photography and Social Media chair was a great way to draw upon some of my past experience in social media, and to have fun with the process! It's also a brilliant exercise in time management - juggling academics, recruiting, socializing and Admit Weekend responsibilities can leave one's calendar pretty full! The best part of the experience though? Definitely the fun conversations I've had with people roaming around Harper Center with my camera, trying to capture Booth in all its myriad hues.

Scotch, Depilatories, Viagra, Leather, and Hipster Glasses

The next few posts on The Booth Experience will be written by first-year students as part of the Career Trek Series. Career Treks at Chicago Booth usually take place during winter break and allow students to visit firms outside of the Chicago area. The treks are coordinated by student groups and expose students to some of the top firms around the world. The first Career Trek Series post is by Ying Liu, who recently attended the Marketing and Retail career treks.

Dana
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What do the above items have in common? No, they’re not accessories featured in one of Rihanna’s music videos. They’re products made by just a selection of the companies which the Marketing and Retail career treks visited in NYC over winter break.

Career treks are self-funded student-led trips to major cities, typically held the first week of winter break, and last about 4 or 5 days. The treks are divided by careers and intended to give students additional exposure to companies outside of Chicago. Treks include (but are not limited to) careers in Investment Management, Investment Banking, Marketing, Retail, and Sales & Trading in locations such as New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, London, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Students recruiting for careers in these locations choose to attend to get a feel for the company culture, meet Booth alumni working at the firms, and evaluate overall fit.

Even though I’m primarily focused on recruiting for consulting, I’m particularly interested in marketing strategy so I attended these treks as a great way to learn about how marketing departments operate at some top NY-area companies. It was an amazing opportunity to go behind the scenes and hear about companies’ strategies, how they’re adapting to the consumer landscape, and most important to Booth’s marketing approach, how they’re thinking about and planning to use data to better understand their customers. It was also a great way to get outside of the consulting bubble and get to know some of my other classmates.

I got exactly what I was looking for and more in the 4 days we spent visiting 8 companies (American Express, Pfizer, Campbell’s, Warby Parker, Diageo, Coach, Reckitt Benckiser, Kantar). Students on the trek also had the option to visit companies like David Yurman, Quidsi, Interbrand, Kurt Salmon Associates, Macy’s, and Bonobos. I was surprised to learn that American Express encourages their Marketing Managers to rotate groups about every 18 months to allow for cross-fertilization while also allowing employees to try something new. Across the board, the established companies talked about international exchange/rotation opportunities for MBA graduates, indicating the increased global scope of the marketplace.

The most informative and interesting presentation about the role of the Associate Brand Manager (post-MBA entry-level) came from Campbell’s. They walked us through a case study of a recent product extension starting from opportunity identification all the way through to product development and marketing strategy. Representatives from each of the different functions involved in the development process came to speak about their roles; this included people from market research, consumer insights, product development, and package design. It was an interactive presentation and I walked away with a very clear understanding of how an Associate Brand Manager coordinates and makes decisions through the process.

It wasn’t all business on the trek: we were allowed to preview the spring collection at Coach (I see lots of coral as the weather warms up!) and given access to the Campbell’s company store where we stocked up on Pepperidge Farm cookies and Goldfish. The best part was when Diageo made us some yummy whiskey cocktails from their on-site bar and invited us to taste various Johnnie Walker labels at their exclusive SoHo House of Walker scotch education and tasting experience – one of their many grassroots marketing tactics.

All of the companies were very excited to discuss their businesses with us and to recruit new talent from Booth. For example, American Express told us that they see some of the highest retention and performance/promotion rates from Booth graduates. The week not only gave participating students a chance to get to know the companies, but for the companies, it also cemented the fact that Booth is a great source of marketing talent.

Student Managed Investment Fund

Booth students have an incredible number of resources to prepare them for their professional goals. In addition to coursework and Career Services, there are also opportunities to obtain practical experience through student groups. This week, Elizabeth Bozek, a first-year student and member of the DSAC Communications team, describes her involvement with the Student Managed Investment Fund, which falls under the Investment Management Group umbrella.

Dana
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One of the many reasons students come back to business school is to change the direction of their careers; one of the best things about Booth is the many ways students can develop a new skill set with relevant experience to make that switch. I came to business school to make the transition to finance and chose Booth for the school’s resources both in and out of the classroom. One of the organizations I got involved with was SMIF, the Chicago Booth student managed investment fund, which operates within the Investment Management Group. The fund started in 2006 as an initial commitment of $1M from the Chicago Booth endowment and gives students the ability to perform equity research and choose stocks for a real investment portfolio.

