School's Back in Session!

I can't believe we are already two weeks into class. Time sure does fly when you are having fun!

This semester, all of the full-time MBA students are taking Accounting, Management & Leadership, and Ethics as core classes on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Then the class has a choice of their concentration and elective courses in Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, and Entrepreneurship. For example, I have opted for the Marketing Track so I am in the "Shopper & Consumer Behavior" and "Marketing Research" courses offered on Tuesday and Thursday morning.

This schedule gives me the flexibility to continue my internship with Kellogg in the afternoons on Monday-Thursday and all day on Friday. As a part of our internships, the Career Center has organized a Presentation and Poster Competition allowing all of us an opportunity to hone our presentation skills and get some exposure to local employers. The first round was Friday and even though I wasn't selected to move on, I am grateful to have had the chance to participate and practice selling my internship experiences.

Yesterday, we received the Professional Development schedule for the semester and there are some exciting opportunities for the fall. The GSB will be offering Advanced Powerpoint, Advanced Excel - Macros & Programming, Six Sigma, and Negotiation. I plan on attending each of these since they will be immensely beneficial to the things that make MBAs valuable job candidates.

Well, I'm off to finish my reading for the coming week!

- Tammy :o)

Summer so far...

Wow! I simply cannot believe that it is almost August. We start classes back on the 20th of the upcoming month, and while I'm definitely excited to get started again, I can't help but start to reflect on my summer so far. If you've been following my blog, you've seen that I was able to travel to China for two weeks with the Walton College MBA program on a tour of the retail landscape. Visiting with Goodmark-Asia, Li & Fung, Walmart-China, P&G, Unilever, a Yantian Port Terminal, and ARC China, provided our tour group with a comprehensive retail tour from product conception and planning to manufacturing to store. I learned so much and gained invaluable insight in the retail industry and international business.

In addition to my study abroad, I've also been able to continue my graduate assistantship with Kellogg as a full-time Sales Analyst intern with the Ready-to-Eat-Cereal team supporting Walmart. Transitioning from part-time during the school year to full-time during the summer has really given me the opportunity to maximize my time and learning experiences at Kellogg. In addition to my responsibilities tracking sell-through of our merchandising events and other forms of consumption, I've been able to take on some special projects measuring incrementality, gauging non-compliance, evaluating attribution characteristics, and planning sustainability scorecards. For the snacks side's Cheez-It Friday launch of the "Shake-It to Make-It" mix, Kellogg even had Kirk Herbstreit come into the office and talk college football with the whole team and sign autographs. He even hinted that College Gameday *might* even make a stop in Fayetteville this year. :o)

As a part of our internship credit with the MBA program, students develop posters and presentations about our summer experiences and learning outcomes. All of the students compete before a panel of judges to summarize their internship and answer questions from the judges. Then all students will again share their posters at the networking competition held at the Alumni House. The winners of both the presentation competition and the poster networking session will then be announced and awarded trophies.

Unfortunately, our trip to the Heifer International Global Village through their Passport Program in Perryville, AR has been cancelled, but there is some hope that we will still get to participate with Heifer over Spring Break next spring. I have been able to do some traveling, however, with MBA Women International through my role as National Student Director. This past weekend, I was in Dallas with the organization at the Professional Chapter's Executive Board Leadership Retreat. I was able to learn so much about MBAWI and the way that the professional chapters operate. I took away a lot that I think we will be able to apply this year to the student chapters nationally, and even with our own chapter at the U of A. I'm so excited about the year ahead!

How is your summer going?

- Tammy :o)

Reflections on My Trip to China

After returning home, I had several assignments to complete reflecting on my time in China and the lessons I learned. I was tasked with writing five different reflection pieces, each on a different topic: 1) Major Reading Assignment and Report: 'Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory” by Peter Hessler, 2) Observations from My First Trip to China, 3) Overview of ARC China Visit, 4) Overview of Walmart China Visits, and 5) Overview of GoodMark-Asia and Li & Fung Visits. 

Some of the key lessons that I took away from our retail tour through China included the cultural and regional differences in China that impact the retail market, the supply chain shortcomings throughout China, the financial and consumer opportunities, and the macro retail trends in China and beyond.

Here is an excerpt of my favorite parts from Essay #4: Overview of Walmart China Visits on our time with Walmart China SVP & CFO Mario-Jose Medina: How to be Successful in International Business:

"Mr. Medina provided our group with a different approach to our learning experience at Walmart China and shared with us how to be a successful business person – especially in an increasingly global marketplace and at a multinational company. The first piece of advice that Mr. Medina offered us was to be tridimensional – a combination of head, heart, and gut. He described for us that life’s decisions are a journey of time, mistakes, and personal dilemmas, and even offered a formula for making mistakes: fail fast, often, and cheap.

