Mountain biking, kayaking, sharing Thanksgiving dinner. Although these activities are not on the Mentor Program schedule, students and their mentors enjoy them together just the same.

And though that goes beyond the aspirations Alumni Relations Director Maria Radulovic holds for the ten-year-old program, many mentoring relationships do progress from officialdom to friendship.

Radulovic’s biggest challenge is finding enough alumni to feed the ever-lengthening queue of students requesting a mentor.

Which is one reason why, last fall, Radulovic introduced long-distance mentoring via e-mail. With e-mentoring, as it’s called, still in its first year, reviews are mixed, but there are enough positive reports for Radulovic to know it’s here to stay.

Yates Dew ’03MBA and his mentor, Miles Jones ’91MBA, have one of the purest e-mentor relationships; Jones lives in Milan, Italy, and their only contact has been through e-mail. Dew is thrilled with the results.

“It’s really amazing how much of a relationship I’ve built with him—not only in a short time, but just based on e-mail—and how available Miles has been for me. He’ll send me a philosophical e-mail,” says Dew, who admits to being a career changer and adds that he half expected Jones to give up on him once he understood this.

“But he’s kind of taken this, ‘Hey, Yates, it’s OK’ approach. He’ll say, ‘Let’s work through this whenever you’re ready. Whenever you figure out what you want to do, that’s fine, but until then we’re gonna keep talking,’ and then he’ll send me a feel-good e-mail.”

For Jones’ part, “I’m surprised by Dew’s maturity, his diverse experience, and the non-traditional career path he favors.”

Most recently, Dew e-mailed Jones to tell him that he is planning to move to Los Angeles this summer to pursue his interest in music. One reason Dew was paired with Jones is because Dew thought he might go into real estate development, which is what Jones does, as managing partner, AIG/Lincoln Italia.

“He was completely encouraging,” says Dew, who recently produced a self-titled CD for which he wrote the songs, sang, and played the guitar, drums, and piano.

“He sent me this long e-mail talking about how the process of recording a CD can be equated to real estate development. You’re taking a project and investing a short amount of time, a lot of money, and effort, then trying to figure out how to turn it around, market it, and flip it so you can move on to the next CD or real estate project,” explains Dew.

Raghavan Santhanam ’03MBA is just beginning to take full advantage of his e-mentor relationship. He blames the slow start on himself. Santhanam, from India, is living in the United States for the first time and acknowledges that his focus on making a successful transition during the first semester probably kept him from communicating more frequently with his mentor, Kathy Gersch ’94MBA, vice president of finance and strategic planning for Nordstrom in Seattle.

“When I sent her an e-mail, even in her position, she replied to each one of them. She, in fact, replies very quickly.”

“He’s got a really nice background,” Gersch says of Santhanam and his former job in production and quality for Liz Claiborne in Indonesia.

“The biggest obstacle,” she says, “is trying to find a way to get over the hurdles that are associated with long-distance communication and encourage students to take advantage and use the resource.”
Relationships based on e-mail can be tricky, says Sherron Bienvenu, associate professor in management communication. “It’s a real opportunity, but I don’t think it’s for everyone. It’s like some people were able to be pen pals; some were not. It always takes two people to build a relationship.”

Even with the difficulties inherent in e-mail relationships, Radulovic sees the program as an opportunity to involve alumni from outside Georgia.

“Alumni all over the globe often call or e-mail me, asking, ‘What can I do to help?’ and this is just a perfect combination,” she says.

Mary Trimbell ’03EvMBA probably would agree with Radulovic. Her e-mentor is Tom McEvoy ’86EMBA, president of U.S. Plastic Lumber in West Chester, PA.

“I’m very lucky that Tom is so easy to talk to and so easy to open up to. The e-mentor concept can be trickier than in person. You don’t get as much feedback. That’s what I’m saying about Tom. He’s very encouraging, very positive.”

Says McEvoy, “It gives [Mary] a person who she can address any question to, and I’m not grading her. All I care about is that she walks away from our conversations saying, ‘OK, I got another little idea that I can try.’ ”

McEvoy is impressed with Trimbell’s blunt questions. Her questions are so much to the point that he told her he thinks she would be good in sales.

Interesting, because Trimbell describes herself as introverted. “Maybe I’m not a natural-born salesperson,” she says, “but it may be an area that I wouldn’t say no to. Sometimes someone else sees things that you don’t see about yourself.”

Radulovic views networking as one of the most valuable aspects of the Mentor Program. “Networking is frequently about eighty-five percent or more of getting a job, especially in this challenging and highly competitive business environment. It is important for students to get into the habit of connecting with people in the business community, as many undergraduate and graduate students and alumni can give partial credit for their internships and/or jobs to their mentors and their mentor contacts.”

Lynne White ’99MBA hired two of her student-protégés. White, an Accenture manager in Atlanta, helped Alan Shaw ’01MBA get his job in Accenture’s Houston office. Another of her former student-protégés, Karan Agarwal ’02MBA landed an Accenture internship last summer.

