On the "To-Do" list for Brahmbhatt, Shah, and Du: clean sweep at Sony San Diego. Check.

By now you may think you’ve heard it all when it comes to Berkeley MBA students winning case competitions. After all, this year students have made strong showings in healthcare, education technology, real estate, innovation, entrepreneurship, and renewable energy.

Well, here’s a case (competition) where Berkeley-Haas students were on the teams that came in first, and second, oh and third. Respectively, Raj Brahmbhatt, Benny Du, and Krishna Shah, all MBA 13, accomplished this feat in the Sony Marketing Strategy Case Competition, hosted by UCSD’s Rady School and held at Sony Electronics headquarters in San Diego, Feb. 10-12.

The competition randomly assembled teams of four, mixing students from participating schools such as Stern, Marshall, Anderson, and Ross, and gave them approximately 20 hours to tackle a challenge from Sony. Students were provided with some background information and asked to respond to three case questions that focused on Sony’s competitive positioning and product and marketing strategy for the short term, medium term, and long term.

Richelle Parham, eBay's chief marketer for North America, addresses the CMO Insight Series

Richelle Parham could have spent last Tuesday evening with actor Brad Pitt. Instead, the chief marketing officer for eBay North America was discussing brand strategy with Berkeley MBA students over dinner and seemed delighted to be doing so.

Parham kicked off the first session in this year’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Insight Series, a Berkeley MBA course in which top marketing executives from companies including Wells Fargo, Jamba Juice, Salesforce, and Genentech will share wisdom with students in the classroom and in a more intimate setting over dinner.

Parham’s missed opportunity to rub shoulders with Pitt was during an eBay online charity auction experience brought to life in a physical and interactive gallery hosted by eBay and Make It Right, an organization Pitt founded to help rebuild New Orleans’ Lower 9^th Ward. She fit in her Haas engagement between serving as a panelist at a White House Urban Economic Forum and as keynote speaker at the Dare 2B Digital conference on tech careers for young women.

In class, Parham discussed the company’s auctions aimed at raising funds for charity, sharing examples from Buffet, Bieber, and Beatrice (Warren, Justin, and Princess). Each auctioned off something of value (lunch with, lock of hair, famous pink party hat) to raise funds—together more than $2.9 million in this case—for worthy causes.

Repositioning the World’s Largest Online Marketplace

However, eBay is now about much more than auctions, as Parham pointed out while sharing insights on repositioning “the world’s largest online marketplace.” Parham, who previously served as head of global marketing innovations and initiatives for Visa, launched the class with one of eBay’s new TV spots. “Good, you laughed!” she said at the end. “I’ll say more later about why that was important.”

Parham said that while eBay enjoys 99.9 percent to 100 percent brand recognition, the company still has legacy perceptions to battle. “A lot of people still think of eBay as the place for auctions and used merchandise, but, in fact, 90 percent of eBay items today are fixed price and more than 50 percent of our merchandise is brand new,” she said. Much of her work since joining eBay in fall 2010 has been to align consumer perceptions with eBay’s new reality.

Whimsy is part of the approach, hence Parham’s appreciation of the laughs that followed her TV spot about parental attention deficit at a child’s school play. The new campaign pokes gentle fun at everything from “mom jeans” to gossiping about celebrities during a mani/pedi and features eBay’s new messaging: When it’s on your mind it’s on eBay. Buy it new. Buy it now.

The spots also feature shoppers making purchases via mobile devices. “Mobile is where the online and offline worlds meet,” said Parham. In 2011, eBay’s mobile application was downloaded 70 million times.

Parham chats over dinner with Emma Qian, MBA 12

Over dinner, the group of five students had fewer than 70 million questions, but still quite a lot. For a relaxed two hours, they asked anything they wanted of eBay’s CMO—and in the course of the semester, each student has dinner with one speaker.

They wanted to know how Parham had charted her career, how eBay’s product organization is structured, how budgeting happens, how she achieves work/life balance, and what she looks for in hiring, to which she responded, “Know my business. Ask me questions that make me think. Don’t be afraid to break some glass.” Parham also shared thoughts on the importance of drawing youth, and girls in particular, to technology and about beloved collections (Barbie in her case, 80′s action figures for participating student Andrew Wisnewski, MBA 13).

