Those Great Commencement Speeches

I always enjoy this time of year in which we celebrate the successes of our students, friends, and children, through various graduation ceremonies.

Some graduations, both high school ones and college ones, are still taking place and it is fun to follow the various commencement speakers, the coverage of their speeches, and even to learn from some of them.

Although I am back in Sweden, I am still following many graduation events and speakers and trying to capture any pearls of wisdom.

The reporting on commencement speakers starts several months before the actual graduations and this year I especially enjoyed the list of Most Notable Commencement Speakers for 2014 compiled by Business Insider. Alright, I am a bit biased since both UMass Amherst's speaker, Governor Deval Patrick, made the list as well as my husband's undergrad alma mater's, Lafayette College's, which featured the Prime Minister of Jamaica, Portia Simpson Miller. The fomer mayor of NYC, Michael Bloomberg,  also made the list and has been quite busy, just recently having given a provocative speech at Harvard. He is also the scheduled commencement speaker for Williams College.

Interestingly, two originally scheduled female commencement speakers, former Secretary of State Condi Rice, and the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, who were to speak at Rutgers University and Smith College, respectively, ultimately, because of demonstrations, never spoke at the commencements. Bloomberg at his commencement speech at Harvard assailed the lack of suppiort for the diversity of ideas at universities, and even pointed out what happened at my alma matter, Brown University, when his former police chief, Kelly, tried to speak there a few months ago.

And, when it comes to great high school commencement speakers, just the other day, the 2014 Deerfield Academy graduation took place. When my daughter graduated from this outstanding school I could not resist blogging about it and posted a lot of photos. Even former President Bill Clinton made a suprise appearance in a video.  The 2014 Deerfield Academy commencement speaker was H. Rodgin Cohen, a renowned financial lawyer. Interestingly, on a USAir flight to Washington DC a few years ago,  I sat next to "Rodge," if  I may. I had noticed this very well-dressed gentelman wearing a bowtie in the boarding area for our flight at Bradley Airport and, honestly, I was hoping that he would be seated to me. (I tend to have amazing seatmates on many of my flights, and this was another one of those cases).  I got the window seat towards the front of the plane and Rodge sat right next to me in the aisle seat. Before long, a conversation ensued, with business cards exchanged. When he told me that he was a member of the Deerfield Academy (DA) Board of Trustees and had gone to Harvard (including Harvard Law), we talked almost nonstop. He even mentioned Ms. Carole Pennock, the Head of the lower school of The Bement School, who had also served on the DA board (and was a wonderful influence on my daughter and her cohort when they went to Bement).

Mr. Cohen is the senior chairman of the top law firm Sullivan and Cromwell. And his financial regulatory expertise  in major financial crises was even featured in the HBO film, *Too Big to Fail."

Well, would you believe, now, every year since our meeting on that flight, I receive a Season's Greeting card from Mr. Cohen!  His DA speech is now posted and it is inspiring - the importance of being quirky and bonding with even Lehman Brothers thrown in!

I have given 3 commencement speeches, thus far, one at the Isenberg School, and two, in Sweden. In preparing these, it was a great opportunity to reflect, to acknowledge, and also to give back. Thanks!

For anyone interested, links to my speeches, and other writings, including those in the popular press, can be accessed here.

Congratulations to all the graduates!

Businessweek Recognizes Our Outstanding Operations Management Major at the Isenberg School

Businessweek has now recognized the Operations Management (OM) program/major at the Isenberg School at UMass Amherst as one of the top programs in this specialty for 2010!

Click here for the full list of OM program rankings for 2010.

To make it to the top 25 (actually, we are number 21) speaks to the excellence of the education that our students are receiving.

But education is a two-way street, and the students that our major attracts are amazing and a joy and a privilege to teach.

Background on the determination of the Businessweek rankings in OM and other business specialties is available here.

Our students benefit from a rigorous core curriculum in business and take foundational courses in Management Science, Operations Management, and Quality Management. They select electives in such topics as: Transportation & Logistics (which I teach), Supply Chain Management, Simulation, Forecasting, Business Process Optimization, and Advanced Operations Management.

