ALL THINGS WPC

he W. P. Carey Master of Science in Business Analytics (MS-BA) exposes students to knowledge that helps them develop an intuition on how to improve specific business functions. During the nine-month program, students dive into 10 courses culminating with an applied project.

“Over the past five years, we have worked on over 150 applied projects with 50 companies,” says Hina Arora, clinical assistant professor and MS-BA director of experiential analytics. “Many students go on to accept internships and full-time positions with the clients they work with. Forty percent of participating organizations have collaborated with us over multiple years, which we believe is a strong testament to the value of this partnership.”

Vivek Singh (MS-BA ’16) valued the experience as a student, and now as an alumni adviser. During spring 2018 and 2019, while working at Ports America, Singh facilitated and sponsored MS-BA applied projects and mentored more than 20 students. Each project gave students the chance to discover actionable insights that could help with predicting the future of business goals. At the end of the project, students presented to stakeholders on their results.

ALL THINGS WPC

t W. P. Carey, we know that business is personal. Our students learn that, too, and take their responsibility to build supportive and inclusive communities seriously. The Hispanic Business Alumni chapter (HBA), founded in 1982, is a textbook example of alumni giving their time, talent, and treasure to uplift the next generation of W. P. Carey students.

Mario Solorzano, president of the HBA, explains the many ways the chapter supports students, including scholarships, mentorship, and a network of more than 3,000 active members. “We try to foster community between current students in the Hispanic Business Student Association (HBSA) and alumni,” he explains. “It isn’t just for students or just for graduates, but a way we can connect multiple generations of W. P. Carey students toward a common purpose.”

More than 100 people attended the most recent HBA alumni mixer in Phoenix. The chapter also holds several fundraisers each year that have supported more than $1 million in scholarships to date. This year, 24 W. P. Carey students are receiving financial support from the HBA. The annual Noche de Loteria takes place every fall, and is the group’s signature event alongside Mariachi Fest and the Sparky Classic Golf Tournament.

ALL THINGS WPC

e are pleased to congratulate Blake Ashforth, Horace Steele Heritage Chair in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, on being honored with the highest faculty award possible. Reserved for the top 2% of faculty, Ashforth was one of five ASU professors to receive Regents Professor status in November 2019.

“Arizona State University is proud to count these deserving scholars among our world-class faculty,” ASU President Michael Crow said of Ashforth and fellow honorees. “Their work meaningfully expands our knowledge of the world, and our university community is fortunate to benefit from their experience and leadership.”

Ashforth, a faculty member since 1996, conducts thought-provoking research on topics of relevance to every business environment, including how new employees find identity and meaning in the workplace, why things like corporate corruption and job burnout happen, how organizations and individuals affect each other, and why respect is important to employees.

We are proud and thankful for your contributions to the school and the world. Bravo, Blake!

e are pleased to announce a new degree program — the W. P. Carey Fast-track MBA, which makes it possible to revitalize your career in as little as 12 months and just two classes per week.

“We’re always looking at ways to make education more accessible,” says Dean Amy Hillman. “ASU and the W. P. Carey School have a reputation for innovation, and the Fast-track MBA is another way we can use our resources to offer a solution for students who might have thought there were too many obstacles to getting an MBA.”

Scheduled to launch in August 2020, the new program caters to professionals with an existing master’s degree in a business discipline. Eligible alumni and friends are welcome to apply.

Learn more: wpcarey.asu.edu/fast-track

ack to Class enables W. P. Carey alumni to learn from world-renowned faculty, expand their network, and gain perspectives of immediate relevance. We hope to see you in person (or online!) for one of our upcoming events. Clinical Professor John Eaton has been a Department of Marketing faculty member since 2006. With research interests including marketing management, brand image and personality, and more, we can’t wait to see what topic Eaton delves into during Back to Class this April.

Taking a behavioral approach to strategic management, Associate Professor Jonathan Bundy’s research focuses on the social and cognitive forces that shape organizational outcomes and behavior. Get the inside scoop at Bundy’s Back to Class session in May.

Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship Mike Baer conducts research focused on trust, fairness, ethics, and impression management. Explore some of his recent work on p. 26, and head back to class with Baer this June.

Scott is the creator of Honest Hazel, a beauty brand that offers hydrating and firming under-eye gel patches now sold at Anthropologie, Nordstrom, Aillea Beauty, Credo, and local beauty boutiques — as well as on Gwyneth Paltrow’s website, Goop. Online and in-person word-of-mouth has also helped the company garner spotlights on The Today Show and in Glamour, Forbes, and Elle.

It all began, says Scott, after a cross-country move for a corporate job that uprooted her family. Within two weeks of relocating she learned of the company’s pending acquisition, and her position was eliminated just months later. When she was told by HR, “This is just business,” Scott thought, “No, this is not just business — this is my family,” and she vowed to leverage her experience in launching and growing social selling companies to create a different kind of company in 2014 — her own. “I will never say, ‘This is business.’ I will be good to people and for people.” The name Honest Hazel (hazel for her eye color) and the tagline “Beautifully Honest” reflect Scott’s business philosophy.

n a society that prides itself on grand plans and historic achievements, human beings have an equal and arguably greater ability to commit awe-inspiring failures. An optimist would say we are constantly improving. A pessimist would argue that we’re better at failure than we are at success.

Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship Matthew Semadeni, who is a Dean’s Council Distinguished Scholar, would tell you that we’re a million times better at failing than we are at success — but that’s why we’re so successful.

The difference between failure and success
“Why don’t we learn from success?” Semadeni asks. “We don’t have the motivation to find out what worked and what didn’t.” As the mantra goes: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The result of that, he notes, is that people never learn from their successes, something not true of failure.

When someone fails, it is easier to step back and see what went wrong and what needs to be changed.

“How can we break this pattern of not being able to learn from success?” he asks. “We have to treat success like a failure, so that we can learn from it the way we can learn from failure.”

It’s also fair for alumni to wonder how their alma mater stacks up with other schools, and the role they can play in maintaining or growing their school’s reputation.

Some rankings, such as the U.S. News & World Report’s undergraduate list, judge business schools by reputation, based only on a survey of U.S. business school deans. The Financial Times’ global MBA ranking combines surveys from alumni with quantitative measures from MBA programs, such as employment rates and class demographics.

Most business schools submit information once a year to organizations that judge objective data, such as student GPAs and starting salaries. Many rankings also include data from questionnaires sent to students and alumni. A minimum number of students and alumni must complete the surveys for a school to be included, meaning their participation is imperative for schools hoping to place high in the rankings.

The local bike shop put him out of business, but from that failure Neuendorff says he learned that funding, marketing, and presence matter. Since then, he’s run other businesses related to music, video, and personal finance. “It’s been a great journey thus far, and I’ve learned that tenacity, creativity, enthusiasm, technology adoption, and total love for your customers all make for a powerful competitive advantage.”

ou are going to fail. It happens to everyone some time or another. How we deal with failure significantly affects our success and, ultimately, our happiness. In my professional experience as a leadership consultant and entrepreneur, I’ve found four lessons to better manage it.

Identify your purpose. Why do you exist? Or, said differently: What kind of productive individual do you want to be? Your answer to this fundamental question will become the standard on how you’ll measure progress and gauge setbacks.

Don’t underestimate the power of this simple but profound exercise. Take the example of Jacob Cohen, a struggling comedian who experienced a constant string of failures in his pursuit of success. He became so disillusioned that he quit comedy for a decade, working a variety of other jobs instead. Keenly aware that he was off-purpose, Cohen returned to comedy at age 46 with a new act and persona. You know him by his stage name: Rodney Dangerfield.

Acknowledge your behaviors. Behaviors, or the manners of action, help explain our responses to failure. I have my clients complete a scientifically validated tool that clarifies “who” they are, with respect to how they instinctively act. It explains a lot. For instance, some behavioral profiles want to win and easily accept failure as a cost of doing business. Sometimes they accept it too easily and don’t learn from it. Others feel they must always be right and technically correct. They can take failure unduly hard and extremely personally.

ou are going to fail. It happens to everyone some time or another. How we deal with failure significantly affects our success and, ultimately, our happiness. In my professional experience as a leadership consultant and entrepreneur, I’ve found four lessons to better manage it.

Identify your purpose. Why do you exist? Or, said differently: What kind of productive individual do you want to be? Your answer to this fundamental question will become the standard on how you’ll measure progress and gauge setbacks.

Don’t underestimate the power of this simple but profound exercise. Take the example of Jacob Cohen, a struggling comedian who experienced a constant string of failures in his pursuit of success. He became so disillusioned that he quit comedy for a decade, working a variety of other jobs instead. Keenly aware that he was off-purpose, Cohen returned to comedy at age 46 with a new act and persona. You know him by his stage name: Rodney Dangerfield.

Acknowledge your behaviors. Behaviors, or the manners of action, help explain our responses to failure. I have my clients complete a scientifically validated tool that clarifies “who” they are, with respect to how they instinctively act. It explains a lot. For instance, some behavioral profiles want to win and easily accept failure as a cost of doing business. Sometimes they accept it too easily and don’t learn from it. Others feel they must always be right and technically correct. They can take failure unduly hard and extremely personally.

Mike O’Dell joined W. P. Carey in 1980 as an assistant professor of accountancy. While here, he was honored extensively for his teaching. He won the 1993 Excellence in Teaching Award from the Arizona CPA Foundation of Education and Research and the 1993 Accounting Circle Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award. In 1995, O’Dell was presented the Governor’s Award of Excellence for his work on the School of Accountancy’s undergraduate curriculum team. He retired in 2004 and continued to serve the school as an emeritus faculty member. Before joining academia, O’Dell served as a captain in the U.S. Air Force. He also worked in real estate and banking before returning to school at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his PhD in accounting with a focus in taxation. He died Feb. 14, at the age of 77.