Presenting the IBD 2017 Spring MBA Team Leads!
For the second straight year, the IBD program has selected student Team Leads to spearhead work with their MBA peers on an international consulting project. In addition to providing leadership throughout the project, IBD Team Leads are responsible for fostering a cohesive and strong working team dynamic. We are very excited to welcome these talented individuals to the IBD program and we want to introduce them to you!
Blakey Larsen: Blakey has 8 years of consulting experience. Before coming to Haas, she worked at Accenture, Genesis10, and spent 4 years in Apia, Samoa working as a consultant for the US Peace Corps. Blakey has a passion for social impact and technology.
“I’m excited to lead a team in a cross-cultural consulting experience to prepare us for working in the global business world.”
Carolyn Chuong: Carolyn is passionate about education equality and has spent the majority of her career working to improve education for children, locally and globally. She spent a year in Venezuela as a Fulbright Fellow teaching 100 university students and 5 years working in the education consulting industry.
“I continue to be impressed by my peers who are witty, passionate, and smart as a whip. That’s why I’m thrilled to lead a group of Haasies to collectively support a global client grappling with a strategy or management challenge.”
Chelsea Harris: Chelsea is a MBA-MPH student and has passion for global health and social impact. She worked at the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Port-au-Prince, Haiti before coming to Haas.
“I worked as an international consultant prior to Haas but was often on teams with people who came from very similar backgrounds. I’m so excited about the synergies, sparks, and unexpected ideas that arise when you put five incredibly diverse Haas students together in a room. In five, ten, fifteen years, we’ll all be in influential roles in a wide range of industries, companies, and organizations. My hope is that the IBD experience lays the groundwork for us to leverage these positions to collaborate around shared goals well beyond graduation. “
Elspeth Ong: Elspeth’s background is in supply chain consulting– she worked for GEP Worldwide before joining us at Haas. She is passionate about innovative transportation solutions and is the CITRIS Foundry MBA Fellow for her work on an autonomous vehicle mapping startup. She is currently completing her pilot’s license.
“While I have spent the last eight years in the US, I hope to one day make a meaningful impact in the business environment of my home country, Singapore. I’m excited for the chance to apply my consulting experience to a project with international impact. Most importantly, I’m looking forward to tackling the unique challenges of our client while soaking in the local sights with my fellow Haasies!”
Hejar Oncel: Hejar has a PH.D in Mechanical Engineering and is fluent in French, Italian, Turkish, and Kurdish. Hejar spent 5 years in Norway working at National Oilwell Varco before coming to Haas. He is also the founding board member of the Kurdish American Foundation of Houston which is dedicated to serving refugees.
“In the developing world, I was amazed how dynamic the youth was, how they perceived the world in a more entrepreneurial and global way compared to older generation. This observation gave me hope that we are progressing globally in the right direction. I am hoping to work with such creative minds to bring positive changes via IBD.”
Harsh Thusu: Harsh worked as a financial services consultant at Finmechanics Pte Ltd before coming to Haas. He also is the organizing member of a nonprofit in India that helps arrange relief drives for those who have been displaced in the Kashmiri Pandit community.
“I am excited about this experiential leadership opportunity to make an impact with a real world organization and hone my leadership skills.”
Juan Norero: Prior to coming to Haas, Juan worked at Vinson Consulting in Santiago and was the first president and founder of the LATAM Airlines Group Toastmaster Club. He also studied Industrial Engineering and Management in a dual program in Italy and Chile.
“What excites me about being an IBD Team Lead is the impact we can generate for our client while having fun as a team.”
Kasey Koopmans: Kasey likes to climb mountains and run long distances all over the world. The highest mountain she has climbed is Mt. Lobouche East (Nepal) at 20,075 feet and the longest she has run is 62.14 miles when she raced in The North Face 100 (Thailand). She speaks Spanish, Burmese and Nepali Bhassa because of her time working in Myanmar and Nepal.
“Cultural immersion is a wringer of an experience, and I can’t wait to forge through it with fellow Haasies by my side. I’m also thrilled to be a team lead and have the opportunity to combine mentorship and intentionality with real world application and unpredictability. I came to Haas to develop my own unique expression of the Berkeley Leader, and I expect IBD to be formative along that journey. “
Lauren Elstein: Lauren spent four year at OPORTUN, a for-profit financial inclusion social enterprise that lends to the underbanked Hispanic community. She also currently sits on two boards, Reality San Francisco Church and HOPE International Regional Board.
