Here at Haas

H@H: Ep 16 – Paulina Lee interviews Leigh Ann West, a full-timer in the class of 2021. Leigh Ann talks about her journey from environmental research in the Peruvian Amazon to a 2nd-grade classroom in Atlanta to C-suite meetings as a consultant and grant-maker. Her story demonstrates how education has been a driving force in her life.

Episode Quotes: 

On finding her northstar after changing her undergrad major - “And I think that really started a trend that I've followed through the rest of my life: following people who make me feel passionate and motivated about what I’m doing .”

On why an MBA is valuable - “At the end of the day, when you're at a high level in an organization, it’s about managing people and making decisions about how to allocate finite resources, and that’s training that you get at an MBA.”

On why she got involved - “I wanted to be a voice for people who felt like their needs weren’t being 100% met. And see what we can do to make sure everyone is learning as much as they can in these 2 years.” 

On becoming a leader - “I really believe in doing other things and exploring so that you both become stronger and potentially [develop] new passion areas.”

Recommendation & Resources List:

• Film: Waiting for Superman
• Teach for America
• Schusterman Family Foundation
• Ballerinas: Tiler Peck & Patricia Zhou

Looking for other stories of Haasies? Visit our website OneHaas.org or check out the OneHaas Alumni podcast. Please subscribe and leave us a rating & review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with a fellow bear!

H@H: Ep 15 – On this special roundtable edition of H@H, Ray talks with 3 members of the Black Business Students Association (BBSA) - Nuhamin Woldemariam (EWMBA ’22), Olaseni Bello Jr. (FTMBA ’21), and Jarrett Wright (EWMBA ’22) - on racial discrimination, injustice, and the deeper-seated issues behind George Floyd and other tragic events targeted against black Americans. Our guests share their own personal experiences with racism, everyday challenges they face, and give advice on how we as a society can help with educating ourselves and our community.

Episode Quotes:

Olaseni Bello on the burden of double consciousness: "...it's not just how I see myself. It's how other people see me - this burden of always trying to dance politely again, to manage everybody else's comfort. You're just trying to balance, you're trying to walk this tight rope your whole life. So of course that's going to manifest itself psychologically, emotionally, physically."

Nuhamin Woldemariam on systemic racism: "There's a school to prison pipeline in this country. And the folks who are future planning for prisons, it's literally correlated to the number of black boys who are wrongly sent to detention and reading scores from the third grade!”

(Nuhamin) on being one of the few black people in the classroom: “I had this moment of relief when I had certain classmates to speak up, raise their hand first and say what they needed to say, I shouldn't have to be the person to speak for an entire experience because it's an individual experience."

Jarrett Wright on police actions: “People do things based on their consequences. If I'm a police officer and I kill someone in the line of duty, rightly or wrongly, there are far fewer consequences…and because of those lack of consequences, those things create issues.”

Educational Links:

• 13th (film)
• White Fragility (book)
• My Grandmother’s Hands (book)
• Pyramid of White Supremacy (info)
• 1619 podcast

Support the Black Community:

• McBride Sisters winery
• Black Bay Area (IG)
• GLO graphics (IG)

Contact info:

• BBSA
• Olaseni Bello
• Nuhamin Woldemariam
• Jarrett Wright

H@H: Ep 14 – On this episode, Ray talks with Trevor Ryan about Trevor’s background and career as a professional baseball scout. Trevor tells us how he got interested in the profession (1:58), and shares with us his day-to-day responsibilities throughout the year (5:42). Trevor also mentions an impressive array of current MLB stars (10:56) he’s crossed paths with at UCLA and through scouting. Finally, we wrap up the interview with why Trevor chose an MBA (12:56) & advice he’d give to others from untraditional backgrounds (21:52).

Episode Quotes

On how Trevor realized (in 8th grade) he wanted to work in professional baseball:

It was just this aha moment, where I read the book (Moneyball), looked at the characters and their background, and said, ‘Hey, I think I could do that.’

Comparing building a sports team to investing:

"I always compare it to running a hedge fund, to picking stocks. The key, just like not everybody can outperform the stock market, not everyone can win in pro sports without learning how to use data and create good, qualitative, analytical frameworks."

On the value of an MBA:

"Anybody can get a lot out of it. It’s a tremendous curriculum, teaches you how to think and then you can specialize and make it whatever you want once you get into electives."

