“Distinguished faculty, great students, and good infrastructure are the three things that make Wharton tick,” says Dean Patrick Harker. “Students come here to learn the latest ideas as they’re being created, not five years later after they get into a textbook,” he observes.
Staying ahead of the curve to remain a top-ranked business school, therefore, means complementing traditional classroom teaching with new educational and technological initiatives. Inspired programming, however, takes substantial financial support. For this reason, gifts to the Dean’s Initiative Fund – which can be used to fund new challenges and initiatives – are essential for the creativity and competitiveness of the School and for the success of the Campaign for Sustained Leadership.
Without startup funds from the Dean’s Initiative Fund and its remarkable benefactors, innovative programs such as Knowledge@Wharton, the Wharton eBusiness Initiative (WeBI) and Wharton West might not have been possible.
According to Jean-Pierre Rosso, WG’67, Chairman and CEO of CNH Global, “one should recognize to what and whom you owe your success.” In his continuing efforts to give back to the School, Rosso made a contribution to the Dean’s Initiative Fund. Rosso’s contribution, from the Jean-Pierre Rosso Charitable Trust, affords Wharton the flexibility to create the programs and facilities necessary to push the School and its students, faculty, and alumni to the frontier of business education and industry worldwide.
- Nicole Davidson, W'01
Rosso stresses that “the Dean and the administration are in the best position to know what’s right for the School and what the top priorities are. Discretionary gifts provide the Dean with the flexibility he needs.”
Rosso is also dedicated to the School in other important ways; he gives his time as a member of the Wharton Board of Overseers and is a recent appointee to the Board of Governors of the Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies.
Rosso is not alone in his dedication to the School. Grateful for the many opportunities he received at Wharton, Joseph Zimmel, WG’79, is “eager to see the School continue its high standards and sustain its place of excellence among business schools. Making a financial contribution, therefore, is a way for me to give something back.” Wharton’s strengths are evident to Zimmel on the recruiting trail, as well. As Managing Director for Goldman Sachs, he states that “having recruited at every major business school, I find that Wharton students are the best prepared in terms of having the skill set, judgment and enthusiasm to succeed.”
Giving to the Dean’s Initiative Fund ensures that Zimmel’s contribution goes where it’s most needed: “I have enormous respect for the Dean and feel that his judgment – being closest to the situation – is the most relevant in terms of utilizing the funds.”
Zimmel also maintains his relationship with the School in other ways, such as contributing to the development of Wharton Professor N. Bulent Gultekin’s course in advanced corporate finance. His other philanthropic endeavors include serving on the board of the Student/Sponsor Partnership, an organization providing at-risk youth in New York an opportunity to attend non-public high schools.
Ruthann Quindlen, WG’83, is another graduate committed to supporting the School’s forward momentum. She and her husband and business partner David Liddle also gave to the school via the Dean’s initiative fund A member of the Western Region Gifts Committee, Quindlen is committed to the School’s innovative programs, and is especially excited about strengthening Wharton’s presence on the West Coast. As an alumna who commuted to Wharton’s Philadelphia campus from Washington, DC, Quindlen knows first-hand that the Wharton brand has the power to draw top students from around the country and around the world. In a recent IT Radio Network interview about investing, Quindlen stated that “the objective becomes putting the venture money – the smart money – right in the path of the oncoming, speeding locomotive.” She believes that giving to the Dean’s Initiative Fund, which provided startup funds for Wharton West, is doing just that. Quindlen, venture capitalist and author of the highly regarded book, Confessions of a Venture Capitalist, is glad that she and Liddle can help fuel the Wharton train.
Wharton West
The School has launched a satellite campus on the West Coast with dollars initially provided by the Dean’s Initiative Fund. Wharton West will provide executive MBA programs, executive education programs, faculty research and student internships from its San Francisco location, and is a direct response to market changes in the United States. The growth in the West Coast business base has continued unbated for a number of decades. It is much deeper than the dot-com industry,” explains Bob Mittelstaedt, vice dean and director of Wharton’s Aresty Institute of Executive Education. Wharton West is also a response to faculty and student demand: many faculty are already doing research with West Coast companies and Wharton students want to be where the action is. “Our students want to spend time understanding growth industries first hand,” Harker remarks. Thirty percent of last year’s MBA class headed out West after graduation. Wharton alumni are also a strong presence there, with more than 8,000 Wharton graduates calling the West Coast home.
