Ties that bind: EarthLink
EarthLink President and CEO Garry Betty
was a hit when he visited Professor Benn Konsynski’s EMBA class last fall. “Garry and
I have been on several forums as a ‘fireside chat’ model of interview. I do the ‘Charlie Rose’ role,” says Konsynski, the George S. Craft professor of decision and information analysis. “Garry and his people respect the school.”
The number of Goizueta alumni working at EarthLink is growing, and while most ties are informal for now, alumni who work at the Atlanta-based Internet Service Provider see value in staying in touch with Goizueta and each other.
Elizabeth Halkos ’01MBA, EarthLink brand manager, was client lead on EarthLink’s 2002–2003 entry in the Goizueta Marketing Strategy Competition, in which EarthLink’s team placed third.
“The team was fantastic,” says Halkos.“I am passionate about the school and the students, and my involvement in the Goizueta legacy is very important to me.”
EarthLink’s Senior Product Manager in Customer Optimization Erik Berkule ’03MBA remains active at Goizueta “as an advisor for the two clubs I was president of—Net Impact and Goizueta Art Studio.”
Interacting with other alumni is a big plus for Adam M. Naide ’88BBA. “It’s a great experience to be working so closely with other alums,” says the director of customer experience and loyalty. “There’s an environment of mutual respect that’s hard to describe.”
That environment was useful to Gil Winters ’95MBA when he joined EarthLink less than a year ago. Winters says he found the network of alumni an icebreaker. “I got in touch with all the alumni I could, so it was a way of fairly quickly getting to know some people here,” says EarthLink’s director of customer self help.
“We have five people working at EarthLink from my class,” notes Nick Gurnick ’03MBA, outbound sales program manager. “We’ve got a good network of alumni here—about fifteen.”
Both Gurnick and Naide are mentors to Goizueta students, as is Alex Hua Chen ’02MBA, EarthLink senior financial analyst.
For Brent Cobb ’98MBA, vice president of EarthLink wireless, and Greg Rothman ’01MBA, senior dial-up product manager, their Goizueta education gets a regular workout. “I don’t know where I would have found the tools and/or the knowledge that I learned there,” Cobb observes.
Rothman says Goizueta “taught me some frameworks I can use to put some structure around complex efforts and problems.”—Carol Carter