Alex Birkner (Psych’23)
Founder, Birk
Alex Birkner is on a mission to revolutionize the beverage industry.
In addition to being a full-time student, Birkner is an NCAA varsity alpine skier for CU and founder of a yerba mate company with a unique twist on sponsorship.
“When I started the company, I wasn’t in the business school yet, but my teammates would tell me about what they were learning, and I thought it would be useful to learn enough accounting and finance to be able to help and support those areas of a company,” he said.
That led him to the business minor at Leeds that, alongside his psychology major, has helped him develop an empathetic leadership style.
“Learning how to keep everyone around you involved and happy is probably what’s helped me most,” he said, mentioning the venture launch class as a favorite “that really shows how valuable the business minor is.”
His company, Birk, sells a traditional yerba mate that Birkner originally experienced while
visiting family in Argentina. He replaced his morning coffee with yerba mate as a remedy for the upset stomach and dehydration he got en route to the ski slopes. After learning that commercially available yerba mates had lots of added sugars and preservatives, Birkner developed his own recipe. He works with a manufacturer in Ecuador that provides locally sourced organic materials for Birk.
What’s unique about the business is its sponsorship program, Birk Dreamers. Rather than paying influencers to drink and promote its products, Birk helps athletes, artists, students and others to pursue their dreams—whether it’s through connecting them to resources or providing financial support.
“We’re trying to support those individuals that quite haven't quite made it, but are very dedicated to their path,” he said.
For Birkner and his partner, fellow CU Boulder student Bobby Ryan, it’s about giving a new generation of dreamers the kind of support they enjoyed from parents and others who helped pave the way for them as skiers and scholars.
While Birkner said there has been investor interest in the company, he’s more interested in the long term—how much he can grow the Boulder market, and how he can expand the Dreamers program—than a short sale.
“It means a lot more to me to see people be able to pursue a passion and a dream than it does to have some some cash,” he said.
Amber Hughes (MBA’22)
Real Estate Investment Associate, RCLCO Fund Advisors
Everyone loves a winner. But for Amber Hughes, winning isn’t everything.
Before enrolling in the Leeds MBA, Hughes spent six years working in marketing for the Chicago Blackhawks, including the tail end of a dynasty that saw them win the Stanley Cup three times in six years.
In a parity-driven league like the NHL, though, the fall from grace is often steep; Hughes said the experience of being with the organization through the lows that followed its championships offered valuable perspective.
“It was humbling to be a part of the downslide, after such an exciting time period,” she said. “You learn a lot about the organization and your role when things are not great.”
Now, instead of building dynasties, she’s into building real estate. Hughes said she’s always been interested in the industry, and moved to Colorado to be close to opportunity, along with the chance to explore some new national parks and hiking trails. She choose the Leeds MBA for the network and the immersive academic and professional development environment it provides.
"I think committing to something like a graduate program ensures you will follow through with your goals,” she said. “It’s so easy to say, ‘I’m going to do this online course, or watch this video,’ but it’s easier to follow through if you’re part of a robust program like the MBA.”
Hughes also plays leadership roles within the graduate Leeds community—she is treasurer and a vice president of the MBA Association and president of the Graduate Real Estate Association, and also was part of a team that represented CU in winning the national Colvin Case Study Challenge.
“The smart people you get to work with and learn from at Leeds have given me a great network,” she said. “Everyone has a diverse set of backgrounds and goals beyond the MBA, which makes the program valuable.”
Hughes also completed an internship with Palisade Partners that was development focused, and while she enjoyed the experience and company, it helped her realize her real passion was on the financial side. That’s what she’ll be doing as a real estate investment associate with RCLCO after a post-graduation vacation in Europe.
“My internship was a great learning opportunity, but I really want to dig more into the financials of commercial real estate,” she said. “It’s a vital part of the industry and I think that’s my next step.”
Atul Raguveer (Fin’22)
Investment Banking Analyst, Morgan Stanley
Atul Raguveer is not the first person to question the value of high-school student government. But he might be the first to do so after serving four years with Leeds Student Government, including a term as president.
“It’s shown me a lot about leadership,” he said. “It’s interesting to see who I was as a freshman, to who I am now, and knowing LSG was this constant that shaped how I work with people, relate to others and be a part of the community.”
You might think he’s off to a future in politics, but Raguveer has long had his eye on finance, specifically investment banking. He’s well known as LSG president, but is just as passionate about Global Platinum Securities, a low-profile student fund with members across eight prestigious schools, including Harvard, the London School of Economics and the University of Pennsylvania.
“It’s a lot of fun learning how to invest alongside some of the smartest people in the country,” he said.
That eagerness to develop a network has been a recurring theme for Raguveer since his freshman year, when he went on an industry trek to New York and got to meet leaders at the major finance companies. He credits his willingness to put himself out there with landing a coveted internship as a summer analyst with Morgan Stanley; it was his third as a Leeds student.
“The alumni network for investment banking is small, but very strong,” Raguveer said. “There’s no chance I would have gotten into Morgan Stanley without the Leeds network.”
While at Morgan Stanley, he took it upon himself to work closely with the bank’s mergers and acquisitions team in the tech division, where he’ll return after graduating this spring.
“On top of the other work I had to do, I built a fully operational merger model between two public companies,” he said. “That was something I’m really proud of. I’m really looking forward to going back.”
When he makes it back to New York, he expects to continue exploring a city he loves, along with finding time to play basketball—and hopefully resume his other hobby, saltwater fish tanks.
“I actually had a company in high school selling high-end saltwater fish to high-net-worth clients,” he said. “I sold it last year, but now I’m dreaming of getting a big tank in the near future.”
Ryan Adzima (MBA’22)
Vice President of Acquisitions and Finance, Meriwether
If you ask Ryan Adzima for one word—other than skiing—describing why he left northern New Jersey for Denver, the answer would probably be innovation.
“In real estate, change comes slowly in Manhattan, because if you’re getting those rents, you’re happy with the money you’re making,” Adzima said. “If you want to do something different, you come to a place like Colorado, where you have room to develop new products and assets, and try something different.”
He found both the geography and industry shift he sought in the Leeds MBA.
“Whether I spoke to someone like Mike Kercheval (executive director of the CU Real Estate Center) or Helen Zucchini (graduate admissions director), they would always tell me, ‘Here’s another person you should talk to,’” he said. “It helped me feel very comfortable and familiar with the real estate program.”
Ironically, when it came to internships, Adzima found himself back in New York, working with prestigious SL Green Realty. He had a great experience with the underwriting team, but most enjoyed the chance to opportunity to work on a marketing effort.
The landlord’s iconic Summit One Vanderbilt had just opened, and Adzima hit on a low-cost way to compete with the other skyline experiences available in New York—hire a bunch of social media influencers to do the heavy lifting. Presenting that strategy to the marketing team was a highlight, though he’s more excited by redevelopment projects in Colorado than the bright lights of Manhattan.
“The ballpark district in lower downtown sold me on what I want to do in real estate—the way they redeveloped all those old warehouses into something that’s still functional and adds to the sense of community,” Adzima said. “That’s something I took away from my experience at SL Green—the idea that you’re there to build a better community.”
His education is helping him in his search as well as his part-time work with Pure Development. Through CUREC, he was able to complete the Adventures in Commercial Real Estate, or A.CRE, financial modeling accelerator—an ambitious extracurricular experience that he feels will be required to work in the field 10 years from now.
“The Real Estate Center connected me with the most incredible opportunities,” Adzima said. “I go to every event they post, because it’s always a great opportunity to meet people or learn something new.”
Jennifer Howard (MBA’22)
When Jennifer Howard was diagnosed with cancer in 2019, it was of course a scary moment—but also a reaffirmation that she belonged in the life sciences field.
“I’m more proud of that diagnosis than anything—I beat it and it has honestly made me who I am today,” she said.
It’s actually how she became involved with a couple of Leeds PhDs who wanted to use 3D printing to improve the cancer drug-discovery process. Camila Uzcategui and Johnny Hergert had the engineering know-how, but they needed an MBA’s insights as they looked to formally launch Vitro3D.
Howard’s insights were particularly valuable because of her career in pharmaceuticals. Though she studied to be a counselor at Old Dominion University, it wasn’t until she took an analytics course that she found her calling.
“I realized my two passions are people and problem solving, regardless of what industry I was working in,” she said.
She became manager of commercial business analytics at Silvergate Pharmaceuticals, a startup that grew tremendously during her nearly five years with the company, quintupling its headcount and going from a portfolio of four products to 13 following its acquisition.
“I fell in love with high-growth ventures—it’s intoxicating,” she said.
When the company was sold, Howard followed her new passion for startups to the Leeds MBA program, where she is part of the High-Growth Venture Fellowship program. Leeds’ reputation in entrepreneurship was attracted her to the MBA, along with network development and experiential learning opportunities.
“As a graduate student, you can collaborate not just with other MBAs, but with Cami and Johnny, in engineering, or with law students,” she said.
Though Vitro3D has pivoted toward dental aligners, Howard is still excited to be part of the team, and hopes to continue on after she completes her MBA. She’s keeping her options open for the future, doing some consulting for early-stage companies as she figures out where to go next.
“My soul thrives when I’m working in entrepreneurship,” she said. “I keep going back and forth as to what I want to do next, but I know it will be something in the high-growth space.”
Emma Pearson (Fin, EBio’22)
Associate, Boston Consulting Group and Founder, Sea the Change
How does a girl growing up in landlocked Colorado become a passionate ocean conservationist and enthusiastic scuba diver?
Emma Pearson said it’s a case of too many National Geographic specials.
“It’s just one of those passion projects that has slowly evolved as I’ve gotten older, and one I feel lucky to be able to continue to pursue,” she said.
Pearson, who was honored with the Student Leader of the Year Award this spring, is keen on marine conservation—but also business, and she hopes her full-time role with Boston Consulting Group, where she interned last summer, allows her to connect those passions in a way that creates positive change.
Pearson didn’t originally plan to study business at CU Boulder—she called checking the box for Leeds when she was applying “the best last-minute decision of my life.”
“Having a business background is so essential to figuring out solutions to major environmental issues,” she said. “That’s something that I’m excited to work on early in my career.”
That’s not just at Boston Consulting. Pearson also completed internships at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where she was able to conduct research on whales alongside colleagues around the country; she also defended her honors thesis on the topic as part of her CU studies.
Part of what interested her in Boston Consulting is its work in the sustainability space, especially with the World Wildlife Fund. As an intern, she cold-contacted the CEO to see if she could learn more about the company’s commitment to sustainability, and was rewarded with a one-on-one conversation.
“I think I gained a little bold confidence from my experience at Leeds, and from all the mentorship I’ve received,” Pearson said.
Some of that confidence also came from a First-Year Global Experience trip. In her freshman year, she did consulting work with a company in South Africa, then visited to present her suggestions and findings to the business. That was her first taste of consulting, and led to her joining the Leeds Consulting Group.
She also credited her scholarships—including the Leeds Honors and Scholars programs—with helping her find her path.
“The scholarship programs at Leeds haven’t just helped me develop as a leader and as an individual—they’ve helped me define where I want my career to go, which is incredibly powerful,” she said.
Marie Axalan (Fin’21, MSBA’22)
Intern, Roboyo and Half a Million Kids
Businesses see data as the next big thing in making better decisions, connecting to customers and improving sales.
Marie Axalan sees data as a way to help companies better meet their missions.
“Helping people with diverse perspectives to have a voice is really important to me,” said Axalan, who immigrated to the United States from the Philippines. “I’m very interested in the power of data, and how it can help people see the world more clearly.”
Specifically, she’s interested in how the business world can use data to better address societal challenges. That’s how she wound up pursuing a master’s in business analytics after completing her undergraduate degree at Leeds.
“I knew the master’s degree would give me a level up on other people trying to enter the job market,” she said.
An excellent student, Axalan won a coveted scholarship from software giant Alteryx that helped her focus on a full-time graduate degree and gave additional opportunities, like access to boot camps and machine-learning tools. And staying in school gave the aspiring data scientist additional practical experience, from a strong network of peers and faculty to a fourth Leeds internship; all of them have been in automation, analytics and data management.
Her role with the nonprofit Half a Million Kids has been the most meaningful for her, and is a blueprint for the kind of career she’d like to have.
“I’m interested in the intersection between data and social issues,” she said. “My internship is showing me how to leverage my data analytics and data science skills to help solve social issues.” The company uses Alteryx, giving her opportunities to use her education in building processes for the business. “It’s an amazing learning experience, getting to build something with my blood, sweat and tears that’s really doing good for community.”
Her experiences at Leeds have guided her in that direction, as well, including the chance to take graduate classes alongside professionals who have worked in nonprofits and her involvement with the Multicultural Student Association and the dean’s cabinet.
After completing an internship with Roboyo, Axalan accepted an offer to return full time as an automation engineer—a logical next step as she pursues a future in data science. An avid traveler who went on a trip with the First-Year Global Experience and studied abroad in Spain, she hopes to continue exploring after graduation.
