Kevin K Blog

24 Hours in Paradise - Life as a Standby Passenger

If the opportunity presents itself to you to fly to Cabo San Lucas to have 24 hours at a resort on the weekend would you take it? Caveat – you might not make it on the flight you hoped for nor might you make it back exactly when or how you hoped to (heck, you might need to rent a car and drive the entire way home if all else fails).

How might this type of circumstance really come to pass? Well, this is the life of a standby passenger working at an airline. And my wife and I, being comfortable with a certain level of risk, have made the most of it. So far too, knock on wood, we have been lucky enough not to have to pull an emergency trump card yet. Proof: infinity pool at Sheraton in Cabo San Lucas from this past weekend pictured below. So as you guessed, we did take the opportunity to enjoy 24 hours in paradise and I can say I would do it again in a heartbeat.

The airline industry is ripe with risk. Borrowing a phrase from one of my fellow interns, this business is not for the faint of heart. Weather can turn at any minute and, even when everything else seems to be going smoothly, someone might fall ill on your plane causing an emergency landing (no joke, that happened on my flight back from Cabo this past Sunday evening – the passenger directly in front of me fell unconscious – he is okay now). To cope with this uncertainty, airlines have developed incredibly complex optimization models for everything from revenue generation to network planning and even resource (planes and crew) allocation. And at the end of the day, these models simply enable them to compete and to maybe scrape a profit.

Life as a standby passenger, I’ve concluded, mimics airlines to the T. Flying standby requires comfort with uncertainty and a nimble capacity to roll with the punches. You keep on rolling the dice because you believe that you have figured out a way to navigate the complexity and know that there are great rewards if you can make it work. And those that are successful at this game last and thrive. American Airlines is a great example of a company that has rolled with the punches and is now destined for great rewards in the near future. Though in this case I certainly hope it is more than 24 hours in paradise.

Pushing the Boundaries

Hopping into flightaware.com as I pass over Washington State, I just realized that this trip to Vancouver, British Colombia, will bring me to the most northern part of the North American continent I have visited thus far. At 49.25 degrees north, it beats Marquette, MI (46.5) and Sault Ste. Marie, ON (also 46.5) by nearly 200 miles (http://www8.nau.edu/cvm/latlongdist.html). Surprisingly (well… surprising to me at least) if you have traveled through Europe you have probably passed even the 50 degree mark. London lies at 51.5, Frankfurt at 50.1, and Copenhagen at a whopping 55.7, or 1,153 miles north of Washington, DC which lies at 38.9 degrees north.

Why am I rambling on about longitude coordinates? This little exercise was an enjoyable way for me to pass some time on my weekend trip courtesy of American Airlines - my current employer. And I hope it was an interesting read for you as well. I know my dad, who always liked to point out the 45^th parallel marker we passed en route to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The plane is soon to touch down, so I need to sign off for now. But given the audience of this blog post I feel obligated to circle back to the world of the MBA and at least tell you a bit about the summer experience. Thus far it has been a blast getting to connect with MBAs in the workplace and validate the worth of the investment. Though tracking the random facebook posts from my classmates and friends always makes me feel a bit nostalgic. So I am feeling like I have one foot in and one foot out of the door at the moment; a wild balancing act in this phase of the MBA program.

 

Taking Flight this Summer at American Airlines

So much of the business school experience is forward-looking and this summer is no different. The Tuesday after Memorial Day marked the beginning of my summer internship with American Airlines in Dallas, Texas. I am working in the international revenue management team stationed in the headquarter office for twelve weeks. This program is forward-looking because it is treated like an extended interview and I may at the end of the summer have an option to continue on with the company full time.

In the meantime, I am having a blast learning about the airline industry and discovering just how closely the McDonough program tracks with the expectations American Airlines has of MBAs. For example, my first small project was a review of the multiple regression model used for trans-Atlantic revenue and traffic forecasting. Guerrero would be proud to hear that I was able to quickly sift through a series of possible variables to eventually land on a model with an extremely high R-square and nearly zero p-values. If that doesn’t make any sense to you, suffice it to say that seeing the functional value of some of the work we undertook this past year is very satisfying.

When I talk to friends and family a typical question is how I like living in Texas. To be honest, I couldn’t really tell you. I have been to and from the office during the weekdays and traveling every weekend. I chose to live in the mid-cities near the airport and the office so I could easily commute to both. What I have seen of Texas, however, I do like. I did make it to the Rangers baseball game with the other interns and to a Texas BBQ last night (pictured below) with a few friends. Oh – and plenty of good Texmex for lunch.

