OCTOBER 2015

Ciao CIMBA Family!

We hope everyone is staying warm as the seasons change and the Veneto bursts into vibrant hues of red, orange, and yellow. With the passing of summer, fall has been full of life and color here at CIMBA this past October.

With the last of the warm days, we held debriefs for our most recent LIFE classes and were fortunate to be joined by Dr. Tobias Kiefer and Mr. Andrew Graham who shared with our students their own LIFE experiences and the importance LIFE lessons have in today's competitive work place. Find out more about it in this month's Leadership Institute Section.

In a similar vein we reached out to local area expatriates Carla Picardi, Charla Caponi, Cortney McDermott, and last month's featured alumni, Scott Newton, to hold an exciting expatriate panel to help our students learn more about the challenges and rewards of living and working abroad.

In this month's CIMBA Spotlight we took a few minutes to sit down with Samuele Zanella from the Class of 2015 to learn more about what it is like to face the unique challenges of our two year part-time MBA program.

Meanwhile, outside the classroom the Undergrads made the mistake of challenging the MBA Class of 2016 to a soccer match.

We also have some new exciting news to share with you from our fellow Alumni Claire McClellan, Elliot and Tanya Botten, Neha Dev, and Vincent Carbone!

As always, we encourage you to reach out and connect with our fellow Cimbians and if you have got some good news you would like to share we would love to hear from you!

Until next time,

CIMBA Staff

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Executives Dr. Tobias Kiefer and Mr. Andrew Graham Drop in to Discuss LIFE in the Workplace

Late last month, Tobias Kiefer and Andrew Graham dropped in on LIFE class 1064's LIFE Debrief to share their own experiences in LIFE and how those experiences have translated to the professional world.

Dr. Tobias Kiefer is a Global Learning

Leader at Ernest & Young, Munich and responsible for global training at EY's Advisory business. He is also a founding partner of Q595, a global leadership incubator, and co-founder of the start-up accelerator theGROWTHfactory. With his extensive background in leader development he found many of the strategies and introspection offered through LIFE as essential ingredients for young professionals in today's competitive and international job market.

Andrew Graham is a professional services business leader with 20 years of experience in business leadership and management consulting. Over the years he has served as President and CEO of such organizations as The Forum Corporation and Kepner-Tregoe Inc. As a former LIFE graduate from the class 1053 he was pleased to have the opportunity to speak with our students and share with them some of his experiences in working in the private sector.

What initially began as an impromptu introduction soon evolved into an invaluable, engaging question and answer session as our students asked for advice on topics ranging from "How does failure affect business and personal development?" to "What is most important to executives these days when hiring new talent?"

From amid the many questions asked that night, one of the greatest pieces of advice upon which both Mr. Graham and Dr. Kiefer agreed on was the importance of emotional intelligence in today's workplace. Both agreed that while many people are hired based on their IQ, hard skills, and factual knowledge; what ultimately leads to a person's professional growth and prosperity is their emotional intelligence or EQ - the ability to do practically apply what you know.

LIFE helps graduates grow their emotional intelligence through it's unique development techniques and personal introspection. Participants graduate with a greater understanding of themselves and with the right tools to help them empower others while growing in their own Emotional Competencies.

Thanks to both Dr. Kiefer and Mr. Graham for your insights and for taking the time to speak with our students that late September afternoon.

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Students Get The Lowdown on Life as an Expatriate - Expat Panel 2015

It takes a special type of person to take the leap to live and work abroad.

Early this October we invited a wonderful panel of professionals to come speak about the challenges and rewards of being an expatriate with our MBA and Undergraduate students. The professionals represented a variety of industries and disciplines, offering our students the opportunity to learn from a diverse range of experiences and interesting stories. After initial introductions and background stories, the majority of the event was an engaging question and answer session where the questions varied widely from the challenges of how to best integrate into a foreign culture to the day to day challenges of learning to bake a pumpkin pie from scratch.

Special thanks to Carla Picardi, Charla Caponi, Cortney Mcdermott, and Scott Newton for sharing your stories and advice with us and for making this evening one to remember for our students!

THE CIMBA EXPERIENCE

MBA vs. Undergrad Soccer Showdown!

This month CIMBA's Fall 2015 undergraduate class threw down the gauntlet and challenged the MBA Class of 2016 to a soccer showdown. The Class of 2016 took up the challenge and the two sides met on the night of October 14th to settle the matter in a fun and hard fought game.

The competition was stiff with the game stretching out to just over 2 hours without stoppage time or a half-time break, but the MBAs carried the day with the final goal being made by Carlo Napoli, an MBA student from Salento, Puglia.

There were smiles all around with many students attending despite exams the next day to show their support and cheer on the competitors.

ABC: AL'S BOOK CLUB

The Charisma Myth
How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism

by Olivia Fox Cabane

The data-driven tools and techniques used by our coaches in assisting coachees in rewiring their brains to embrace more productive, constructive, and healthy habits are fundamental to the personal and professional development system here at CIMBA. Within our 6-Columns Development Tool, the initial five columns or process steps involve setting a goal and then understanding and testing why your brain is making it so difficult to achieve it. With that understanding and the data that supports it in hand, coaches then take coachees into the final phase of the development process, column 6. The intent of column 6 is to practice, practice, and practice so that the new habit becomes the brain's default wiring in response to the social stimulus that initially motivated the behavior development goal.