“I’ve always had an interest in seeing the world,” she said.
Will Xu (Acct, Fin, InfoMgt’22)
Asset Management Operations Analyst, Goldman Sachs
All Hummel Scholarship winners at CU Boulder get the same message from the family that supports the award: Pay it forward.
Will Xu has taken that to heart.
The first-generation college student benefited from his high school’s FBLA club, so he established a Phi Beta Lambda chapter—the college equivalent of the business club—at Leeds. He took part in KeyBank’s summer Business Leadership Program as a pre-college student, then became a counselor in the program as an upperclassman. He got a great job at Goldman Sachs, so he started working as an employer relations ambassador for the school.
“The reason I got involved as an ambassador was to help other students through the process of going to career fairs and meet-and-greet events,” he said “Anything I can do to help companies engage students is my way of paying it forward.”
This summer, Xu will leave Boulder for Salt Lake City, where he’ll begin his career with Goldman Sachs in an asset management and operations role. He’s excited to begin, and said it will be a good step toward his long-term goal of creating more transparency in the finance industry.
“One day, I’d love to be a lead investor in underprivileged communities, helping direct capital toward startups and small businesses in communities that could use support,” he said.
He’s got a head start in that arena, too, having done a little strategic consulting for a CU student startup, Shivoo, a tool for group meetups and events. While he’s not as involved lately, “it was really cool to help it get off the ground,” he said.
Xu said he’s been able to pursue opportunities like Shivoo and Phi Beta Lambda, as well as the business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi, thanks to his scholarships, “which allowed me to be more involved on campus instead of working full time to pay for school.”
Leading Phi Beta Lambda is one of the experiences he’ll most treasure from his years at Leeds.
“I wanted to give back to the community that really sparked my interest in business in high school,” he said. “I wanted to create a driven community of students who will represent CU at statewide and national case competitions. Last summer, we had one of our members go to nationals and place in the top 10, which was extremely gratifying.”
Olivia McKeen (Mktg’23)
Intern, Sol Vae
Olivia McKeen is good at turning tragedy into alacrity.
When her family lost their Louisville home to the Marshall Fire, McKeen—like many others—was in shock, but she quickly pivoted to how she could help others affected by the disaster.
“I was able to get out safely, my parents got out, our pets got out,” she said. “We even got some of our stuff out. And that was certainly not the case for everyone.”
Enter the Marshall Fire Resource Guide, a comprehensive website for those who lost their homes as well as people seeking to support displaced families. It’s the result of a group project McKeen led in her digital marketing course to develop and market a website.
The idea came from a Slack channel for fire victims, which had a lot of information, but was poorly organized. “And a lot of older people who lost their homes don’t know how to use Slack or Facebook, but they’re comfortable with a website,” McKeen said.
Those audience considerations helped drive the site’s design aesthetic, which is equal parts professional and accessible. Even its logo and the shade of blue she used were chosen “because it’s a calming color,” she said.
McKeen is no stranger to digital marketing—she started doing internships in the industry in high school, as a way to explore her interest in the discipline—and is currently interning with startup Sol Vae, founded by Bridget Thorpe (OpsMgmt, E’ship’09). That opportunity came about after Thorpe spoke at a networking event at Leeds.
“Right now, it’s just the two of us, which is exciting,” she said. “It’s like getting to be the head of marketing, with a lot of freedom to try new things and see what works.”
She’s also very involved on campus, including membership in Delta Sigma Pi, Women in Business, the Dean’s Student Cabinet and Kappa Alpha Theta.
Developing the website was equal parts group and passion project—and she continues to update it with news and resources—but McKeen is now in talks with Boulder County about a takeover of the site, to further broaden its reach.
The project has helped McKeen think about a career doing digital marketing for a nonprofit.
“I wanted to come out of Leeds with a meaningful degree and a meaningful job,” she said. “I would love to use my degree do something that helps people.”
Jordyn Gerstle-Goodman (Info Mgmt, Fin ’21; MSBA’22)
Organization Development Data Analyst Intern, Disney
When she applied for an internship with Disney, Jordyn Gerstle-Goodman knew what kind of odds she was up against.
“I told myself if I just got to the first round of interviews, that’s an accomplishment,” she said.
Four rounds of interviews later, Gerstle-Goodman had the kind of experience any student dreams of—in exactly the field she’s passionate about (people analytics), with a supportive team that challenged her to grow. It’s gone so well that the fall position was extended through the spring.
“Disney is very encouraging of career exploration—there are senior vice presidents who will take time out of their days just to talk to interns and try to get them hired,” she said.
Her Disney internship is Gerstle-Goodman’s fourth; most of them have revolved around an interest in data science she developed at Leeds.
“I originally wanted to be a corporate attorney, but in the middle of my undergrad, I learned about this career, data scientist, that I’d never heard of before,” she said. “I thought it was the coolest thing ever, to play with statistics and math and algorithms in business.”
Most data scientists have graduate degrees that prepare them for the advanced statistical and modeling techniques they use at work, so Gerstle-Goodman pursued the one-year master’s in Business Analytics immediately after completing her Leeds bachelor’s degree.
“My graduate classes have gone far beyond what I learned in my undergrad,” she said. “I’m sure my career will start as an analyst, but with what I’ve learned, I think I’ll be able to get to that level much more quickly than I otherwise might have.”
An enthusiastic traveler who’s visited nearly 40 states, Gerstle-Goodman received scholarship support to help finance her degree, including one from Alteryx that’s closely aligned to her career goals.
“The money obviously helps, but there are also these great learning opportunities,” she said. “I get to attend coding boot camps and have access to Alteryx tools, in addition to job opportunities.”
She’s also a member of the Diverse Scholars Program, which aligns with her goal of using people analytics to improve equality in business.
“My goal is to do work that helps everyone feel that they’re represented and belong,” she said. “I really see that as being an area that will really benefit companies, both in an HR capacity and in improving their customers’ experience.”
Amanda Freeberg Donovan (Mktg’03)
Executive Director, Don and Lorraine Freeberg Foundation
Amanda Freeberg Donovan still remembers the announcement of the naming gift that gave the Leeds School of Business both a name and a purpose in shaping the future to be more sustainable.
“I remember discussing it in one of my classes—we talked about what it meant and what the future of the school might look like as a result,” Donovan said. “And it’s fun to go back and see the new buildings and the opportunities today’s students have, and sort of connect that with my experience.”
With that perspective, it’s no surprise Donovan is such a CU Boulder booster. She sits on the Leeds Advisory Board, is active in CU’s alumni association, and has served as a mentor and leader on other Leeds boards. And she regularly shares updates about the school with her networks as a LeedsLink digital ambassador.
“I like to stay updated on awards, research, students and rankings—and I want people to know how awesome Leeds and CU Boulder are—so I appreciate that there’s an easy way to share the latest news,” she said.
While Donovan studied marketing, her career path has not been limited to one industry. She credits her overall Leeds experience, including classes in entrepreneurship, as a reason. Companies hired her “because they could tell I had those important communication, writing and personal skills,” Donovan said. “Those were things that I built while I was at Leeds.”
Her experience in marketing and banking set her up to become executive director of the Don and Lorraine Freeberg Foundation, where she oversees grant making to organizations working with children, education, healthcare and veterans.
“The banks I worked at supported community initiatives, so I got to work with a lot of nonprofits in Boulder County, and I really enjoyed that part of the job,” she said. “My work at the foundation makes me feel like I’m making a difference on a much larger scale.”
In fact, the foundation provided important support to the Rustandy Building, connecting Leeds to the College of Engineering & Applied Science; for Donovan, it hearkens back to that day when she thought about how the Leeds gift would change CU’s future.
“It’s a beautiful space—I wish it had been there when I was a student,” she said. “I’m excited to help the business and engineering students collaborate, and to see what’s created as a result.”
Lily Combs (Mktg’24)
Intern, Early HR Solutions
Lily Combs is a Binghamton, N.Y., native, but it was through a connection in Denver that she got to work at this year’s New York Fashion Week.
She was introduced to Colorado while taking vacations there to visit family during the summer—and once she started attending CU Boulder, one of those relatives connected her to a friend in the fashion industry.
“I reached out and asked about an internship, and he said, ‘I have no idea what the summer is going to hold, but I do need help at Fashion Week,’” Combs said. “That’s been the dream for me. I told him if he was joking, it was a cruel joke.”
It was no joke, and Combs, who has been interested in a fashion career all her life, said working as an assistant to the casting director validated an idea she’s been chasing since she drew sketches of different looks and took sewing classes as a girl.
“I got to see all the different components that go into a show, and it was so rewarding to be a part of that and know this is what I’d like as a career,” she said.
She’s also counting on her Leeds education to help her get there. Combs transferred to the business school “because I really liked the reputation, the networking opportunities and the community at Leeds,” she said. “I’m seeing a lot of ties between what I’m learning in class and the work I’m doing on my internship.”
Her internship, a virtual position with a startup HR solutions company, involves supporting its marketing and social media efforts. “I’ve learned a lot—especially on LinkedIn, in terms of how businesses communicate there,” she said.
Combs also works part-time at the Dushanbe Teahouse, a Boulder institution, and gives tours of the business school as a Leeds student ambassador. When she’s not working, you’re likely to find her skiing or catching a show in Denver; “having a city nearby was a big selling point in coming to CU,” she said.
Given her interests and skills, it’s not hard to picture Combs in a fashion marketing role someday; she’s also studying entrepreneurship and global business at Leeds.
“I don’t think about tours as ‘selling Leeds,’” she said. “I remember the stress of figuring out where to go to school, and I want people to be happy if they decide to come here.”
Hayley Porter (Acct’19)
Audit associate, KPMG
Hayley Porter describes herself as a proud Buff who, despite graduating just a few years ago, is a highly active mentor to Leeds students.
And yet, so many of her family members attended CU Boulder that, as a high school student, Porter was determined to go elsewhere—“but I did a tour of CU and I really saw myself there,” she said.
While she was involved in plenty of activities as a student—from the Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity and mentorship programs to working with Teach for America as a campus campaign coordinator—Porter most fondly remembers the scholarship programs that gave her both financial support and a sense of community.
“The Leeds Scholars Program was an incredible opportunity to be part of a cohort that would challenge me, in terms of being surrounded by other driven students,” Porter said. “I was shy coming into college, and the opportunities that scholarship programs gave me helped me grow and challenge myself.”
In fact, she called the Diverse Scholars program “my home base at Leeds,” where she had opportunities to lead thanks to the support of upperclassmen in the program and staff at the Office of Diversity Affairs. She also was a Norlin Scholar, which helped her become more open-minded to new experiences and different perspectives.
That’s a spirit she shares with students today as a mentor. “I may not have as much experience as an alumnus from 10 years ago, but I remember what it’s like to be a student,” she said. “I can point out the courses and professors I really enjoyed, and answer questions about being a young professional.”
Porter’s role at KPMG came about after an internship with the company. She was interested in teaching when she first came to CU, but pivoted after taking an accounting course. Like many companies, KPMG is short-staffed coming out of the Great Resignation, “so, like many others in the firm, I have taken on a senior role to support our teams,” she said. “I am proud of how I’ve stepped up to the plate.”
An avid concertgoer who can be found on a paddleboard during summer, Porter enjoys her accounting role. In the long term, she has an eye on how to create impact in the education space: “A lot of good could be done by someone who has a business background, and also a passion for education.”
Tommy Marlier (Acct’14; MS’15)
Campus Recruiting Manager, BDO
Many Leeds graduates who earn certificates in Business of Sports go on to careers in marketing, sponsorships, events management or sales.
Tommy Marlier instead dances at halftime during Denver Nuggets home games.
He got an invitation to join the Average Joes squad through a fellow alumnus he met while doing in-game promotions for Kroenke Sports & Entertainment as a student. But his network isn’t the only reason he’s willing to bust a move at half court.
“Going to CU helped get me out of my comfort zone,” Marlier said. “It gave me a better chance to open up my circle and talk with other people.”
It also gave him the confidence to leave accounting, after dedicating his entire academic career to the discipline, and make the jump to recruiting.
“I studied accounting for five years, then another year and a half for the CPA exam—and suddenly, I was giving up on it,” he said. “But CU not only gave me the education, it taught me to follow my passions, and gave me a great business education that I could take anywhere.”
Today, Marlier works with BDO’s talent management team to recruit interns and entry-level professions from universities in the Rocky Mountains and Southwest, in addition to HR-related roles.
“You don’t work a day in your life if you love it,” he said. “What’s so invaluable and fun to me is how much I learn from the students.”
That learning is a two-way street: Marlier also is a mentor to Leeds students—his favorite way of giving back to the university.
“I wish I had been involved in formal mentorship as a student,” he said. “But it’s so rewarding, to be on this side and to provide insights and support—whether it’s a résumé review that leads to someone getting a job, or even becoming a lifelong friend.”
