Nawroz Pirani (BUS ’07) and Zeeshan Bhimji (BUS ’09) may not be coders, but they’re using their business smarts to teach kids how to code at their Code Ninjas learning center, which they opened last May in Long Grove, Ill. The center teaches children ages seven to 14 how to build video games using computer programming in a fun, interactive environment.

“We’re arming kids with foundational computer science skills, and the best part is, they have no idea how much they’re learning because for them it’s all fun and games,” shares Pirani.

“And it’s not just about coding,” adds Bhimji, “It teaches kids the value of persistence because when you code something, it rarely works the first time. You have to continually troubleshoot before you’re rewarded with something that works.”

One could say the friends are living the American dream. Both moved to the U.S. as teenagers—Pirani from Pakistan and Bhimji from Kenya—to pursue their education and build careers. Both graduated with bachelor’s degrees in finance from DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business.

“DePaul taught me the importance of constantly learning and constantly looking for the void in the market,” shares Bhimji, who started his first business, a residential property management company, after graduating from DePaul at age 24. “I would have not had the confidence to go out there and pursue my business interests were it not for my DePaul education.”

Bhimji has been running profitable franchises for more than 10 years, with Code Ninjas being his newest venture. He grew his property management company from one to two franchises before going on to start a software company, ShowingHero, which was recently nominated for the 2018 Chicago Innovation Award.

“I had to hire developers for my software company, and the experience made me realize how much I didn’t know about coding. I thought, if only I had had more exposure to this growing up,” says Bhimji. “Then when my wife and I had our first child a year ago, I starting looking into educational programs for kids related to coding, and I found Code Ninjas.”

Pirani’s motivations also stemmed from something personal: “I didn’t have good experiences with coding growing up, so I wanted to provide a positive experience for the next generation to learn and excel in this arena. Not everyone is going to be a coder, but no matter what you do in the future, technology is going to be a part of it, so learning these skills early on is critical.”

Prior to opening the center, Pirani spent 10 years building a successful career in the higher education industry. He managed finances and long-term strategy for a $150 million professional education business and worked in IT consulting for top research universities.

“It was through DePaul that I landed my first job after graduation, at Huron Consulting Group,” says Pirani. “DePaul prepared me to go out into the workforce and apply my knowledge with confidence. I learned how to analyze problems and situations from different perspectives, which is an essential skill to have when starting a business.”

The duo has plans to open two more Code Ninja center locations in 2020, one in Arlington Heights and one in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, and their business was recently featured on WGN-TV News.

“When it comes to business, you have to keep your eyes open to where the needs are,” says Bhimji. “Where there is a need, there is an opportunity for business. I’m grateful to DePaul for teaching me that.”

By Nadia Alfadel Coloma

DePaul Univer​​sity’s Coleman Entrepreneurship Center (CEC) summarizes its mission in four words: do good, do well. It’s a message teenagers embraced last spring at the Gary Comer Youth Center on the South Side of Chicago, where the CEC taught them how to develop their entrepreneurial skills to do good and do well.

A series of CEC faculty and board members, including DePaul alumni, visited the youth center from February to May to share their experiences as start-up founders and facilitate hands-on learning about entrepreneurship. Part of the youth center’s High School Smarts program, the initiative aligns Comer’s mission to develop the full potential, talent and skills of young people and  DePaul’s Vincentian mission to engage and empower people in underserved Chicago communities. Frances Comer, wife of the late Gary Comer, the founder of Lands’ End who launched the youth center, suggested the educational partnership to show teens how entrepreneurship can create opportunity.

Fredricka Holloway, youth employment manager at the Comer Youth Center, says the center pursued the partnership because it’s important for young people to learn about entrepreneurship as a potential path to success. “Entrepreneurship fosters creativity, the ability to address community and societal problems, and access to wealth and opportunities,” she says. “Our children must have a foundation and understanding of this to navigate the advances of today. Having the ability to create one’s own business is key for youth and for developing our future business leaders.”

The CEC speakers discussed economic opportunity and the community, developing an entrepreneurial mindset and the types of businesses that entrepreneurs found, among other topics. The teens also participated in hands-on activities that introduced them to the real world of financing, marketing and sales for start-ups. A field trip to Tastytrade, an online financial media company co-led by CEC board member Kristi Ross, allowed them to see these concepts up close.

Four DePaul alumni were among the volunteers who shared their experiences and knowledge with the teens. Bruce Leech (MBA ’81), executive director of the CEC, was among them.

“When we first heard about the Comer opportunity, we jumped at the chance to expand our community outreach and leverage our entrepreneurship programs at the CEC,” he says. “It was a tremendous experience for our board members and mentors, who were very impressed with the students.

“While our team was there to provide their insights to these students, I know we all received much more in return by appreciating their commitment to this program. I was also very inspired with the purpose-driven business ideas the Comer students developed, like addressing the food desert on the South Side of Chicago by starting a healthy grocery store in the neighborhood.”

The program taught teens valuable skills—brainstorming, decision-making and presenting business ideas—that can be applied to entrepreneurship or any career, Holloway says.

“They enjoyed the opportunity to work on a real-life business and be able to present it as a future opportunity,” she adds. “They also were very enthusiastic and excited about the guest speakers – they appreciated talking with them and the interest speakers took in their ideas.

“Not only do they express that they want to be entrepreneurs,” she adds, “some already are working on businesses of their own.”

The CEC and Comer plan to continue the program at the youth center this academic year.

