Viva Chicago & Welcome Fall B Semester

Just got back from the yearly Netimpact Conference at the Kellogg Scool of Management in Chicago - where we had a whale of time, both during the conference itself and on Saturday night where a Chicago native classmate took us out for some Halloween fun (hence the lovely get up seen in photo above!).

Netimpact is an organization of b-school students interested in making a positive social impact - in short people who want to make money while doing good at the same time.This is something I am pretty interested in at the moment and luckily something that is taken quite seriously here in Berkeley. For those who are all about the details: "double/triple bottom line ventures" is what really interests me personally - that is you only consider your company successful if it delivers: monetary value, social value and environmental value (hence the 3 bottom lines). Expect environmentally friendly iPods (or the like) made by well fed people in developing nations to be built by Maiken-Inc. in the very near future...

Other than that - we finally finished our Fall A semester! Done are Statistics, Micro Economics, Organizational Behavior & Leadership Communication. I won't go in to the details of how busy we were and how much our final weeks sucked - the very brief version is that it was a bitch - but hey it is done and I feel confident that i passed all my classes!

So, next up and already in full swing are: Accounting (homework for which I should be doing right now :), Corporate Finance (I'm finally learning what the bean counters do all day!), Marketing (fun stuff like selling 3 wheel scooters in India) and Leadership (how-not-to-be a micro manager among other things...)

In other good news, I have been admitted to Haas' International-Business-Development Program meaning that I'll get to go on a 3-4 week consulting gig 'someplace-in-the-world' next spring - check the website above for past projects and countries, they include places like Zambia, Madagascar & Tahiti (but also Finland & Germany) - I wont know until January where I get to go to, but still quite exciting.


On this note, back to accounting and hopefully more updates soon!