Not being a peer mentor may be Marlier’s only regret from his days in Boulder.
“I never even took a campus tour of my own, because my sister went to Leeds and I knew so much about the place from her,” he said. “I had originally wanted to study out of state, but my sister’s experience made it an easy choice. I always tell people, choosing CU was the best decision I ever made.”
Jamie Lujan (Acct’05; MEdu’10)
Founder, Saluzo Business Solutions
One of the first questions a successful entrepreneur asks about her business idea is the “why.”
Jamie Lujan found her why as a young girl, spending her Saturdays coloring in the back of her mother’s barbershop.
“My mother couldn’t take me to a traditional workplace, but I could go to the barbershop,” Lujan said. “My husband also grew up in his family’s small businesses. Those are the businesses we want to work with, so that when we’re talking to a university or sports arena, we’re able to find opportunities to help big organizations diversify their supply chains by engaging with companies owned by women and people of color.”
Her latest venture, Saluzo, offers consulting and professional services to startups and entrepreneurs, especially those owned by women or people of color. It’s the latest stop on a career that’s encompassed entrepreneurship, accounting, grants, marketing and higher education, including work at CU Boulder and Leeds.
Lujan chose CU after attending a pre-college program. Today, those programs are robust—she teaches the Introduction to Business course that pre-college students take in the summer—but at the time, they were limited, and departments like Leeds’ Office of Diversity Affairs, which eventually hired Lujan as its associate director, didn’t exist. “But I landed in the right place. I tell people all the time that Leeds is one of the best business schools in the country.”
Lujan’s well-traveled résumé is a kind of roadmap for today’s students, who are expected to have “career portfolios” of several distinct careers in their professional life. She attributes her success to the network she cultivated throughout her career.
“For students, it’s so important to remember that your reputation will precede you in business,” she said. “In my work, I call on people in universities, policy, VC, banking, technology, youth athletics and nonprofits—and I can continue working with them because I’ve maintained a level of transparency, honesty and excellence in my work.”
Her network and reputation helped her secure her newest project, where she’s leading the Latino strategy for the Network of Untapped Entrepreneurs, an investment firm focused on closing the wealth gap by supporting entrepreneurs of color and their communities.
For Lujan, the best part of her work is getting to meet other founders: "I’m a people person, I love to meet other people chasing their passions and seeing what magic happens when we work together.”
Fiona Murphy (Mktg’18)
Account Executive, Lattice
An early-career layoff can be devastating for young professionals, who wonder what they could have done differently to keep their jobs.
Fiona Murphy decided the solution was to make herself indispensable, and her willingness to raise her hand and take on additional responsibilities is how she became one of her company’s first employees in its London office.
“A lot of skills I built at Leeds have translated to my professional life,” Murphy said. “I don't think I would have had as many opportunities available if I didn't have the support I got at Leeds.”
In her role, Murphy works directly with corporate HR departments to show them how Lattice’s people management software makes companies better places to work.
“I’m so grateful that my work allows me to make an impact on people's lives,” she said. “That’s what excites me and keeps me motivated.”
Also keeping her motivated? She has a cheering section—a network of 14 Buffs at Lattice who encourage one another and share their successes.
“We love watching our herd grow,” she said. “There’s a lot of pride in our in our channel, and we're always just hyping each other up.”
Murphy has fond memories of her time at Leeds, especially with faculty like Laura Kornish, who helped her get one of her three internships, and Brian Higgins, who got her started in her sales career. While she applied to plenty of schools, one visit to the Boulder campus was enough to sell her on CU.
“Boulder felt like the start of an exciting new adventure, where I’d be pushed out of my comfort zone and have all kinds of opportunities to be involved,” she said.
The same is true of her new home, London, where she eagerly moved in the fall despite having never visited before. She’s eager to explore, and has a goal of visiting 22 new cities for 2022.
“When I look back at who I was when I joined Lattice, I’m most proud of my career mobility, the skills I’ve learned and how much I’ve grown as a person,” Murphy said. “I’m excited about what the future has for me in London, professionally as well as personally.”
Kai Suematsu and Samariddin Meliboev (both Info Mgmt, BA’21)
Co-founders, Kobu Foundation
Ironically, Kai Suematsu and Samariddin Meliboev realized they had good chemistry when they met in a high-school chemistry class in Denver’s George Washington High School.
Since then, the friends and recent Leeds graduates have been a force for change in helping Colorado’s less-fortunate population through several initiatives focused on food donations and delivery.
“When people say, ‘What do you do for fun?’ and you say, ‘I volunteer,’ people think it’s weird,” Suematsu said. “But it’s really just hanging out with friends, and volunteering while you do it.”
Suematsu and Meliboev created Denver Club of Humanities, a food pantry, in high school with classmate Kelly Trang, also a CU Boulder student. Because of their different schedules in college, Trang and Jamal Giornazi—another CU Boulder student and Washington alumnus—have not been as involved with Kobu, “but Kelly had such a big influence on how we run Kobu, especially in terms of how she helped us create a culture at Denver Club,” Meliboev said.
The friends started Kobu after searching for ways to pick up the threads of Denver Club of Humanities, and found their answer when pandemic-related quarantine measures made it harder to get food donations to the people who needed them. Since then, Kobu has delivered some 150,000 meals, powered by both donations and the volunteer efforts of CU Boulder students who help prepare donations for delivery. On top of that, Kobu has awarded more than $15,000 in scholarships to students—the founders’ acknowledgment of the scholarships they received and their role in making an education affordable.
In turn, their education has given Suematsu and Meliboev invaluable perspective on how to build a better, more sustainable vision for their volunteerism.
“Business classes taught us how to network with the community, which helped us quickly get started when the pandemic hit,” Meliboev said.
Suematsu, who also completed a certificate in entrepreneurship as part of his Leeds studies, said the ability to iterate and shift is core to almost every class he’s taken.
“Knowing when to pivot, knowing what the big idea is and figuring out how to fill a needed role is something we learned about a lot,” he said.
Their business skills are especially important now, as the pair decide what to do with the nonprofit they’ve built. Both have started work after graduating early (Meliboev at Kaiser Permanente, Suematsu at Accenture) and are now weighing an acquisition offer from a larger, more established organization.
“We’d like to see Kobu get to the next level, and this organization has the systems, grant money and scale to do that,” Suematsu said. “But there’s also value in having it stay with CU students.”
Magda Luczak (Bus’25)
Olympic skier
For most first-year students, a major accomplishment of the fall semester is navigating campus without getting lost.
Magda Luczak expects her days of getting lost on campus aren’t over yet, but she has an excuse, having only spent six weeks of the fall semester in Boulder. The rest of the time, she was in the mountains of Europe, preparing to represent her native Poland at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
Her spring, meanwhile, began remotely from her home of Lodz, outside Warsaw, after a successful 2021 that saw her earn her first World Cup points at an event in Courchevel, France.
“Coming from Poland, everything was new to me—the people, the culture and the campus,” she said. “When I was applying to CU Boulder, I read about how it’s one of the most beautiful places in the U.S. Now, being here, I realize how lucky I am to be able to study in such a nice place.”
The best alpine skiers, not surprisingly, tend to come from mountainous areas—which Lodz is not. Luczak credits her love of the sport to her parents, who enjoyed the sport and encouraged their daughters’ interest in it.
“I’m grateful for my parents and their support, because I wouldn't be here without them,” she said. “I may be the one going to the Olympics, but it feels like a win for all of us.”
One of the most valuable things an athlete can bring to the field is a sense of perspective. Luczak is fortunate in that in Poland, there are fewer skiers, and therefore more opportunities. She’s appreciated being able to being around older athletes who have helped her adopt the right mental attitude to the sport, but being part of a team at CU is helping her even more.
“Even just in doing some of the physical preparation and training, it’s a really nice change to be supported and be part of a group, as a skier,” she said.
That also extends to her academic experience. As a freshman, she doesn’t have to declare a major yet, and isn’t sure what career path she might take, “but I’ve never received so much support as a student than I have at Leeds,” she said. “The academic advisors, the staff and the faculty have been a great help to me already.”
Ben Altschuler (Mgmt, PolSci’22)
Intern, Deloitte
Don’t be surprised if Ben Altschuler makes a name for himself in politics someday.
In addition to serving in CU Boulder Student Government, Altschuler has done consulting work for a political advocacy group and just finished an internship with Deloitte as a government and public services analyst. He recently accepted an offer to return to Deloitte in a similar role after graduation.
“Originally, I was convinced that I’d work directly in public sphere, at a nonprofit or a government entity, which is why I was excited to consult for the political advocacy group,” Altschuler, a recreational hockey player and avid Colorado sports fan, said. “I could still end up there someday, but I’m very happy and excited about where I’m going next year.”
In fact, it was during his Leeds experiences, especially with the Dean’s Leadership Fellows, that he got his introduction to consulting. As part of the inaugural class of this group—which helps talented students become leaders—Altschuler has a voice in setting its direction. It wound up giving him some career direction of his own.
“In a panel discussion, someone brought up the Leeds Consulting Group, and said it was for high-achieving students—so even if you don’t know what you want to do, you’ll learn valuable skills and be surrounded by great people,” he said.
He’s now a senior analyst who helped a food and meal prep startup develop a go-to-market strategy, in addition to the political advocacy research project.
"Because we got to know the guys behind the company well, we got to see the impact of our work,” Altschuler said. “We had four recommendations for them, and two of them we saw go on their site within six months.”
In addition to his summer with Deloitte, Altschuler completed internships with Laws Whiskey House and the Colorado Youth Congress. His most recent internship, he said, has left him prepared to succeed when he returns to Deloitte after graduation.
“It felt like a very real experience—I was put on a team, and I had real tasks that I needed to accomplish, and they had real impact on how our team was doing,” he said. “It was one of those things where I didn’t know I was prepared for it until I did it.”
Court Rye (Mktg'06)
Founder and CEO, ElectricBikeReview.com
Court Rye knew there would be sacrifice involved in pursuing his startup business full time. So the two years he spent living in his Toyota Prius were all part of the plan.
“Your business is a living thing—you need to take care of it for it to work,” Rye said. “I’m doing this because I want to have something authentic that helps people looking for honest answers when they buy an e-bike.”
Rye’s business, ElectricBikeReview.com, offers thousands of bike reviews for hobbyists and newcomers alike. In almost 10 years, the site has generated millions of page views from people who come to EBR for simplicity and authenticity, instead of being sold on some fancy marketing.
Rye has worked at big companies—including Google and Accenture—as well as smaller ones over the years, but he’s always had a taste for the startup life. On nights and weekends, he would practice programming and launch side projects, two of which he sold when he lived in Silicon Valley.
Turning to startups was a natural, but not always smooth process for Court. He participated in the entrepreneurship program at Leeds, but failed to earn the official certificate after receiving a C in the capstone course.
“I’m really thankful for that C,” Rye said. “It was the lowest letter grade I earned at CU and it reflects the reality of business—it’s not just about how hard you work, and there’s no extra credit.”
It’s safe to say the lesson stuck—EBR shows no signs of slowing down. Rye still creates virtually all the content for the site, and even a brief sampling of his videos shows obvious enthusiasm for what he does. Luck and timing have played a role in his success, he said, but so does his hard work; the site is the longest running independent resource for e-bikes on the web.
“I’ve had a couple of good offers to sell,” he said. “But it’s honest, it’s a special place, and I want to preserve that. My plan is to keep EBR independent.”
Amy Gillespie (MBA’22)
Intern, NetApp
Ask Amy Gillespie about her passion, and she’ll tell you about all the music festivals she and her husband attended, often camping out to embrace the outdoors and be close to the action.
But then, she became pregnant, “and sleeping in a normal bed was hard enough. How was I supposed to sleep on the ground?” she said.
The answer was The Campfire Experience, her startup specializing in glamping for weddings, festivals and corporate events, which opened up the outdoors to an audience less accustomed to roughing it in a tent in the woods.
“There were concepts like this, but only on the coasts, and I was in Columbus, Ohio,” Gillespie said. “But I thought, I’m a customer, there have to be other people like me—and honestly, I couldn’t stop thinking about the idea.”
Gillespie has since sold the business, but the experience of running her own startup is changing her outlook on what comes next—as is the Leeds MBA she’ll complete this spring.
“In all that I do, from Campfire to college, my motivations center around building a sense of community,” she said. “My Leeds MBA has helped me connect to a group of students as passionate about the startup ecosystem as I am.”
While she enjoyed scratching her entrepreneurial itch, Gillespie said she expects to return to the corporate world after graduation; she brought nearly 10 years’ experience at Nationwide to the classroom. On her internship with NetApp, “I get to be a part of this giant company that’s incredibly entrepreneurial,” she said. “That’s the kind of environment I’ve learned I like—where I’m challenged to find problems, have the runway to figure them out and be around other people who are like minded.”
