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About TMMBA

The new class – TMMBA Class 10

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Tracy Gojdics, Director

In October I wrote a post congratulating the new class. I also promised to post names and companies. The incoming class is diverse, motivated and really excited about the journey they are about to take. Here are a few quick stats on the incoming cohort -

# of Students 77
Monday Section = 39
Wednesday Section = 38
Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Zambia and the US are all represented.
37 Organizations Represented (yes one of these orgs is Microsoft and one is Boeing)
23% advanced degrees
Average age is 33.
6 Huskies and 2 Cougars

Kathy	Alexion	WaMu\|JPMC
Lateefa	AlWaalan	Atheeb Telecom Consortium
Raheleh	Ansari
Pete	Austin	Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Isaac	AuYeung	Amdocs
Ritu	Bahl
Prasanna	Balaraju	Motorola, Inc.
Bill	Barnard	NTT America
David	Betz	The Boeing Company
Nenad	Bjelogrlic	The Boeing Company
Naiana	Campos	Microsoft Corporation
Bob	Carlstrom	PRO Sports Club
Kevin	Chen	Microsoft Corporation
Satyen	Choudhury	Amazon.com
Michael	Chung	Emerson Process Management
Todd	Cota	Callison, LLC
Indresh	Datar	The Boeing Company
Eran	Dvir	Microsoft Corporation
Shane	Egeland	CH2M HILL
Meave	Ellsworth	Tableau Software, Inc.
Ahmed	Elsherbini	The Boeing Company
Vasavi	Epari	Microsoft Corporation
Terry	Etapa	The Boeing Company
Angus	Fan	Egencia
Matt	Feeney	ZAAZ
Cory	Fisher	The Boeing Company
Graham	Ford	FreshStart Logistics
Ryan	Gaukroger	Microsoft Corporation
Davor	Golac	Microsoft Corporation
Carolina	Gonzalez Chacin	General Electric/Thermal Products
Krishna	Gopalan	Nordstrom
Linda	Hapgood	The Boeing Company
Branden	Harper	Growthink, Inc.
Mary	Hofbeck	The Boeing Company
Steve	Holstein	The Boeing Company
Yasser	Ibrahim	Microsoft Corporation
Akihito	Kita	Microsoft Corporation
Madhava	Kulkarni	The Boeing Company
Anand	Kuttappan	The Boeing Company
Eric	Lai	ComputerWorld Magazine
Xuan	Le	Honeywell
Cathy	Lee	The Boeing Company
Richard	Lee	The Boeing Company
Milind	Lele	Microsoft Corporation
Stephanie	Leung	Expedia, Inc.
Dan	Liao
Sai Shankar	Madanagopalan	Credera
Nick	Marcuse	WatchGuard Technologies Inc
Subin	Mathew	RealNetworks, Inc.
Gautam	Mehandru	Isilon Systems, Inc.
Gabe	Miller	The Boeing Company
Geetu	Mishra	Quilogy, Inc.
Angie	Moe	Tableau Software
Miwa	Monji	Harrison Medical Center
Kevin	Mueller	Intel
Dilip	Mujumdar	The Boeing Company
Bryant	Ng	The Boeing Company
Dhawal	Ogale	Amazon.com
Casey	Peay	Eddie Bauer
Thiago	Pizzirani	Microsoft Corporation
Vishwa	Ranjan	Microsoft Corporation
Patrick	Redburn	The Boeing Company
Naomi	Rosell	Microsoft Corporation
Chris	Rosenquest	CharityUSA.com
Gustavo	Rubio Escudero	Microsoft Corporation
Kenyatta	Saunders	The Boeing Company
Tova	Scherzer	MarketTools, Inc.
Brian	Shaflik	The Boeing Company
Jeff	Steiner	Real Networks, Inc.
Ryan	Tonder	Intel Corporation
Eric	Vernon	Microsoft Corporation
Justin	Wallace	Rotella Capital Management
Mary Kay	Wegner	Renton Technical College
Matthias	Wilke	The Boeing Company
Flora	Wu	Seagull Scientific
Josh	Yim
Chad	Yin	Beyondsoft Consulting

Posted in About TMMBA, Admissions | No Comments »

TMMBA Class 10

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Tracy Gojdics, Director

Congratulations to the new TMMBA class! As the last offers of admission arrive we are busy preparing for the Welcome Reception and the December Orientation Immersion. The new class promises to be one full of diversity, enthusiasm, drive and passion. Plus, the class is comprised of some really nice folks that will be a joy to have in the program. In a couple of weeks I’ll publish class names and companies. Stay tuned…

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Remembering the most impactful leader in my life…

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

Reetu Gupta, TMMBA Student

September 27th, 2009…one of last lazy Sunny Summer Sundays…

Next Friday I get to go to the Leadership Immersion. I’m really excited about that. Part of the reason is I want to see what kind of leaders have impacted my class mates. This was one exercise we are supposed to do. Talk about some one who has been most influential in our life stream so far.