By Robin Florzak

A decade has passed since a massive U.S. housing bubble triggered the 2008 financial crisis. Could another housing bubble be brewing?

We asked James D. Shilling, the George L. Ruff Endowed Chair in Real Estate Studies at DePaul University, who researches housing and real estate investment trends. A prolific scholar and sought-after speaker at academic and business conferences around the world, Shilling recently discussed the prospect of another housing bubble at the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, South Korea. Here, he discusses his findings and gives his take on other real estate trends.

What trends are affecting the current housing market?

Global economic growth slowed in late 2018 and early 2019. One factor negatively affecting global growth has been the down cycle in technology (for example, a low demand for iPhones). Another factor has been the slowdown in credit in China and the trade conflicts with the United States. Europe—and, more specifically, Germany, the world’s leading exporter by most measures—has also been affected by trade tensions. There also is uncertainty over politics in Europe (for example, Brexit). Finally, that growth in the United States slowed is no surprise. The U.S. grew quite quickly in the first half of 2018 on the back of a large fiscal stimulus, and the effects of that stimulus are starting to wear off.

These factors generally caused most housing markets worldwide to cool in late 2018 and early 2019. Nevertheless, lower 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rates in the U.S. (which have recently dropped to 4.2%, a drop of more than 0.75% since late 2018) are likely to lure many buyers back into housing markets in the U.S. for the remainder of the year.

Are we due for another housing bubble?

If you look at what happened during the last crisis, housing prices in real terms increased about 70 percent from 2002 to 2008. Then they fell by 30 percent from about 2008 to 2011. If you apply that same criteria to housing prices today, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and San Francisco all meet that criteria for a bubble—real housing prices have grown by more than 70 percent in those markets since 2008. And markets on the brink include London, Los Angeles, Zurich and Boston. Interestingly enough, however, Chicago and New York City have been laggards in terms of real housing prices. In New York City, the high end of the market has really declined significantly over the last 12 to 18 months.

So, the data presents a picture that in some places prices are going through the roof, other places are on the brink, and in still other places, such as Chicago, we aren’t seeing that big an increase. The short answer is that it doesn’t look like a bubble will cause a crisis because housing prices are not affecting all places in the same way.

On top of that, in order to have a bubble, there also needs to be some sort of speculation taking place. If you go back 2002-2008, we saw a lot of people doing that. People bought homes and they didn’t do anything with them – they just kept them vacant and then tried to flip them. We saw that in Chicago and almost everywhere. But the only place where you are seeing that now is in Asia. In places like South Korea, about 20 percent of households are looking to flip.

We’re also seeing very little new housing starts (new residential construction projects) and existing home sales here in the Midwest as well as the East and West coasts. People have low interest rates. Four or five years ago the rates were 2.75 to 3%, and now it’s about 5%. So people are thinking about whether they want to give up their favorable financing to take on something new. We’re starting to see more improvements to existing homes instead.

What other factors make the current housing market different?

While many families were struggling to make their mortgage payments just before the Great Recession, debt to income levels and delinquency rates are currently much lower than they were prior to the bust. Households are holding significantly less mortgage debt and are making their monthly mortgage payments at a much higher rate than during the Great Recession.

Why are housing prices at bubble level in some cities but not in others, like Chicago?

I think the answer involves economics in general and where the shared economy and technology impact the economy. If you look at places like San Francisco, which is driven by technology, for people in the top 10 to 20th percentile, the ratio of housing prices to incomes is about 2 to 2.5 times. For that segment of the population, the prices are pretty reasonable. For everybody else, it’s hugely unaffordable. Then you look at Chicago. We haven’t benefited as much as San Francisco in the technology-driven economy, and so we won’t necessarily expect to see the huge prices we’ve seen in places like San Francisco, Boston and Austin, or in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai.

The issue of housing affordability speaks to the work of the Institute for Housing Studies​ at DePaul. As much as we thought affordable housing was an issue in the 2000s, going forward it’s going to be doubly important because income inequality is not going away. It’s tough to put technology back in the bottle and reverse these trends.

How might things have changed in Chicago if the city had been chosen for Amazon’s second headquarters?

Having Amazon located in the city would have been both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that it would have created a ton of jobs in Chicago. The curse is that it would have moved us to become more like San Francisco – higher prices on housing overall because the incoming workforce would have lowered supply and raised housing prices.

Read the latest report from the Institute for Housing Studies on the State of Rental Housing

By Robin Florzak

Whether you are a recent graduate about to enter the job market or an alumnus looking for a raise or new employment opportunities, one of the most important skills you need to master is negotiation. We asked Driehaus College of Business Associate Professor of Management Charles E. Naquin, an organizational behaviorist and co-author of “The Essentials of Job Negotiations: Proven Strategies for Getting What You Want,” for advice that will tip the job negotiation scale in your favor.

How should I respond when they ask how much I expect to make?

Generally speaking, don’t answer this question. Instead, you should respectfully deflect. A key word here is respectfully. A job negotiation should never be antagonistic. However, you do want to deflect because answering this question typically never helps you and can actually hurt you. So, don’t play that game—instead, respectfully deflect. Here are some examples:

“I’m getting my MBA so my prior salary doesn’t matter.”
“I’m switching industries so my prior salary should not be considered.”
“What I’m making does not matter so much, what I would like is to be paid competitively to my peers.”

You get the picture—respectfully deflect and have a few responses in your back pocket. This is a question you will likely have to address on multiple occasions during the same interaction.