The coaches will build the essential Column 6 foundation for this development by first guiding coachees in becoming more self-aware of the situations and/or people that activate their Social Brain threat detection circuitry and bring about the unproductive, unconstructive, or in unhealthy habitual reaction of concern. Not infrequently, this habit was generated by the coachee's Social Brain as a productive reaction to a particular social stimulus in prior social groups, but it is now proving to be unproductive and dysfunctional in the present one. In making this knowledge actionable, the coaches will correspondingly encourage coachees to strengthen their Social Brain's self-regulatory capacity through mindfulness and other tools. Their intent is to enhance a coachee's ability to slow down his or her brain in those difficult situations, understand the deceptive emotional sensations it is generating, and then direct the brain toward more productive, constructive, and healthy action choices.

It has always been our sense that the functionality and usefulness of our Social Brain's self-awareness circuitry reaches far beyond merely perceiving the onset of emotional situations. Heightening the conscious interaction of the Social Brain's self and social awareness circuitries has always presented itself as a potentially productive area for personal development focus and attention. It is in this sense that I found the book The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism by Olivia Fox Cabane to be quite interesting.

Cabane's basic premise is that our internal physical and emotional workings (Self-Awareness circuits) manifest themselves externally without more in our facial expressions and body language (Social Awareness circuits). Of course, our Social Brain evolved to be particularly sensitive to those signals, and particularly if the brain's interpretation of those signals is negative. Signals we transmit to others work to our benefit when the intended signal we send is the signal they receive. For example, if our facial expressions and body language signal our disagreement with the content of a discussion and the other party receives that signal, the receiver's Social Brain will have the appropriate information upon which to base a reaction. But what if the transmitted signal has nothing to do with the current social interaction but is actually reflective of a prior communication with another person completely unrelated to the current interaction?

Leadership Institute

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Share Your Cultural Experience

ABC: Al's Book Club

CIMBA Spotlight

Alumni News

SAVE THE DATE!

Saturday, December 12 at 5:30 pm we will be holding a CIMBA Christmas Event at which we will be giving out the official MBA diplomas to the Italian MBA Class of 2015!

All CIMBA alumni are welcome to join so stay posted for more information to come!

Samuele Zanella, Class of 2015, Part-time Student of The Year

This past July CIMBA celebrated the graduation of our MBA class of 2015 and among those honored was Samuele Zanella as the Part-time Student of the Year. The award is an acknowledgement of the many challenges he overcame to earn his MBA after two long years of balancing work, family, and classes. We sat down with Samuele after graduation to ask him about what it was like to balance being a father, professional, and student and to ask him to share some advice to future Cimbians looking to earn their MBA through the two year, part-time program.

In balancing your part-time MBA, life, and work commitments, what were the most significant challenges you faced?

When I first considered the MBA, I remember very well that I spoke with Dr. Al and Cristina to see if past MBA classes had students who traveled a lot. I am an Export Manager for Dainese and AGV, I travel 3 to 4 days a week most of the year, and I have been in charge of the exports for more than 10 years. I was worried about how to balance my work obligations with the demands of CIMBA's MBA. They told me that it was manageable, but obviously not simple. I knew that I wanted the MBA, but was also just as convinced that it would not be easy at all. When I started the program, my daughter Giulia was 4 years old and Carolina was 1� years old. My wife Patrizia worked for Tecnica Group. When I attended the first weekends of classes, I quickly realized what a challenge it would be to balance traveling for work, classes on the weekends, studying and taking exams while abroad, and spending time with my family.

The keys to success were a lot of determination and the drive to succeed. I really wanted to get the MBA; I had wanted it for a long time and now that I was in the storm, I wanted to face it and not back down. The friends that I made in the class helped me by providing me with the support and courage it took sometimes to persevere. It was a wonderful experience to create the camaraderie that allowed me to expect a hand on the shoulder from a friend who understood my thoughts and problems!

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Executive Program: LIFE

Leadership Training in November (English Version) - Apply Now

Executive Certificate Program Starts: November 13,14, and 15th

Class with Professor Karwan:

Weekends of Nov. 21st and 28th

ALUMNI NEWS

Claire McClellan, undergraduate alumni of 2005 and graduate alumnus of the class of 2009, and her husband Parker have just welcomed their first child on September 7th - a wonderful son named John Rossi McClellan. We wish you all the best back home in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Elliot (UG 2002 and MBA 2008) and Tanya Botten (UG 2008) welcomed a 7lb 14oz (3.57 Kg) baby boy Gabriel James Botten to the family on June 8, 2015. They are already saving to send Gabriel and his big sister Olivia to CIMBA in 2032 and 2035.

Congratulations and Best Wishes to Neha Dev, MBA Class of 2011, and Ankur Dhingra! This beautiful couple were married on October 17. Some of Neha's classmates flew to India to attend the wedding celebrations.

Vincent Carbone, MBA Class of 1998, and his wife Cally would both like to introduce you to their new son, Francesco Mark Carbone! Born October 22, 2015; Vincent tells us that Francesco is bound for a future as a F1 Driver! Congratulations Vincent and Cally!

Professor Leslie P. Anderson, Finance Professor for the Class of 1994, has passed away.

It is with heavy hearts that we share with you all the sad news of Professor Anderson's passing. He passed away last week at the age of 89. Professor Anderson had a PhD from Wisconsin and retired from the University of Oregon system after over 20 years of teaching Finance there. He loved travel and taught and consulted all over the world including China, Japan, Russia and Eastern Europe, Kuwait, Italy, and South America.

Les joined CIMBA many years ago when he came to teach finance to the Class of 1994. He touched many lives during his time with us and he will be missed.

ALUMNI CONNECTIONS

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