The CFO also shared a new concept with us of the ‘VUCA’ world. The world is one of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. In order to succeed in this kind of world, we need to be professionals with Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility. Finally, Mr. Medina recommended that we strive to be a combination of IQ (intelligence), EQ (emotional), and CQ (cultural) – in order to accomplish this, we must be open-minded and should attempt to work abroad and stretch ourselves by experiencing ‘culture shocks’ as often as possible. He closed with his adaptation to the popular Charlie ‘Tremendous’ Jones quote, 'You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet, the books you read, and the places you go.'"

As a part of our coursework, we were also assigned an online photo album with detailed explanations of the photos that depict some of the key lessons from our trip. Here is the link to my album: http://photobucket.com/uachina2012_tammy. I should probably warn you that there are more than 500 photos here, but for a smaller album of just the highlights with the 25 key lesson descriptions can be found via this link: http://s1076.photobucket.com/home/uachina2012/tag/Photo Essay Assignment. And if that is still too much for you, haha - here are only a few: 

- Tammy :o)

Home Sweet Home

I've finally made it home from my adventures abroad in China and started to get settled back into my summer internship at Kellogg and Director roles with MBA Women International. I had such an amazing time in China with my fellow travel mates from the UofA - it's definitely been hard to get adjusted back to daily life. I'm still absorbing all of the incredible lessons that I will forever take away from my brief visit to a very different far-away land, but I do know for sure that I want to seek out opportunities to live abroad as a young professional to further develop myself and career. In the meantime, I'm also still learning so much in my time at Kellogg. From developing my skills in Excel, Retail Link, and Access to beginning to really understand the tactical and strategic relationship of Kellogg as vendor and Walmart as buyer, every day I legitimately take away something new. During my spare time (haha), I'm also working with an incredibly talented group of ladies from MBA Women International. We have been drafting a membership and leadership survey to go out next week to further develop and support our initiatives for the year to bring new and improved benefits to our general membership and chapter affiliates. I'm really excited to see what we can accomplish as a team, and I will be sure to keep you updated on our progress as well. Until next time, I leave you with the link to meet my fellow National Student Leadership Team members and a few more photos from China. Enjoy!

http://www.mbawomen.org/national-student-leadership-team

- Tammy :o)

Paris of the East

It's Shanghai Noon! This will likely be my last post before I make it back to the states, but I wanted to show you some photos of my time here in Shanghai. We've been able to travel to the Jade Buddha Temple, Yu Garden, the Bund, and the tallest building in China - the Shanghai World Financial Building. We also got to visit with Unilever, Arc China, and Kantar Retail. Although I'm excited to start my journey back home tomorrow, I'm definitely going to miss the group I've gotten to travel with throughout China and I will remember my trip here fondly and always look for chances to come back. I'll share more about the whole trip when I have better access to Internet, but thanks for following my trip thus far!

- Tammy :o)

Beijing 北京

Nǐ hǎo! After leaving Hong Kong and heading to Shenzhen to visit the Walmart China headquarters and a distribution center, the group headed to China's capital city - Beijing. Tonight is our last night here before we get up early to travel to our final stop on our Chinese tour in Shanghai, but we've done a lot during our time here. We focused primarily on cultural excursions here and have seen Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Temple of Heaven. I've learned so much in such a short time here about Chinese culture. I also have to admit, I have a newly heightened sense of respect for the international students in our program. Being unfamiliar with the language and facing daily challenges communicating with those around you is even more challenging than I could have imagined. Most of my time here, I have felt very dependent on other people - which is not in my nature! During our time at Walmart China, we had the opportunity to meet and speak with their CFO MJ Medina who talked with us about seeking out these experiences to stretch ourselves and overcome the pain of culture shocks, and I am so grateful to have been able to come to China and experience this firsthand. I feel that I have already grown so much in these two short weeks, and I am confident that it will only benefit me in the future. I would love to work for a multinational corporation and spend several years over seas in another country such as China to further develop myself as a business leader and professional - and I have this trip to thank for opening my eyes to these opportunities. Anyhow, enjoy some of my photos of Beijing sights below, and I'll try to check in one more time from Shanghai before I return stateside. Then I'll give you a full update on my trip when I get home. I've been taking lots of notes and pictures that I can't wait to share with you! Zài jiàn!

- Tammy :o)

HONG KONG!

I made it to Hong Kong tonight! After a long 15 hour flight from Chicago leaving yesterday at 1:30pm CST, we touched down at Hong Kong International Airport 5:55pm HKT. Shockingly, the flight didn't actually seem that long. I had made sure to download plenty of entertainment onto my new handy dandy iPad (the whole first season of 'Hart of Dixie'...) to keep me occupied. When I arrived, half of our group was already here as the undergrads spent a week in Zhuhai studying Chinese culture and met the grad students in Hong Kong. My roommate, Lily, is actually from China, and she has already proven to be a marvelous resource as she took me to dinner tonight and showed me the ropes. Tomorrow we have a free day in Hong Kong and then the next day we visit Li & Fung for our first business visit. So far, all is well, and I'm absolutely loving China. That's all for tonight, but I will keep you posted as the week goes on. For now, here's a photo of our view from our room. Ciao!

- Tammy :o)