As the evening wound down, Parham asked the group what they wanted to get out of the course and what they felt they got from her presentation. “For me this is a guide for how people who do marketing think about their customers, since I don’t have that background,” said Meredith Benedict, MBA 13. “It’s like getting all the lessons of a marketing class, but from real people.”

The Winning Team: Dave Hirsch, Rohan Ma, Dan Stotts, Josh Lich, all MBA 13

The Competition: Renewable Energy Case Competition, University of Michigan, Feb. 2nd.

The Team: Dave Hirsch, Josh Lich, Rohan Ma, and Dan Stotts, all MBA 13.

The Outcome: First place.

The Field: Fifteen other teams, including those from Columbia, Tuck, Fuqua, and Kellogg.

The Challenge: To move a Michigan utility closer to achieving 20% of electricity generation from renewable energy technology. The team analyzed the cost-effectiveness of both renewable  and conventional energy generation; conducted risk and extraneous cost assements, and developed a risk-minimizing strategy that included analysis of tax implications.

The Winning Approach: Diversification. “We suggested a solution similar to diversifying a stock portfolio that would minimize the risks associated with renewable energy,” says Stotts. Also, a dose of reality.” We emphasized that there is no ‘magic bullet,’ but rather a combination of best-practices to employ around locational diversification, smart grid, energy storage, and market integration. Behind these recommendations, we provided robust financial modeling the corroborated our story.”

Won Because: Judges praised the team’s thorough and consistent approach. Stotts says the team’s two “quants,” Ma and Hirsch, exhaustively researched the inputs to the financial models that eventually led to the final costs presented. “The judges, industry experts, could see our costs were logical and realistic,” Stotts says” Additionally, the team’s strategy was specific to the market in which it operated and highly applicable.

The H Factor: “There’s no question that Berkeley-Haas has a vibrant energy community,” says Stotts. “The access that we, as first-years, have received through BERC, the Energy Institute, and experiential learning really provided an intuition from which we could think through the problems.” The team also credits the Leadership Communications course with helping deliver a confident presentation.

Defining Principles at Work: “Everyone left their egos at the door in order to facilitate collaboration,” says Stotts. The team took a Students Always approach by believing they could learn from each other and incorporating peer feedback to arrive at a more refined message. “Our maturity and authority on the subject matter also showed the Confidence without Attitude” that was behind our teamwork.”

Why it Mattered: “These are important problems and this is the preeminent energy case competition in the U.S. We wanted to represent Haas and leverage our respective backgrounds to develop solutions.”

ZZZ Factor: Every spare moment from receiving the case on Jan. 27 to presenting solutions on Feb. 2. was spent on the case. The night before departure, the team worked until 2 a.m., then left to pack for 6 a.m. flights. Copious amounts of caffeine and 80′s pop via Spotify kept them going in those final hours.

Grad: Hrishika Vuppala, MBA 11

 Working as: Associate with McKinsey & Company, so far working with clients in healthcare, and consumer packaged goods.

Thrilled to be with McKinsey because:  She has the opportunity to work across a broad sector of industries and functions and to work alongside very senior clients, influencing and driving change.  “McKinsey has a stellar reputation in this regard, and hence this was a job that I really wanted.”

Most excited to be working on: Actively recruiting for McKinsey. “I am excited to come back to Berkeley-Haas to speak to students about a career in consulting.” On the work front, Vuppala says she is “keen to work on engagements involving regulation in the telecom sector – a niche area that is bound to have a far reaching impact globally.”

Inside McKinsey: “McKinsey is a great place for someone looking for diversity in work,” says Vuppala. “One of the most interesting features is that the company allows you to do one-year international rotations in any of the McKinsey offices across the globe.” She says several colleagues have worked in Asia and in Europe and have greatly benefited from their experiences in a different geography.

Networked: Vuppala interacts with Haas alums at McKinsey for events related to recruiting at Haas and connects with fellow alums at McKinsey offices worldwide as she travels for business. “I’ve often connected with my classmates in different cities to catch up over dinner and reminiscence about our time at Haas.”

Best career search strategies: Vuppala practiced “tons of case interviews” and ensured that she addressed the feedback she got. She also found fellow students to be instrumental in helping her prepare and build confidence to do well interviews.