I have been thinking about it for past few weeks. Finally today I sat down and wrote about the most influential person in my life – my mom. After I wrote what I’m going to share with my class, I thought of sharing that with other perspective students too on this blog. While writing about that I realized that I would have been a totally different person if my mom was not who she is. In addition, I also suddenly became aware that whatever I do is also influencing others in positive or negative way ( I hope not this way though..). Here is what I’m going to share about most influential person in my life.

Leadership Impact – how are you impacting others?

I don’t think I have come across a leader that was perfect in all aspects. Each one had his or her own strengths and weaknesses. Each leader also had his or her unique style. As a follower I’m sure I have picked up various attributes of different leaders but I would say most impact has been made by my mother.

My mom is one person I characterize as energetic, result oriented and high achiever and mainly with a high degree of perseverance. She is someone who thrived thru tough times in her life. She was always determined and struggled thru a male dominated society where women were still is a role of house maker. Having career was sort of unheard of. If any women were to do that, she had to do that in her own time after completing her other society dictated responsibilities. My mom went to high school against her parent’s wishes. She went to college without knowledge of her parents. She did her masters while she had two kids and without any help from her family. Finally she started an elementary school in 1980 which she ran for 25 years before she retired. There were over 350 kids in her elementary school. She demonstrated to me that “Where there is a will, there is a way”. This has been my mantra too. She always taught us that only person you can really rely on is you. You need to have the confidence in your abilities and once you know what you want to do, it’s only a matter of going after it.

She also always have opinions about things. She is an active volunteer in society. She was active in politics. She ran for two political campaigns at the district level. On one of her elections, I acted as her campaign manager. This was after my masters in engineering. That was one time that I worked closely with her and came to know how she connected with people on a more personal level. During this interaction, I learned the people always have a need for personal bond and if you can create that bond, as a leader you can be much more influential than otherwise.

Of course my bond with her is at a much deeper level and I don’t need any physical object to remind me of her. But to share with you all, I brought with me here this box that she got in her wedding. This is a great memory from my childhood and when I moved here 10 years ago, she gave it to me.

I just hope that I can be a role model for my daughters and some day they give a talk remembering the positive impact I made in their lives.

Enjoy the sunshine…

Posted in About TMMBA, Events, Life outside TMMBA, Student Advice | No Comments »

The calm before the storm

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Aaron Lykken, Manager – Academic Services & Technologies

September in the TMMBA office is the period I like to call “The calm before the storm”. While the rest of the staff is frantically busy processing, reviewing and making decisions on admissions for the incoming class starting Winter 2010, the academic services side calms down quite a bit as I largely support the students (away on break) and the faculty (courses for summer are over). Every year I take this time to focus my energies on the gathering “storm” that is Winter quarter. While it may seem that I’m getting ahead of myself by prepping a quarter in advance, that’s the nature of the business, always at least a quarter ahead, if not more. The extra time is especially valuable to have before the frenzy that defines Winter quarter, and when I think of it, doesn’t really end until Spring quarter is complete, eeeks! Winter is wild for these main reasons:

A new cohort of students starts the program, Class 10 (they’re trying to learn how to be a student again while finding zen with a full-time job and family)
New course material distribution medium (Class 10 is receiving Kindle DX’s to receive their textbooks at the start of the program, this is a pilot for the Foster School of Business)
The veteran group of students, Class 9, is starting their 2nd to the last quarter (this puts the total number of courses between the two cohorts at 8; a lot is going on)
Planning begins to wrap-up Class 9’s MBA career, including their Capstone event and graduation in the Spring

Hopefully this entry doesn’t come across as complaining, because I’m not. Winter and Spring quarters for all their work and stress end up being some of the most exciting and rewarding times in the program! In the Winter I get to meet a brand new group of eager students, which I find is one of the neatest parts of my job. Over the years I’ve worked here I have developed quite a network both professionally and socially which turns out to be one of the most significant perks for students too (not necessarily meeting me, but meeting people across industries/disciplines/cultures). After Winter exits Spring arrives and we see the veteran group of students finishing their MBA careers. This experience is always very special as the staff gets to know many of the students on a personal level so it’s pretty neat to see them reach their goals. So I’m buckling in and holding on, it’s sure to be another doozy!