Will I offend my future boss/employer because I am negotiating the job offer?

That’s a myth. Keep it respectful, not antagonistic, and you should be fine. In fact, it is more likely that your future employer will respect you even more if you negotiate because you are obviously business savvy.

What do employers dislike about job negotiations?

Most employers making job offers expect you to negotiate and many will actually offer a starting salary lower than what they expect to actually pay you because they anticipate you’ll negotiate it to a higher level. Therefore, employers typically expect negotiations and they don’t dislike them. What they DO tend to dislike are protracted job negotiations (so keep it short) or someone who pits one job offer against another (so don’t do that). ​

What is the biggest error that people make in job negotiations?

I would say the biggest error I see in job negotiations from a candidate’s perspective is negotiating before you even have an offer in hand. There are a number of reasons why you do not want to start negotiating before you get a written offer. Among them is that a verbal offer is easy to withdraw, while a written offer is not. In addition, once you get a written offer, the nature of the interaction changes — they (your potential employer) switch from “who should I make an offer to” to “how do we get you to sign.”

What is the NEXT biggest error you see in job negotiations?

The second biggest mistake is negotiating the job package over email (or worse yet, texting) when face-to-face is a viable option. Arranging a face-to-face meeting is often more work than emailing (or texting), but the dynamics in face-to-face job negotiations tend to work to your advantage while the dynamics of email (or texting) tend to work to your disadvantage — again, this is true in job negotiations (and is not true for all negotiations).

There are a number of reasons why this is the case. A person will have a harder time declining your requests when they are face-to-face with you than if they were looking at your requests on a computer screen. In addition, it sends the message that you place a high priority on this job opportunity if you take the time to meet face-to-face.

I once had a student fly from Chicago to Kansas City for what ended up being a 15-minute conversation about a job package, and ended up with several thousand dollars more in salary. Would this have happened over the phone? Maybe, but a jump in base salary in the thousands paid for that trip many times over and increased the odds of getting a favorable response. That investment in time and airfare for a face-to-face meeting was a worthy investment in my mind.

Offer to take your potential employer for a cup of coffee (as an example) and have a face-to-face conversation about the job offer. Negotiating job packages face-to-face is to your advantage, so take the time to set up a meeting.

What is your advice for asking for a raise?

That is a common question when I talk to alumni. People who have been working for a number of years may come to realize they are getting paid less than the market wage. Naturally, they want to know how to get a raise—at least get paid what the going market wage is. Is there a way to do this? Well, let me be upfront here — negotiating a new job offer is much easier than getting a raise internally in an organization. Internally there are many restrictions — whether it is administrative (e.g., caps on raises) or political (e.g., your boss does not like you). Here is the best strategy to take, in the sense that it is generally the one that is most likely to work — change companies. When you switch companies your salary tends to be reset to market wage.

What if you don’t want to change companies, do you have advice on getting a raise?

That is a complex issue that cannot be covered properly in a forum like this Q&A, but there are a few things you should know that can be helpful. First, for you to get a big raise you should make sure you are on good terms with your boss. If not, forget it — look for another position, whether internal or external. Second, figure out where you are salary wise in the company. Often companies will have a range of salaries for each level, often called bands. Find out where you are in your band. This knowledge will help when you talk with your boss about what it takes move up in the band, or if you are at the top of the band, discuss with your boss what it will take to go to the next level and higher band.

By Andrew Zamorski

Serving Students as a “Concierge of Education”

July marked the one-year anniversary of Misty M. Johanson’s tenure as leader of the Driehaus College of Business. She was recently named a “Notable Woman in Chicago Education” by Crain’s Chicago Business, which highlighted her role in promoting strategic enrollment growth, student success and industry-college engagement. An award-winning teacher and prolific scholar, Johanson joined DePaul in 2009 to help establish the college’s School of Hospitality Leadership, which she directed for four years. She previously served as an associate dean of the college, overseeing areas that include academic quality, accreditation and alumni/industry relations.

In this Q&A, Dean Johanson looks back on her first year as dean and ahead at the college’s future, which will be guided by a new strategic plan that will be completed this fall.

How does your expertise in hospitality leadership and human resources influence your approach to leading the college as dean?

When you look at hospitality organizations, such as hotels, many offer similar products and experiences. The ones that succeed differentiate themselves by offering more personalized levels of service and value than their competitors, and by focusing on specific markets. We’re trying to do something similar at the college by transforming how we do business in higher education.

We’re moving from a transactional delivery of programs to a much more service-oriented model. We are focusing on delivering value and establishing long-term relationships with students to build a satisfying experience for them.  This means personalizing our programs and services, as well as offering stackable degrees and professional education that serve students’ needs at various stages of their careers and lives. We’re building a portfolio of student segments we serve rather than focusing on maintaining a rigid portfolio of program offerings.

Our service orientation means that, for example, with our cohort MBA programs, instead of having separate people providing recruitment marketing, advising, development and coaching, we’re having a dedicated person provide all of these services for specific segments of students.

We’re also strengthening our relationships with industry to support this model.  We are forming partnerships with companies and associations to deliver MBA and MS degree programs onsite for their employees. This serves both the employees’ career advancement goals and the organization’s workforce development plans.

At the undergraduate level, we are partnering with major Chicago employers to create mentoring and career development programs.  This adds value for our undergraduate students because it provides experiential learning and skills that enable them to place in good positions after graduation, while also adding value for our partners who are seeking to access to career-ready graduates.