First-year students are selected to participate in the fund and become analysts. In their second year, students can move on to be the Portfolio Managers of the fund after an evaluation of their stock analysis abilities and investment management knowledge. SMIF also has two Chicago Booth faculty advisors who offer oversight of the fund’s functional activities and approval for the new stock selections and exchanges. Once a year, the three-member SMIF Alumni Advisory Board offers recommendations and gives feedback on the performance, asset allocation, stock mixture, benchmarking against the Wilshire 5000 composite. During the school year, the Portfolio Managers sponsor a variety of stock pitching opportunities and host training sessions in the areas of industry analysis, financial modeling and putting together a persuasive stock pitch. Since SMIF proceedings compose at least one of more scholarships to Chicago Booth students, the fund does a great job in providing genuine experience to its members.

Though I am only one quarter through my first year at business school, I have already been able to dive deep within the analytics of the stock I am responsible for. SMIF is currently in the exciting process of re-evaluating last year’s stock picks and making decisions on how to alter this year’s portfolio. The second-year Portfolio Managers have been very helpful in answering my questions and preparing me to develop a position on whether buy, sell, or hold. My experience as a SMIF analyst has definitely helped prepare me for the internship opportunities I would like to pursue this summer. Working on SMIF has introduced me to Bloomberg, FactSet, Capital IQ, and other research tools not used in the foundation courses most students initially take. The PMs have been particularly helpful in walking me through the structure of a valuation and encouraging me to develop opinions and theses on equities in the portfolio. These skills are the core of any equity research or portfolio management internship or fulltime position. I encourage anyone who has a deep interest in the market or who wants to make a career change to finance to join the Investment Management Group and pursue involvement with SMIF. A list of our current holdings can be found here.

Binder Full of Booth Women

The past few weeks at Booth have been filled with conferences, giving students the opportunity to learn about particular industries, broaden their professional networks, and hear the thoughts of successful alumni. The Chicago Women in Business (CWiB) Conference, which was held on October 19, is one such event. This week, we have an update from Erica Nollen, a member of CWiB who attended the event. Many thanks to Diane Nguyen for sharing her photos of the event with The Booth Experience!

-Dana

Hey Booth Nation! I’m Erica Nollen, a second year at Booth studying marketing and strategic management. After a few years of working in management consulting and marketing strategy, I’ve come back to my Midwestern roots for my MBA. In addition to its proximity to the best state in the union (Ohio–my Buckeye state pride runs deep), I chose to come to Booth for its diverse student body, hands-on learning opportunities and flexible curriculum and my experience thus far has exceeded my expectations.

One of my favorite parts of being at Booth is getting to hear stories and glean insights from today’s business and organizational leaders. From daily Lunch and Learns, the weekly Alumni Breakfast Series, annual conferences and more, we’re fortunate at Booth to have so many opportunities to pick the brains of brilliant business minds that visit campus. It really keeps the big picture of why we’re in business school in focus, which sometimes gets lost in the details of balancing a statement of cash flows or calculating a project’s weighted average cost of capital.

Conference Season commenced for many female Booth students on Friday, October 19 when the Chicago Women in Business (CWiB) Group hosted its annual conference at the storied University Club of Chicago. Most professionally-focused clubs host annual conferences which not only draw in impressive alumni and business leaders from across the world, but also provide some of the best meals of the year (it’s embarrassing to admit how much I eat cereal for dinner). The all-star team of CWiB co-chairs and volunteers did a tremendous job putting this conference together for the benefit of all attendees and participants.

The theme of the conference, “finding a personal path to success”, was woven throughout the afternoon’s sessions. Two seasoned Booth alumnae gave heartfelt key note speeches connecting their business school experiences to the challenges they have thus far conquered in their professional journeys. Audra Lalley, ’98, the VP of Barclay’s Wealth Management, inspired the audience to set ambitious goals and seek balance in life with her account of training for an Ironman while working through the aftermath of the financial crisis. Karen Greenbaum, ’02, Partner at Nick Pierce & Associates Inc., captivated conference attendees with her story of rising through the ranks of Mercer to COO and the key ingredients to her successes inside and outside the office. Panel breakouts covered topics including speed mentoring, managing career changes, entrepreneurship and negotiating. After the formal sessions, students mingled with one another and company representatives over drinks and finger foods at a networking reception.

