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Boom town
Goizueta alums embrace
Atlanta’s allure
The growth of Atlanta as a global business center is
reflected in the number of Goizueta alumni who forego jobs in other locales
to stay or return to the Big Peach. Currently, more than one-third of
Goizueta’s nearly 12,000 alumni—BBA, MBA, and EMBA—work
in the greater Atlanta area.
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“Atlanta is unique among major cities,” observes
Dan Branch ‘03MBA, a recent Goizueta
grad who is a consultant with Taylor Consulting Group, an Atlanta-based
business finance firm. “In Atlanta, there’s a kind of fusion
of old-style Southern charm with today’s new international flavor.”
Like other alumni, Branch was drawn to Atlanta because of a desire to
attend Goizueta. “I learned about Goizueta while in the Navy from
a fellow officer who had graduated from the school, and whose father also
went there before it was renamed Goizueta.” Branch graduated from
the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a nuclear engineer aboard the USS
Enterprise aircraft carrier among other assignments during his five years
in the Navy. Prior to his discharge in 2001, he researched all the major
east coast graduate business schools before deciding that Goizueta and
Atlanta have it all. “I soon found that publications like The Wall
Street Journal were calling Goizueta ‘an up-and-comer,’ ‘a
diamond in the rough,’ and ‘a real value.’ And that’s
exactly what Goizueta proved to be for me—a great experience—and
I’m very happy with my choice.”
Branch notes that three of the eight consultants at Taylor Consulting
Group are recent Goizueta alumni. “We know that we’re quality
graduates so we try to hire other quality graduates, and if they happen
to be from Goizueta, all the better. Also it puts into practice Goizueta’s
core values of community and teamwork, and it shows we don’t just
talk about those values in the classroom.”
As for his choice of Atlanta as a home, Branch, married and father of
a new baby daughter, says, “Here you can actually imagine yourself
comfortably raising a family, and still have all the amenities of a big
city.”
Jagdish Sheth, the Charles H. Kellstadt
professor of marketing at Goizueta, is an enthusiastic advocate for his
adopted home. He has championed Atlanta as the permanent site for the
secretariat of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, an effort that seeks
to unite the economies of the Americas into a single free trade region.
“Atlanta is a very vibrant, friendly and affordable city, full of
professional talent,” he says. “It is clearly a city of the
future.”
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin agrees, noting that the city’s appeal
is its mix of offerings. “All great cities strike an ideal balance
between business and lifestyle, commerce and culture—Atlanta has
that balance.”
Hans Gant, senior vice president of economic development for the Metro
Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, says this balance is what draws companies
to the metro area. “First, the great quality of life in Atlanta means
that companies have no problem in relocating or attracting executives
or valued employees to Atlanta. Second, because of world-class universities
like Emory and Georgia Tech, companies have no trouble finding the talent
and educated workforce they need to succeed.
“Finally, Atlanta is the business capital of the Southeastern United
States, and the Southeast is the fastest growing region in the country,”
Gant explains. “Companies want to be located where there is a vibrant,
fast-growing environment—a place where their businesses can grow.”
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Indeed a number of respected publications, including Forbes, have
ranked Atlanta among the top U.S. cities for doing business and to advance
one’s career. Atlanta ranks #1 in Inc. magazine’s “Best
Places for Entrepreneurs and Business,” while Black Enterprise magazine
ranks it #2 among “Top Cities for Black Americans.” Atlanta
also currently ranks 4th among U.S. cities with the Most Fortune 500 headquarters,
such as The Coca-Cola Company, Delta Air Lines, The Home Depot, UPS, Georgia-Pacific,
Rayovac, Rubbermaid, and dozens more. In addition to major offices of
nearly all Fortune 500 companies, Metro Atlanta is now home to more than
120,000 firms, from technology centers and manufacturing plants to distribution
facilities and service industries. A myriad of women-owned firms, countless
small businesses, home-based enterprises, and entrepreneurships also continue
to crop-up in Atlanta’s business greenhouse. (See
Alumni Entrepreneurs)
The key to Atlanta’s prosperity is and always was its accessibility—railways,
roadways, and now, increasingly, runways. A crossroads city, it straddles
the confluence of three major interstate highways, and boasts extensive
rail distribution facilities. The linchpin of its current economic and
cultural boom, according to many city boosters, is Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson
International Airport; the world’s busiest in daily flights, which
welcomes several thousand business travelers and visitors from around
the nation and globe.
“Atlanta’s airport is one of its chief advantages, from any
business perspective,” says Dave Gould ’90EMBA,
echoing the sentiments of many other business types. “I do a lot
of international travel, and it really helps that I can get to almost
anywhere in the world by direct flight from Atlanta.”
Gould came to Goizueta “to further my education through the Executive
MBA program, and its emphasis on talking through the ways organizations
behave and operate.” Putting that knowledge to use after graduation,
Gould first worked with two technology firms in Atlanta until 1995, and
then he relocated with his family to Boston to serve as chairman and CEO
of an early-stage Internet electronic commerce company targeting the healthcare
market. But after four years, Gould and his family returned to Atlanta.