Show Links:

Moneyball – book & film

Major League

Oakland A’s

Bill Simmons podcast

H@H: Ep 13 – Sean chats with Dr. Sahar Yousef, one of our faculty lecturers here at Haas. She teaches an extremely popular elective called Becoming Superhuman on the science of peak performance and productivity. Today, she shares with us some of those lessons on how to increase human performance and improve productivity - without using any kind of "limitless" pill.

H@H: Ep 12 – Paulina Lee interviews Lucas Miller,a human performance researcher and the youngest faculty at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. A best-selling author on the science of learning and behavior change, he co-designed one of the most popular MBA courses at UC Berkeley called "Becoming Superhuman: The Science of Productivity and Performance" and has been featured in Wired and The Wall Street Journal. 

Episode Quotes: 

On student takeaways from the course - “I've even seen grown men cry and then get into a very personal reveal of how (their phone has) ruined their marriage or it's made them way less effective and way less intelligent than they used to be in their forties or thirties. They realize that these habits have been completely reinforced over time and they can choose to fight back and take control...if they're willing to make that trade off.”

On the importance of focus - “It's not really about time management. It's more about getting the right things done. It's one thing to talk about being a faster runner or a better performer or getting more things done in fewer hours. It's another to make sure you're doing the right stuff because it doesn't matter how hard you're working. If you're not focusing on what matters, then you won’tget the results you want.”

On maximizing your day - “That's one concept that sticks with folks, that it's okay to not be a hundred percent the entire day. I mean, we're not machines. We're not like laptops where if we simply have power, we can just run at a hundred percent capacity and run multiple programs at the same time. We have peaks and we have troughs, and if we don't manage our energy over the course of the day, we have long periods where we're just burned out and can't do anything.”

On finding your strengths - “I think something that's really, really important for folks to learn as they try different careers and potentially go down rabbit holes that may serve them or may not serve them, is to keep a keen eye on what gives them energy and what drains them. Because ultimately, it gives you real insights into what's going on on a daily basis; and will help make you fulfilled and feel like you're growing.”

Recommendation & Resources List:

• LinkedIn: Lucas Miller
• Stoa Partners
• Beyond Brilliance: The Blueprint for Learning Anything by Lucas Miller
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• Berkeley Free Ventures

Looking for other stories of Haasies? Visit our website OneHaas.org or check out the OneHaas Alumni podcast. Please subscribe and leave us a rating & review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with a fellow bear!

H@H: Ep 11 – Paulina Lee interviews Akonkwa Mubagwa an engineer, entrepreneur, musician, and student of life. Akonkwa was raised in Zimbabwe, the US and Belgium, and has studied and lived in Paris and Switzerland before becoming a full-time MBA student (class of 2021). He is a two-time entrepreneur with a passion for the advancement of technology in Africa. Together with Wing Tse he founded Winko Solar which aims to provide affordable solar energy and internet connectivity to rural villages in West Africa and the DR Congo. Akonkwa is Jacobs Fellow, a Maxwell Fellow and a Belgian American Exchange Foundation Fellow.

Episode Quotes:

On childhood interests - I was really into two things: music and technology. Those are the common denominators throughout my whole life...There's the opportunity to create and at the same time you can create something that's permanent that stays behind, but that you can share with others and that they can use and that has an effect on them.

On the his fellow Haasies - “But since I've come here, I've been influenced by others way more than I expected before. That's very humbling and it's very rewarding at the same time.”

Recommendations:

• Zero to One by Peter Thiel
• The Man Behind the Microchip by Leslie Berlin
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Attack on Titan on Hulu
• The Last Dance (available on Netflix July 2020)
• 13th on Netflix
• Check out Akonkwa’s song that we featured throughout the episode: We’re Gonna Be All Right

H@H: Ep 10 – Marco Lindsey, our Berkeley Haas Associate Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, joins us today to talk about the importance of fighting anti-blackness not only in ourselves but in our future generation.

For those of you who may not understand Anti-Blackness, it was best explained in an article written by Kihana Miraya Ross, Northwestern University professor of African-American studies, as "the inability to recognize black humanity." She describes it as a "theoretical framework that illuminates society's inability to recognize our humanity - the disdain, disregard and disgust for our existence."

