UFA/UMCG receives the Director's Advisory Council Award

The Undergraduate Finance Association/Undergraduate Management Consulting Group (UFA/UMCG) received this year's Director's Advisory Council Award. The Director's Advisory Council Award is given to a student organization that gives back to the Haas community and helps promote a sense of community here at Haas.

This year, UFA/UMCG worked diligently with the Career Center to organize and sponsor the Investment Banking Forum, host the Management Consulting Forum, as well as co-host the Real Estate Finance Forum and a Consulting Forum. This was also the first year that UFA/UMCG launched its philanthropic arm, teaching basic finance, credit, etc. to local high school students. Congratulations!

Cal Charter Gala and graduation

In April, I attended the Cal Charter Gala in San Francisco at Fort Mason, where top Alumni were given awards and support the Cal community by giving back. In this picture from left to right, is myself, Robert Haas (Walter A. Haas's grandson), his wife Colleen, and fellow Haas student Adam Melero.

We were invited by the Haas Alumni office to represent the current UG students. We had an amazing time meeting grads all the way back from the fifties! What an experience!

I sat at the Levi Strauss table where I was sitting among very influential employees. Dinner was okay ... I really did not care for it because the beef tasted gamy.

The presentation was a little long but enjoyable. We sang Cal songs...I don't know any of the words. Awkward, being a current student. The best part was the honoree of the night, Mr. Haas. He spoke about Levi, his strong connection to Cal and one other particular interesting story. As he told it, the day he graduated from Cal was the same day Stanford was holding their graduation. At that time, students only wore black gowns and black tassels. He told his parents that he would be back in a few hours. As it turned out, he stood in line at Stanford's graduation, had his named called out, and received a scroll. Everyone cheered and laughed about the story of crashing Stanford's graduation.

It was a great night with dancing at the end and mingling. I encourage all students to take advantage of these great opportunities to be a part of the Alumni network and attending fancy night galas.

I am off to graduate tomorrow. I don't think my parents will let me run over to Stanford, but I'll think about it...

Finals week

Things are starting to wind down. Yesterday was the last day of instruction, and finals start this Thursday and continue into next week.

Group projects are finally done and over with! Four of my classes required group projects and, of course, they're all due at the end of the semester. It's been hectic these past few weeks scheduling time to meet with my groups outside of class. To me, these are more draining than anything else at school. Hopefully I get lucky next semester and only have one or two group projects.

It's sad to know that the Seniors will soon be gone. At least most of them will be working in San Francisco or San Jose, so it won't be too difficult to meet up every now and then. I've been asking my friends what they plan on doing over the Summer. Some have full-time jobs, some have internships, and some will be overseas. Hopefully some of us can get together over the break and go to Tahoe, or Vegas, or maybe a road trip to some place fun.

2009 McGill Canada Case Competition Part 3

Well, here we are the finals day. I have watched the team leave to go get their case and the boys and I do a quick "Go Bears" for them in the hallway...now it is up to them. FAST FORWARD....

Saturday morning, my boys and I go to watch the teams presentation. Christina, Jenny and Michael come into the room with great poise and readiness, I already know that poor Michael is sick with a cold, so I am anticipating that he is not feeling his best. Christina gives the opening and she nails it! Jenny follows and is wonderful and Michael, even though sick is perfect. I couldn't stop smiling. The judges were not easy, and they handled the questions well.

I stayed and wached 9 more teams present including the second presentation for our team. Again, they were on, even better than the last presentation, I was very proud of them. The questions from the judges went more smoothly this time since the team anticipated their weak points of their analysis. The team was balanced in who answered each question, and they supported each other very well.

OK, so you are waiting to hear...well the finals dinner was held in an beautiful venue, and the french food that was served was delicious, oh that wasn't what you wanted to hear....

Well, the awards started and WE WON THIRD PLACE!!!! I was so happy for the team! I think they were somewhat dazed that they did as well as they did. Judges were very quick to come up and compliment their presentations. First place went to USC and second went to National University of Singapore. Yes, the only representatives from the United States were from California!!! So we all took lots of pictures, smiled and smiled some more and then off they went to play some more. I would have gone, but I had two very happy kids (they had heard the news of our win) to come back to.

So home we come to California with big smiles on our faces and one more award to add to that ever growing awards case in the Undergraduate Office.

To Christina Ting, Jenny Cheng and Michael Chen, you were a fabulous team, it was an honor to be with you at MMICC 2009.




Posted by Dinko Lakic for Janet Amador

2009 McGill Canada Case Competition Part 2

Well, I can tell you that if the competition was about snow tubing Berkeley just hit the ball right out of the park. Ok, let me start at the beginning.

