Tag: Professional MBA

What happens when you combine a profound appreciation for the power of education, deep gratitude for opportunities opened by a scholarship, setting priorities, and career success?

For J.T. Mosbacher and Heidi Morris-Mosbacher, you get the chance to be among the youngest alumni ever to endow a scholarship for future business students at WashU Olin Business School.

“Education and philanthropy are very important to our family. It has shaped who we are,” said J.T., AB 2010/PMBA 2015. “These are some of our biggest priorities. Heidi and I have deep discussions about how to pave the path forward.”

Indeed, for Heidi, AB 2009, it’s a perfect opportunity to give back after being a self-described “scholarship kid.” Thirteen years after graduating from WashU, she was excited to let her own scholarship donor know of their gift.

Both J.T. and Heidi work as financial advisors for Edward Jones in St. Louis, where they take great pride in serving in coaching roles with their clients, helping them to set and achieve goals. The couple sees the ability to endow a scholarship as an extension of some of the work they do with clients—prioritizing and establishing a legacy.

Impacting lives ‘in perpetuity’

“We’ve been blessed with career success,” Heidi said. “Our hope is that we can impact the lives of others in perpetuity. With what we do for a living, we are confronted by the following questions: ‘What do we want our legacy to look like? What impact do we want to have on the world?’ on a near daily basis. I see our legacy as threefold: the human beings we shape our children into, philanthropy, and being a part of our clients’ life stories.”

The couple also hopes to instill these values into their three children.  “Our hope is that our actions will inspire them and others along the way,” said J.T.

The pair met at WashU thanks, in part, to what J.T. described as his “snaking path” to a career. Initially, he felt pressure to declare a major early on and chose architecture but soon realized that was not going to be his career. “Going to a university that was forgiving if I changed my major was a prerequisite.  I also have a second major in American Culture Studies,” he said. “That’s how I met Heidi. She’s a dual major in Political Science and American Culture Studies.”

For her part, Heidi found a path as a WashU student looking into investment research. “I didn’t grow up around investing jargon. I didn’t know what stocks or bonds were,” she said. “I stumbled upon investing my freshman year and ended up in a brokerage firm office at 18 years old telling them I wanted to open an account. The advisor looked at me and asked if my parents knew I was there.”

Her path eventually led her to study at the London School of Economics.

Enduring influence of WashU

“Not only do I enjoy wealth management and financial planning, the true highlight of my career is forming relationships with the families that I serve,” she said. “I enjoy getting to know people on a very deep level and helping them achieve their version of financial success.”

J.T. and Heidi’s contribution brings the number of endowed scholarships at Olin to 205 as of December 2022. Their endowed scholarship was established with a gift where a portion of the earnings are reinvested, helping to ensure resources for the scholarship will always be available.

Both J.T. and Heidi specifically recalled a personal finance course they took under Mike Gordinier as a highlight of their WashU education. “That was a phenomenal class,” Heidi said. “It opened my eyes to a career path.”

For J.T., joining a cohort of young professionals in their PMBA program was also a formative experience as successful classmates worked together to catapult their careers: “The discussions and ability to relate to our work experiences helped bring the theories we learned in the classroom to life.”

To join J.T. and Heidi in supporting financial aid resources for our students, please visit the Scholars in Business website for more information.

Seventeen WashU Olin student-led startup firms each received a $1,000 grant from the Holekamp Seed Fund over the past academic year. The grant program, initiated in 2018, has granted a total of $44,000 to 40 companies since then.

The program is the brainchild of Cliff Holekamp, MBA ’01, Olin’s former professor of practice and academic director for entrepreneurship. The program is built to provide up to 20 grants each year thanks to a $500,000 gift from Holekamp and his father Bill Holekamp.

“It’s exciting to see not just student interest in the Holekamp Seed Fund doubling but also the continued excitement and energy around entrepreneurship at Olin and WashU,” Cliff Holekamp said of the 2022 grantees. “WashU students have exceptional and big ideas to change the world. We’re proud to be the first money in to support them.”

The number of applications doubled from 11 to 22 year-over-year, with grantees rising from 10 to 17.

Grant applications are evaluated by a panel that includes Holekamp and Doug Villhard, Olin’s professor of practice and academic director for entrepreneurship. The four-member panel also includes II Luscri, assistant vice provost for innovation and entrepreneurship, and director of the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship; and Elise Miller Hoffman, AB ’11/MBA ’16, and a general partner at Cultivation Capital, Holekamp’s venture capital firm.