The idea of Wharton West grew from a discussion of international options for the Wharton brand. Mittelstaedt notes that many schools were looking abroad, but California was virtually being ignored. “If California were on its own, it would be the sixth largest economy in the world. As such, it contains a large concentration of untapped business and education potential.” For these reasons, Wharton West is illustrative of an ideal reason to give to the Dean’s Initiative Fund: “It’s a one-of-a-kind opportunity to practice what we preach, and to be part of something as it grows from the ground up,” says Mittelstaedt.
The first Wharton West executive MBA student to be accepted to the program – and the first West Coast student to forego the long commute to Philadelphia – is John Balczewski, a San Francisco resident and senior analyst at Chevron. He is eager to start his first WEMBA session in August 2001. Balczewski researched other schools, but was drawn to Wharton by its clear distinction of experience, diversity and pedagogy. “I don’t want to sit passively and absorb, and since two years is a big investment in time and money, I’m looking forward to it being two years of ‘I can’t wait to get to class’.”
Wharton eBusiness Initiatives (WeBI)/eFellows
Like Wharton West and its traditional MBA counterparts, the Wharton eBusiness Initiative (WeBI) is taking risks and creating new models for the future of e-business research and management education. WeBI is a partnership among business leaders, Wharton faculty and students to generate and disseminate new knowledge about e-business through research, academic programs, and strategic corporate partnerships. As part of this integrated response to challenges brought about by e-business, Wharton has created the Wharton Fellows in eBusiness (or eFellows) program.
“A unique hybrid of online and in-person exchanges,” according to Neil Neveras, director of the eFellows online community, the eFellows program prepares senior executives from old-line and online firms to be “change agents” and lead the e-transformation of their organizations. The program begins with three live sessions over a three-month period in diverse parts of the world. Between sessions, participants work on team projects and interact within a virtual community. At the program’s close, participants are inducted into the Society of Fellows and join a lifelong learning community of faculty and eFellows working collaboratively to identify emerging e-business issues, develop deep knowledge and create educational innovation. “The beauty of this integrated effort is that eFellows’ real-world issues filter back to WeBI and influence curriculum research and development,” Neveras asserts.
Turning On A Dime
Individual alumni are not alone in recognizing Wharton’s quality of education. Corporate executives who know the necessity of keeping track of dynamic business trends acknowledge the School’s value to the business world. According to Tom Piazze, director of Wharton’s Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations, Wharton can provide knowledge to keep corporations on the cutting edge. He stresses, however, that the School’s ability to provide this key component is dependent upon having sufficient resources and funding “to stop on a dime and shift – to adjust priorities to meet industry needs.” Piazze is also quick to point out that this is an exchange of ideas; these same companies who support the School financially also contribute to and stimulate the knowledge that Wharton produces. In fact, Wharton-corporate partnerships frequently serve as catalysts for many new initiatives.
Merrill Lynch, known across the globe for its investment banking, brokerage, investment and asset management services, is one firm making Wharton work for them. Carlos Valle, W’81, Managing Director, Global Business Head Recruiting and Relationship Manager for the Wharton School, stresses that “there’s great affinity in terms of core competencies – on the technical, interpersonal and cultural sides – between the School and the firm.” This affinity is one of the reasons Wharton is the largest source of career employees for Merrill Lunch; 400 Wharton alumni represent Merrill Lynch worldwide. He explains that Merrill Lynch benefits by having employees participate in the Wharton programs that the firm supports.
Merrill Lynch is a sponsor of Knowledge@ Wharton, and Merrill Lynch’s employees have access to Knowledge@Wharton as part of the firm’s professional development programs. This sponsorship complements another key Wharton initiative. The firm recently made a significant gift to the School’s Financial Institutions Center. The Center’s pioneering financial services research, notes Valle, will also be available to Merrill Lynch employees via Knowledge@Wharton. Wharton and Merrill Lynch have partnered to create an innovative executive education sequence. Valle explains that globally promoted analysts participate in a 4-week “boot camp” at Wharton designed to replicate the curriculum and experience of a second-year Wharton MBA program.
When speaking of the need for a WhartonMerrill Lynch partnership, Valle asserts that it’s key for corporations dependent upon Wharton for knowledge and talent to give something back. He stresses that since Merrill Lynch benefits from its partnership with Wharton on many levels, the School should be supported in just as many ways. “The ties that bind are very strong, so we view it as an ongoing commitment – at an institutional level and on an individual level.”