The drive was about 1 hour to a snow tubing area which we owned for the day. No outsiders, it belonged to all of these wild college kids, advisors and of course two cute kids (mother's prejudice!) Before we got rolling (literally) we were ushered into the hall with the roaring fire, and the sweet smell of maple syrup. This hall would be the place for our sugar shack experience after tubing.

The weather was yucky at first, a kind of snowy rain, and the snow on the ground was very icy and sllllliiiiiicccckkkk. So we all got our tubes and got on the moving sidewalk that took us uppppppp the hill. My oldest Chris was the first kid down the hill and my youngest Craig soon followed with a couple of students. I got up to the top, decided I had better go down by myself because I was going to scream all the way down, which I did. The students, Michael, Jen and Christina, were already going down hills, did a train with 4 tubes (that was very fun even when they put me in the front) and they even went down in the rafts that held up to 13 students...no I did not try that. There were some students who got tubed. This meant that others layered tubes over their heads and then in some cases gently rolled the person around in the snow until...well I would assume they said stop at some point. Luckily none of us volunteered for that one. My boys stayed out till the very end, I found the fire in the lodge to be just right after many runs down the hill.

The next experience was the sugar shack. All I can say is that you put maple syrup on everything in sight. We started with some vegetables (no syrup for these) and then deep fried bacon, sausages, ham, an egg cake (not sure how to describe it), maple syrup pie, pancakes, and a cake. All very sweet and well just really sweet. The end of the meal was a maple syrup taffy. They heat up the maple syrup and then pull it as they cool it over snow (clean I hope) and then roll it onto a stick like a lollipop. I can tell you that this was an interesting experience that you do it once and that is probably more than enough.

We were entertained by a student from Finland who led us in a song, and then it was time to get rolling. Many napped on the way home, having enjoyed lots of fun and food.

There was rest time and then our team, the team from Singapore and the advisor from Copenhagen were treated to a walk in the underground. Since the weather can be so cold and wet they have built 3 miles of underground shopping. If you are a shopper this is amazing. We walked through quickly without opening our wallets. Then off to a great Italian dinner and back to the hotel for an early night sleep.

The team is organized and ready to go. They have emailed me about their plan for the day, they have slept well and are ready to start the case. So we wish them luck, we keep our bear paws crossed and we wait until tomorrow night to see how we fared.



Posted by Dinko Lakic for Janet Amador

2009 McGill Canada Case Competition Part 1

Yes, we are here, and we are anxiously waiting for today's major competition. No, this is not case day, but rather a competition that we may have difficulty winning...it is snow tubing. I am worried about our wonderful case team, Michael, Christina and Jen have no experience in this very competitive area, there lack of experience may be a problem, have no fear, I brought 3 weapons with me, my two boys (Chris 11, and Craig 8) and a handy snowball maker for pelting the enemy. We leave for this adventure in a couple of hours, so how we fair will have to be continued on the next blog...keep your fingers crossed.

Otherwise we are doing great! The team has had a chance to see Montreal with an intense 4 hour walk through the downtown and surrounding areas. The weather has been holding steady at a balmy 4 degrees C, so we have been lucky not to battle any sub-zero freezing temperatures. Last night we had our welcome dinner at Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History which included a tour and a brief history or our northern neighbor.

At the dinner the order of the presentations was done and we are number 7 of 12 teams. We will present at 11:00 and then again at 4:30 on Saturday. At this competition every school presents twice to a different set (7) judges and the top 3 schools are chosen after those presentations. So Michael, Jen and Christina have their work cut out for them with 2 presentations and a 22 hour case prep.

Since I know you all would like to know which schools are attending here is the list:

• USC
• University of Auckland
• Thammasat (Thailand)
• Queen's University (Canada)
• National University of Singapore
• Copenhagen Business School
• Corvinus University of Budapest
• Helsinki School of Economics
• Koc University (Turkey)
• Maastricht Unviersity
• UC Berkeley
• McGill University

More to follow...



Posted by Dinko Lakic for Janet Amador

Senior gift committee & etiquette dinner

Thursday I went to a meeting for students interested in helping out with the annual Senior Gift to Cal. Last year, a record 45% of Haas graduating seniors made a pledge to contribute. That's an incredible number of people, and we're going to do our best to beat it this year.

After the meeting, I headed to an etiquette dinner for the Haas undergraduates put on by the alumni office. The event was surprisingly fun. Each table had at least one Haas graduate or MBA student as our host. The etiquette expert (I wish I remembered her name) was upbeat and funny at times, which set the tone for a fun, light-hearted dining experience. The Wells Fargo Room buzzed with conversation and occasional laughter. As we ate our dinner and learned about etiquette, I kept thinking to myself "oh yeah, I remember hearing that before". It was definitely a good refresher, and, of course, I learned something new. Well worth it!