Finding people who view challenges the same way she does has helped Gillespie at Leeds, also, including leadership roles with Women in Business and the Deming Center Venture Fund—where she is director of DEI initiatives—and as a recipient of a High-Growth Venture fellowship.
“The High-Growth Venture program has helped me connect to savvy leaders, incredible mentors, brilliant students and engaging professors,” she said. “The incredible value lies in its community of alumni, professors, mentors and peers, who are all active in their engagement and support.”
Bonnie Auslander
Instructor and Writer
Say you’re leading a sales presentation to an executive team at a major company. Intimidating, right?
Now let’s say partway through your pitch, the CEO rolls over, kicks her legs in the air and takes a nap.
That doesn’t happen in most boardrooms, but before she came to Leeds, Bonnie Auslander used to see something like this all the time in her work in business communication.
Auslander brought in dogs to be a more sympathetic audience for nervous presenters—leading to a predictable rise in stated speech anxiety at the Kogod School of Business at American University, where Auslander directed its business communications center.
“I probably would have pretended to have anxiety, too—‘Oh, I’m shaking like a leaf, I want to work with the dog,’” Auslander said with a laugh. “In truth, I found there was a lot of stress, and nothing we did in the center to that point quite met that need.”
At Leeds, Auslander—a poet, essayist and aspiring children’s book author—teaches Leeds undergrads to be more proficient writers and communicators through core classes that emphasize a lot of drafting, revising and rehearsing. In her course, she encourages students to draft their best work, then be open to her suggestions as she coaches them through the challenge of learning business and team writing. She plays a similar role for case competitions and in entrepreneurship classes.
“There’s no substitute for getting someone who cares about you as a writer and presenter, gives you comments on your draft and helps you rewrite or revise it,” she said. “That’s when you learn—revision is when true learning takes place.”
Revision and, perhaps, the chance to pitch before a canine audience. But the pandemic curbed the chance to release the hounds at Leeds, so Auslander is using her more conventional coaching techniques to coax the best work out of her students.
“I tell the students, ‘I’m here for the long haul—when your best friend gets married, I want you to feel like you can give the toast,’” she said. “Teaching people how to present effectively is more than a business skill, I really see it as a sort of world citizenship issue.”
Connor Lacey (Bus’22)
Founder, Boulder’s Best Sports Cards and Memorabilia and Intern, L’Oreal
He’s completed three internships as a Leeds student while running his own small business, but that hasn’t kept Connor Lacey from being heavily involved on campus.
Lacey is the student business chair for the CU Conference on World Affairs, serves as a teaching assistant, is involved with the Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity and, as he puts it, “I’m a lunch lady for the athletes, which is the best job ever,” because it gets him good food that he doesn’t have to make himself.
Lacey isn’t much of a cook, but he is an expert on marketing. He’s built a small business that deals in flipping sports cards, and is fresh off an internship with L’Oreal that led to a full-time offer in marketing management.
“They gave me this multifaceted role to tap into these different business disciplines and give me ownership of a new product—which was incredible, as an intern,” Lacey said. “I secured an $11 million media budget—which was really mine to lose—but I was pitching to the second-in-command of L’Oreal USA, and she’s listening to me, asking hard questions that I had the answers to, and challenging me to fight for work I was proud of. It was so rewarding.”
Lacey already runs a successful business of his own, Boulder’s Best Sports Cards and Memorabilia. It’s something like fantasy sports—Lacey tries to determine who’s due for a big year, then buys and flips that player’s cards online.
“If Lebron James drops 40 points in a game, his card value goes up overnight,” Lacey said. “It started as just a side hustle in high school, but it’s turned into a fun way to use my excitement for sports to further my interest in business.”
An Ohio native, Lacey came to Colorado courtesy of his sister, who graduated from CU Boulder last year. It didn’t hurt that he was accepted to the Leeds Scholars Program, as well.
“Going to a big state school far from home is kind of scary,” he said. “I knew I wanted to get involved early, and the Leeds Scholars Program made me part of a great group of students and allowed me to connect and build relationships early on.”
Evan Anderson (Bus’22)
Some of the most successful people in finance bring a wide set of interests—medicine, energy, education, technology and so on—to their professional work.
That’s a harbinger of good things for Evan Anderson, who’s used his time at Leeds to explore an entire portfolio of disciplines to understand how they interact with the finance industry.
“I just find things that change quickly to be really interesting,” Anderson said. “Energy, I’m really interested in renewables, and that’s moving so quickly. And I’ve really become interested in medicine, too, especially seeing how much progress happened so quickly with COVID.”
For Anderson, who’s pursuing a double focus in finance and economics, that curiosity extends beyond the classroom. He’s active in Kappa Sigma, is a vice president in Leeds Investment and Trading Group, works as a student assistant at the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility and is an economic research assistant for Zach Donohew. Not surprisingly, his research work encouraged further curiosity about economics and finance.
“Doing research, you learn so much about your topic, but then have another hundred questions about related areas,” Anderson said. “I would just go down the rabbit hole reading all these reviews and materials, and figuring out how a researcher like Zach focuses on what data is most important to his work. It’s been a great experience to work with him.”
Anderson said he’s unsure where he’ll end up after commencement, but expects to be in banking or investment. Energy is a big interest, whether in commodities trading, materials research, or even mergers and acquisitions within the industry.
“There are a lot of new regulations and policies coming out around energy and sustainability,” he said. “I think the sector is poised for a lot of change and transition, which will make it an interesting place to work.”
His work with LIT Group, where he’s vice president for membership, will be an important part of his future. The club is open to student interested in business and finance, and includes an investment arm that manages a portfolio created through a portion of the university’s endowment.
“I just walked into a meeting during my sophomore year, and it was all these incredibly smart people talking about what was going on in finance,” he said.
Brian Higgins
Consultant and Professor
Brian Higgins built a successful sales career, rising to CEO of a startup and eventually opening his own consulting practice. So he knows a thing or two about persistence.
He needed it when he decided Leeds should start a sales program.
“I kept running into companies that were recruiting students into their sales organizations, because they were cheap,” he said. “The students had no foundational knowledge of sales, and were feeling defeated, because the companies threw them into the deep end.”
So, in 2015, Higgins turned his attention to solving that problem, and found a partner in CU. He audited a course to understand what students were learning about sales, then told his professor he was willing to bring a specialized course to Leeds.
That one course is now a portfolio of five courses, including one for MBAs. It also features a group of full-time and adjunct faculty with extensive sales experience, and a network of nearly 200 mentors working in sales who meet regularly with students.
“I don’t think all my students are interested in sales careers, but the skills you learn in these classes—how to schedule, plan and execute a meeting; how to report back on a meeting to a sales manager; communication and organizational skills; time management—are valuable in any career,” Higgins said.
He also enlivens classes by bringing in guest lecturers, such as Michael Leeds, who discussed his decision to invest in the school, and players and coaches with the football team, who walked students through the recruiting process, “which teaches students how the purchase decision gets made.”
Higgins himself was a college athlete, playing soccer for an elite Division I program at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. Athletics taught him about work ethic, competition and rejection—all important to a sales professional. Today, he enjoys skiing with his wife and golf, and is the father of two grown children, including a son who graduated from Leeds in 2019.
“I never dreamed we’d have this grassroots community of students, faculty and sales professionals,” he said. “I get a tremendous amount of gratification from seeing the students grow and learn, and appreciate how important what we’re teaching them is—either in their personal lives or professionally.”
Kristi Ryujin
Associate Dean
Kristi Ryujin would be on a wildly different career path had she not met David Sanbonmatsu.
Ryujin said she struggled as a woman of color attending the University of Utah until meeting Sanbonmatsu, a professor, who took her under his wing.
“Because of him, I found my voice and realized there were so many other students like me, who were struggling to find role models, to believe in myself and to believe that I belonged at the university,” she said.
Today, it’s Ryujin who’s in that role at Leeds. She’s associate dean for graduate programs and special assistant to the dean for initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion; an important part of her work is helping create a climate where students from all backgrounds have a seat at the table.
“For me, the idea of a life’s work being about helping people achieve their goals has been extraordinarily fulfilling,” she said.
A program she’s most proud of is the End the Gap initiative, created in 2017 to create gender parity across all business programs at CU. Like many areas related to DEI, Ryujin said the needs of the real world demonstrate the value of such initiatives at a business school.
“Companies regularly say, ‘We need more women, we need to see more students of color in your programs, because we need those folks at our company,’” she said. “So making sure everyone has access to high-quality education is critical to serving the needs of our partners and of course our students and society benefit as well.”
And her work is also about helping students who aren’t from diverse backgrounds to develop an inclusive mindset—key to leading global teams while avoiding the embarrassments that have befallen businesses whose workforces are too uniform.
Leeds, she said, is doing a lot of things well, especially through its focus on student success and placement. In her DEI role, which she started this fall, she wants to see Leeds make further inroads recruiting students of diverse backgrounds, especially in Colorado.
“The reason why I believe so much in graduate education is because it opens doors,” Ryujin said. “If women and people of color are absent in grad school, they’ll be absent in leadership roles within organizations. Ensuring everyone has access to these skills and perspective is the job of everyone within higher education today.”
Tandean Rustandy (Fin'87)
Founder and CEO, PT Arwana Citramulia Tbk
Vision and Tandean Rustandy have always gone hand in hand.
It was true when he was an undergraduate student, feeling privileged to attend a great university as a first-generation student. It’s true in his professional career, as founder and CEO of one of the world’s most successful ceramic-tile manufacturing companies. And it’s true as an alumnus, as Rustandy’s support has helped to usher in a new era not just at Leeds, but at the University of Colorado Boulder as a whole.
During Homecoming Weekend, the Rustandy Building will celebrate its grand opening. This expansion physically joins the business and engineering buildings on the CU Boulder campus; for Rustandy himself, this connection is a perfect representation of the continuing overlap between these disciplines in the real world.
“It is not often that you have the opportunity to change the face of the university,” Rustandy said. “And it’s even rarer that creating such a physical space accompanies a vision for an academic and programming partnership that will improve the education of our students.”
The expansion features state-of-the-art classroom, meeting and collaboration spaces; an innovation and entrepreneurship hub; and a revitalized business library. The building has been operating at capacity since students and faculty returned to campus in August—a welcome sight for faculty and leadership at Leeds and the College of Engineering and Applied Science, who are finding new opportunities to collaborate as a result of the new building.
“With a convergence like this, innovation is bound to happen,” Rustandy said. “We just have to provide it with the means to happen.”
Coming from humble beginnings in a small town in Indonesia, Rustandy has dedicated his life to helping advance his native country through his business practices, and to supporting education as a pathway to a better future. That’s part of why supporting Leeds is so important to him—a message he hopes resonates with students.
“Take full advantage of your time at CU Boulder to learn and grow,” Rustandy said. “And then come back often, and continue the legacy of paying your success forward to bring new opportunities to the generations of students who come after you.”
Gail (EnvDes’79) and Kim (EnvDes’80) Koehn
Leeds has an excellent reputation for both real estate and entrepreneurship, and in his time teaching at the University of Colorado, Kim Koehn has been approached plenty of times by students who want to start the next great venture in the Front Range.
Koehn instead tells them to leave.
“I always say, go to a larger market, where you’ll see new and different things,” said Kim, an adjunct professor in the CU Real Estate Center. “As an entrepreneur, the more narrow your background, the less likely you are to succeed. You can always find your way back to Colorado.”
It’s great advice—and Koehn should know. Before starting K2Ventures—an investment and development firm focused on small and midsize Colorado properties—he enjoyed a successful corporate real estate career in Chicago and Denver.
It all started in a city planning class at CU, though, where he met Gail, whom he followed east after graduation. “She told me if I wanted to stay with her, I’d have to move,” Kim said, “so of course, I did.”
While Kim built his career in Chicago, Gail also worked in the industry—in architecture, property management and, as she put it, as general contractor when the couple rehabbed a historic home they bought.
But Boulder was never far from their hearts.
“We’re fortunate that we were able to find our way back to Colorado after 14 years in Chicago,” Gail Koehn said. “And it’s given us opportunities to be involved with our alma mater that we otherwise might not have.”
The Koehns are staunch supporters of Leeds. The Kim and Gail Koehn Leadership Award is given to the top real estate student each year, and in addition to his faculty service, Kim Koehn has served as executive director of CUREC and chair of its council.
“It’s fun to have a pulse on the next generation,” he said. “I started teaching and, all of a sudden, we grew this network of young people. Sometimes, if I have a question, rather than calling the head of a company, I’ll call a former student—and oftentimes, they'll have a better, more applicable answer.”
Given their real estate background, it’s no surprise that the Koehns are most intrigued by the new Rustandy Building, connecting the engineering and business schools at CU.
“I come from a family of engineers, and both our daughters ended up being engineers,” Gail Koehn said. “The collaboration between the schools is going to be really amazing, and I think the new building will help the university point to the strength of both programs.”