Hard Eight - the real deal

Instead of roaming around Dallas on the weekends, I have traveled each of the past four weekends. First on the list was Austin – a short distance south of Dallas where the highlight for me was the flagship Whole Foods. Did I mention that one of the internship program perks is free(ish) flights? My wife and I are certainly taking advantage of this unique opportunity to see the country and have plans to hit a few overseas destinations as well. We made it to San Francisco to visit friends and see the city, Green Bay for my sister-in-law’s college graduation ceremony, and I’m just getting back from Colorado Springs where we found some cool crisp mountain air to balance out the Texas and DC heat.

In my next blog post I will share a few tips and tricks I am picking up while traveling. For now I’ve got to get back to the Sunday evening chores so I am prepared for the week ahead (i.e. groceries, laundry, etc.). Have a great week all!

Glacial lake in the Rockies during the flight back from San Francisco

A Cajun Boil at McDonough

The McDonough Cup, which I’m sure my fellow bloggers are writing about this week as well, is the hot topic on campus this week. Every spring, the three largest “classes” – first-year full time, second-year full-time and evening program – compete for four days in a series of events. The prize is for bragging rights and ownership of the rotational McDonough Cup. In a few hours I’m off to the fields to compete in ultimate frisbee and soccer, for example (a welcome stress reliever two weeks before final exams). This quick blog entry, however, is a review and critique of the first event I participated in – the grill-off.

On Thursday evening (or morning depending on what you count as the kick-off of the event), the three competing teams prepared BBQ meals on the patio outside of the third floor of the business school building. The second-years were smoking meat at around 10am and a few of us first-years were collecting all the ingredients and tools for our concoction in the early afternoon. The judges arrived at around 6pm to sample a plate of each and decide upon a winner. The criteria judged were presentation, creativity and taste.

A few weeks ago a few of us thought it would be fun to do a Cajun craw fish boil in a DC park. We discovered that there is a company in New Orleans that will send crawfish FedEx by the pounds for a reasonable price. One of us (for whatever reason) also had a ginormous pot for such a boil. After discovering that the logistics of putting on such an event were actually intense (park waiting list for reservation space for example) we had second thoughts. The McDonough Cup BBQ, however, was in our minds the perfect stage for a boil.

Due to some shenanigans from the second years treating this more like a “top-chef” match than a true BBQ cook-off (yes, I’m a bit bitter), we only managed to squeak out a second place. Granted, the smoked meat on small plates (not pictured below) was decadent and no doubt won in a taste war. All I can say is that next year, we are going to up the game even more and I’m confident we will win.

 

The Cajun man himself - Jack Clements

 

The Three Prof. Judges Bibbing Up

Case Competition #2 Complete!

Today I helped to lead the second and final case competition I will be part of as a first year MBA - this time for the Technology & Innovation Club. When / if you are beginning an MBA program soon you will discover that there are a good many chances to practice your presentation skills and perhaps influence change at a company through case competitions. Some of you will also be involved in making these events happen. That is where I fit into today’s and February’s competitions.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, this event is the first annual MBA Innovation Case Competition (http://www.innovatewashington.com/). The idea of the competition is to take a real business problem and explore business solutions through the design and innovation lens. The problem statement this year was how to overcome barriers of use of the Metrobus system in DC, Virginia and Maryland. Participating teams provided varied and exciting new ideas which made for a very entertaining afternoon of case pitches – especially for the WMATA team who now has an arsenal of ideas to bring back to the rest of the executive team. 

The winners of the competition today were Georgetown McDonough School of Business School Evening Program students Oz Tolon, Selman Altun, Jeremy George, and Manuel Bueno (congrats again). They wowed WMATA leaders, their Department of Transportation partners, and innovation guru Jeneanne Rae, Founder and CEO of MOTIV, with a new way to streamline bus loading and offloading (among other recommendations).

 

The first competition I helped to lead (in case you are curious) was a Diversity and Inclusion themed multi school competition. The Human Capital and Leadership Club (HCAL) partnered with Deloitte Consulting LLP to run this event. I’m happy to report that a Georgetown team won the competition (nice work again Ema Kamara and James Zimmerman). This was the second annual such event and I look forward to the next HCAL Board taking the reins for a third round.

Dallas for the day? Why not?

For some of us at MSB, the internship interview season is at a peak. I find myself in that group. Yesterday, for example, I caught a cab at 5:10am to the airport and my wife picked me up at 10:30pm that same day. Luckily there are multiple sections of classes so I can make-up the class I missed (or watch it online for those professors that are ambitious enough to provide that option – really meant for notes review, but I am taking a bit of liberty this week). And let me tell you, it sure makes you start to wonder whether instating a real Sabbath rule isn’t such a bad idea.