As I walked back to my apartment after the close of the conference, I felt inspired to chase my professional dreams and excited to attend other conferences and events offered through Booth, the University of Chicago, and the greater Chicago community.

Social Impact at Booth

Today, Booth’s social impact community is excited to be at the annual Net Impact conference at the Gleacher Center in downtown Chicago. Net Impact is a student group for MBAs committed to using their business skills to create positive social impact while driving economic value. Some of the areas of interest for members include corporate social responsibility, impact investing, international development, education, and public sector service. Net Impact co-chair, Sarah Walczewski shares highlights of the upcoming conference and explains the role of Social Impact at Booth.

Beth
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Looking Forward to the Conference
As a co-chair of the group, I’m excited for this year’s conference because we’ve tripled in size over last year with 150 students expected to attend. It’s also the first year we’ve hosted a full-day Net Impact conference. There was so much interest from both students wanting to attend and people wanting to speak to Booth students, we couldn’t fit in all in half a day! We have secured some really great speakers, high-profile speakers such as Lois Scott, CFO of the City of Chicago, David Browning, Senior Vice-President of TechnoServe, and Eric Weinheimer (Booth ’94), President and CEO of The Cara Program.

My Path from Sustainability to Booth
Prior to Booth I worked with retail companies to understand and apply best practices in sustainability, and I found it incredibly rewarding to work with large companies to reduce their impact on the environment. However, I knew that sustainability is an enterprise-wide effort, and for me to become a better sustainability professional, it was important for me to find a program that would help me understand the objectives of leaders throughout the business, not just the CSR team. I’m in my second year at Booth, and I believe that my classes are giving me that perspective. In particular, taking the Social Entrepreneurship Lab course during my first year has helped me to get hands on experience in this area. My team worked with the US State Department and a Brazilan private equity firm to identify new business models for increasing electronic waste recycling. It was great learning first-hand about differences between doing business in the US and in Brazil, and the challenges of implementing sustainability in an emerging market. This was great experience to get before I began my summer internship at Deloitte where I got to apply my sustainability background in a consulting environment.

Exciting Changes at Booth
Last spring, Chicago Booth’s administration put a stake in the ground in support of social impact by launching the Social Enterprise Initiative (SEI). At the urging of faculty, alumni, and importantly, students, SEI was formed in order to support faculty research, alumni programming, and student group activities in the social sector. SEI is supporting cutting-edge research in the social sector by Booth faculty, who can later bring that perspective into the classroom. Additionally, Net Impact, along with other social impact-related student groups such as Emerging Markets Group, International Development Group, and Food, Environment, Agribusiness, and Development Group, now benefit from the support of SEI and greater recognition from the administration. We are really excited to see what’s coming next in social impact here at Chicago Booth!

Meet Booth’s Dream Dates

Happy Friday! Hope everyone’s week is wrapping up well. Here at Booth, we kicked off our weekend on Thursday with a fun fundraising event. Last night hundreds of Boothies filled the Chicago Cultural Center for Giving Something Back’s Annual Charity Auction. A silent auction featured prizes including dinner with professors and photo opps with Booth’s Nobel Laureates, while a live auction offered students a chance to bid on a date with one of their classmates. Today at TBE, we hear from some of the students who were auctioned off and learn why they went for thousands of dollars last night.

David Osei
Boothies should bid on me because I'm a great listener and self-esteem booster. Also, I once won a dance contest at a Mexican-themed bar in Canada. Just saying.

A dream Booth date would start with a drink at the fifth floor Gleacher Center bar, followed by dinner at the secret basement Gleacher Center restaurant. (I know people there.) After dinner, we're off on a stroll to MPP. I don't live there, but it's great people watching.

Jess Scrimale
Boothies should bid on me because:
1. I can say bad words to you in Italian
2. I know the entire "Gettin' Jiggy Wit' It" rap and have some sweet dance moves to accompany it
3. I'm a cheap date and a 12 year old at heart - my favorite things include Sour Patch Kids and chocolate milk

My dream booth date would go something like this: You pick me up at the Metra station. We head to the Harper Center and hit up some recruiting events for some Potbelly's sandwiches, grape tomatoes and hummus, or maybe if we're feeling really classy, some pulled pork sliders. We play a game or two of pool in the student lounge. Then, we take a scenic stroll through the winter and summer gardens and head to Ida Noyes to finish the evening off with a few beers.

