Around Cornell Business

Demir Sabanci, MBA ’99, President, chairman, and founder, Sedes Holding, and president and CEO of Sedesco Inc Two pieces of art dominate the main boardroom at Sedes Holding, Demir Sabanci’s Istanbul-based investment management firm. One is an oil painting of a ship swaying through choppy waters. The other is a scale model of the Titanic. […]

Change for good In China’s remote villages, residents who don’t have access to electricity cook their food by burning wood or yak dung inside poorly ventilated homes. The toxic smoke generated from these primitive stoves causes more indoor air pollution than can be measured on a city street in Beijing. Yet in 2008, a company […]

Better banking in Dubai As a consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Dubai, Salmaan Jaffery advises banks on how to operate more effectively. But since moving to the Middle East in 2008, he’s found that working with banks in the region is a completely different undertaking than assessing financial institutions in the United States. While Jaffery primarily […]

Breathe Deep Victoria Chen immediately noticed something was different when she landed at Shanghai Pudong International Airport last December. Though it was nearly 11 p.m. and the food court was closed, the airport smelled like barbeque kebab. After staying in Shanghai for a few days, she saw clouds of smog so thick shrouding the city […]

Cornell’s first African-American MBA broke barriers throughout his career The Johnson community was saddened to learn of the passing of Wilbur Parker ’50, MBA ’50, Cornell’s first African-American MBA and inaugural recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from Johnson’s Black Graduate Business Association — subsequently named in his honor as the Wilbur Parker Distinguished Alumni […]

Growing Dropbox If a startup is a company designed to grow fast, then Dropbox, the online storage firm, still fits the model. Since Olga Narvskaia joined the San Francisco-based company as head of user operations in 2012, the number of employees has spiraled to 1,200 from less than 200. “The brand is so big and […]

Bulgaria anticipates incremental growth, particularly in the IT sector, and has benefited from accession into the European Union. by Krasina Koleva, MBA ’15 Overview: Bulgaria is a small country located on the Balkans that borders Romania, Greece, Turkey, Macedonia, Serbia and the Black Sea. In 2011 the total population of the country was 7.3 million […]

In order to achieve prosperity, Venezuela must change economic policy, fiscal policy, be more business friendly, liberalize the labor market, promote exports, and strengthen democratic institutions. by Leonardo Pozzobon, MBA ’15 Emerging Markets, what a catchphrase! They’ve been all the rage in the past decade. Half a billion Chinese lifted out of poverty since the […]

An interview with Humberto Ribeiro, former Brazilian Secretary of Commerce and Services reveals how entrepreneurial spirit can be mirrored at the country level. by Larissa Wecshler, MBA ’15 Humberto Luiz Ribeiro is a Brazilian entrepreneur, who has started and operated various ventures in the IT, outsourcing and bio capacity sectors. In 2011, he was appointed Secretary of Commerce […]