Defining Principles in action: Vuppala identifies strongly with the principle of Students Always. As a consultant, I don’t necessarily always have the most relevant industrial or functional expertise,” she says. “However, with the mindset and the willingness to learn, it is easy to overcome the lack of experience and win the confidence of your clients.”

Living the Atlanta life: “Living in the South gives you access to the best comfort food in the US. I try to explore as many restaurants as I can and, if anyone is down in Atlanta, I’d highly recommend the South City Kitchen for its awesome food. “

A winning approach: Emily Ewell, MBA/MPH 12 (r.), and other team members hit the streets in Mexico City to talk with targeted users.

The Competition: The IBM/Novartis NCD (non-communicable diseases) University Challenge.

The Team: Tara English, MBA 13, and Emily Ewell, Jenny Chang, and Rachel Sherman, all MBA/MPH 12.

The Outcome: First place in the “Developing World” category.

The Field: Sixteen teams, including those from Spain’s ESADE and the London Business School.

The Challenge: To create a tech-enabled innovation in non-communicable diseases. “This was extremely open ended as there are so many diseases, making it challenging to target a specific, actionable area where we could achieve maximum impact,” says Ewell.

The Winning Approach: A proposal for 2Vidas, a pharmacy membership program in Mexico for low- to middle-income pregnant women with diabetes that would provide access, community, and encouragement to improve health for mom and baby.

Won Because: The  team’s “2-for-1″ approach impacts the health of both mothers in the short-term and babies in the longer term. Judges also touted the proposal for its focus on a confined timeframe of behavior change—pregnancy. “This is a highly motivated population that’s easy to target, track, and measure,” Ewell observes. And the team impressed with a decision to test hypotheses first-hand in Mexico.

The H Factor:“Our team was definitely the strongest contribution to our success, which is in so many ways due to the Haas culture,” says Ewell. “This was really an ‘all for one and one for all’ effort.”

Defining Principles at Work: “We were fearless in our quest to find an innovative solution for the NCD Challenge, but we were also the first to ask for help,” says Ewell of a Confidence Without Attitude approach that led them to reach out to friends, healthcare colleagues, and mentors. “Taking a step back and listening to their perspective was not only refreshing, but enlightening.”

The Motivation: At the end of the day this isn’t for us – it’s for women with diabetes and for their children, families, and communities,” says Ewell. “All of us were motivated by the final impact of creating a sustained impact on communities in need – in a scalable, replicable way.”

2Vidas hope to launch a pilot this summer in Mexico City.

Lynn Upshaw's Strategic Brand Management course: Real-world examples, insightful guest speakers

Emily Douglas, MBA 13, says real-world examples in Lynn Upshaw’s Strategic Brand Management elective helped her to understand the importance of human nature in marketing. “We talked about connecting with human emotions on more obvious products like diapers, where new moms are looking for guidance, but also for less obviously emotional products like routers, where buyers want to use products they can trust with their jobs.”

Yelena Bushman, MBA 13, says guest speakers in Upshaw’s course added to her learning experience. She appreciated the chance to walk through the evolution of a corporate mass media campaign with Cisco’s director of marketing brand strategy and identity, Monique Mulbry.

Jill Rea, MBA 13, says it was eye-opening to learn from Holly Schroth that “everything is negotiable.” She says the Negotiations course offered extensive practice and a wealth of stories from Schroth’s professional experience, as well as the opportunity for students to share examples from their own workplace experiences.

First-year student Ronan Kennedy, MBA 14, was impressed by Shachar Kariv’s teaching of the core Microeconomics course and says Kariv held a reality game show to demonstrate the power of second bid auctions. “We also used game theory to discern how smart we think we are–and how smart our opponents think we are.”

The message from Kariv’s course that will stay with Kurt Zhao, MBA 14: Everything in life is quantifiable. “Shachar totally stunned me when he explained the root cause of unemployment using just one simple graph within a minute, precisely and elegantly.”

For Hussein Khazaal, MBA 12, the mix of lecture, exercises, and reflection offered in Sara Beckman’s Problem Finding, Problem Solving (PFPS) course drove home the importance of understanding customer needs before searching for solutions. “It is critical to observe potential users and learn first-hand about their pain points,” he says. “My engineering background was focused on solving a problem, but that is only one part of the puzzle,” says Khazaal. PFPS provided a step-by-step guide to an entire problem framing, problem solving process, as well as a safe environment for learning and applying concepts.

