CEO Evolution Offers a View from the Top

June 22, 2015

Fairfield County Business Journal – For the second consecutive year, accounting firm Citrin Cooperman gathered a panel of CEOs to UConn Stamford’s General Re Auditorium — filling it again with an audience of 200 — for a give-and-take with Mark Fagan, managing partner at the firm.

The questions were designed to plumb the CEOs’ successes and harvest their anecdotes. The CEOs responded with unguarded responses that ran from whimsy — “I always wanted to be a ballerina” — to horror: “When you hit the water at 74 mph it’s like hitting cement.”

Advice from the Top

June 19, 2015

Portraits of Anne Mulcahy, Tom Kallish, and Denis Nayden.
Pictured, L to R: Anne Mulcahy, Tom Kallish, and Denis Nayden

Three Outstanding CEOs Share Business Insight, Success at ‘CEO Evolution’ Program in Stamford

Be a coach, be a leader, be a taskmaster—but don’t ever be a jerk.

Establish a strong network, but if you need additional help, reach out and ask for it. Even strangers can be strong allies.

Don’t plan your career path so rigidly that you miss out on new and amazing opportunities that can enhance your future in ways you never imagined.

That was some of the advice that three exceptional CEOs shared at the second annual “CEO Evolution’’ June 15 at the University of Connecticut’s Stamford campus. The program, attended by almost 200, was presented by Citrin Cooperman, the University of Connecticut School of Business and the Fairfield County Business Journal.Continue Reading

Should Companies Eliminate Audits?

Fortune – Do the millions that large companies spend on annual audits actually provide the information investors need and are paying for? And are the earnings reports that companies produce trustworthy? If recent events offer any indication, the answer to both questions is likely a resounding no.

The Small, Happy Life

June 18, 2015

Closeup of a flower healthily in bloom.

I have previously shared my thoughts about graduation speeches and mentioned several excellent examples.  In that blog, I talked about the range of topics and advice in those speeches but I just read an essay by David Brooks—NYT, May 29, 2015, “The Small, Happy Life.’’—that I think enriches the discussion. David invited his readers to “send in essays describing their purpose in life and how they found it.”  He “expected most contributors would follow the commencement speech clichés of our high achieving culture; dream big; set ambitious goals; try to change the world.”Continue Reading

Ph.D. Research and Accomplishments – Spring 2015

Selcan Kara
Selcan Kara presented: Shared and Connected: Interpersonal Relationships and Shared Brands.   She also successfully defended her dissertation proposal titled, “Two Essays on the Effect of Alphanumeric Brand Names on Consumers’ Brand Related Decisions.”

Bin Li
Bin Li passed his CE titled, “Technology and Market Structure: An Empirical Analysis of Entry and Exit in the Banking Industry” and received the Voya Financial Summer Doctoral and School Year Doctoral Fellowship.Continue Reading

‘Cosmo’ Editor-in-Chief Coming to UConn Stamford

Women Entrepreneurs Empowerment Forum logo.

 

Joanna Coles to Address Success, Empowerment at UConn Women’s Entrepreneurship Forum in September

Joanna Coles, the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, will be the keynote speaker at the Third Annual Women Entrepreneurs Empowerment Forum on Friday, Sept. 18, at the University of Connecticut Stamford campus. Coles was named editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan in September 2012. With 62 international editions in addition to the U.S. flagship, Cosmo is the world’s largest women’s magazine, reaching 18 million readers in the U.S. each month and more than 100 million worldwide. Coles additionally serves on the board of Women Entrepreneurs New York City, an initiative to expand female entrepreneurship, with a special focus on underserved women and communities.Continue Reading

Drivers of Local Relative to Global Brand Purchases: A Contingency Approach.

Journal of International Marketing (2015), 23 (1), 1-22.

Yuliya Strizhakova and Robin A. Coulter

As globalization has ensued, consumers around the world are increasingly making choices between global brands (sold under the same name in multiple countries around the world), and local brands (sold under a given name in one country or local region). Historically, local brands, particularly in emerging markets, were viewed as low quality and unappealing, but with the increased prevalence of global brands, local brands have become more competitive alternatives that signal originality, local cultural connections, pride and prestige. Notably, local brands are steadily gaining market share in India, China, Russia, and Brazil.Continue Reading

Fishing, Healthcare, Power of Change

Improving the World is the ‘Husky Way,’ Luciano Tells Fellow Grads

Margaret M. Luciano ’15 Ph.D., spoke at the graduate commencement ceremony about the importance of leading positive change, telling the audience that improving the world is the ‘Husky Way.’

To the old Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,’’ Luciano said she’d like to expand the proverb to add a third verse: “Lead the creation of a community-based, sustainable fishery, and you start to change the world.’’Continue Reading

The Colt Bankruptcy

June 16, 2015

Demise of a Connecticut Icon

UConn Today – Gun manufacturer Colt Defense LLC has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a process that will allow for an accelerated sale of Colt’s business operations in the U.S. and Canada. The Hartford, Conn.-based manufacturer, which created the iconic revolver whose bullets were loaded into a revolving cylinder that became known as “the gun that won the West,” has been a major producer of firearms since the early 1800s. How did Colt get to this point and what does the future hold? UConn Today asked economic historian Fred Carstensen, a professor of finance and economics in the School of Business, and director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis.