Frank Islam, successful entrepreneur and investor, will serve as the keynote speaker. Islam is founder and CEO of FI Investment Group LLC, a private investment holding company focused on providing strategic capital and management support to emerging businesses. He also founded QSS Group, a government contracting firm providing engineering and information technology services.

Along with serving as a member of the School of Management’s Dean’s Advisory Council, Islam serves on the Maryland Governor’s International Advisory Council and many other notable boards and councils. Islam has been awarded the Ernst & Young’s Maryland Entrepreneur of the Year in 1999 and the Small Business Administration’s Minority Small Business Person of the Year in 2001. He is a contributor to several publications including Huffington Post, Indian Express, Economics Times, and India Abroad.

Muhammad Tahir will give the graduating student address. Tahir began his studies at Mason in 2006 and graduated Cum Laude in 2009, with a BS in finance and a minor in economics. Tahir is now graduating with an MBA from George Mason.

MS in Technology Management alumna, Polina Zhuravlev, will give the alumni address. Zhuravlev graduated from the School of Management in 2005 and has worked for IBM, QinetiQ, and 3H Technology.

Casey Coleman, Chief Information Officer at U.S. General Services Administration, will also be in attendance to announce the names of our MS in Technology Management graduates. As a founding member and one of only seven programs in the world partnered with the federal government’s CIO University, we have a close relationship with the GSA and Federal Chief Information Officers Council and our MS in Technology Management graduates receive CIO certification in addition to their degree.

The Convocation ceremony will begin at 4:00 p.m. Click here for more information.

Read the full article, written by Rosa Vivanco and originally featured on Mason’s School of Management website.

Let’s just say that host Star Jones, Spokeswoman for the National Association of Professional Women, knew how to work it, from her pink dress to her glittery footwear. Her message: “Choose not to live with regret,” and “focus on the future with reinvention.”

For most us, that’s easier said than done. A lot easier. How did Jones, who had a rough ride when she was on “The View,” do it? Advice from her father helped Jones follow and realize her dreams: “Find something you love to do and find a way to get paid for it.” Women draw strength from their network and from connecting with and hearing from the wisdom of others. And if they don’t? “There is a special place in Hell for women who don’t help other women,” Jones blurted. Amen.

Arianna Huffington poses for a photo with Mason alumna Dee Dee Mendez at the 2013 National Association of Professional Women’s networking event in April

Keynote speaker Arianna Huffington told the amped-up crowd: “I do believe that this is our time. Not just to succeed in the male world, but to change it.”

And she began by her altering own life. After a fainting spell due to her grueling schedule and lack of rest, Huffington shared that she has been “rediscovering sleep.” Color me jealous when she said that, “Unapologetically, I strive to get seven to eight hours of sleep a night.”

Most of us skate by on a few hours, opting to watch TV or fixate on work. I can tell you from personal experience that chronic lack of sleep is debilitating. Getting quality shut-eye is the single best thing that we can do each day to regularly renew our energy for sustained performance and good health. Among many other effects, too little sleep can impair concentration and judgment, and can lead to serious health issues, like headaches, vision problems and massive amounts of stress.

Bosses, take note: Huffington built her company’s new offices with two nap rooms, which have turned out to be quite popular among her 850 journalists. “They are always full. We need to install another one.” I can’t help but wonder how much more productive I might have been with the luxury of a nap room during my twenty sleep-deprived years in corporate America, burning the candle at both ends. I have often wondered, “Why does the nap have to stop when we are 5?” And, most recently, “Why doesn’t my 3-year-old want to take a nap??”

And Huffington was all about estrogen in the workplace. “We want to change the world — it’s screwed up. If Lehman Brothers was ‘Lehman Brothers and Sisters,’ they might still be in business!” Point taken, lady, point taken. And well said.

According to Forbes’ 2012 World’s Most Powerful Women in Business, “It [was] a standout year for women in business. For the first time in history, there are now 20 female CEOs at the 500 biggest U.S. corporations.” We need even more women leaders if you look at a recent study from McMaster University, published in the International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, “which found that women tend to be better corporate leaders because of the their decision-making abilities” because they “[tend] to shirk tradition, consider the interests of all stakeholders, cooperate, and be more inquisitive”.

We do need a balance of energies in leadership and in business. Women can be powerful and feminine at the same time. Feminine energy is receptive, approachable, interested, sensitive, responsive and sharp. And that’s good Feng Shui for business.

Written by Delores “Dee Dee” Mendez, ’88

Founder, Feng Shui Wellness Consulting

Read the full article here, originally featured on HuffPost Women.

Gary Perlin joined Capital One, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, from the World Bank in July 2003. Capital One is a diversified financial services company with more than 50 million customer accounts worldwide, and more than 900 bank locations in New York, New Jersey, Texas, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Capital One’s subsidiaries offer a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses and commercial clients and collectively had approximately $212.5 billion in deposits and $312.9 billion in total assets outstanding as of December 31, 2012.

As the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Perlin is responsible for Capital One’s overall financial management including financial planning, accounting and reporting, funding and treasury operations, corporate finance, and investor relations. Mr. Perlin serves on the company’s Executive Committee and chairs the Asset-Liability Management and Resource Allocation Committees.

As CFO of Capital One, Mr. Perlin plays a key role in the company’s leadership both externally with investors and internally with business operations. In playing this role, he draws on 13 years of experience at the World Bank, where he served four years as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. He had overall responsibility for the financial management of the World Bank’s $300+ billion balance sheet.

Prior to that, Mr. Perlin spent more than 11 years at the Washington-based Federal National Mortgage Association, Fannie Mae, including eight as Senior Vice President – Finance and Treasurer.

Through his diverse financial experiences in domestic and global settings, Mr. Perlin has acquired a depth of knowledge and has established a track record for understanding and managing risk across a multitude of stakeholders. He is recognized for his ability to bring clarity to the complex choices required in order to achieve a company’s need for balanced growth and innovation consistent with the interests of shareholders, bondholders, regulators and customers. Mr. Perlin has been named “CFO of the Year” for finance companies by Institutional Investor magazine for five straight years, from 2007 – 2011.

Read the full article, written by Andrea Cordray and originally featured on Mason’s School of Management website.

This community-based, academic initiative aims to enrich the educational experience of the School of Management’s students, faculty, and alumni while building and strengthening relationships with the region’s business community. Though the series name has changed, the driving force of this initiative continues to be alumnus, Jeff Johnson ’75.

Johnson, who received his BS in business administration from George Mason, was approached with the idea for the speaker series in the fall of 2008. He had been very active as an alumnus, having served as a board member, vice-president, and president of the George Mason University Alumni Association. At the time, Johnson was principal and president of Johnson & Strachan Insurance. “I thought it was an excellent idea and presented it to my partners,” Johnson reminisces. “We thought it was a worthwhile initiative so we agreed to a 3 year sponsorship.”

The series proved to be very successful and was well received by Mason students and the local business community. As a result, Johnson and his business partners, Bill Strachan, Rick Dygve, and Charlie Venus, decided to extend the sponsorship. “We have been very pleased with the success of these events. We have had great audiences and positive feedback,” says Johnson. “Thanks to this series, Mason students get the chance to interact with the local business community and the event’s featured speaker.”

Past speakers have included Steve Case, Newt Gingrich, and George Will.

“By establishing the speakers series,” says Alison O’Brien, associate dean for undergraduate program at the School of Management, “Jeff is essentially contributing to the intellectual capacity of the region and to our efforts to enhance the reputation of the school and the university.”

Johnson, who has since retired, secured the future of the speaker series with Brown & Brown’s support. He looks forward to continuing to support the series and its mission and continues to play an active role within the School of Management and the university by serving on the Dean’s Advisory Council and as the Treasurer on the George Mason University Foundation Board of Trustees.

“I’m a big believer that you need to give back. I can attribute a lot of my success to my education at George Mason,” he says.

The next Brown & Brown Distinguished Speaker Series event will take place on June 6 and feature Fortune 200 CFO Gary Perlin of Capital One Bank.

Read the full article, written by Rosa Vivanco and originally featured on Mason’s School of Management website.