Matt Kreimer (Fin, Acct’22)
President, Leeds Investment and Trading Group
Matt Kreimer was just a high-school sophomore when he got bit by the finance bug, making a tidy profit on an investment in a small biotech company.
Since then, he’s been a diligent student of investment strategy and the markets in general, securing three impressive internships and rising to president of the Leeds Investment and Trading Group, while helping usher in its Investment Team.
The Investment Team is special—while LIT Group is open to anyone, prospective Investment Team members must apply, since as analysts, they will manage a portion of the university’s endowment. Kreimer designed and taught the course for aspiring analysts last spring.
LIT Group’s legacy training program lacked real-world application, and “wasn’t robust enough to properly train our analysts to manage money,” Kreimer said. In the new program, students complete weekly assignments in line with their Investment Team responsibilities, and “the course culminates in applying what they’ve learned in a final stock pitch presented to the team.”
The effort was far greater than you’d expect from a college student on a non-credit initiative; past President Viraj Suri (Fin’21) said Kreimer “spent hundreds of hours making that course, and there’s just no way to appreciate what that meant for LIT Group.”
In addition to LIT Group, Kreimer is involved with the Investment Banking Club, of which he is co-president, and is a member of the Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity. And while his interests and successes—including internships with Q Advisors, GMB Mezzanine Capital and Schwarz Dygos Wheeler Investment Advisors—make him a tremendous fit for Leeds, the great outdoor activities in the area helped Kreimer choose CU Boulder.
“Boulder came on my radar because of the close proximity to great mountains for snowboarding, plus the major/minor combination I wanted and the Bloomberg Lab,” he said. “And now, as a senior, there’s no better place to be for college.”
As he prepares to graduate and start his finance career as an investment banking analyst at Guggenheim Securities, in New York, Kreimer said he’s also gained a real appreciation for the alumni community at Leeds.
“Almost anyone who went to Leeds is willing to pick up the phone and talk, which is really great, and I think is unique to Leeds,” he said.
Matt Lappé (MBA ’14)
Senior Climate Strategist, Boulder County
Matt Lappé chose an interesting time to accept a promotion to executive director of Action for the Climate Emergency, or ACE. Not only was he in the home stretch of completing his Leeds MBA, but he was taking over an organization that was $3 million in the red.
ACE is now on track to be a $9 million organization, and Lappé is quick to credit the remarkable turnaround to the education and network he developed at Leeds.
“I was really interested in the evening MBA, because I knew there was a good diversity of professions represented there,” he said. “And I wanted to take classes alongside people who were figuring out how to apply the curricular material right away at work.”
Today, Lappé works within the Office of Sustainability Climate Action and Resilience, where he’s tasked with keeping Boulder County on track to meet its ambitious climate goals, which include reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 90 percent by 2050, while also addressing economic development, resilience, and racial justice priorities. In his role, Lappé needs to be a systems-level thinker who brings interdisciplinary approaches to the most complex challenge of our time.
“The lessons in strategy from my MBA come into play daily,” he said. “Being able to think strategically and pull in qualitative and quantitative analyses to decide on the best approaches—those are some of the skills I use regularly.”
Lappé is particularly excited about the launch of the Innovation Fund next year, which will identify cutting-edge climate solutions—low-carbon concrete production, direct air capture technology, regenerative agricultural processes and more—and find creative ways to scale them for Boulder.
Lappé, who did undergraduate and master’s-level work at Stanford, remains tightly connected to CU through his service on the Leeds MBA Alumni Board, where he helps students make connections that enable them to secure jobs after graduation.
“The board is a really good example of how great this network is,” he said. “You have experts in venture capital, real estate, finance, nonprofit—having that kind of network is really rewarding and engaging.”
Maggie Rodney (MBA’22)
Chief of Staff, WorkIt; Venture Associate, Techstars
Maggie Rodney has the same sort of hobbies that you’d expect of a native Coloradan—skiing, hiking and camping, usually with Wrigley, her black lab, in tow.
Her other hobby involves finding a 25th hour of the day. How else can you explain her balancing a full-time MBA schedule while being chief of staff at Workit, a venture associate at Techstars and managing director of the Deming Center Venture Fund at Leeds?
“Putting in the time and effort right now has opened a lot of doors, broadened my network and given me a lot of skills that I can bring to whatever I choose to do following Leeds,” Rodney said.
The opportunity to work in the startup space—she’s part of the founding team at Workit and relishes the chance to work with new ventures through Techstars—was what compelled Rodney, then a senior consultant with Altvia Solutions, to pursue her MBA at Leeds.
“Leeds was the only school I considered, because I knew I wanted to focus on entrepreneurship that aspires to do good,” she said. “I want to be part of this community for a long time, and the Leeds MBA is the best way to get involved with that network.”
Being a chief of staff has helped Rodney apply lessons from class while grappling with the enormous set of duties the position entails, especially for a startup in the crowded professional development space.
“As much as I want all the pieces of our operations to work, I’ve learned to prioritize what’s messy, but can be cleaned up later, versus things that have to be up and running right now,” she said. “It’s been such a cool learning experience.”
In addition to her extensive professional work, Rodney also is a volunteer with the Big Brother Big Sister Foundation, and served with the Peace Corps in Rwanda, which she said helped prepare her for the big challenges she wants to take on after graduation.
“Problems outside the western world are really hard to solve, and I don’t have the answers,” she said. “But it helped me understand people who come from someplace different than myself, and sparked my interest in work that creates impact—which is why I was so focused on working with inspiring businesses when I came to Leeds.”
Liv Delgado (Bus’23)
Intern, Wiland
Liv Delgado called Texas home for years, but when it came time to look for colleges, she wanted to make a return to her native state.
“We moved to Texas when I was really young, and from then on we spent every summer in Colorado wishing we still lived there,” Delgado said with a laugh.
In fact, it was between Boulder and Madrid, in Spain, where her father is from, but when she attended a Leeds alumni dinner in Texas, her decision became an easy one—as did winning a highly competitive Presidential Scholarship from the university.
“Even based on just one event, it was clear that the networking and opportunities Leeds offered were first class,” she said. “They offer so much help in getting jobs, which is a huge reason I got the internship I have now.”
She’s interning with the client solutions team at a database marketing company, Wiland, where she works on demographics to help clients identify likely customers and target key segments. Class projects and conversations with faculty helped her awaken her interest in marketing analytics, sparking a change in her major and helping her secure the internship.
“I was struggling to find internship opportunities in finance and accounting, but when I started looking at marketing, I got several offers in areas like product management and business analytics, which are really interesting to me,” she said.
As an intern, Delgado’s work focuses on building models for her co-workers based on meetings with clients and prospective customers. A lot of the work is based on stats and analytics, which she’s enjoyed learning in class and on the job.
She’s not only enjoying the work—she’s also enjoying the company culture, and is hopeful she might one day return as an analyst. But she’s also looking to further her knowledge, and is exploring the master's program in Business Analytics at Leeds.
In the meantime, she’s absorbing as much of Colorado as she can, whether that’s outdoor workouts on campus or exploring Chautauqua Park with her friends.
“I want to get more involved this year,” Delgado said. “I went to a lot of networking and afternoon coffees when we were on campus. I want to do more with the marketing club and Women in Business now that we’re returning to campus.”
Steffie Ungphakorn
PhD Program Manager
Asked where she’d like to be interviewed for Faces of Leeds, Steffie Ungphakorn quickly suggest the fourth-floor balcony of the Koelbel Building, with its dramatic views of the Flatirons.
It’s an appropriate choice for Ungphakorn, a Colorado native who does her best thinking outdoors, whether doing yoga, hiking her favorite trails around Mount Sanitas or standing on a paddleboard. And it’s a selling point when she talks to prospective students.
“It’s not only the brilliant minds you get to learn from,” she said. “This environment just lends itself to creativity and innovation.”
Since joining Leeds in 2015, following volunteer leadership roles at both her almae matres—the University of Denver, where she earned her master’s, and Regis University—Ungphakorn has helped drive a prestigious doctoral program that has placed graduates in the world’s top universities. And while that’s a source of pride for her, she said, the most rewarding part of the job “is being a part of their journey here, and helping celebrate their life milestones—like marriages and babies—and academic achievements.”
Her other passion is advocacy on behalf of underrepresented communities, be they women, persons of color or those who identify as LGBTQ. That started at Regis, where Ungphakorn, who identifies as bisexual, was chair of Allies in Action, a group for faculty and staff who supported the LGBTIQ community. She also was part of the counterprotest movement that, in 2010, pushed back when Westboro Baptist Church targeted Colorado high schools with extremist messaging. And she chaired a board on inclusivity created by the mayor for the city of Westminster.
Ungphakorn clearly cherishes the opportunity to be a voice for the underrepresented on a college campus, especially for undergraduate students, who may be away from home for the first time.
“College is one of the first moments where we get the opportunity to understand who we are, how we fit into the world and how we want to move forward,” she said.
As a suicide loss survivor, she’s also a fierce proponent of adequate, accessible mental health services, and tries to ensure her PhD students can recognize signs of burnout and take time for self care, or to seek professional help
“It’s a rigorous program,” she said. “I do a workshop every year to help them recognize signs that they’re struggling, and encourage them to get out in nature, take breaks, take a bubble bath or just turn off their phones and spend an evening doing something for themselves.”
Amy Link (MBA’16)
Sales Account Director, Zayo Group
How much do you love cheering on the Buffs?
Amy Link has you beat. She just got back from, in her own words, marrying Chip the Buffalo.
“CU changed my life,” said Link, who this month tied the knot with Brendan Bradley Bus’10, who played the mascot as an undergrad. “It gave me a new network of close friends and professionals, and led me to Zayo—which ultimately is how I met my husband, through a close friend at work.”
Today, she manages one of the top accounts at Zayo, where she’s a resource for solving complex problems while leading strategic conversations about growing revenue and better serving customers. It’s an unexpected turn for someone who studied literature as an undergrad, but Link got a sense of her love for business managing a coffee shop in Minneapolis.
“My store excelled in every way,” she said. “That experience of managing people, budgets, P&L, labor, marketing and sales got me thinking about studying business.” And her Leeds degree “gave me the confidence to know I could do this work well in a corporate setting. I wouldn’t have been considered by Zayo without my MBA.”
Asked for her favorite professional accomplishment, Link brings up not that she was promoted five times in two years, but that she got to build and lead her own team at Zayo, a Boulder-based communications infrastructure service provider.
“I’m incredibly proud that all of them did really well at Zayo, and that I played a role in helping them have their own versions of success,” she said.
She expects her own career arc to bend back toward leadership, “hopefully in a more strategic position, where I’m at the forefront.”
As you would expect of a Colorado transplant, she’s passionate about the outdoors—especially skiing, hiking and rafting—and is an avid soccer player. The first-generation American—her parents are British—also sits on Leeds’ alumni board, where she has regular opportunities to engage with students and alumni, many of whom are eager to share their own stories about their experiences.
“I think all Leeds alumni are able to reflect on how our experience at CU changed our lives for the better,” Link said.
Jake Melara (Bus’22)
Financial Analyst Intern, DaVita
University of Colorado Student Government has been a major fixture in Jake Melara’s time as a business student, including roles as the senator for Leeds and chair of the finance committee.
So his answer to a question about the achievement he’s most proud of might surprise you.
“I don’t have one, yet,” he said.
It’s not a question of what student government has accomplished at CU, but rather, what got Melara interested in the first place—the chance to amplify his peers’ voices in shaping the future.
“When I talk to other students, I get so much energy from their ideas and enthusiasm,” he said. “Listening to ideas about how we can make the school a better place gives me such energy.”
It’s the same perspective that helped him gravitate toward DaVita Kidney Care. He attended the company’s Redwoods Leadership Development Program as a sophomore and just completed an internship as a financial analyst this summer.
“I’ve always seen business as a way to enhance society and push us forward,” he said.“What really spoke to me about DaVita was the emphasis on saving lives, doing work that matters and having a net positive impact.”
It didn’t hurt that he had a great relationship with his manager, who challenged him from an analytical standpoint while encouraging Melara to be a better team player and communicator.
“I knew I might not have the strongest analytical skill set, but I can always bring an attitude that people want to work with,” he said. “We take part in many team projects at Leeds, and I really saw how important teamwork is once you’re out in the real world.”
Student government isn’t Melara’s only passion on campus. He’s treasurer of the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity and has volunteered with Camp Kesem, which supports children whose parents have been diagnosed with cancer. He’s also an avid outdoorsman who’s into skiing and hiking, and hopes to one day climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
His professional interests, meanwhile, are closer to healthcare, which is something of a family trait—his mom is a nurse, while his sister is going into social work.
“While I like doing analysis and I love finding trends, I love working with people,” he said. “I think in the future, I might like to work on more of a clinic level, doing field finance or even being able to run a few clinics.”