We hear about Marco's upbringing in East Oakland and how he wakes up every day to instill the right values in not only his children but also the youths in his community. He does so by walking his talk, serving as an active board member of the 100 Black Men of the Bay Area, and giving back to the community through his gratuitous actions.

H@H: Ep 9 – This month on Monthly Musings from Here@Haas, we talk about Sean graduating, new additions to the Haas Podcast team,interviews from May, and what exciting interviews we have coming up.

Notable Quotes:

On graduating without a cermony - “I thought, oh, maybe we’re not meant to say goodbye.” - Sean

On a recent interview with Ace Patterson and being an Ally - “It's not that people don't want to take action. I think people have the right intentions, but if you're just feeling something without doing anything about it, it is inaction….the best thing to do is to start with caring. Showing that you care. Reach out to your friends.” - Sean 

On staying connected - “I think that's been one thing that's been so much fun about being a part of this team during quarantine is just staying in touch and meeting new people. And hearing all the different stories.” - Paulina

On our new series - “We had an idea to do an international series where we interview people who have come from outside of the U.S. and have been a part of Haas.” – Aravind

Free pickup line: “So would it appropriate to say [the time] ZOOMed by?” - Ray

Recommendation List:

• Call Me Ace
• 5:15 AM
• CUSH
• Dispatch Goods
• Notion

H@H: Ep 8 – Wei Zhu (EWMBA ’22) joins hosts Sean and Ray to talk about his previous entrepreneurial pursuits. We immediately dive into his lessons learned in founding a karaoke bar and a startup incubator. Then we discuss why ignorance is both a blessing and a curse in the early stages of forming a company. Finally, Wei tells us how he has applied these learnings in helping mentor others on their path toward entrepreneurship at Haas.

Episode Quotes

“I can build something from 0 to 1, but going from 1 to 100 requires a totally different skillset” – Wei Zhu

“Many people we talk to only have succeeded because [they’ve] failed so many other times in so many other ways.” – Sean Li

“I see data not as just a bunch of numbers that you can run math on…it’s an abstraction of human behavior.” – Wei Zhu

“Axe the status quo!” – EWMBA ‘22 Axe

Show Links

StEP

Launch

Skydeck

Looking for other stories of Haasies? Visit our website OneHaas.org or check out the OneHaas Alumni podcast. Please subscribe and leave us a rating & review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with a fellow bear!

H@H: Ep 7 – host Paulina Lee interviews Lindsey Hoell (EW MBA ‘21). Lindsey spent over 10 years as a cardiovascular perfusionist, during which time she fell in love with surfing and started a women’s surfwear company, Kinda Fancy. Following her job and passion, she landed in Hawaii for a few years, at which point she saw the horrific impact of single-use plastics on our oceans. Seeing a need for a system overhaul, Lindsey decided to return to school at Haas, launching her current start-up, Dispatch Goods.

Episode Quotes: 

On what she learned from her first start-up - “By the time that we got far enough along, I realized, I needed to listen more. We'd been working for too hard for too long without that breakthrough moment that I was losing my team. And so that was, that was a hard learned lesson, but a really valuable one.”

On how COVID has impacted Dispatch Goods- “The first couple of weeks were honestly pretty devastating because, we were literally getting to the light at the end of the tunnel... Everything was coming together. I heard a quote this morning, (it) said that investors used to want a unicorn and now they want a camel. And so, we have to think about things differently. It's not growth, growth, growth. It's can you have a profitable business model that will sustain you through the next 24 months.”

On building her team - “If you ask people to help you push your car, nobody will pull over and help you push your car. But if people see you pushing your car, everyone wants to pull over and help you push your car. And I feel like people just see us pushing this car and like how desperately we want this car pushed.”

On surfing - “Ocean beach is you against the elements in the rawest way that I've ever experienced. I feel like you have to focus so hard on fighting the difficult paddle out and all of the elements in the cold that there's no way that you can worry about anything else in your life.”

Recommendation List:

• LinkedIn: Lindsey Hoell
• Dispatch Goods
• Instagram: Dispatch Goods
• UPDATE: Since our interview, Dispatch Goods has launched new partnerships with local eateries and cafes around SF - order today!
• Surfrider Foundation
• How I Built This
• Pod Save America

Looking for other stories of Haasies? Visit our website OneHaas.org or check out the OneHaas Alumni podcast. Please subscribe and leave us a rating & review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with a fellow bear!