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Summer Quarter

Monday, July 20th, 2009

Aaron Lykken, Program Manager

I have always enjoyed Summer quarter in the TMMBA program. This feeling is probably the product of my enjoyment of Summer quarter as an undergrad student at the UW (best time to be on campus and in Seattle) combined with the timing of the quarter within TMMBA. By timing, I am referring to how Summer quarter begins after graduation (for the veteran cohort) in early June. Since I work primarily with the student body and faculty, this allows me an increased opportunity to connect with the newer cohort of students as my attention is no longer split across two groups.

Another fantastic reason for me to enjoy the Summer quarter is that I enjoy seeing the shift to more qualitative content. The first two quarters of the TMMBA program begins with many of the traditional core courses such as Accounting, Economics, Statistics, Finance, etc., which are mostly quantitative heavy courses. I find it a bit interesting to observe from the surface level how those with quantitatively focused degrees thrive early but then see them adjust and adapt to more qualitative content such as Negotiations, Leadership, and Marketing. The inverse happens for those with liberal arts focused backgrounds too, as they are forced to work heavily with numbers initially and then later welcome courses that make use of studies and theories instead of formulas. Either way, it is extremely important to have an understanding of how the various disciplines in business function so that one can see how they operate as a whole and affect one another. Regardless of the background of the student, they’re all here for the same purpose, to obtain a collection of business tools to help them make the next career/life move they desire; whether it’s a promotion, change of job function, breaking into a new industry, or even starting their own business.

So, while it surely is difficult to have to turn down sailing on Lake Washington or taking a hike in the Cascades in order to complete assignments and readings for classes, Class 9 certainly appears to have good momentum and spirit as they near the half-way point in the quarter. Perhaps they’re driven by the significant milestone in the program, September, which is the one large break in TMMBA (roughly a month long) and just as importantly, marks the half-way point for the program (3 quarters down, 3 more to go).

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And Life goes on…

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Reetu Gupta, TMMBA Student

We are almost at the end of 2nd quarter. I can’t believe it. Time flies no matter how busy life is.

Actually 2nd quarter wasn’t so bad. I went back to watching “Lost” live on TV. It may be because after 1st quarter, you become a more seasoned student. You learn better time management tactics. You also learn how to skim instead of reading and trying to retain everything. You learn to compromise on quality when you have four different assignments due within a week’s period. These may sound like bad things but if you are a perfectionist like me, believe me, these habits bring you closer to reality.

Anyway, one thing to remember is that you don’t get discount in life just because you are in TMMBA program. Life’s ups and downs still happen. Nothing stops in outside world even if you lock yourself in a classroom. At the very beginning of 2nd quarter, my family got hit by recession lightening. My husband’s company shut down and he lost his job. Now I had one additional assignment of helping him find a job and keeping his morale up. My 5 year old got prescribed with eye glasses and gave me first shock of parenthood. My company announced a pay cut and let few people go. In a nutshell, these were hard three months that hit me and my family close.

Interesting part was, TMMAB helped me maintain my sanity. It helped me in some very unique ways. I contacted my classmates and alumni for my husband’s job. I was glad to see that finding a job for my husband became a group project. I have never so much support from so many people. In addition, knowledge I gained in corporate finance and accounting, I immediately applied to personal finances. I was able to maintain my cash out flow with only 45% cash inflow. Using newly acquired Marco Economics skills I was able to read various indices and was able to set my expectations accordingly. “Green shoots” in economy gave us hopes and labor index monitoring told us it may be a while when labor market improves.

I think going through an MBA program during a deep economic recession made it very fruitful and interesting. It’s perfect combination of theory and its use in practice. I think it was a once in a life time opportunity for me. Not that I’m crazy about economic recessions but if I was going thru MBA in a normal timings I probably wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the gravity of management skills.