Caitlin Thompson (Bus'21)
Financial Advisor, Primerica
When she decided she wanted a change of pace from the hectic hustle of the East Coast, Caitlin Thompson’s three older half-sisters steered her from California to Colorado.
“They all live in the Denver area, and they were after my dad to have me come out and look at CU Boulder,” Thompson said.
To say it was a good adjustment is an understatement: Thompson fell in love with the campus, accepted a job as a financial advisor with Primerica after graduating and plans to enroll in the finance master’s program next fall.
“I just moved to San Diego, but I’m already looking forward to being back at Leeds, learning from great professors and expanding on what I’ve learned already,” she said. “In finance, to move forward in the field, you really do need a master’s, so I’m excited to gain those skills and be more qualified for future occupations.”
Thompson’s strong people skills and quantitative insights are a good fit for finance, but it wasn’t always her passion. She credits her father with guiding her in that direction, along with Leeds for challenging her to explore business in greater depth.
“Classes at Leeds offer a lot of real-life experience, so you get to apply different aspects of business and really explore what areas you thrive in,” she said.
It’s that, alongside opportunities to be close to skiing and camping again, that has Thompson excited to return, though she’s enjoying getting some real-world experience with nationwide financial services company Primerica, where she’s able to apply the quantitative insights she learned at Leeds while honing her relationship development skills. Her goal is to work in investor relations after she completes her master’s.
“I think it’s the perfect fit for me,” she said. “You get to work in the investment side, which I like, but you also have to have strong people skills and be able to connect with clients.”
Laura Kornish
Associate dean and professor
On the one hand, Laura Kornish is the daughter of a nuclear physicist and a lifelong university administrator, so it isn’t a surprise that she chaired the marketing department at Leeds before becoming associate dean of undergraduate affairs this summer.
On the other hand, she felt burned out on academia after working so hard to complete her undergraduate degree in applied math from Harvard University. “I was never going to set foot on a university campus ever again,” she recalled.
Fortunately for Leeds, academia won out—and it might just be because as an undergrad, she wasn’t exposed to the business contexts of what she was learning.
“Students want an education that's applied, and the things that a business education applies to are growing all the time,” Kornish said. “And so, the Kool-Aid that I was served—you can be anything you want to be with a liberal arts degree—is actually true for a business degree.”
Kornish’s path to academia wound through a stint in industry, at a boutique tech shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and grad school at Stanford before teaching at Duke and, eventually, Leeds. In her new role, she said, her mission is to encourage students to become explorers who have the energy, momentum and confidence to try new ideas, courses, clubs and so on to find out what drives them—as opposed to sticking with safe things they already know.
“Our students are high achievers who are used to being successful, and they hear us talk about learning from failure—but I don’t think many students genuinely accept that,” she said. “I think we could do a better job of providing them opportunities to try things that might not work out.”
Family is important to Kornish—she’s quick to mention her parents in talking about her career arc—but it’s her sons who are influencing her role at Leeds. Her youngest, Nathan, is a recent college graduate who interviewed for multiple positions as a student.
“A question he got asked a lot was where he saw himself in five years,” Kornish said. “And his answer was, ‘The job I’m going to have in five years doesn’t exist yet.’ That’s the mindset I want for our students—to seriously explore how what’s out there matches their talents, and to understand that the employment landscape will always be changing. If they have that mindset, that will position them to adapt to whatever the future brings.”
Yashi Uppalapati (Bus’23)
Growing up, Yashi Uppalapati’s fashion choices were all handed down by her mother.
“When we’re looking at childhood pictures, you can tell when I picked out my own outfit, because I’m actually smiling in those,” she recalled, laughing.
From beginnings like that, it’s hard to imagine Uppalapati becoming a fashion model. But she’s the reigning Miss Colorado Teen USA, has walked at Denver Fashion Week and is now looking at a career in the industry—a turn she credits to her parents, who encouraged her to try new things and not be afraid to explore.
The question now is what her career might look like—and having two parents who are entrepreneurs, along with what she’s learning about marketing and business analytics at Leeds, have already given her perspective.
“I love being a model, but I am intrigued by the behind-the-scenes perspectives of the fashion industry,” she said. “After taking some marketing classes, now when I see an ad on a TV, I wonder about what went into putting that out there—what message they wanted and how it might be interpreted.”
Her Leeds courses have given her some food for thought as she stakes out a career in an industry with a troubling record on human rights. One of those courses was her World of Business class, where she now works as a teaching assistant; part of the course involves watching videos that show how garment workers are treated abroad.
“It was hard to watch those videos the first time,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what I took away from that. But seeing them again, as a TA, I realized that as a result of the course, I was looking for more sustainable choices in fashion.”
She’s working as a sales associate at Prana, she said, “because of what they stand for and how they pay workers fairly. My goal right now is to work in fashion, but sustainability is important to me, and that started at Leeds.”
And for those who think modeling is nothing but having great smile and looking good in designer clothes, Uppalapati will tell you she’s learned more about time management as a model, a TA, a tutor for the EXCEL Scholars Program and a full-time student, in addition to working at Prana and the Leeds welcome desk.
“I’ve learned a lot about pushing my limits, and I owe a lot of that to what I’ve learned modeling,” she said. “But it feels good to have a better focus on what I want now, because I don’t want to put myself through that every day.”
Nicholas Cervasio (Bus’22)
Nicholas Cervasio felt he was at a crossroads after completing his freshman year at New York University.
“I wasn’t in a good position to have a good student mindset,” the Long Island, N.Y., native said. “I’ve always had high expectations for myself, so if I wasn’t in school, then I wanted to do something that made a difference to me.”
That led Cervasio to the U.S. Marine Corps, where he eventually rose to sergeant as a reconnaissance marine—those first boots on the ground, who learn the environment and provide the details battlefield commanders need to make combat decisions.
“Doing our job well provides more safety and knowledge to the troops coming in later,” he said.
That call to share his knowledge in helping others is at the core of his career goals, and it’s a major reason he chose Leeds.
“Leeds has a great reputation for teaching the full picture of business, and how through it, you can accomplish great things and make it a force for good,” Cervasio said.
Cervasio is exploring a career in fintech and entrepreneurship, especially something that would help him make finance more accessible to the masses.
“Now that I’m studying business, I can see there’s so much I didn’t know,” he said. “If I can find some way to make finance and investing more accessible to people who don’t have a business background, that will be a huge accomplishment for me.”
Like most Marines, Cervasio is incredibly dedicated to the task at hand—he’s on pace to graduate early, in December 2022—and he’s supported not only by the Student Veterans Association, but by a professional mentor who’s offered valuable insights on fintech from his own career.
“The faculty who head up the mentorship program do an incredible job of matching you with someone relevant to your future goals,” he said.
Another reason Cervasio chose Leeds is the location—specifically, a location he chose, without the Marines dictating where he’d live. After recon training in California and moving to Camp Lejeune, in Jacksonville, NC, then deployment to U.S. Central Command, “I was looking for a place with skiing and snowboarding, along with a highly ranked business school. Leeds was my dream school for figuring out the next chapter of my life. I love being here; I’ve never had a class or professor I didn’t enjoy at Leeds.”
Arianna Greenspan (Bus’23)
Arianna Greenspan is going to have a hard time settling on a career when she graduates from Leeds, because she has a very varied set of interests—education, fundraising, foreign language and culture, service, and the outdoors.
“For the time being, I’m enjoying the chance to explore new opportunities, to see what I like best,” Greenspan said.
She was able to put most of her interests to work during the pandemic as the lead on Operation: Step it Up, a class project that challenged fifth-graders at nearby University Hill Elementary School to virtually walk across Colorado.
“The whole idea was to get kids excited about going outside when recesses and sports were canceled,” she said. It evolved to a math and nutrition effort, as students converted steps into miles and learned about healthier eating choices.
Greenspan and her teammates—Lindsay Beil, Jack Bilello, Patrick Dolan and John Douthit—are all part of the Leeds Scholars Program for exceptional students. That program is what drew Greenspan to Leeds in the first place: She attended charter schools growing up in Colorado, so was a little intimidated by CU’s size.
But in her interview with the Leeds Scholars Program, “I felt right at home,” she said. “I love the smaller class sizes, but also the different opportunities you get at a big school.”
Greenspan’s on-campus activities reflect her broad interests: She’s a peer mentor, a member of Women in Business and Kappa Alpha Theta, and is interning with Leeds’ Office of Advancement.
Another keen interest for Greenspan is travel. She’s pursuing a Spanish minor alongside a double major in information management and marketing, and hopes to study abroad before graduation. She’s already done one international class consulting project, where her comfort connecting with the client virtually made for a smooth experience.
“It was valuable not only to be able to use the tools Leeds has provided us, but also to see how our professors used them in class,” she said, mentioning Prof. Kevin Schaub’s statistics and organizational behavior classes, which drew on his great energy and willingness to incorporate things like PlayPosit into class discussions.
Wherever her career takes her, Greenspan said she’s grateful she chose to study at Leeds: “In addition to all I’ve learned, I love hiking, so Boulder as a place—not just as a school—has given me great opportunities.”
From left are Derek Cain Bus’22, Delaney Cain Bus’24, Jennifer Cain Comm’95, Michael Cain Bus’93 and Matthew Cain.
Michael Cain (Bus’93)
President, Cain Travel
As the president of a business travel agency, Michael Cain considers himself lucky to have ridden out the worst of the global COVID-19 lockdowns.
But he also believes you create your own luck, and when a longtime client decided to start a nursing placement company—to deploy nurses to states hit hard by the pandemic—Cain’s agency was able to help manage transportation and quickly get healthcare workers where they were needed.
“Our ability to pivot was great, but really, the small role we played in helping to work toward a solution for COVID is a huge source of pride for me and our whole staff,” Cain said.
The president of Boulder-based Cain Travel said surrounding himself with University of Colorado Boulder alumni played a key role, also: His CFO, “who squirreled away enough cash to help us manage through the worst,” is a Leeds graduate, as is one of his top salesmen, who he first hired as an intern. He’s served as a mentor to several Leeds students, and two of this three children are currently studying business at CU.
“Leeds is a stepping stone to a fantastic career,” Cain said. "As a mentor, I enjoy being able to tell students that I have so many friends and contacts who have gone on to incredible success as a result of a well-rounded Leeds education.”
For Cain, who in 2004 became president of the company his parents started, the well-rounded education he received at Leeds helped him turn what he expected would be a short stay with the family business into a career. A collaborative class project that challenged him to use data gave him a head start on tech-driven changes that would soon transform the travel industry. The growth of the business gave him reasons to stay on, in marketing, sales and technology roles.
While many Leeds grads go on to careers in consulting, finance and entrepreneurship, Cain enjoys demonstrating how his company faces the same kinds of challenges as the Fortune 100, to help them think about the sorts of issues they will confront at work. That also goes for the two business Buffs he’s raised alongside his wife, Jennifer, herself an alumna from the Class of 1995.
“We’ve entrusted our children to Leeds, and they’re going to come out not just with a fantastic education, but as great people who will be well prepared for tomorrow’s workplace,” Cain said.
Carl Koelbel (MBA’10)
Chief Operating Officer, Koelbel & Co.
Carl Koelbel knew he wanted to get a graduate degree in real estate. And his family’s name adorns the building that the Leeds School of Business calls home.
But it wasn’t certain he’d get his MBA from Leeds until his grandmother put her foot down.
“I also got into the Wisconsin School of Business, which has a pretty well-known real estate program, but Mimi made it very clear that I needed to go to CU,” Koelbel said. “That was the end of the discussion right there.”
The University of Colorado is a family affair for the Koelbels—Carl’s father and grandparents attended—but so is Koelbel & Co., the Denver-based real estate developer of which Carl is chief operating officer.
The part of his job Koelbel most enjoys is taking an idea and turning it into a physical property. The company builds commercial and residential properties, including affordable housing, and Koelbel is proud that the company is committed to its idea of being part of a community, instead of just a collection of buildings. In fact, he keeps photos of his completed properties on a wall in his office.
“The fun part, for me, is designing a new deal and the front end of putting it together, and then the most fulfilling part is when it's opening up, we get to have the ribbon cutting and you see this exciting new place for people to live or work,” he said.
Speaking of his office, Koelbel & Co. recently welcomed its fourth Leeds MBA to the team; having served on the curriculum committee for the program, Carl Koelbel is confident that graduates have what it takes to make an impact right away.
“Serving on the committee gave me a chance to say, this is the skillset I would like you to help instill in your students, so when they graduate, I have to spend less time training them,” he said. “We’ve gone back to the well frequently with Leeds grads and have not been disappointed.”
A golfer and skier, in addition to be a husband and a father to three girls, Koelbel also counts pottery among his hobbies, though conceded he hasn’t had much time for it of late—instead of creating at the potter’s wheel, he’s creating in the community where he grew up.
“The ability to positively impact the community that I grew up in through responsible development is unique, exciting and fulfilling,” he said.