In short, we see ourselves as a concierge of education.

What’s different about Generation Z, the generation the college is currently recruiting, compared to past generations of students?

Students in this generation have grown up as “screenagers” – they are immersed in technology. They are not high-tech experts necessarily, but they are accustomed to communicating and in some ways learning through high tech phones and gadgets. And this has created a challenge in higher ed for developing their soft skills, especially their written and oral communications skills, which are essential for succeeding in any career field.

The other part of this is that this generation is looking for a lot of hands-on support, especially when they are going away to college. This fits well with our move to a more service-oriented culture. They seek personalization, high-touch engagement and for their needs to be met. So, it’s important that our advising offices, faculty and academic units know who each student is, where they need to go academically and what skills they need to develop. By keeping our classes small and the experience personalized and high-touch, we are adding the value that this generation – and their parents – look for in a university.

When a parent asks ‘Why should I send my son or daughter to study business at DePaul?’, how do you respond?

DePaul has an unbelievable business and liberal studies curriculum that provides analytical, technical and leadership skills. But other universities could say the same thing. So the question is, what differentiates us? What is our value proposition?

At the college we have an opportunity to add value through our centers and institutes. They have different missions and purposes, but most offer the opportunity to support the student and the student experience by engaging alumni and industry partners with students, faculty and the life of the college.

What we’re doing is developing new programming at these centers and institutes in the form of co-curricular plans for students that will go along with their curricular plans. These plans support what students are learning in the classroom with mentorships, internships and hands-on learning experiences involving our industry partners, and soft skills development.

The model for this is the Marriott Foundation Center for Student Development and Engagement at the School for Hospitality Leadership, which was endowed in 2016. Students take introductory classes in hospitality leadership, hotels, etc. while getting internship experience and skills development.  They are learning skills such as how to get a job, how to review their résumés, how to make the 30-second elevator speech, etiquette training so they know how to properly dine at work events and use social media properly. As their academic scores grow and their internship experience deepens, the center matches students to additional soft skills training.

This has come to fruition beautifully; these students have extremely high learning outputs and extremely high placement rates because they are graduating with technical and analytical skills as well as career skills and experience. The center’s success also has helped us to expand the school’s advisory board to include the who’s who in the field because of the high caliber graduates we are producing.

Our plan is to expand this model to other relevant centers at the college. Our fundraising and engagement priorities are to seek support from alumni and donors who want to be part of these efforts to engage our students and faculty with industry and alumni through our centers. We’ve already had success creating two new student success hubs with the launch of the Keeley Center for Financial Service in our finance department and the Office of Student Success and Engagement at the School of Accountancy. Now we’re turning our attention to creating success centers in other areas, including real estate, marketing and leadership.

What are the highlights from your first year as interim dean and then dean?

In addition to the student success initiatives I mentioned earlier, we are focusing on innovative initiatives such as the recently launched Women in Entrepreneurship Center. The institute supports women entrepreneurs through education, business plan competitions, and research into how to improve the investing climate for women-owned startups. It’s a great initiative that has already attracted support from an extremely strong board and we’re continuing to raise funds for it.

I’ve also made it a priority to support diversity and inclusion at our college. I’m reaching out to develop leadership opportunities for our women faculty and faculty of color.

This fall our enrollment was solid, supported by our strategies to build relationships with students and partner with companies to offer onsite graduate programs. The Doctorate in Business Administration just graduated its first class. We launched a new Master’s in Business Analytics degree this fall and enhanced our analytics course content throughout the curriculum to provide students with skills that are sought-after in the marketplace. We’re looking to create an analytics center.

It’s been a fantastic year with more to come.

What’s in store for the college in its new strategic plan, which will be completed for launch in January 2019?

Over the last year the university completed its strategic plan, Grounded in Mission,  and did it differently than the university ever done before, not only setting baseline metrics and goals but also aligning dollars to support initiatives within the strategic plan.

At the college, I pulled together a group of advisory board members, who are alumni and industry leaders, students, faculty from all ranks, staff and college leadership to discuss how to do our strategic plan. With guidance from the president’s office, we built our framework based on the higher education challenges and opportunities that are happening not only in the business college but in higher education as a whole. We looked at challenges in the economy and factors such as there being fewer college-aged students in Illinois. We also looked at how DePaul is positioned — we need to compete with lower-priced public institutions as well as private universities that have similar academic profiles. We need to understand how this impacts DePaul and how we should position ourselves to add value through our strategic plan.

We came up with three defining pillars that are the basis of our plan — supporting academic excellence, engaging the Chicago business community and alumni,elevating the reputation of the college. We’re focusing on our value proposition, and I believe we have a really great opportunity to address our challenges and create value through the greater service orientation and the student success centers mentioned earlier, among other strategies.

We’ve come up with six key initiatives, and this fall units throughout the college have been asked to create strategic tactics to carry out these initiatives, align with the pillars, and move us into the future.

How do you see alumni and the business community contributing to the achievement of the college’s strategic goals?

There’s no better group of individuals to inspire the next generation of Driehaus alumni than our past alumni. We want to connect alumni to current students to provide mentorships—have alumni talk with them about what their challenges were, what pitfalls to look out for, and how to take advantage of opportunities in their future careers.

Mentoring programs are the hallmark of the student success centers we are developing. We want to provide more opportunities for one-on-one engagement between alumni and students, as well as alumni and industry engagement with student groups, center activities and with faculty members.  We need to have deeper alumni engagement with the college and offer better mentoring than before, and encourage “hire DePaul” better than we ever have before — and offer more reasons for the alumni to be engaged.

We’re looking at ways to expand the success of Alumni University by offering more professional development and enrichment opportunities for alumni online. There’s a demand for continuing education among alumni and we’re exploring ideas for creating ongoing seminars.

We also want to expand our corporate connections, especially with Chicago organizations, that employ a lot of DePaul alumni. We’re looking at what these alumni are doing to engage with each other and the college — are they hiring DePaul (graduates) and are they seeing the college as a source of degrees and continuing education that will help them advance?

We’re looking at how we can take these initiatives to the next level—how can we collectively add value and create a win-win for our students and our alumni.

Photos by Kathy Hillegonds

Erica Thewis is taking a nontraditional route to land her dream job. The one-time culinary creationist sifted through both tasty and unappetizing career choices before she realized that her true passion was helping people and organizations excel. Now, studying for her master’s degree in human resources (MSHR) at DePaul’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, Thewis hopes to find her metaphorical elusive black truffle—a job that combines her new career path with morsels of her multidisciplinary skills and talents.

Associate Professor of Management Jaclyn Jensen, the faculty director of DePaul’s MSHR program, understands the challenges that Thewis and others with multidisciplinary educations and experience face when looking for a job in their desired career.

“As much as we talk about the need to be diverse and open to different backgrounds and perspectives, sometimes recruiters can be too quick to judge a candidate,” says Jenson. “When you have two candidates side by side and one has come up with matching degrees, and one has come up through a different functional path, the person who has a more traditional background may get the edge.”

Jensen notes that there are ways to address employers’ hesitation to hire a candidate with a wide-ranging education and career background. She recommends building a network of contacts in the current desired field and connecting with mentors. The mentors are especially important because they can provide an insider’s knowledge of the industry and give advice on how to approach applying for jobs. Jensen also recommends building business knowledge through continuing education courses, certificate programs or getting an advanced degree. As for candidates like Thewis who are in the MSHR program, Jensen recommends seeking an internship so that they can receive on-the-job learning while studying in the classroom.

“Something that all applicants, whether traditional or multidiscipline, will need in order to be effective in their new role is business acumen,” says Jensen. “This is being able to have a clear understanding of how a business works. This includes a sense of how your organization makes money, its goals and strategy, and how your technical expertise plays a role.” Jensen notes that business acumen can be learned through experience, but it can also be supplemented through additional study. She also stresses that multidisciplinary-background candidates highlight their transferable skills and business acumen to help land a job in their new field.

Gathering Ingredients for Success

Thewis, who has undergraduate degrees in art history and Italian and an associate’s degree in baking and pastry making, has impressive business acumen. While living in Memphis, Thewis opened Pistache French Pastry from her home, where she made fresh macaróns, chocolates and petits fours. She sold her baked goods at local farmer’s markets, on the online marketplace Etsy and through catering companies. After a few newspaper profiles about her venture and great word-of-mouth, Thewis hit it big in the Memphis food scene, which made her job both sustainable and fulfilling.

“Pistache French Pastry truly was a learn-as-you-go experience,” says Thewis. “I discovered everything you needed to know about how to run a business. This was a smaller market, which gave me the opportunity to make mistakes and to learn from them. I also learned that I wanted to be a part of the business and not just on a pastry assembly line.”

Personal reasons brought Thewis back to Chicago where she decided to change professions. After searching for jobs online that infused her interests, Thewis became interested in the job postings for human resource roles.

“Baking is a solitary life, but I want to engage with people,” says Thewis.

I want to help people find their passion and get to a place where they feel valued at work. I also wanted to work in a business that has a strategy and goals that isn’t about the number of cakes that get iced.”

Mix in New Passions

Thewis applied to every HR job she found, but without any nibbles on her applications, she decided to look into an advanced business degree. While attending an info session at DePaul, she sparked a conversation with Anthony Cuellar, assistant director of recruiting for DePaul’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, who also has a multidisciplinary background with a bachelor’s degree in audio arts and acoustics and a master’s in counseling.

“Many students think that if they don’t have an undergraduate business degree, they are not qualified for graduate business school,” says Cuellar. “That is not the case.

Many times multidisciplinary backgrounds provide businesses transferable skills like conflict management, leadership and communication—skills the mean something in the real world.”

Cuellar also notes that DePaul has been seeing a sizable increase in business school applications from students with non-traditional backgrounds as well as career changers. In fact, DePaul’s full-time MBA student cohort entering in fall 2018 has applicants who are military veterans, healthcare practitioners, lawyers and other non-business careerists.

“Students coming from non-business backgrounds have an outside-looking-in perspective,” observes Cuellar. “The more a student is removed from their bachelor’s degree, the more professional experience and transferable skills they bring into the classroom. They are bringing different perspectives of leadership.”

Bake to Perfection

Thewis is eager to take more human resources courses and to integrate all of the unique ingredients of her background into her new career, including her experiences of owning a business and studying art history.

“Art history is about analyzing and looking at everything critically,” says Thewis. “I bring those skills into the business world and try to look for the whole story, not just a solution to a problem. I am able to bring in real examples from owning Pistache into my business courses. I also like to consider the human aspect of a business and the way that people matter, which is why I am eager to get into the HR curriculum.”