“We left Atlanta kicking and screaming, and we’re very happy
to be back,” says Gould. “Boston is good—but it just isn’t
Atlanta.”
Gould is chairman and CEO of Witness Systems, a global provider of workforce
optimization software and services. He says, “When you hear the familiar
phone phrase: ‘This call may be monitored for quality assurance,’
that’s Witness Systems in action.” Gould explains that Witness
Systems’ products take call-center data, both telephone and Web-based,
and turn valuable customer intelligence into useful corporate information
for training, performance improvement, and to help ensure high caliber
customer experiences.
”Atlanta is a wonderful environment to live and raise a family,”
says Gould, who lives just a few blocks from the Emory campus in a tree-filled
subdivision. “There’s plenty to do. The weather is nice, the
people are friendly, and it’s a clean city,” he adds.
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Left,
Piedmont Park at dusk, and right, The Fox Theatre on Peachtree Street. |
Located in the foothills of the southern Appalachian
Mountains, the Atlanta area is blessed with a gentle climate, abundant
green space, and an elegance unlike anything found in other modern cities.
Juxtaposed with the expansive green space and Southern charm is a booming
metropolis. In 2005, Greater Atlanta spans a vast area of over 6,000 square
miles, and includes twenty-eight counties and 110 municipalities. Last
year’s stats show the metro population at nearly five million people,
half of Georgia. This explosion in growth can also be seen in the expansion
of Atlanta’s Asian and Latin American communities. Now, more than
1,000 international businesses operate here and more than fifty nations
have representation in the city through consulates, trade offices, and
chambers of commerce. In fact, the U.S. Census reports that more than
130 languages are spoken in Georgia.
Not surprisingly, Atlanta now has about three thousand ethnic restaurants:
Continental, Asian-Pacific, Hispanic, Near East, Middle East, Far East,
and every flavor in between. This new democracy of taste is also catered
to by several international farmers markets that provide a complete menu
of fresh multicultural foods and delicacies, from authentic baklava to
bok choy to borscht, not to mention the fixin’s for traditional southern
cuisine such as grits, fried chicken, and Coca-Cola-corn bread.
For newcomers to the Atlanta area, this wealth of culture, variety, and
modern conveniences not only helps to ease their transition, but is also
a gateway to the United States. Nancy Roth Remington,
executive director of international programs at Goizueta, hears from sponsored
international students, especially those from Korea and Japan, that colleagues
and Goizueta graduates are enthusiastic about the wonderful weather, lovely
neighborhoods, and availability of great golf. “The presence of major
corporations as well as successful entrepreneurs—many of them with
Emory ties—ensures that students have access to individual mentors
and potential employers.”
Although Atlanta is not yet as well known outside of the United States
as New York, San Francisco, or Boston, Remington finds that “students
learn quickly that amenities here are wonderful, the prices are far lower
than in other major cities, and the shopping can’t be beat.”
Though the academic possibilities of Goizueta lured Joy
Wei ‘01MBA from her native China in 1999, it was the city’s
charm that convinced her to stay. After graduating with honors from Nankai
University, Wei worked for two years with Procter & Gamble in cities
and towns near Hong Kong and Beijing. Originally, Wei planned to complete
Goizueta’s two-year MBA Program then return to China. But by 2001
and with graduation near, Wei decided to remain in Atlanta and accept
a plum job offer. “By that time, I had gotten to know the real Atlanta,”
she says, “not the Atlanta I had imagined from reading Gone with
the Wind.” She adds, “Actually, Atlanta is a totally modern
city with exciting business opportunities and a sophisticated lifestyle.
I’m very glad I stayed because I found my dream job here eventually.”
As a management consultant with Accenture, a global management consulting
and business process outsourcing company, Wei says she thrives on the
fast-paced intellectual challenges of working with different industries
and different problems, from strategic planning to day-to-day operations.
For Wei, Atlanta not only provides an ideal environment for business networking,
its climate has also helped spur her to adopt a new sport: golf. She notes
that Atlanta has 54 golf courses. Wei adds, “Someday I’d like
to have time to play every one of them.”
As a native of the area, Albert D. Maslia ‘54BBA,
director with Cornerstone Bank and managing director of retail services
for Atlanta’s AmericasMart, has always known the area’s potential.
“I remained in Atlanta knowing that it would be one of the ‘world’s
Next Great Cities,’ and I wanted to be a part of it and its growth.”
Maslia, who remains active in the Goizueta community as an alumni advisory
board member, has also observed explosive growth in size and caliber of
Goizueta Business School. With the strategic plan put forth by Emory University
and changes such as the near-completion of The Goizueta Foundation Center
for Research and Doctoral Education, Maslia is optimistic about the trajectory
of Atlanta and Goizueta.
“The future is wide, wide-open,” he confides. “President
Wagner is of a new generation of leadership, former Dean Thomas
Robertson has moved up to further internationalize the university,
and Goizueta’s incoming Dean Lawrence Benveniste
is fully qualified to fill Robertson’s shoes. I’m talking about
the 22nd century now!”
—Joseph Z. Torre