Madison Halstead Bus’23
Intern, Vestaboard
When she reached out to Vestaboard as part of a class project, Madison Halstead was only interested in seeing if she could get a discount on a bulk order.
But in addition to a quote, she got an internship.
Vestaboard makes eye-catching messaging display systems for home and business use, and Halstead thought her client, Illegal Pete’s, could use them to improve communication and decision-making across the restaurant’s 12 locations. When connected with a manager over Zoom, her knowledge of the business and her enthusiasm for the product led to an internship offer on the spot.
“It’s amazing what doors open when you just reach out to people,” Halstead said.
A California native, Halstead transferred to the University of Colorado Boulder during the pandemic. “I heard Leeds was very challenging, and coming to college, I wanted to be challenged, I wanted to learn, I wanted to leave and feel prepared for the world,” she said. “Leeds has been perfect for that.”
The project for Illegal Pete’s was a case competition for her business communications class. More than 100 teams participated; thanks for her outreach to Vestaboard, Halstead was able to include a video from the company in her team’s presentation, helping secure the win and a cash prize.
What she enjoyed most about the class was the ability to apply her lessons to a real project, something she values about her classes in business, information management and data analytics.
“I use the methods I’ve learned in my classes every day,” Halstead said. “Things I learned in my communications class have helped me on interviews, and I use lessons from my data analytics class on my internship.”
The pandemic has kept her away from the campus so far, but Halstead is eager to start taking classes and making face-to-face connections in the fall; a beekeeping hobbyist, she also plans to join the CU Bee Club, a group for aspiring apiarists. She expects her experience with Vestaboard to play a role in whatever comes next.
“I’m not sure what I want to do in the long term, but I feel confident in my future, and that has a lot to do with Leeds and what I’ve learned here,” Halstead said. “There’s so much you get here, from classes and the connections you make, that it’s hard not to be successful.”
Capt. Zach Baumann MBA’21
Co-founder, Air Force Gaming
Zach Baumann has been a gamer since he was a kid bouncing around the country with his four siblings during his father’s military career.
Baumann is now an Air Force captain—a personnel officer and expert in human resources and business administration—so it’s hard to get under his skin. But one way to do it is to suggest that gamers are a collection of introverts who shun the outside.
“I wouldn’t trade all the time I’ve spent gaming for anything,” Baumann said. “The friends I made, the things we did together, it’s all been so valuable to me.”
That value isn’t just unlocking achievements in Call of Duty—Baumann is a co-founder of Air Force Gaming, a digital platform that connects airmen with fellow players in the service.
A lot of the insights he’s brought to the table come from the Leeds MBA he completed while on active duty. Many of his responsibilities focused on marketing strategy, “and the tools I was using were so fresh, they still had tags on them,” he said. “I was able to get insights on all the challenges we faced—from creating a social media presence, to building pitch decks, to refining our strategy—from my MBA classes.”
In fact, the platform has become so successful that last fall, the military effectively acquired it, bringing in a startup called Rally Cry to help take the program global.
“The Leeds MBA gave me the confidence and strategic mindset to push forward,” Baumann said.
In the short term, alongside running Air Force Gaming with co-founders Oliver Parsons and Mike Sullivan, Baumann is headed to the Air Force Personnel Center at Randolph Air Force Base, in Texas. He’ll be a talent management analyst, using analytics to assess the personnel programs the Air Force uses in the selection and development of all career fields. “I’m really excited to join the team, and I feel well equipped to do so thanks to my Leeds education,” he said.
Longer term, Baumann isn’t sure whether he’ll stay with the Air Force or transition to a civilian career. Either way, he expects the combination of military experience and his MBA to open new doors.
“It would be cool to hit one more rank, to major—the same as my dad when he retired,” Baumann said. “He also had an MBA. When I talked to him at graduation, I said, ‘Hey pops—I’m coming for you.’”
Melissa (Bus’77) and Gary (MBA’74 Ph.D. Bus’77) Porter
For something that seems so meant to be, fate sure took its time with Melissa Komisar and Gary Porter.
They were both studying business at the University of Colorado Boulder in the mid-1970s—Gary was working on an MBA, then a Ph.D.; Melissa her bachelor’s degree—but it wasn’t until the year before they graduated that they first met in the Koelbel Building.
They’ve been together ever since.
Today, the Porters have retired to Wisconsin, but distance hasn’t dimmed their pride in being Buffs. On a Zoom call to discuss the endowed scholarship they created, both wore CU gear and were as happy to talk about football games they attended as the life lessons from the classroom.
“CU was a springboard for Melissa—it’s how she got into sales at IBM, where she spent her entire career,” Gary Porter said. “And were it not for my master’s and Ph.D. at Colorado, and the encouragement from my mentors, my own career would have taken a very different turn.”
In fact, his retirement career has been an interesting turn—as a professor at Loyola Chicago and elsewhere, Gary Porter wrote influential accounting textbooks; today he writes compelling fiction, including “Duffy: The Tale of a Terrier” about the rescue dog the Porters adopted and a “memoir” of Griff, Drake University’s bulldog mascot. Melissa Porter, meanwhile, puts her 32-year career in marketing for IBM to work in supporting these stories through social media and other channels.
“It’s funny, my background was more in sales and marketing, but I worked at a high-tech company, so wound up doing technology business development, managing global alliances with software vendors, that kind of thing,” Melissa Porter said. “I had so many chances to use my skills and shift—we were pivoting before it was fashionable!”
The endowed scholarship is part of their estate planning—they are supporting something similar at Drake, where Gary Porter did his undergrad and still teaches in the MBA and continuing education programs—and the Porters also contributed to the Rustandy Building connecting the engineering and business hubs on the Boulder campus.
“We realized we actually have three degrees from Colorado, versus the one from Drake, so we decided to become more involved,” Melissa Porter said. “We think CU does an incredible job preparing students for the future, especially with the focus on entrepreneurship.”
An important consideration for their scholarship was it be awarded to out-of-state applicants, as both Porters came to Colorado from elsewhere. And supporting the Rustandy Building, which opens this fall, was about helping future generations to pivot professionally as technology becomes a greater force in the business world.
“Even though everybody now has to be into technology, we feel the same about business—no matter what your career choices, you have to have a basic business background,” Melissa Porter said.
Doug Elenowitz (MBA’02)
Co-founder, Trailbreak Partners
While coming up with a name for his latest real estate venture, Doug Elenowitz drew inspiration from his love of the Colorado outdoors.
Elenowitz and Jordan Scharg, his co-founder and principal, share a love of camping, skiing, mountain bike riding and hiking, which led them to the name Trailbreak Partners.
“If you’re breaking trail, you're leading the pack,” Elenowitz said. “You need to be willing to take a little bit of risk, but in a disciplined way. Those were the characteristics that resonated with what we wanted to do as investors. We want be thoughtful and prepared and intentional as we manage risk.”
Denver-based Trailbreak Partners is a niche private equity investment firm focused on the development and acquisition of infill real estate, as well as opportunistic investments in middle market operating companies. It draws upon expertise in urban real estate to develop and invest in desirable commercial properties.
Beyond investor relations and corporate culture, which are both important to him, Elenowitz said he’s interested in the organization’s legacy and impact. “As somebody who’s been here now 22 years, I want the projects we take on to have meaningful impacts in the communities in which we’re doing work,” he said.
When he relocated to Colorado from Atlanta, one of the first things Elenowitz did was to enroll in the Leeds MBA—partly because he was trying to break into real estate investment and development with a science background, and partly to build a network in his new home. In fact, he still hits the trails with professionals he met in his cohort.
“My MBA was the foundation for my feeling grounded and connected to Colorado, both professionally and personally,” he said. “To this day, I still have really strong relationships with people in organizations that I met through CU.”
Trailbreak Partners isn’t Elenowitz’s first foray into business ownership—he jumped in shortly after completing his MBA. Leeds, he said, encouraged him to explore entrepreneurship, a passion he discovered as a boy.
“When I was at CU, there were two areas where I spent my time—entrepreneurship, where I was active in the venture capital investment competition, and real estate,” he said. “It’s interesting that 20 years later, my career has gone full circle, and now I get the luxury of making real estate investment development decisions and investing in operating companies while co-owning a business.”
Emily Abed (Mktg’21)
Account Development Representative, Arrow Electronics
Ask most recent college graduates what their long-term goals are, and you’ll hear about career advancement, professional development, maybe finding ways to give back through their education.
You’ll get the same from Emily Abed, but first, she’ll tell you about her lifelong aspiration to be on “CNN Heroes.”
“I’ve always had a passion for sustainability and giving back,” said Abed, who recently started at Centennial-based Arrow Electronics. “It’s what made me so excited about CESR—learning that business can actually be sustainable, because there are people who want to do good through business.”
CESR—the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility at Leeds—is where Abed found a home after transferring from the University of Colorado’s Colorado Springs campus. A soccer player who captained the club team, she originally thought about a career in sports management, but coming to Leeds awakened her passions for marketing and entrepreneurship, which were further developed at internships with startups Sacred Cycle and The Jackfruit Company.
“At Sacred Cycle, I was really inspired to create my own nonprofit, and Leeds helped me work out a business plan,” Abed said of Community, a platform for connecting nonprofits with helpers that she expects could one day compete with VolunteerMatch.
Right now, she’s busy becoming part of the team at Arrow, but she hopes to push forward with Community—she’s received some seed funding and is getting mentorship from Prof. Brad Werner to flesh out the idea. For the moment, she’s appreciating the opportunity to learn at a bigger company.
“Arrow is giving me the chance to learn new things every single day,” she said. “I went from sports to consumer goods to technology: Four years ago, I didn’t think about a career in the technology industry. But the more I explored and learned during my internships, the more I realized it’s where I want to be.”
She’s doing so while continuing to stay active in nonprofits—including a seat on the board of Sock It To ‘Em, which collects and donates socks to the homeless—and chasing her ultimate goal of being a CNN Hero.
“I think I have the potential and I know I have the motivation,” Abed said, laughing. “It’s just a matter of continuing what I’m doing and staying true to my passion for giving back.”
Lane Levine (MechEngr’21)
Lane Levine sees the world differently than a typical engineer.
He’s good at identifying problems and possible solutions, but he also has a strong sense of what makes an idea practical—a combination he attributes to the business minor he earned at Leeds.
“The people in business who I collaborate with have wild ideas, which is great—but many of those ideas don't make sense, engineering-wise,” he said. “On the other hand, engineers often get to the point where they have a full product, but never stopped to consider whether there’s market demand. That's what’s great about the business minor—that I can combine those two things and actually make something feasible.”
Something feasible, in this case, is ReachRak, an accessible roof rack designed to improve storage in compact vehicles. Levine, who earned his business minor to go along with a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, earned top honors in a capstone pitch competition judged by community leaders and entrepreneurs.
An avid skier who also played ice hockey at CU, Levine said ReachRak was born from personal frustration.
“I would get to the mountain, get on my boots and everything, and then forget to pull down my skis from the top of the car,” he said. “And then it’s hard to get your skis down without slipping.”
The solution—a telescoping rack that folds down to the side of the car, allowing chest-height access to rooftop storage. He’s now doing some provisional patenting on the idea with the hope of moving forward with the idea as a side hustle as he pursues his dream of working in the automobile industry.
Levine pursued the business minor for its emphasis on entrepreneurship, a key point of distinction for the university and Boulder. Choosing the University of Colorado, he said, came down to “the chance to be in a positive environment, to do things that can benefit the world—that’s what brought me to CU as well as Leeds.”
It’s a perspective he’s eager to bring to the real world.
“No matter your major, having a business minor is perfect, because it prepares you for any job,” said Levine, whose own career search has begun in earnest now that the capstone competition has concluded. “Having this broad knowledge of how the business world works will be very beneficial to me, both as an engineer and, hopefully, an entrepreneur.”
Victor Bjorlow (Fin, Mktg’20, MFin’21 )
Though he’s completed two degrees at Leeds already, Victor Bjorlow isn’t done with his education.
But he’s not returning to a University of Colorado classroom. Instead, he’s off to Q School.
Aspiring pro golfers must complete the grueling European Tour Qualifying School in order to join the continental equivalent of the PGA Tour. It’s an unusual career route for someone with two finance degrees, but Bjorlow—a five-year star on the golf team—said he expects his education will be an asset whether or not he qualifies for a major tour.
“Golf is important to me, but I have this passion for finance, as well,” said Bjorlow, who focused on investment in his graduate studies. “After three or four years, I want to reflect on how the golf is going and, if it’s time for a change, be able to move into finance.”
Bjorlow was able to explore his passion for finance in further depth because of the pandemic. As a result of the golf season shutting down last spring, the NCAA awarded an extra year of eligibility to athletes; the native of Hellerup, Denmark, eventually decided to take advantage of the extra year to get his master’s, but nearly wound up returning to his home in Spain instead.
