Alumni Profiles
Here you will find profiles of a few GSOM alumni, highlighting their
experiences at Clark and how their degrees have helped them advance in their
careers.
“There are few universities in the U.S. that can deliver such an
international learning experience.”—Wolfgang Hammes
Five continents. Thirty countries. Daily meetings with leading experts in global
business strategy, finance, marketing, labor relations. Collaborating with
colleagues from Taiwan and Germany, Venezuela and Japan, the United States and
India. This could be the nine-week diary of one of the world’s top international
business executives. It also happens to describe a typical day in the life of an
MBA student at Clark University’s Graduate School of Management (GSOM).
“The diversity of the student body is unmatched and reflects our world in every
dimension. In my first MBA class, we had students from all continents,” recalls
Wolfgang Hammes, MBA ’89. His post-Clark career began with a management
consulting position at McKinsey and Company in Germany. A year later, he
transferred to the firm’s New York office. There he focused on a client base of
financial institutions, ultimately co-heading McKinsey’s North American risk
management practice. He was elected a partner in the firm in 2000.
Hammes credits his upward trajectory through the ranks of international
financial management to his time at Clark. “Clark University is an exceptional
place,” he says. “The international student body gives you first hand access to
business experience from around the globe. You quickly realize that the way
Americans, Germans, or Japanese approach a business problem or communicate a
solution may vary hugely. The faculty at Clark encourages this learning process
by actively drawing on the international perspectives of the students in classes
like business strategy or international marketing.”
Hammes says he drew on his experience at Clark GSOM when looking for a new
challenge in 2000. “With the skills and experiences acquired at Clark, I did not
have to be afraid of changing jobs or moving to different countries. The Clark
University experience actually made it fun for me to seek these changes.”
Observing the major transformation taking place in the European market, Hammes
decided he wanted to be more directly involved in restructuring efforts. He
moved from New York to London and joined Merrill Lynch’s investment banking
division. The move paid off when he took on responsibility for bank and
insurance clients in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
Hammes’ global savvy recently caught the attention of Deutsche Bank, which named
him Managing Director and Head of the Financial Institutions Group in Global
Banking with responsibility for all German-speaking countries.
“I strongly feel that to be prepared for a globalized world does not necessarily
mean that you need to speak several languages, even though that may help,” he
observes. “More important is that you are able to interact with people from
different parts of the world who may have quite different thinking and
decision-making patterns. Going through a Clark MBA enables you to acquire these
skills ‘en passant.’”
“The level of teaching is extraordinary.”—Ed Serotta
Ed Serotta, MBA ’88, did not actually choose Clark for the opportunity to be
immersed in an international community of learners. His reasons, he says, were
more mundane. “The fact that it was close to home was a big draw,” he confesses.
“At the time I was working full-time as CFO of a private software company,
traveling extensively, and trying to make time for my two children, aged five
and two. Clark’s part-time MBA was a perfect fit for my hectic schedule.”
But as a Harvard University graduate, Serotta also wanted top quality. Clark
GSOM’s accreditation by AACSB International (the Association to Advance
Collegiate Schools of Business), guaranteed that the school consistently
delivered the highest standards of quality. Today, this accreditation places
Clark GSOM in the top one-third of schools in the U.S. and the top ten percent
of business schools worldwide.
Serotta insisted on a program that was focused above all else on educating its
students. “Even though my professors at Clark were doing serious research and
work that is highly regarded in the field, their primary focus was on teaching.”
In his experience, the close and frequent interaction with leading experts in
finance, operations, accounting, human resource management, and marketing
clearly sets Clark GSOM ahead of the field. “You get a degree of exposure to
senior faculty that you would never get in the other top MBA programs. The level
of teaching is extraordinary.”
All this combined to transform Serotta’s approach to business and his career
path. Looking back, he sees himself as a classic consulting type waiting to
hatch. “I was curious about everything. I wanted to know how things worked. But
with my background in banking, I had a tendency toward a very narrow,
financially-based approach to problems,” he says. “The professors at Clark took
my natural curiosity and directed it into a multi-dimensional framework. This
gave me the ability to find the most productive course of action and to avoid
missteps in solving almost any problem. This alone was worth the price of
admission.”
After graduating from Clark, Serotta’s expanded abilities led to a dizzying
rollout of global successes. He developed the global data warehousing for a
major international bank headquartered in Germany. Led a project team that
created the business architecture for a new market surveillance infrastructure
at the Toronto Stock Exchange. Established a European-based subsidiary to
provide direct operations for the Greek Stock Exchange. And analyzed and
developed recommendations for improvements to the Bulgarian Central Market
Securities depository.
Today, Serotta is Vice President, Solutions—Financial Services Business Unit of
Patni Computer Systems, a $500M+ IT consulting company with major development
centers in India. As Global Account Manager for Patni’s largest banking client,
a top-ten international bank, Serotta heads a team of account managers operating
out of a network of global locations. He also leads the development of new
strategic service offerings and intellectual property within Patni’s global
financial services business unit.