Jensen agrees with Cuellar that multidisciplinary backgrounds bring new perspectives and transferable skills to the business world, but also recommends that non-business students take business courses.

“Businesses value the critical thinking skills and communication abilities and even the creativity of those who graduate with a liberal arts degree,” says Jensen. “A business degree offers those with a multidisciplinary background an opportunity to apply those skills in a business context while also showing an employer, through their new degree, that they have an appreciation for all the functional areas of business, like management, finance, economics and others. It also shows that the candidate appreciates that there is technical knowledge and skills associated with each of those different disciplines.”

Changing careers for those with a multidisciplinary background can be as tricky as nailing a perfect soufflé, but by mixing together the transferable skills from a diverse background with business acumen and education can prove to be a recipe for success.

By Andrew Zamorski

With guidance from alumni and professionals from a wide range of industries, 19 DePaul University students spent the spring quarter of 2018 developing businesses during a startup launch program hosted by the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center and the Founder Institute.

Students worked on various aspects of their business plans with the help of 50 mentors. Jason Jacobsohn (MBA ’02), director of the Founder Institute’s Chicago chapter, facilitated the program at DePaul.

Based in Silicon Valley, the institute hosts idea-stage accelerator programs for aspiring entrepreneurs throughout the country and the world, and has helped participants develop nearly 3,000 companies. This is the first time the institute has brought its program to a university.

Accelerator programs allow students to explore an idea while they have a safety net,” says Coleman Assistant Director Abigail Ingram.

“Students have access to all of the university’s resources and networks, and expertise in every possible area, so it’s one of the few times in their lives where they will be plugged into a network of PhDs and specialists as well as experiential opportunities.”

To qualify for the free program, students were required to fill out an application and take the Founder Institute’s aptitude test, which assesses problem-solving abilities, agreeableness and openness—qualities of a successful entrepreneur. The Coleman Center also hosted a mini version of the institute’s program in fall 2018 to gauge whether it was a right fit for DePaul students.

DePaul’s Entrepreneurship Ecosystem

An adjunct instructor at the business college, Jacobsohn formed the Chicago chapter of the Founder Institute in 2011. Typically, the institute requires that participants’ business ideas be based in the tech industry and that applicants pay a program fee. Jacobsohn says while the DePaul-based program is free, students are held accountable through an online system that tracks the progress of their businesses.

“The entrepreneurship ecosystem at DePaul is very diverse, so we’re letting the students build whatever business they want to build,” Jacobsohn says. “They also have to be prepared every week to present to mentors so that by the time they’re done with the program, if they want to present to other stakeholders or a board, potential hires, co-founders, or investors they get really good and comfortable to present their business.”

During the first half of the program, students spent about 10 to 15 hours a week working on research to see if their business idea is a viable opportunity. In the second half, students worked on building the company by incorporating, developing a revenue model, putting together a market strategy and developing a solution to the problem for their business to solve.

Turning an Idea Into a Business

To further their business idea, undergraduate finance majors Austin Garwood and Tyler Cornelius decided to participate in the Founder Institute pilot accelerator program in fall 2017.

The two, who are DePaul transfer students, formed their idea as roommates during their sophomore year at the University of Missouri. An avid video game player, Garwood wanted to buy the headphones he really wanted—a pair of headphones designed in a galaxy skin—but also wanted the option of a neutral pair of headphones that wouldn’t clash with his clothes.

“In the headphone market, Beats has 400-something different colors in sports team patterns and all these crazy designs to choose from,” he says. “You have to choose one pair and stick with it, and if you want another pair, it’s another $300. So what we’re trying to do is create one pair of headphones that can be all of that at once.”

In addition to applying to more rigorous accelerator programs, Cornelius and Garwood are hoping that by the end of the accelerator program they have obtained a prototype and design for their product so that they can eventually obtain their intellectual property.

So far, the program has forced them to improve their elevator pitch by presenting their business idea to fellow founders and mentors. Jacobsohn also encouraged them to collect feedback on their product and business idea by conducting customer interviews and narrowing their target audience and price point.

“The biggest thing that we’ve gotten from the Founder Institute is just all of the connections that we’ve been able to make with people, especially the mentors they bring in,” Garwood says. “Jason and all of the mentors have given really good information on how to go about developing our ideas into an actual business and what it takes to go from an idea to getting to the market to creating an actual company.”

By Jaclyn Lansbery

Millennials are predicted to become 50 percent of all travelers in the Unites States by 2025, according to study by the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research. When they do travel, members of this generation are increasingly staying at boutique hotels in their quest for personalized, authentic and technology-driven experiences.

To find out more about this trend, we talked with Allyson Murphy (BUS ’15), front office manager, and Alexander Foster, director of rooms at Hotel EMC2, a boutique hotel that opened in the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago in May. Founded by Lincolnshire-based SMASHotels and part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection, EMC2 has a millennial-appealing, art-and-technology theme that is inspired by scientist Albert Einstein.

In addition to working at EMC2, Murphy and Foster, who both previously worked for Starwood Hotels & Resorts, share their knowledge of the lodging industry as mentors for students in DePaul’s School of Hospitality Leadership.

Q: About what percentage of your clientele are millennials, aged roughly 20 to 35?

Foster: Almost half of our guests are millennials. We find that we attract a wide variety of travelers from all walks of life.

Q:  How does the hotel’s theme and decor appeal to experience-seeking millennials?

Foster: Our guest rooms feature many different touch points for experience-seeking travelers. My favorite is the phonogram, which allows our guests to amplify music from their phones.