“What excites me most about IBD is the opportunity to partner with people from other countries and cultures, learn from them, and leverage our MBA skills and experience to have a lasting impact on their organizations.”
Lyndsey Wilson: Lyndsey worked at the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation in Seattle before coming to Haas. She has also worked and lived in many different countries including Argentina, Mexico, and Kenya. Lyndsey is professionally fluent in Spanish and in her free time she enjoys cycling.
“I am most excited about leading an IBD team because this project combines my experience working across cultures to strengthen grantees and partners’ capacities delivering high-impact results with my interest in building strong businesses in under-resourced settings. I am energized by the opportunity to lead a work stream in a dynamic context, learning from our client and partnering with them to develop a context-specific solution for a challenging project. The potential for high impact in this space is incredible, and I am excited to apply what I’ve learned at Haas and further refine my capacity to work across diverse industries and regions.”
Mary Harty: Mary is from Ireland but spent the last 4 years in London working at Whitbread Plc in financial services. Whitbread is a multinational hotel and retail company headquartered in the U.K. She also spent a year in France working at the Four Seasons Hotel and Resorts.
“I’m excited to start putting into practice all this core knowledge, and get to know my fellow Haasies better in an international context!”
Nolan Chao: Nolan came to Haas after working at JPMorgan Chase in their Global Auction Service department and with FedBid, Inc., a multi-billion-dollar online marketplace where suppliers can bid for large contract in the form of an auction. If you need a good DJ, Nolan is the person to call, as he has spun tunes for more than 30 events and is an avid hip hop dancer.
“I’m really excited to start putting together everything we’ve been learning in the MBA classroom into practice for a tangible project with real impact. I’m also excited to feel “uncomfortable” again. There’s a degree of ambiguity that comes with working in a new culture and a new environment–something that no matter what, you just can’t really predict or “prepare” for. But that’s exactly what makes it so fun–immersing ourselves into new experiences and coming out as a better leader because of that.”
Nony Onyeador: Nony is interested in screenwriting, digital entrepreneurship and multi-media. She recently finished an internship with Macro Ventures in Los Angeles where she assessed scripts for possible TV, film or digital projects. She also worked at Accenture as a consultant.
“I’m excited for IBD because it challenges me, as a lead, to connect the dots between my team’s experiences, the client’s experiences, and the new cultural context. I have never been to my project country or worked in the industry specifically, but I have been in neighboring countries and worked in industries that have several similar attributes for clients that were working toward similar goals. Learning to be comfortable in a new setting while also identifying the value that I bring to the table will be tremendously useful as I look to become a savvier business leader.”
Peter Wasserman: Peter is a MBA-MPH student and joined Haas after working with Accenture for 4 years where he worked in China, Scotland and Europe. He speaks Mandarin and Spanish and is an enthusiastic participant in language partner programs.
“Through IBD I get to lead a group of diverse and intelligent Haas students to solve a challenging problem for a real client in an international environment. What could be more interesting than that?”
Raphy Chines: Raphy worked for L.E.K. Consulting since 2012 and provided pro-bono consulting services to small businesses in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Raphy has lived in Madrid, Tel Aviv and Argentina and speaks Spanish. To relax, Raphy backpacks, runs, hikes, meditates, and practices yoga.
“I’m most excited to take on a difficult business problem while stepping outside of my comfort zone and getting to know a new culture. Additionally, the unique opportunity to lead a team of my peers will help me improve my leadership skills in ways that would be difficult to accomplish outside of this context.”
Sarah Evans: Before coming to Berkeley-Haas, Sarah was with Vera Solutions, a consulting and technology solutions company that focuses on social change, to get her MBA. She has lived in South Africa, India, Tanzania and Botswana and speaks French and Swahili. Sarah is a MBA-MPH student and is committed to global health care.
“What drew me to Haas was the rich diversity of perspectives among the student body. Now that I’m at Haas, and leading an IBD team, I can’t wait to leverage those diverse perspectives to solve real companies’ largest international development challenges”.