For both Shaw and Agarwal, White helped them practice for their job interviews.

“In consulting in general and strategy consulting in particular, the interview process is different. You actually are given a business case that you have to solve during the interview. It’s hard, and like anything else, you get better by practice, so I would do mock interviews with them.”

She still keeps in touch with both of her former mentees and is working with a third.

When Roger J. Colson ’99MBA was still a student, his mentor was David Spear ’97EvMBA, current president of the Goizueta Alumni Association Board. The two have remained friends, and the relationship recently opened up an opportunity for Colson, senior manager in business development for Peregrine Systems.

Spear, global account manager for The Coca-Cola Company, invited Colson to an alumni board meeting, where Colson learned about the Atlanta Business School Association (ABSA), a networking organization of Atlanta-based alumni of the nation’s top twenty-five business schools. Goizueta needed an ABSA representative, and Colson volunteered, thus becoming Goizueta Club Chairman of the ABSA.

“It’s a great opportunity for me to network but also for me to get Goizueta’s message across to some of our peer institutions,” Colson says.

Though Rob Howell’s ’03MBA mentor has opened up summer internship possibilities for him, Howell isn’t sure he’ll take advantage because his career direction has shifted from telecommunications (his mentor works for BellSouth) to renewable energy. But internship or not, Howell describes his relationship with his mentor, John D. Karry ’92MBA, as “fantastic.”
Both are kayakers and mountain bikers.

“We’ve gotten to be friends, and we’ve done a lot of fun stuff together sports-wise, which has led to introductions to some of his friends who work in areas I’m more interested in,” says Howell. “One of the great things about the program is that John is not somebody I would necessarily bump into on my own.”

The same probably could be said of Bill Holden ’72MBA and Jorge Palacio ’03MBA. But as a result of the mentoring program, Palacio, a native of Colombia spent Thanksgiving last year with Holden’s family in Bucyrus, Ohio.

Shortly after Palacio arrived in Bucyrus, Holden took him by the FC Banc Corp./Farmers Citizens Bank, where Holden was president and CEO.

“He showed me the things he did, and he did a couple of financial things with me,” says Palacio. “I know that if anything comes up, if I have a problem or an interview and need to know something, he’ll always be available.”

From Holden’s viewpoint, “All you can share is your experiences and your opinion and, ultimately, they have to make their own decisions. I get the satisfaction of helping somebody from Goizueta and seeing him develop, and I try to be there as a resource. He’s free to ask me anything he wants, and it’s between him and me.”

As an undergraduate, James Petkun ’03BBA initially was concerned that his mentor, Andrea Rodriguez ’00BBA, an associate with the National Basketball Association, would have little to offer him because of their age difference.

“But I was surprised how she’s only three years removed from Emory, and she’s still just like me. It gives me a chance to ask advice from someone who was exactly in my position not too long ago. I’m getting a chance to speak to an ex-student who has made choices that I’m about to make.”

Linking up with successful business people makes an impact on students, Radulovic says. This was especially evident to her last fall when she invited David Kusiel ’84BBA and Chip Gross ’97MBA, Mentor Program co-chairs and Alumni Association Board members, to take her place in speaking to incoming students during orientation.

“It made a big difference,” explains Radulovic, “because the students looked at them and said, ‘Wow, they are successful, and one of them could potentially be my mentor.’”

Every mentor-mentee match may not be perfect. For them, Radulovic urges diligence.

“Alumni know a lot of people, including former classmates who may be able to assist them. I always try to make the point with students that if they don’t think their mentor is the perfect match, ask the mentor if they can help in additional ways. You just never know.”

In the case of Dan Branch ’03MBA, he and his mentor, Tara Whitehead ’93MBA, were to meet in September when she was due to travel from London to Atlanta for the Alumni Awards Dinner. That, of course, wasn’t possible, following the Sept. 11 attacks, but she paid for his ticket to the event anyway. Branch went and says he met some interesting people.

Whitehead, client services managing principal, Communications Sector, IBM, has been a mentor for six years.

“For students, it’s a link to the business world. We are a very network-centric business community, and hopefully I provide them a link to my network, inside and outside IBM,” says Whitehead, who describes mentoring as “one of the most rewarding experiences I have had as an alum.”

Rodrigo Laniado ’83BBA is mentoring long-distance as well. As president of Sociedad Nacional de Galapagos, he lives in Ecuador, so his mentoring relationship is strictly e-mail.

Laniado and his student-protégé, JurisVitols-Gonzalez ’02MBA, from Venezuela, haven’t had much contact, but Vitols-Gonzalez hopes Laniado can provide feedback about “what he has done that enabled him to succeed after graduation” because Vitols-Gonzalez, plans, eventually, to return to his home in South America just as Laniado did.

“It feels good to help someone,” comments Laniado. “It is a way to help and also to remember times at Emory.”

Colson takes that thought further. “Once you find somebody to mentor, it’s almost like you’re grooming them so they can do the same for somebody else,” he says. “It’s kind of the pay-it-forward process.”

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