Murphy: Our hotel tells a story the minute you walk in the door. Guests are welcomed by Leonardo Da Vinci’s wisdom: ‘Study the science of art, study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.’

Q: Millennials are technology savvy and socially connected, and they expect the same from the hotels where they stay. How does EMC2 address their expectations?

Foster: No one has time for phone calls anymore, our guests included. We implemented a text-messaging platform that we found makes communication less intrusive for our guests and allows for a quicker connection.

Murphy: Each guest room features an Amazon Dot (Alexa) that can connect to our Guest Services team. You can ask her almost anything, including restaurant recommendations, for any forgotten items, or even just to say ‘hi’ to our robots, Leo & Cleo.

Q: What services does EMC2 offer that appeals to millennials’ desire for unique, authentic and personalized experiences?

Foster: Our property features two robots, Leo & Cleo, that work as personal assistants. The experience of having a robot come right to your door with towels or welcome amenities is truly unlike anything else.

Murphy: One of the most authentic elements of Hotel EMC2 is our staff. Our Door Attendant team starts out guests’ experience from the minute they walk in the door. They tell the story of the hotel and show off each unique feature of our guest rooms. Our team is also knowledgeable about local art and science exhibits in the city.

Q: How is food and beverage at EMC2 designed to meet the preferences of the millennial market?

Foster: Our restaurant, the Albert, features globally inspired food, crafted by Executive Chef Brandon Brumback. His ever evolving menu consists of only the freshest local ingredients that are currently in season.

Murphy: Not only can our guests dine in our beautiful, library-esque dining room, but they can have that same experience in the comfort of their own guest room. Our guests can view the menu with ease on our interactive TV platform.

Q: Social consciousness and sustainable practices are important to many millennials. How does EMC2 support this?

Foster: With a focus on building the best possible team to deliver the best possible service, we partnered with Heartland Alliance, which actively helps refugees from all over the world. They have an incredible hospitality program, which trains their students to work in hotel operations and prepares them for a future in hospitality.

Murphy: Hotel EMC2 believes that creating is universal and innovation is the key to the future. Our team fulfills this vision through its partnership with Project SYNCERE, with a percentage of each reservation booked going directly to students studying in the STEM field.

Q: As student mentors at the School for Hospitality Leadership, what advice do you have for students and recent alumni who are entering the hospitality field?

Foster: Network! You never know who will become your next potential boss or coworker. The hospitality world is incredibly small and well-connected.  Take advantage of every opportunity to interact with industry professionals as everyone has a unique piece of knowledge that they can share with you.

Murphy: Have an open mind and be willing to take on any role! Each experience is a unique opportunity for you to learn something new.

Q: Anything else you would like to add?

Foster: With all of our technology, it’s easy to forget our beautiful art that is everywhere in the hotel. Each of our meeting rooms, Emmy Noether (named for the German mathematician) and Symmetry, feature a unique custom piece created by our Resident Scientist Eugenia Chang. In Emmy Noether, Eugenia brought Emmy’s theory to life with a visual representation of her conservation of movement theory. In Symmetry, the concept and real-life instances of symmetry are displayed across the front of the room.

Murphy: From the novel we leave on the night stand in each guest room to the zoetrope in the lobby displaying artistry and angular momentum, we give travelers “Instramagable” moments throughout the entire hotel. The hotel encourages our guests to come together to appreciate art and science in a non-traditional way.

By Robin Florzak

Read more: Millennials and the Experience-Driven Economy

Mike Miller and Tom Mondschean are two long-time DePaul economics professors who are often interviewed by the media about current economic debates. Last fall, they teamed up to share their varying perspectives on economic issues shaping the 2016 Presidential Election as guest lecturers in a DePaul political science class. Business Exchange checked in with them again this fall to find out their views on five big economic questions that are dominating current national and local headlines. The questions include two submitted by alumni via the DePaul business school’s LinkedIn page. Below is an excerpt of this conversation.

Q: Do tax breaks stimulate growth in the economy?

Mondschean: Tax breaks can be an effective stimulus depending on the type of tax break. But I don’t think generally cutting taxes across the board necessarily stimulates the economy any more than any other kind of fiscal stimulus. For Instance, tax breaks to encourage more investment or research and development would be more useful than other types of tax breaks.

Miller: I agree, but would add a few other things. Many people on my political side think that all tax breaks always lead to growth. They point to two other cases (of leaders who implemented tax breaks): John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. What they are missing is that the rates that were changed (then) were excessively high and they were dramatic reductions. However, if you are talking about reducing taxes, which are already low, there is not any empirical evidence that this will lead to higher employment or higher incomes and so forth.

Mondschean: You also have to consider the offsetting factor of the deficit and how often people tie high tax cuts with government spending cuts to make the revenue deficit neutral.

Miller: There is research that asks the question: can you starve the government in order to cut taxes, and the answer is no. Cutting spending is not the number one way to get things to work. The most contractionary action a government can take is to raise taxes. The effect of a tax hike is much greater than a commensurate decrease in government spending.

Mondschean: It is not asymmetric in that way. Tax increases could potentially be beneficial if they cut the deficit. We already under fund our government given the amount of spending the people want to have and we push that responsibility onto future generations. The true level of taxation on the economy is the level of spending, not the level of taxes. Shifting the cost onto future generations by not taxing enough to pay for the spending is what we are doing and it is harmful.