More next week I promise. I am literally on my way into my last final round interview in 20 mins.  So I should have more time on my hands soon.

(Wish me luck!)

The Other Perks of Business School

This past month I had the unique opportunity to visit with Motiv, a design consulting firm based in the DC area. The Technology & Innovation Club is partnering with leadership at Motiv to run a case competition for METRO in April. As a board member, I am responsible for helping to develop and manage the event – something that includes corporate partnerships. Jeneanna Rae, Motiv founder and CEO, is a goliath in the design strategy and innovation space and will be advising and judging at the competition.

 
Imagine a small warehouse, white walls, a well-lit room, a few desks in the middle, and a variety of nooks and crannies along the edges where you can escape with a team to brainstorm. This is the office in which this cutting-edge firm resides. Walking past one of the conference breakout spaces Jeneanne pointed out the poster-board size notes along the walls and described the ideation process her team helped a client undergo here on a recent project. Enjoying lunch and chatting about App business strategies in the kitchenette in the back of the office, I realized that I was getting something special out of my business school experience – variety in business strategy perspectives.

Why am I sharing this story with you? Because this is something I personally didn’t think much about when looking into going to business school and I want to catch the ear of anyone out there that might be interested or like me. The basic message here is that at business school you will not only learn in the classroom or through career search, there are ample opportunities to interact with and discover companies operating in very interesting spaces.

In addition to my recent interaction with Motiv, I am currently in a business and public policy intersection residency here at Georgetown. The focal industry of this residency is whiskey. Today I chatted at length with Scott Harris, co-founder of Catoctin Creek, about the unique challenges his company faces in terms of state regulations in the spirits industry. On Thursday my team and I will be presenting to Scott to advise him on how we think he might best grow sustainably and safely within this highly regulated environment.

Lastly, I am also working on a consulting project for a major national nonprofit as well as another consulting project for a technology startup. Needless to say, I am finding myself in a space where I am not only learning in the classroom or through career research, but more and more so I am learning by actually engaging in business advisory services. So whether you knew it or not about business school already, this is one of the major perks that I am currently enjoying.

Refreshed and Ready to Go

In contrast to a very lonely looking Hariri building late December (see picture text from a friend below), the halls at McDonough School of Business are once again buzzing this week.  The last few winter break travelers arrived this past weekend, returning from as far away as Malaysia, India, or Poland.  And fittingly, our operations professor decided to spend a few minutes discussing the frustrations of air travel.

Quiet halls a few days after classes dispursed for the winter holidays

My cohort just before leaving for break. Go Blue!

I do not typically speak about my classes at the McDonough School of Business in my blog posts, but I hope I have your permission to break my rule today.  I want to express my excitement about the courses I am taking during the next 7 weeks.  I promise I will include a few non-school notes in closing. 

My course line-up is operations, management science, corporate finance, and applied marketing.  While any non-MBA student or prospective student might think I’m a bit out of sorts to be excited for this, some of you will get it.  Especially because this third wave of classes in the first year of the program begins true integration of all prior coursework. 

One professor knocked it out of the park on the first class of the mod by demonstrating the goal of a holistic academic course design.  He spent the first hour of class walking us through a business case he had on his first job immediately after finishing his MBA.  This demonstration of an application of new skills we learned the six months prior was incredibly inspiring and vindicating to me that going to business school was the right decision.

Okay, enough of that.  I promise I will stick to anecdotes and non-academic posts from here on out both for yours and my sake.  Let me end this post by sharing a few highlights in my life these past few weeks.

Winter break highlights (in no particular order):

1. Honeymoon with my wife in St. Lucia
2. Chance to reflect on the whirlwind of the first semester of business school
3. First time feeling well rested and new car excited again walking into the Hariri (main building on campus)
4. Feeling on New Year’s Eve a bit sad to close the chapter on 2011 because of how great of a year it was for me and many of those with whom I am closest

Highlights from the first few days back:

1. Reconnecting with new friends
2. Club leadership transition is underway and there is a lot of buzz of new, exciting events in the pipeline
3. Internship recruiting is in full swing

From the honeymoon - my winter break

Month of Volunteerism (MOV) at McDonough

While exam prep is in full swing and there is a lot on the career front that is top-of-mind for me, I want to take this blog space to tell you about a volunteer initiative that I am personally very proud.  Thank you in advance for the opportunity to procrastinate from studying!