Part-time MBA students gave kudos to a number of other courses, including: Mark Rittenberg’s Active Communications course, touted by Bernie (Bernadette) Geuy, MBA 12, for offering the chance to “find your authentic voice and leverage your life stories to be an effective communicator;” Leif Nelson’s Market Research class, hailed by Jessica Galeria, MBA 13, for imparting solid skills in regressions and cluster analysis in remarkably entertaining ways; and Jo-Ellen Pozner’s Leading People course, said by Erik Krogh-Jespersen, MBA 14, to provide a set of tools for influencing opinion and shifting biases.

Part-time MBA Students Set Careers in Motion

MBA Internships: Visa

Three Minutes to Launch: Berkeley MBAs Soar in Rocket Pitch

Winning Approaches: Innovation Challenge Semi-finals

The Heartbeat of Berkeley-Haas

More to come in 2012–including updates on the careers of some of our MBA 11 graduates. First-up, Hallie Marshall, MBA 11, who says of her work as a Portfolio Manager with Dodge & Cox, “I’ve always been interested in the intersection of politics and economics, particularly in the developing world, and my work allows me to study these topics on a daily basis.”

No job interviews just yet, thanks.

Razors may factor into the New Year’s resolutions of some 120 Berkeley MBA students, who sported a shaggy look following the annual tradition of No-Shave November.

This year’s event raised $12,500 for Challenge for Charity (C4C), an organization of West Coast business schools that raises funds and contributes volunteer hours to the Special Olympics and a charity of each school’s choosing. (Berkeley-Haas contributes to the Alameda Point Collaborative.)

In honor of No-Shave November, beards, heads, legs, and chests were left to their own devices, causing hardship for a few. “It was itchy,” says Ignacio Garcia-Ros, MBA 13. “My girlfriend wasn’t thrilled,” says Kevin Callaghan, MBA 13.

The event concludes with an auctioning off of each student’s “canvas” (be it legs or head, or chest) to the highest bidder–who then shaves the participant in a design of their choosing. The new look must be kept for the next 24 hours. For Mike Vincent, MBA 13, this was the challenge. Vincent already had a beard and says, “While I knew it would be hard to part ways, I also knew I had plenty of friends and family who would love to see it go.”

“We don’t do things half-way here at Haas,” says Garcia-Ros. “If we commit to something and it’s for a good cause, we’re all in!” Some participants, however, may be resolved to keep razors close at hand for the remainder of the year.

Innovation team Sathishkumar Balasubramanian, Shisher Wahie, Winnie Phua, and Denise Toy, all MBA 13.

The Competition: The Innovation Challenge, a global business innovation competition.

The Team: Evening and weekend MBA students Sathishkumar Balasubramanian, Winnie Phua, Denise Toy, and Shisher Wahie, all MBA 13.

The Outcome: Emerging from a field of 178 teams to be among the top 15 overall and top 5 in the strategy and business model category.

The Challenge: Generating ways for AT&T to better connect its cloud-hosting services with mobility applications and services to meet the needs of small businesses.

The Winning Approach: “We definitely used brainstorming techniques amassed from the PFPS class, so had a broad range of solutions from which we ultimately picked our unique solution,” says Phua.

Defining Principles at Work: “We received positive feedback from judges and organizers on our innovation and presentation skills and the general display of confidence without attitude,” Phua says.

Fitting it all in: Since team members work full-time and attend school on Saturdays, that left Sundays–and much of Thanksgiving weekend to devote to the Challenge.

Fuel of Choice: Breakfast muffins and sandwich dinners from Panera Bread. Entertainment provided by Chief Morale Officer Sadie the Maltese.

Demonstrated Competition Prowess 2011-12: Innovation, education, management of organizations, marketing, entrepreneurship, and real estate.

• First-place: MIT EdTech Competition, Babson SF Rocket Pitch Competition
• Second-place: UT Austin Real Estate Challenge, Vanderbilt Human Capital Case Competition, Babson SF Rocket Pitch
• Third-place: Carlson Elite Eight Brand Management Case Competition
• Semi-finals: Global Innovation Challenge