Click here for more information on upcoming Brown & Brown Distinguished Speaker Series events

Chuck is co-owner and President of UrsaNav, Inc., an advanced engineering and IT firm with principal offices in the United States and Belgium. He started UrsaNav in the second term of his GMU EMBA program, and the company is approaching its ninth birthday. A serial entrepreneur, Chuck is also co-owner and co-founder of Flowtronics (1982), Grolar Technologies (2011), and ChronoMetrix (2012). He has put to very good use the knowledge, skills, and experiences from his time as an EMBA student, having led UrsaNav through the acquisition of seven companies, the most recent in January of 2013. Chuck also provided the impetus for diversification into legacy system transformation, boutique product design and development, corporate memory management, and alternative timing and frequency solutions that resulted in UrsaNav becoming a three-time winner of Inc. Magazine’s 500|5000 award for the fastest growing, privately held, engineering companies in the U.S.

Chuck is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Society for Quality; a founding member of the Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services’ Special Committees 127 and 131; a Marine Representative of the Institute of Navigation; and a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation.

Besides providing what Patricia Roberts, BS Business Administration ’77, says was “a wonderful education,” George Mason University also gave Roberts an introduction to a professor who had a profound impact on her life.

Roberts, this year’s Alumna of the Year Award recipient, received her degree in 1977, but soon after graduating, she found she wasn’t receiving the types of job offers that were being presented to her male classmates.

“Many employers were offering only what were considered to be traditional occupations for women at the time, such as bank teller and secretarial roles,” says School of Management dean Jorge Haddock, who nominated Roberts for the award.

Roberts took her concerns to her finance professor, Robert Johnston, who was able to set up an interview for her at General Reinsurance Corporation, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary. Roberts was promptly hired by the corporation and dedicated the next 35 years of her professional energies to her work there. She says she “loved every day,” working her way up through a variety of leadership roles. In 2001, she was named president and chief executive officer of two companies within the Berkshire Hathaway organization: General Star and Genesis.

Now, in a grand gesture of gratitude to her former instructor, Roberts and her husband have established a professorship in honor of Johnston, who will retire next year. They kicked off the endowment last November with a gift of $500,000—the largest contribution ever received in the history of the School of Management. The gift was a “way for us to say thank you,” Roberts says, “and pave the way for the next professor to follow in his footsteps.”

Roberts’ career and her generous spirit are “setting a magnificent example for the way in which alumni honor our faculty,” Haddock says. “She exemplifies the professional success and perseverance we see throughout the Mason community.”

Roberts also reconnected with Mason two years ago by joining the School of Management Dean’s Council in an effort to help the university expand relationships with executives and to create training and educational opportunities.

Having retired last year from General Star, Roberts now divides her time between family, sailing, working with the Dean’s Council, and volunteering at Inspirica, an organization providing support for the homeless in Connecticut. This fall, she plans to begin traveling with her father and with her husband, who is also a Mason graduate. The three will begin with a trip to St. John, and then Roberts and her husband will embark on a cruise down the Danube River.

Read the full article, written by Cathy Cruise and originally featured on the Mason Spirit website.

With a strong foundation in technology delivery, Ms. Altman joined IBM in 1981 as a systems engineer.  She quickly distinguished herself as a technology strategist who understands how best to leverage the intersections of high performance computing, business analytics software, and research with the unique needs of government and private sector clients.

Ms. Altman’s three-decade career with IBM has been heavily influenced by the work she has delivered in the government market.  She previously served as General Manager for IBM’s Public Sector with responsibilities for global government, state and local agencies as well as education and health care.

Known as a transformational leader, she has often been tapped to address complex business challenges within IBM and on behalf of clients.  Most notably, she helped establish IBM’s footprint as a major force in the U.S. Federal market; and led the company’s server hardware business during the most important product launch in the history of the mainframe business – the System z mainframe.

A recognized thought leader who has delivered congressional testimony on behalf of IBM on topics ranging from national security, technology in the military and intelligence communities, ‘smarter’ government, intelligent transportation, cloud computing, business analytics software, the role of innovation to drive economic growth and government R&D.