“Working in India, one of the big challenges is merging U.S. delivery methods
with the framework of Indian culture. An ability to analyze all dimensions of a
situation simultaneously, whether technical or personal, is essential to success
in an international environment.” Multi-level adaptability, he feels, is a skill
he has developed with the foundation of knowledge and experience he acquired at
Clark.
“For me, this was Wonderland.”—Isabel Hochgesand
For Isabel Hochgesand, MBA ’91, study at Clark GSOM was supposed to be a side
trip. “I originally came to Clark for a year abroad,” she remembers. “My purpose
was to immerse myself in the language and culture of the U.S.”
Hochgesand was so excited about what she found at Clark, however, that she
decided not to return to her university in Germany and instead completed her
degree in the more international environment she’d discovered at Clark. “You
study with so many different people from different countries and cultures. I
learned to work in small teams on a project with different nationalities. It
helped me to understand and appreciate the different aspects of diversity.”
Like Serotta, Hochgesand found the Clark experience to be transforming. “For me
this was Wonderland, especially coming from Germany where you were in classes
with 500 people.” The small classes gave her a chance to establish productive
working relationships with faculty and students from around the world. The
teachers, she says, taught with passion and “an open ear.” Most of all, she
found an invigorating, instructive global atmosphere.
Hochgesand says that Clark schooled her in the specific skills and cultural
nuances necessary to succeed in a major U.S.-based global company. “How to
present, how to write memos, how to communicate,” she notes. “This might sound
simple, but was one of the key enablers for me as a German. And my studies in
the U.S. helped me to understand the American culture much better and therefore
work better in global teams or with colleagues from the U.S.”
Upon graduating, Hochgesand set her sights on a position in which she could use
her newly honed global capabilities. She found it at consumer goods giant
Procter & Gamble. At P&G she plunged into the international business world,
negotiating with colleagues from every corner of the globe. Soon she was working
out of P&G’s European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
Now responsible for European and global marketing purchases and for integrating
the recently acquired Gillette into the marketing purchases fold, she leads a
department of 30 people in an innovative, location-free, virtual environment.
Hochgesand and her employees work from five different locales across Europe
establishing their headquarters wherever their business and personal needs are
best met.
She finds that she integrates the knowledge and skills she learned at Clark into
this dynamic, challenging, and truly global position. “My job is to get the most
marketing bang for the buck, to source marketing products and services, and to
negotiate with movie companies like Disney on co-promotions. It is really key in
this area to be collaborative and open, to respect the core competencies of the
other functions we are working with, and to be able to always see the big
picture.”
Hochgesand says that Clark gave her the personal and professional dexterity she
needed to accomplish something else rarely seen in her home country—to be a
working mother at the top of her game in international business.
Like so many other Clark GSOM alumni, Hochgesand, Serotta, and Hammes have come
to understand that to excel in business in the 21st century, a career-minded
executive must be global. Hammes could be speaking for any of them when he says,
“Globalization has reached almost all industries. There are few careers left for
MBAs that do not require cross-cultural skills and an international mindset. I
feel strongly that my education at Clark GSOM enabled me to work in different
geographies as well as in different functions. I can’t imagine being where I am
today without it. Students in Clark’s MBA program not only acquire a first-class
management tool kit, they also learn how to employ it in a global environment.”
Lawrence Norman (BA'94, MBA '95)
Vice President,
Director of Global Basketball for adidas
“The international feel opened my eyes to
the rest of the world,” he says, citing that one of his graduate classes
was 85 percent international students. “I knew after that class that I
still had so much to learn and that I needed to see what the world had to
offer.” |
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Marcus Rodermann
Vice President International, MobShop, Inc. San Francisco, Managing Director
of MobShop BV
"Studying with American and other international
students from all over the world definitely was great preparation for my
current job." |
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Margot Nones
Head of Operations for the Americas, UBS Global Asset Management, New York"It is hard to put into words the experience that
I came to my first job with, but I knew I could do anything...and I
learned that at Clark." |
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Isabel Gilles
Associate Director of Purchasing at Proctor and Gamble (P&G)-Europe
"Clark MBA also prepared me for life faster. I finished my
studies faster, and the experience of living on another continent in another
culture makes you mature faster." |
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Ted Theodoropoulos
Financial Analyst
Global Finance, SA Athens"Clark...gave
me the experience of working together with people from different cultures
and confronting conceptual problems. This is valuable not only for people
working in different cultures, but even in your own country." |
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Shaun Hayes
Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation Redmond, Washington
"My experience at Clark was significantly enhanced
by the ability of the students and faculty to bring their real-world
experiences to illustrate the principles and problem-solving techniques that
we were being taught." |
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Alumni
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