Miller: According to the works of economic researchers David and Christina Romer, the most contractionary action you can take is increasing taxes, not cutting spending. Tom and I mostly agree that raising taxes can be bad. Overall, we agree, but you can actually make things better if you fund the government properly.

Q: How does Illinois’ pension crisis affect Chicago?

Mondschean: In some ways, it has not affected our city yet. The economy keeps chugging along. Illinois has been a cheaper place in which to do business in the last few years in part because it has not adequately funded its pension plan. I don’t think people fully understand the magnitude of the crisis that we’re facing. As of Dec. 31, 2016, the Chicago firefighters’ pension fund is about 21 percent funded; the police fund is just under 30 percent, and those are based on fairly generous actuarial assumptions about the underlying liabilities. Those funds will eventually run out. And what happens when they do? What do we tell the firefighters and police who have put their lives on the line for their whole careers to help the city when their pension funds run out? This is a crisis Chicago will face 15 to 25 years down the road. It is hanging over our heads and no one has a real sense of the issue. Chicago’s mayor raised taxes quite a bit to put money into the pension fund, but that was a small portion of what is needed. This has been a problem that will have an effect on the business climate in the long term.

Miller: I have nothing to disagree about this, but I would add that the only way around it—given that you can’t change the agreements—is to raise taxes. You have to fund it properly. When you compare our relative tax rates to others states around us, it’s clear that raising our taxes again can only be extremely damaging. When you combine income taxes with real estate taxes and sales taxes, we have a relatively high tax rate. The trouble is Chicago is so close to the border. If it were in the middle of the state, it wouldn’t be the same situation. All the surrounding states have a better business atmosphere than we do, which allows capital to move not that far and keep their customers.

The pensions have to be funded. It will be immoral to not pay these people their pensions that they have been promised. They’ve made their plans for retirement with these pensions in mind. But, how do we pay for them? We make assumptions that these funds will have a 7 percent rate of return—but the state hasn’t made their contributions. That is why our credit rating is the second lowest in the country—if not the lowest. Anything that you borrow, you are going to have to borrow at a higher rate.

Mondschean: This definitely affects the finances of the state and local government. Illinois is in a mess not only because of pensions, but also because we have huge backlog of unpaid bills.

Miller: Around $15 billion.

Mondschean: That’s a huge problem and the lack of any kind of consensus in Springfield to come to terms with this in a meaningful way is troubling. Chicago is a net revenue producer. We send more revenue to Springfield than we receive. This unfairness has never been addressed.

Q: Does globalization hurt U.S. economy? (alumnus reader question)

Miller: No, globalization helps, but it helps unevenly. There are going to be winners and losers. Some of my conservative colleagues and I split in this opinion. Some people are ruined by globalization. It is my opinion that if the government is going to impose such policies, it behooves them to then help these people be retrained to get into something else given what their policy has done. Are we better off getting the product with the lowest possible price, with the most efficient allocation of the world’s resources? But there are people who are clearly ruined by it and they have to be helped and given a chance?

Mondschean: I basically agree. But I’m not sure that retraining will be the panacea to help these people. It is a hard issue. I think if resources could be more efficiently allocated and it would strengthen the economy, but it requires new entrepreneurial activity to use the resources released by globalization. Companies can become more productive through globalization and then those companies become more efficient. Producing more goods and services with the same resources is how the economy and standard of living improve. We have not been doing a good job of improving entrepreneurial activity. That is one of the big issues facing the economy today: how can we increase the level of entrepreneurial activity especially in the poorer areas in the city?

Miller: The number one creator of new jobs is startups. The entrepreneurial activity in the country has started to fall before the recent recession and it has not recovered. People are becoming more risk averse. Something is not clicking in the entrepreneurship sector.

Q: What is the reason for stagnant wage growth? (alumnus reader question)

Mondschean: This is a complicated issue. I think that there have been changes in the way corporations are governed, which have changed the relationships between labor and capital. This has, in effect, reduced the bargaining power of labor. Most people get cost of living increases, but do not receive the benefits of productivity growth. Since the end of World War II until 1990, real wages and productivity have roughly followed the same upward trajectory. But since 1990, productivity has been rising and real wages have not. What I believe happened is that corporations became so fixated on raising their share price at the expense of everything else, that this has led to a transferring of value from certain stakeholders, like employees, to shareholders. We need to reward true value creation as opposed to value transfer or diversion. Value diversion should not be supported by government policy, but value creation should be. How to distinguish between those two is really hard.

Miller: The one thing I would add to that is that there seems to be a belief within corporate world that the returns you get on investing in new capital simply do not justify buying the new capital. If you have all this money, it can just sit there or you can use it to manipulate your stock prices. It could be that they have nowhere else to spend their money. The issue is that wages paid to workers are not keeping up with worker productivity. And we, as economists, teach that in an economy that is functioning properly, workers should be paid in relation to their productivity. The more you produce per hour worked, all else constant, the more you should be paid per hour. In no other expansion between the end of a recession and the beginning of the next recession has income not risen above where it was before. And we are in that situation today.

Mondschean: I think there is another simple explanation for this. The vast majority of CEO compensation is tied to the stock price.

Miller: Why did Mr. Trump win? Wages have not gone up. It becomes frustrating as a worker. What allows you to move up if you are born into the middle class? It’s harder and harder to move up. Those who do essentially take risks.

Mondschean: This is the age of shareholder capitalism in the U.S.

By Andrew Zamorski