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And so the quarter ends…

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Lucas Perin, TMMBA Student

As Plato would say (as I remember from playing Magic, the Gathering), all things must come to an end. And that includes our quarter.

There’s no real vacation between quarters. Really, don’t count on it. What happens is that you don’t go to class a couple Mondays (or Wednesdays, if that’s your thing), but between the last Saturday of Q1 and the first Saturday of Q2 there are two weeks, just like “normal” times.

And there are a lot of pre-reads and homework between quarters. Honest. A lot. You even have to watch a movie.

At the end of the quarter, the summary is:
- Accounting was great, and a welcome surprise. I can decently read a company report now.
- Microeconomy was interesting, but a little shorter than expected, so it felt a little incomplete.
- Statistics was good. Not very interesting by itself, but I can see it being used in other courses.
- Strategy was “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. If the last class was the first, it would make much more sense.
- Team building was great. I used a lot of it on my current job and it paid off.

So far, still very much worth it.

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Greeting!

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Nhi-Huong Huynh, Fiscal Specialist

Hello all! My name is Nhi-Huong Huynh, and I am a Fiscal Specialist for the Technology Management MBA. I’ve joined with the TMMBA team for couple months. My current responsibilities are including Financial Analysis, Budget Reconciliation, Tuition and Fees.

I’ve enjoyed getting to know the students and provided them tuition fees breakdown and payment deadline for every quarter. Also, I can give out FAFSA information for students who interested in getting Financial Aid, so feel free to contact me. Welcome and best wishes to all TMMBA students.

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The TMMBA and I

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Amit Ghosh, TMMBA Student

I am about 7 weeks into to TMMBA program at the UW. So far, its been a very eye opening if hectic journey. Life has been a blur of Accounting, Strategy, Microeconomics and Statistics. Throw in student presentations, midterms and a 9 month old baby (in my case) and you have the makings of a perfect storm.

Despite all that, I absolutely enjoy the fact that I have already started looking at business and financial news with a new kind of understanding. For instance, now that I know that for a business, Revenues are not the same as Cash Flow. I understand what VCs and financial experts mean when they ask startups to focus on Cash Flow to stay alive in this downturn. On that note, check out this very interesting presentation that a VC firm, Sequoia Capital, gave at a mandatory meeting to 100 CEOs. http://slideshow.com/presentations/244-sequoia_outlookpdf

The basic program itself has been structured to cater to busy professionals, so the program staff does a phenomenal job in taking care of things you would not want to spend your time on. Your books and case studies are ordered and delivered to you before the quarter begins. Food is catered in during class times, so you do not have to rush out to grab a bite. You really appreciate these thoughtful timesaving touches as you try to balance your student, professional and personal lives. One of my classmates even created a blog about the food served at the TMMBA at http://tmmbafoodie.blogspot.com

Will keep writing as more interesting things keep happening..

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About TMMBA

Friday, December 5th, 2008

Tracy Gojdics, Director

Hi, my name is Tracy Gojdics and I am the Program Director for the Technology Management MBA program and a proud alumna of the program. I thought I would give you a summary of the program and invite you to contact me if you have questions or would like to talk about the program. We can meet in person or talk over the phone. Of course, if you are ever in the neighborhood we’d love to have you stop by our facility in Kirkland.

The Technology Management MBA Program is unique in that it is the only 18-month, tech-focused MBA program offered at the UW Foster School of Business. It is also the only program to be offered exclusively on the Eastside in Kirkland. The Program started in January 2001 and has grown to nearly 600 alumni and students. In January 2006 the program expanded to accommodate two sections of approximately 42 students per section.

The program is an excellent MBA option for busy professionals who are passionate about technology. Students are able to complete an MBA degree in a short timeframe while acquiring critical and applicable business management knowledge and skills that allow them to think more strategically and take on leadership roles within their organizations.

But, let me say that this program is challenging. It requires a lot of commitment and time. Students generally spend between 15 and 20 hours per week on school-related activities and they have both individual and team projects throughout each quarter. With three classes per quarter (a full load!) there isn’t time to squander. Support is key. The support students receive from the TMMBA program team is outstanding. Study teams also serves as a great support for students during the program. And support from family and friends helps too!

I have seen several students graduate from this program and I can tell you that each of them have transformed themselves during the 18-months. It is both personally and professionally enriching and the relationships formed last well beyond graduation. I’d love to tell you more.

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