This week ends the first ever Month of Volunteerism, a student-led initiative with the goal to collectively volunteer an aggregate of 1,000 hours of service between November 14^th and December 16^th.   Here are a few highlights from my experiences this past month.

This first picture goes out to some of my classmates that made it to So Others Might Eat (S.O.M.E.) at 6am on a Tuesday morning to help serve breakfast.  This pic represents the flood of our internal Facebook group of pictures and a few notes of healthy competition.  I bring this picture into this blog to impress upon you the degree of visibility and buzz this initiative has created on campus – something that is quite surprising to me given the high degree of academic rigor, club elections, and career prep work going on these weeks – and something that makes me proud to be a Hoya.

An out-of-the-ordinary “volunteer” initiative this month for me was growing my first mustache.  No joke.  I was part of a successful fundraiser that culminated with $27,272 in donations from the friends and family of 87 MBA students at Georgetown and contributed to the $108.6 million raised globally.  The fundraiser, titled Movember, is a fundraiser for prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.  I can honestly say that it was fun sporting a mustache and more than worth it considering the successful outcome of the campaign.  Sorry, no pic for this one – but you can search the Movember site if you are curious.

One of the volunteer events I led this past month was at Martha’s Table School Food Pantry.  This nonprofit sets up “shop” twice at month at two elementary schools to distribute quality grocery items to families of students in that school.  As you can guess, these are schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods in DC.  My wife accompanied me and a few other school friends to participate in this excellent project.  Below is a picture of the setup right before the families began their grocery shopping.

Now I do have to get back to the books.  Have a great week!

Theme Park Lines and a Balanced Life

I know I said in my last post that I would blog next about prom, but I am going to renege on that and dive into a story from my Old Rag hike this past weekend.  So that I am not letting anyone down, however, let me kick-off with a two-line recap.  Prom was the first big mixer since the beginning of the year and was also the first time we haven’t all been in business attire at a function in a while.  It was held at the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria (a town worth a lazy afternoon sometime for sure).  Now onto the hike this weekend...

I don’t know if any of you reading this post are currently living in the Mid-Atlantic, but if you are you already know that the weather was beautiful on Saturday (high 50s and sunny) and perfect for a hike.  So beautiful, in fact, that I was “dunced” twice.  First, I alerted everyone participating in the hike I led (14 joined in total) that they would need to purchase gloves and a hat for the summit if they hadn’t already because it would be cold at the top.  Also, the peaceful, respite to nature at Old Rag I promised instead resembled something like a theme park at Shenandoah. 

Old Rag Mountain is the most popular hike in Virginia for good cause.  It is a beautiful, 2000 ft climb with plenty of challenges (read: rock scramble) and panoramic views (read: multiple false summits).  Given that I planned this hike for mid-November, I assumed it would be lesser traveled than say a weekend in September.  Boy, how wrong I was.  Veteran’s Day this year the National Park Service waived entrance fees to all parks and the weather was beautiful.  The reason I say it was like a theme park is because the number of people waiting in line to pass through the challenging parts reminded me of waiting for a roller coaster ride.

Another bizarre bit of the journey I want to share with you is our lunch on the summit with a soundtrack.  One of my classmates and friend Ivan brought along his iPad that he used as a boom box while climbing (a hit during the queues along the trail).  With a beautiful view of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the sun on our faces, we enjoyed lunch while listening to Russian rap – a unique experience to say the least. 

Why am I telling you about a hike in a business school blog post you might be asking?  It is because so much of the experience at business school is about more than the classroom and the job – it is about getting to know your classmates and discovering a healthy work-life balance. 

The most rewarding part of the journey this past weekend was deepening my relationships with international students at McDonough.  In a large group setting such as a classroom it is not easy to truly have a conversation with someone, and this is exaggerated when the other person does not share your native language.  On the trail, however, there is ample time for a one-on-one conversation whereby the pace of speech is such that you understand one another very well.  I am happy to have gotten to know friends from Turkey, Taiwan, China and Russia much better during the trip.

Also, the workload we encounter – especially at McDonough School of Business – is very demanding both in and outside of the classroom.  Finding an opportunity during the weekday or on the weekends to carve out time for relaxation or reflection is critical to success.  Some folks find that in happy hours or intramural sports.  This past week some of my classmates and I found it on the mountain.

Next week I will tell you a bit about the volunteering efforts underway on campus.  For now, enjoy this pic from Movember and feel free to search for my page on the official site.