“It was just the shock of one day you’re playing, and the next, the season’s canceled,” Bjorlow said. “And I felt like I had more to learn, especially in terms of how to apply everything I’d been taught. Being able to take the master’s was everything I’d hoped for.”
It’s perhaps a surprising turnaround for Bjorlow, whose father is in finance but who arrived in Boulder five years ago without a defined academic direction. He enrolled in the Pre-Business Program, working diligently to gain admission into Leeds and becoming a strong student who was named to the Pac-12 Academic Honor Roll as a senior—all while continuing to improve on the golf course.
It’s a great start, but Bjorlow knows there’s more to do to achieve his PGA Tour dream.
“There was so much uncertainty last year—I’m just grateful that I made the right decision to stay at CU, to be able to focus on golf and school,” he said. “Whatever happens next, my lessons from the golf course and classroom will both be important going forward.”
Shannon Cox Baker (MBA’07)
Founder and Managing Partner, Rivet Development Partners
Most MBAs can vividly recall where they were when they got their acceptance offer.
Shannon Cox Baker is no different. After doing her phone interview from an internet café in Chile, Cox Baker headed into the mountains with her husband. Upon returning to civilization a week or so later, she got the news that she was in.
That story may be a little different from a typical Leeds MBA, but her motivation for enrolling was not.
“I wanted to make a difference in the world, and it occurred to me that I could make the biggest difference by working in a mission-driven organization through the private sector,” she said.
Leeds, she said, immediately felt like home, and while she enrolled in the MBA sight unseen, she’s been in Boulder ever since.
“It was a very forward-looking program,” Cox Baker said. “My MBA was the first time I realized I was not the only one who was interested sustainability—I was surrounded by a cohort that wanted to make an impact in the environment, in social equity or a related area.”
Today, Cox Baker is the founder and managing partner of Rivet Development Partners, a boutique developer with a focus on social equity. Her goals are to expand beyond affordable housing to include mixed-use development opportunities for small-scale commercial and retail tenants.
Her success in merging real estate innovation and entrepreneurship was helped by her studies at Leeds, which included a lot of time with the CU Real Estate Center and the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. But her current work also was shaped by what she considers the most fulfilling part of her career—building housing for the homeless while at Boulder Housing Partners, the housing authority for the city’s government, just after completing her MBA.
“I got to work on one of the most contentious development projects in Boulder’s history, because it was the first development for the homeless in Boulder,” she said. “It was intimidating and stressful, but exciting, and it left me wanting to do more of this. My goal for Rivet is to become the go-to company that creates physical spaces for those who are underrepresented.”
Megan Griffith (Acct, Fin’23)
Founder, Luxury Redesigned
You might not expect an aspiring accountant to have a flair for fashion, but Megan Griffith can count stitches as well as beans.
Griffith got her accounting sense from her parents, who both studied the discipline, but her fashion sense comes from her grandmother, who had a beautiful collection of handbags. Scrolling through her social media feed on her phone one day last summer, she saw a denim jacket that had bits of designer bags sewn into it.
The price was out of her reach. The concept was not.
“The more I looked into it and researched the idea, the more I saw an opportunity not only to repurpose designer bags, but to take unusable ones and give them a second life as part of a unique design,” Griffith said. “So the bags I buy have broken zippers or handles, but they become part of a jacket or keychain that becomes a designer item at a lower price point.”
She worked with a professional seamstress to create her first item, a jacket, for herself. With her leftover material, she was able to create a second, which sold instantly online. Since then, her jackets and keychains have sold incredibly well through social media campaigns; in late April, the Boulder boutique Madison Riley began carrying her Luxury Redesigned merchandise.
Griffith, a California native, wanted to study in Colorado to be close to family — she’s the eldest of four siblings — while exploring the area her father grew up in. She credits the unique Leeds ecosystem with helping her advance Luxury Redesigned, even as she serves as a peer mentor, holds a leadership role in Pi Beta Phi and is part of the selective Leeds Scholars Program.
“Leeds gives you all the resources you need to have the confidence to take the first step into something you want to do, and not be afraid to fail,” she said.
And while she expects her future to focus on accounting, Griffith is happy she’s at least found a fun side hustle.
“Finding such a love for entrepreneurship has been a big surprise,” she said. “The more I learn, the more it seems like a great opportunity for me to grow. Whether that’s with Luxury Redesigned or something else, it’s definitely a possible route for my future.”
Dean Sharon Matusik
She’s now in her fifth year as dean of Leeds, so Prof. Sharon Matusik has seen plenty of talented classes graduate into a world that craves the entrepreneurial spirit and innovative insights business students bring to the table.
And she has the same high expectations for this year’s graduates.
The Class of 2021 faces unique challenges as it goes out into the world, but Dean Matusik is confident that Leeds graduates have the skills—and determination—to succeed. She said students should remember that uncertainty is nothing new, and that the path forward after graduation is unclear even in the best of times.
“Remember to look for and create opportunities around you,” she said. “You are well-equipped to think entrepreneurially and to discover, create and act when an opportunity presents itself. Saying ‘yes’ these opportunities may also take you to places you may not have otherwise imagined.”
In fact, imagination and creativity—both hallmarks of entrepreneurial thinking, a major differentiator of the Leeds experience—are two qualities Dean Matusik has seen a lot of from the Class of 2021.
“I have been privileged to see countless examples where you have shown creative problem-solving, humility, empathy, community mindedness and grit during the pandemic,” she said. “It makes me incredibly optimistic for our future and for your personal success.”
When they look back on their last year at Leeds, graduates will probably remember the many unique challenges they faced, but, “while I certainly hope you draw strength from all that you have overcome, I hope you also remember all of your engagement with our community—from your peers to the many mentors, faculty, staff and business leaders who care deeply about you and your future,” she said.
As they go out into the world in such unusual times, Dean Matusik said she wants graduates to reflect on who they want to be and how their unique strengths can help them get there—professionally, but also personally.
“Know, too, when you are not able to be strong and need to ask for help,” she said. “Let that inform your empathy for others when they face difficulties in their lives.”
Ananya Tyagi (Fin’21)
When Ananya Tyagi accepted her admission offer to Leeds, she didn’t know exactly what she wanted out of her career, but hoped to find new perspectives to guide her search.
In doing so, she helped other students get new perspectives, also.
Tyagi said her service as vice chair on the school’s Distinguished Speakers Board, which brings public figures to campus to share thoughts with the Leeds community, was one of her most valuable experiences as a student.
“It was a chance to think about the current social climate, what's happening in the world and how students at CU feel about it,” she said. “It was a pretty diverse board, so we all had a voice for different pockets of the school.”
Among the speakers the group invited during her tenure were astronaut Scott Kelly, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, and actress and producer Viola Davis, who “was just as inspirational and motivational behind the scenes as she was in her talk,” Tyagi said.
Tyagi was president of her high school’s FBLA chapter, so knew she wanted to study business in college. “I saw Leeds as a place I could get a business education and do anything with it, whether that’s work for a nonprofit, go to grad school or get into tech,” she said.
Four years later, each of those options remains on the table. She’ll be returning to professional services firm RSM as a technology consulting associate, following a virtual internship last summer; she’s earned a minor in computer science to go with her business degree. But she expects she’ll pursue graduate school in the future, and her Leeds experience has her thinking about working in the nonprofit or entrepreneurship spaces in the long term.
“In the computer science part of my education, I learned to code,” she said. “The business part of my degree is where I learned the creativity to think about how that code can solve larger problems. That’s what I’m hoping to do in my career.”
Eyob Abai (Fin, Mgmt’21)
Eyob Abai puts authenticity among the most important attributes a professional can have.
So, when asked for his proudest accomplishment from his internship with McKinsey & Co., Abai offered an authentic answer.
“On my first day, I looked at the scope of the project and thought, there’s no way I’m going to fully understand this,” Abai said. “But on my last day, I was so surprised at what I had accomplished. I’m genuinely proud that I took ownership during my internship to get the most out of the experience.”
McKinsey clearly liked what they saw, too. Abai accepted an offer from the management consulting powerhouse to return as a business analyst after graduation.
“I’m most excited to join McKinsey for the opportunity to explore,” he said. “I think I’ll be able to use a lot of the soft skills I’ve gained at Leeds—how to navigate dynamic situations, how to maintain a positive work ethic, how to have conversations with different groups of people.”
That’s not just his work in the classroom, either. Abai’s on-campus involvement is staggering: Leeds Student Government president and senior analyst with Leeds Consulting Group, plus involvement with the Multicultural Business Students Association, Alpha Kappa Psi, the Leeds Honors Program and Diverse Scholars Program.
A common theme of his involvement, as a first-generation college student, is how to bring diversity, inclusion and equity to the forefront of the conversation.
“The business world serves a wide variety of people, and so only having one subset of individuals represent those interests is not going to cut it,” Abai said. “And you can bring in different kinds of people, but you’re not going to be effective unless they actually feel included.”
Some initiatives he’s proud of from his time at Leeds include testifying before the Colorado Legislature on a bill to remove standardized test requirements in schools and organizing Leeds Student Government around five guiding principles, like career readiness and mental health, to improve the student experience.
“I didn’t know just how good Leeds was until I got here,” Abai said. “As soon as I came to CU, I appreciated being able to engage in conversations—with peers and in classes—that pushed my train of thought and diversity of thought.”
Shannon Flahive (MBA'21)
Shannon Flahive’s career was off to the races from the moment she graduated from Harvard University.
Even as her classmates struggled to find work in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, she immediately started what became a 10-year consulting career working with the Fortune 100 in Boston and New York.
At a certain point, though, the corporate treadmill felt like a conveyor belt, as she shuttled between opportunities without a strategic sense of her future.
Moving back to her home of Colorado—and enrolling in the full-time Leeds MBA program—was the inspiration she needed.
“The Leeds MBA was really a chance to provide myself with a space to think creatively about what I might want to do next, because I had a really tough time doing that while also working,” she said.
Over the course of her two-year program, Flahive took courses in new venture creation and launch, with Profs. Brad Werner and Jeff York, and completed two internships with local venture capital firms. Those experiences gave her a taste for the excitement of startup culture.
“As much as I enjoyed the projects I did with big companies, the future of the global economy is going to depend on how well we can get capital to folks with really creative and innovative ideas that can drive change on a huge scale,” she said.
Flahive’s extensive corporate experience made her a natural fit to be president of the MBA Association. Not only that, she was director of finance for the Deming Center Venture Fund, where she worked with a cross-disciplinary team of students, faculty and experts. The fund supports promising early-stage companies in the Boulder area.
“I joined the Deming Center in my first couple of months, and it solidified for me that this was the path I wanted to take,” said Flahive, who got an internship at Blackhorn Ventures through a Deming Center relationship. A second, with Service Provider Capital, started with an introduction from a professor.
Working in the local business community affirmed her belief that returning to Colorado was the right professional move.
“I love the energy of Boulder and Leeds — the program and the city attract a certain kind of professional, and I was able to develop this great network from my cohort, my professors and the community,” she said. “I’m very passionate about doing work that benefits the local ecosystem.”
Emma Spaulding (Mktg’21)
Emma Spaulding accepted her dream offer, but she doesn't know her boss’s name. Or where she'll be working. Or what she'll be doing.
It's all part of the journey when you accept a fellowship from Venture for America. Modeled on Teach for America, Venture for America offers two-year fellowships that challenge recent college grads to help drive economic mobility in underserved U.S. cities by working at startups; Spaulding is now determining where, exactly, she’ll work.
Like many of her classmates, Spaulding applied to a variety of organizations as she sought employment in a job market still bearing the scars of the pandemic. Securing the Venture for America fellowship has the feel of a distinctly Leeds story: She’ll graduate with a certificate in Social Responsibility & Ethics, “which gave me new perspectives on business and influenced where I want to end up in my career — and the type of company I want to work for,” she said. “I would not be going the Venture for America route if not for SRE and Leeds.”
In an internship with PFD Group, a consulting firm, Spaulding was part of an entrepreneurial team that worked with executives to shape their long-term company vision, showing her what it takes to run a business. “I was able to discover what I’m passionate about, and meet incredible mentors who will help me get to where I want to be,” she said.
Spaulding’s passion for service is authentic. She volunteers with Service for Sight as a sister in Delta Gamma, and when she learned about pandemic-related teaching shortages in her Telluride, CO, hometown, she became a substitute teacher.
“A lot of teachers were understandably afraid to be in the classroom, but I already had antibodies to COVID-19, so I saw substituting as a way to make a difference during winter break,” Spaulding said. “It was unlike anything I’ve done before.”
That comfort jumping into new experiences will be key as she prepares for the next stage of her life, which may one day involve a startup of her own.
“I’m really excited to see where I end up fitting into the mission for Venture for America,” Spaulding said. “I want to apply the skills I’ve learned at Leeds in a way that impacts not just the bottom line, but the community the business operates in and the people they serve.”
