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COE Lecture Series

The lecture series highlights practitioners who provide additional exposure to the issues of various organizations and careers. 

 

On November 10, 2009, Lawrence Benjamin '77, Executive Vice President, Royal Ahold and Chief Operating Officer, Ahold USA, will give a talk focusing on business ethics entitled, Cleaning Up After a Fraud: Lessons Learned for Building an Ethical Culture.

 

On April 22, 2009, Donna M. O'Brien, President, Community Healthcare Strategies, LLC, gave a presentation entitled Reconfiguring Healthcare to Realize the Promise of Personalized Medicine:  A view from the trenches, which focused on how new scientific developments in molecular medicine and technology will require major changes in the healthcare system in order to become a reality for patients. 

 

On April 3, 2008, COE with its co-sponsors the Division of Engineering and the Swearer Center for Public Service hosted
An Afternoon with Paul Polak, Founder of International Development Enterprises and expert on sustainable economic development.

 

On November 26, 2007, Steve Gresham, Executive Vice President of Phoenix Investment Partners, Ltd., gave a talk on the global aging phenomenon.

 

On October 18, 2007, Mr. John Chen '78 gave a talk entitled, Examining the U.S. and China Business Landscape. Mr. Chen, Chairman, CEO and President of Sybase, Inc., discussed the business relationship between the United States and China--the world's largest developed country and the largest developing country.

 

On October 3, 2007, Mr. Hambleton (Ham) Lord '83, Managing Director of Launchpad Venture Group, delivered the first COE lecture series talk for the 2007-2008 academic year, Raising Money From Angels. With over 20 years in the software industry founding and building industry leading companies, Ham shared what an angel investor does and how they select companies for investment.

 

On April 10, 2007, Former United States Treasury Secretary, John Snow, delivered a talk entitled, A Discussion on Globalization, Exchange Rates, and Current Account Imbalances. Read the Brown Daily Herald article, Former Treasury Secretary Discusses Economic Policymaking.

 

On November 16, 2006 Dr. Sadeg M. Faris discussed the links between innovation and trading in his talk, "What Does Innovation have to do with Harmonious or Acrimonious Trading?"Dr. Faris also spoke about the challenges that arise with a growing disparity between the technology haves and have-nots and how this leads to instability and “technology colonization” in trading, as well as lessons learned from a recent case study involving a failed experiment by the government of Malaysia to achieve technology sovereignty.

 

On October 27, 2006, Mary Lou Jepsen gave a talk entitled: One Laptop per Child and the $100 Laptop: A Global Humanitarian Cause. Dr. Jepsen is CTO of One Laptop per Child (OLPC)—a new kind of startup designed to get to high volume manufacturing quickly, get massive purchase orders from the outset, and in the process has had to ignore some of the traditional tenets of business including maximizing gross margin (they have none), intellectual property protection (they believe in open source)and traditional sustainable competitive business advantages. Dr. Jepsen discussed OLPC’s thinking about this, and why it may be relevant to other business efforts trying to reach and help the developing world—the 4 billion people outside the reach of most of today’s technologies.

 

On April 26, 2006 Mr. Hank Greenberg gave a lecture on American Competitveness in the Global Marketplace. Mr. Greenberg was the chairman and CEO of AIG, a global financial corporation that is the largest underwriter of commercial and industrial insurance in the US. Mr. Greenberg presented his views on the current state of US-Sino relations, the impediments to financial system growth of the American regulatory system, tort reform, and higher education.

 

On October 3, 2005 the COE Lecture Series was inaugurated with a presentation by Sandy Grossman, an academician for 20 years, who now manages the hedge fund Quantitative Financial Strategies.  He spoke with students about the differences between hedge funds and mutual funds, linking economic principles to investment and regulatory issues facing the financial world.