Today, Ms. Altman will receive the 2013 IES&BD Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Sales Excellence Award event in McLean, Virginia. This prestigious event is often referenced as the “Oscars of Sales Achievement” as it recognizes one outstanding businessperson in addition to companies and organizations that have demonstrated outstanding leadership, strategies, and vision in sales and business development.

In addition to the IES&BD Lifetime Achievement Award, Ms. Altman is a recipient of the prestigious Eagle Award, one of the highest honors issued to technology partners serving the Federal market.  In addition, her outstanding contributions to the information technology industry and its clients include: Federal Computer Week’s Top Federal 100, Washingtonian Magazine Top Tech Titans, Washington’s 100 Most Powerful Women, the Award for Industry, the CIO Council’s Azimuth Award for the Industry Executive of the Year, and a Lifetime Achievement Heroines award from the March of Dimes and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

Her work has been featured in leading publications, including The Washington Post, Associated Press, Federal Computer Week, Business Week, The New York Times, Washington Technology, Government Computer News, Information Week, among others.  Ms. Altman has also contributed to key government-related review boards for organizations such as the National Academy of Public Administration, the National Science Academy and the Private Sector Council.

Ms. Altman is committed to community service and serves on the Executive Committees of the Northern Virginia Technology Council, National Symphony Orchestra, and National Kidney Foundation.  She also serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council for George Mason University’s School of Management.

Ms. Altman earned her BS in Marketing from George Mason University.  Her professional success and tireless support of her alma mater were recognized in 2011 when she was honored as Mason’s School of Management Alumna of the Year.

Now Accepting Nominations

The School of Management is seeking nominations of our most notable alumni to be honored for their contributions and leadership in their communities and respective fields.

Winners will be commemorated at the Annual Business Alumni Celebration on Friday, October 4, 2013.  In addition, winners will be featured on the School of Management website and the Mason Business Alumni blog.

Nominees must meet the following requirements:

• Must be a School of Management Alumni
• Must demonstrate leadership, scholarship, and citizenship as defined by The Mason Graduate

Honorees will be selected by the 20 Prominent Patriots Selection Committee.

Deadline for nominations: Sunday, June 30, 2013

For questions, contact Whitney Hanlin at whanlin@gmu.edu or 703-993-1875.

There are more than 128 million existing homes in the US. And the median age of an owner-occupied home according to data from the 2009 American Housing Survey was 34 years old, making remodeling a significant part of the economy.

The remodeling industry was $275 B in 2011 representing 1.8% of the GDP according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. Though down from a high of $328B in 2007, the amount exceeded new home construction. The housing crisis hit the remodeling industry hard, dropping 38% between March 2007 and July 2011 but was small compared to the single family home construction which fell 81% from its peak. 

Who does the remodeling?

While do it yourself (DIY) remodeling is part of the picture, it has dropped significantly in the last few years from almost 26% in 2003 to just 18% in 2011 according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing.  The rest of the industry is fragmented with more than 600,000 specialty and general contractors.   According to the Joint Center two thirds of these remodelers are self-employed with very small payrolls.  However, NAHB recently surveyed remodelers with an average of seven employees for a Remodelers’ Cost of Doing Business Study.  It found that the average remodeler earned about $1.1 M in revenue with 26.8% gross profits and after subtracting operating expenses which includes indirect construction costs, financing, sales, overhead and owners compensation, the net profit was 3.3%.

The Future of Remodeling

I frequently talk with remodelers around the country and they describe the last five years as a roller coaster ride.  The phones can ring solidly for a month and then no calls for another month.  The calls have become more regular recently and remodelers are bidding on more jobs.  But homeowners are still reluctant to sign the contract or they are taking a long time to get to that point.  And though the downturn weeded out underperformers, the housing crisis brought new competition, with out of work new home builders entering the remodeling market. The outlook for the remodeling industry remains strong as the housing stock continues to age. And the growth of existing homes sales will add to the health of industry because a lot of remodeling activity occurs immediate before and after the sale of existing home.  The NAHB Remodeling Market Index (RMI) reached 50 this last quarter, the highest in five years. And the Joint Center for Housing Studies LIRA predicts double digit growth in 2013 all leading to a bright future for remodeling.

Therese Ford Crahan (MBA, 1990)

Executive Director

NAHB Remodelers

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