“We encourage students to courageously move beyond the brainstorming phase, by turning their ideas into action and their concept into a company,” Hoffman said. “It’s my pleasure to review their applications, offer advice and seed the next generation of innovation. Our students are beyond inspiring.”

The 2022 Holekamp Seed fund recipients include:

• St. Louis Consulting Group, Samuel Holliday, MBA ’23
• bonhome, Jacob Wise, MD ’23/MBA ’23
• Ice Cream for Bears, Tim Berg, MBA ’22
• Closet Switch, Chiara Munzi, AB ’23
• Vulvopedia, Najjuwah Walden, PhD/MSW ’18
• NXTUP, Nathan Genstein, MBA ’22
• SpanAbility, Ritvik Illindala, EN ’23
• SpeakIT, Kai Skallerud, AB ’17/MBA ’22
• VertiGreens, Dave Kanoff, BSBA ’12/MBA ’22, and Tova Feinberg, MBA ’22
• Got Sure, Felipe Cuartas, MBA ’22
• Utter, Justin Matthews, MBA ’23
• Lyfe Health, Tony Sims, BSBA ’23
• The pcBEE, Tyler Richards, BSEE ’22
• Pool, Rebecca Brosch, PMBA 51, and Sarah Ramrup, PMBA
• Sobriety Hub, Clayton Canfield, BSBA ’23

“We’re fortunate to have supporters like the Holekamp family and alumni like Elise who are passionate about Olin, WashU and our students,” Villhard said. “What a wonderful example of how a donor can really impact our students and help to encourage their dreams and career trajectory.”

You might say this partnership is just the bees’ knees. Two Olin alums have joined forces thanks to a common ingredient between their two products: honey.

Cam Loyet, PMBA ’21, and cofounder of Honeymoon Chocolates, has partnered with Timothy Berg, MBA ’22, founder of Ice Cream for Bears. Both promote the benefits of honey as the sweetening agent in their respective confections.

“Honey is having a moment,” Berg said. “Consumers are educated on it and looking for it. Products that are sweetened only with honey are just starting to appear though, so I feel like our companies are hopping into the ring at a perfect time.”

Loyet’s chocolate brand opened its first retail location in January not far from the WashU campus in nearby Clayton at 16 N. Central Ave. As of now, Berg is scooping his ice cream from the same location as the two honey-based companies use their hive minds to stick together and work smart. He said it was “an amazing opportunity to get valuable exposure for our very young product.”

“It’s always fun watching students take their startups from the classroom and apply them in the real world,” said Doug Villhard, the academic director for Olin’s entrepreneurship program, who coached both startup founders. “Especially when two WashU MBA entrepreneurs partner on a honey of an idea.”

Loyet said the partnership emerged because he and Berg have like-minded products with a focus on sourcing sustainable honey. They’ve shared contacts from the location where they source their honey—Jeff Weaver, an apiarist in Bourbon, Missouri. He said both he and Berg found a lot of support in launching and testing new products in St. Louis.

“I personally see this as a long-term collaboration—as long as we can both continue to find honey,” Loyet said. He credits his collaboration with Villhard and the WashU community for helping get Honeymoon Chocolates off the ground. “Honeymoon had very little traction before WashU. I gathered mentors and a team that made traction and sales possible.”

Berg also credits the “unbelievable impact” of the WashU community. “Anytime I need help, there’s someone in the WashU network a phone call away with the experience and knowledge I’m looking for,” he said. “Even the spot where I manufacture is a result of WashU connection.”

Pictured at top: Tim Berg, MBA ’22, and Cam Loyet, PMBA ’21, have partnered their companies in promoting honey-centric products: Loyet’s Honeymoon Chocolates and Berg’s Ice Cream for Bears.

The return to a sense of normalcy and traditional in-person events continued in late April as more than 90 PMBA students arrived in Washington, DC, for their two-day residency at the Brookings Institution.

Students arrived for the trip in time for dinner on April 27 and spent the next two days in conversation with noted political insiders, media experts and policy wonks—all in service of connecting the dots between business, government and policy.

“We spend so much of our time optimizing our market strategy, but there are so many other factors at play,” said Archie Karanwal, PMBA class 48, a product owner at Edward Jones. He said the Brookings residency was a great opportunity to gain an understanding of some of those other factors.

Indeed, the trip is a manifestation of Dean Mark P. Taylor’s oft-stated desire that every WashU Olin student have a Brookings experience during their time. The April residency included students from four different PMBA cohorts: classes 46, 48, 49 and 50. The two-day visit even included an evening tour of DC monuments among the activities on April 28 and 29.

Ian Dubin, associate dean and managing director for WashU at Brookings, exhorted the students to bring their own experiences and professional work with them as they listened to and engaged with the speakers, who covered topics including cyber-security, the government regulatory process and Congress.

“It’s not all like cable news here in Washington, where people are yelling at each other all the time, believe it or not,” Dubin said.

Speakers included Ron Christie, CEO of Christie Strategies and former deputy assistant to the vice president for domestic policy under Dick Cheney, who shed light on the more subtle interactions that occur among policy makers and elected officials—and who reinforced the importance for business leaders of understanding that process.

Those connections were not lost on Kelsey Wortmann, PMBA 49, a product planner at Emerson. “I hadn’t realized how actual work gets done in Washington. I never really thought before about how easy it is to make connections.”

Other speakers included:

• Michael Fitzpatrick, director of global strategy and innovation, Google; former associate administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget
• Jim Papa, senior vice president and managing director, Global Strategy Group; host of Staffer podcast; former special assistant to the president for legislative affairs; former House and Senate senior staffer 
• Susan Page, author and Washington bureau chief, USA Today 
• Steven Chabinsky, former deputy assistant director, cyber division, FBI 
• Hon. Albert Wynn (D-MD), senior director, Greenberg Traurig LLP; former member, energy and commerce committee, US House of Representatives 
• An assortment of foreign policy experts.

Pictured at top: Kelsey Wortmann, PMBA 49 (with book), asked a question of Ron Christie (on screen, left) during the 90 students’ visit to DC for a two-day residency at the Brookings Institution.

Who doesn’t love chocolate? Especially when it’s free!

Honeymoon Chocolates, cofounded by Olin alum Cam Loyet, PMBA ’21, is hosting its grand opening of its chocolate factory from 3–7 p.m. this Saturday. The address: 16 North Central Avenue in Clayton, Missouri.

Free drinking chocolate, chocolate samples, baked goods and merchandise will be available, and the first 30 people to come will receive a gift. Masks are required.

Honeymoon Chocolates crafts bean-to-bar chocolate sweetened with raw honey.

“We are chocolate makers in solidarity with our cacao farmers through pledging to pay a premium for all cacao purchased,” Loyet said in an email. “We donate to honeybee research and purchase directly from beekeepers.”

Loyet co-founded the company with his now wife, Dr. Haley Loyet. The brand evolved from a dorm room in 2016 to a team of five and the Clayton location. In 2021, Arch Grants awarded the business $50,000.

Top photo: Founders Cam Loyet and Dr. Haley Loyet.

The St. Louis Business Journal recently announced its 40 Under Forty Class of 2021, a set of young leaders the publication expects to feature in the next decade. This year’s list includes Ryan Harbison, MBA ’19, a US Marine veteran who now serves as general manager and vice president of business operations at Breeze Helicopters.

Harbison was an outstanding student at Olin. He was a Charles F. Knight Scholar and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honors society. Before coming to WashU, Harbison received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History at Colgate University, where he also served as a volunteer firefighter. He then spent 10 years as a Marine pilot and flight instructor.

‘Olin bridged the knowledge gap for me’

“Olin was instrumental in preparing me for life in the ‘civilian’ business world,” Harbison said. “While the Marine Corps provided me with a set of skills that have also been beneficial, Olin bridged the knowledge gap for me between a largely liberal arts background and the hard skills I needed to feel confident entering the business world.”

Harbison is also grateful for the Olin Veterans Association, of which he served as president in 2019. “The OVA was one of the main reasons I choose Olin,” he said. “Washington University has a robust veteran network and actively engages transitioning veterans. Our cohort of students worked hard to increase the OVA’s presence in the community while also trying to bolster veteran numbers at the school.”

‘Outstanding entrepreneurship program’

Harbison also said he benefited from Olin’s “outstanding entrepreneurship program. I had the opportunity to work with several start-ups during my two years in the MBA program. Those were very enjoyable and beneficial programs, and I learned a tremendous amount from the founders of the companies that my groups partnered with.” 

The St. Louis Business Journal will host an awards ceremony for Ryan Harbison and the other 40 Under Forty nominees on Thursday, November 18, at the St. Louis Marriott Grand Hotel. Tickets are available online.