With recent faculty hires, we are even offering a course in Cybertechnology!

As for what our recent graduates are doing now?! Some are working in exciting startups, others in established well-known retail companies and high-tech companies, while others have positions in logistics and even in government and in the military.

Several of our OM majors have worked for prominent consulting firms and have gone on to receive their MBAs from Harvard or a PhD from MIT.

No matter where their life journeys take them, the critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills that our Operations Management majors acquire, coupled with excellent communication and writing skills, will serve them well. Plus, with the variety of student clubs that we have at the Isenberg School, there are numerous opportunities for our students to assume leadership and officer positions, to travel and to live abroad, to take on wonderful internships, and to engage themselves in community service projects.

Thank you, Businessweek, for recognizing our truly terrific Operations Management program at the Isenberg School!

The Greening of the Metropolis

On my flights back from the ALIO-INFORMS in Buenos Aires, Argentina I had the distinct pleasure of reading the latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. There was a special segment in it on Clean Energy and an excellent article, "The Greening of the Metropolis." With cities being home to more than half of the world's population and generating more than two thirds of the world's carbon dioxide, greening of our megacities can make a significant difference in improving the environment.

I am hopeful. With the leadership of some of the biggest cities in the world taking proactive, creative steps to reduce emissions, much can be accomplished especially since regions and nations are failing to act.

Kudos to Los Angeles and its mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, for 1,700 miles of bike paths that are to be completed by 2015, complete with showers and bicycle storage areas.

Bravo to the mayor of Toronto, David Miller, who plans on investing over $1 billion in public transport and environmentally-friendly air-conditioning systems for buildings.

In Tokyo, where, amazingly, 68 percent of the trips are by bike, subway, or on foot, in April a cap and trade system was instituted for carbon dioxide that is city-wide. As for Houston, Texas, where an astonishing 95% of the trips are made by car, at least officials are getting electric cars to reduce emissions.

Robert Doyle, the Lord Mayor of one of my favorite cities, Melbourne, in Australia, plans to bar cars from downtown and to offer incentives for green investments.

Copenhagen, in Denmark, is spending over a billion and a half dollars on bike paths, green energy projects, and retrofitting city buildings.

Amsterdam's infrastructure is being improved to the tune of 1 billion dollars, with its 2,400 houseboats being retrofitted to use electricity instead of diesel.

New York City, one of my absolutely favorite cities, since I grew up in Yonkers, is moving forward with its PlaNYC, to make buildings more energy efficient, power plants more environmentally-friendly, and with tax breaks for the use of solar panels.

Having spent over a week recently in another megacity -- Buenos Aires, Argentina, with about 11 million people in the central and surrounding areas, I know that much needs to be done.

The architecture of this city is stunning as are the neighborhoods with unique identities, and the lively, warm people and culture.

However, the traffic is horrendous with the busses running frequently but on diesel and their evident fumes spewing and belching out. Not only do they emit toxic pollutants but the noise that they generate is substantial. As one former Argentine physics colleague of my husband's, dating back to our Brown University days, told us during a lovely 3 hour dinner in Buenos Aires: when the busses go on strike, the people notice how much cleaner the air gets and how much more peaceful the city is even with more cars! Ironically, in parts of the developing world, getting rid of public transit with aging engines may actually improve air quality.

A better approach (and our colleague told us that he expects that this may happen but it will take about 10 years), is for the city of Buenos Aires (where 1/3 of Argentina's population lives) to purchase busses with the latest green technologies and with quieter designs.

Above are photos taken from the 14th floor of the Etoile Hotel in Buenos Aires where we spent last week. In the photos one can see the famous La Recoleta Cemetery where Eva Peron is buried and the Law School with the big columns, where the operations research conference that I attended and spoke at took place.

My talk at the ALIO-INFORMS conference was on "Sustainable Supply Chain Network Design: A Multicriteria Perspective" and it certainly hit "close to home." The paper is available here and the pdf of the presentation is here.