Anna Yang
Why should Boothies bid on you?
1. I'm a good chef
2. I don't get the Asian flush
3. I have all my teeth (and they are all real)

What's your dream Booth date?
Dream date: You buy me fro-yos from Kovler (free with $6 purchase!)
and we sit underneath the Charlie Brown Christmas tree statue in the
summer garden to get to know each other better.

Want to check out another Booth student? Vamsi wasn’t auctioned off but his DITL video shows a pretty great day at Booth.

Have a great weekend all and check back in next week to see more springtime fun at Booth!

Beth

From LEAD to FEAD

Hi there!

We are excited to bring you our blog entry for this week. In this week’s WIWG video, we have ask students about the Booth community. In this blog entry, we wanted to explore a particular element of the community and the student experience, which is participating in student groups. While Booth already has over 100 student groups to choose from (ranging from professional clubs to social clubs, to pick-up sports groups), students are encouraged to form their own group if there is none directed towards their interests.

This year, a group of enterprising students started FEAD, the Food, Environment, Agribusiness, and Development group. Read on to learn more from Carolyn Kriss, one of the founding members of FEAD. Carolyn is a first year at Booth interested in general management, marketing, and entrepreneurship. Prior to Booth, she worked almost five years in political campaigns and government, concluding at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services where she helped launch the Healthy Food Financing Initiative.

Tina

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First, for those who have already been gotten in, congratulations on your admission to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business! I remember being in your shoes a year ago and then having to make the difficult decision among schools. For those still applying, I hope you’ll find that Booth is a place where you can see yourself fitting in and thriving.

One new ace in Chicago Booth’s pocket—the newly-founded Food, Environment, Agribusiness, and Development (FEAD) group, an official club formed this year for students with a professional interest in food and agribusiness. I had the honor of working with an incredibly talented and dedicated core of first and second year students in founding the group, and our ability to so quickly mobilize interest from students and support from the school is a testament to the hunger for a food and ag group, so to speak, and Booth’s commitment to backing up Dean Kumar’s “Swing for the Fences” ideals with real resources.

While the group may be new, Chicago Booth’s excellence in the food and agribusiness space is anything but. Chicago is the world capitol for agricultural commodities and is poised to become a food hub with cutting-edge agribusiness developments, packaged good conglomerates, and food-focused startups. Over 1,000 Chicago Booth alumni are at the cutting edge of each step of the value chain, from farm to fork, including:

• Charles Harper, former CEO of ConAgra (and namesake donor of the beautiful Harper Center)
• David W. MacLennan, President and Chief Operating Officer of Cargill
• Hugh F. Johnston, Chief Financial Officer of PepsiCo. Inc.
• Robert Mariano, CEO of Roundy’s Supermarkets
• Matt Maloney, CEO of GrubHub.com

With FEAD, Booth is uniquely positioned to leverage its location and strength in business to empower the next generation of food and agribusiness leaders. And Booth’s commitment to building the bench comes not a moment too soon—by 2050, global food production must nearly double to feed the estimated 9 billion world population.
This humanitarian and business challenge motivates us in everything we do. Already, we’ve organized a trip to the Chicago Board of Trade (photo below), and successfully executed a consulting project with Green City Market, Chicago’s leading, year-round farmers’ market, to help them more effectively process food stamp benefits and provide greater access to fresh, healthy food for low-income families. We’ve held entrepreneurial brainstorms for those interested in launching food-focused startups and will host PepsiCo’s Vice President for Innovation and Strategy in their newly-established Global Nutrition Group.

While we’re very much looking forward to the networking events and consulting projects lined up down the road, we’re looking forward to something else—you. Because FEAD is so new, the class of 2014 will have a huge opportunity to help shape the group, moving it in the direction that matches the passion of its student members. The FEAD Co-Chairs look forward to welcoming you on campus and are available in the meantime to answer any questions you might have. Feel free to reach out, and again, congratulations!

Carolyn Kriss, ckriss@chicagobooth.edu; Tyler White, twhite0@chicagobooth.edu, Andres Imaz, aimaz@chicagobooth.edu; Monica Ganley, mganley@chicagobooth.edu; Khairunisa Mohomed; kmohomed@chicagobooth.edu