Lecture Series

The lecture series highlights practitioners who provide additional exposure to the issues of various organizations and careers. 

2017- 2018

Healthcare Access in An Uncertain TimeHealthcare Access in An Uncertain TimeOn September 28, 2017, BEO together with the School of Public Health will sponsor a panel discussion entitled, "Healthcare Access in an Uncertain Time." Panelists will include: Chanee D. Fabius, Ph.D, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Health Services Policy & Practice, Center for Gerontology & Healthcare Research, David Barton Smith, Ph.D., Research Professor, Health Management & Policy Department, Drexel University, Emeritus Professor, Temple University and 2016 Goldberg Prize recipient for the best book in the area of medicine for his book: The Power to Heal: Civil Rights, Medicare and the Struggle to Transform America's Health System, Terrie Fox Wetle, Ph. D., (moderator) Dean, School of Public Health, Professor of Health Services, Policy, and Practice, Brown University and, Ira B. Wilson, M.D., Professor of Health Services, Policy & Practice, Professor of Medicine, Chair of Health Services, Policy & Practice, Brown University.

2014-2015

On October 29, 2014, BEO hosted David Ebersman '91, former CFO of Facebook, who gave a talk entitled, "Opportunities for Health Care Entrepreneurship".

On April 8, 2015, Allen Murabayashi gave a talk entitled, "The Unintended Entrepreneur: The Success & Failure of a Music Major. From Web 1.0 success to taking too long to understand social media, Allen helped students rethink what it means to be an entrepreneur.

2013-2014

On March 17, 2014, Marshall Sonenshine, ’82, Chair and Managing Partner of Sonenshine Partners Chair, RosettaBooks, gave a talk entitled, " Creative Destruction: RosettaBooks and the birth of the eBook market" where he discussed how innovation can disrupt a market resulting in opportunity, a valuable lesson for Brown community members interested in business strategy, technology and entrepreneurship. 

On April 8, 2014, Sanjan Dhody, Managing Director & Client Advisor of Deutsche Bank, presented to the BEO community a talk entitled, "What it Takes to Succeed: Talking Success with Barrons #1 Rated Financial Advisor”.

2012-2013

On April 24, 2013, Nzinga Misgana '87 gave a talk entitled, "Are Nonprofits Obsolete?" answering questions such as, in an age of social entrepreneurs and social enterprises, why do we need traditional nonprofit organizations? Are they unwieldy, ineffective, and allergic to change? Or, do they still have ways to surprise us?

On November 1, 2012, in collaboration with PRIME and Continuing Education, BEO hosted Dr. Larry Rand '64, President & CEO of Kekst and Company, Inc., who gave a talk on Crisis Communications: Learning best practices from recent crises.

2011-2012

On March 12, 2012, Dr. Jason Owen-Smith, Barger Leadership Institute Professor of Organizational Studies and Associate Professor in both the Department of Sociology and the Organizational Studies Program at the University of Michigan, gave a talk as part of the COE-lloquium series entitled, Measuring Radical Innovation Using Interrupted Patent Citation Flows .

2010-2011

On February 28, 2011, Katharine White, MS, and Bill White, MS, President and CEO of Workplace Renaissance, Inc., a Rhode Island-based company that brings human capital innovations to businesses; and Alexa Baggio, a 2009 COE graduate, founder of Brown Women in Business, and an analyst in Bank of America Merrill Lynch, gave a talk entitled: Set-up for Success: Prepare Yourself for Work in Great Workplaces.

2009-2010

On May 6, 2010, Barnett Helzberg, Jr., former Chairman of the Board of Helzberg Diamonds (est. 1915) and current Chairman and founder of the Helzberg Entrepreneurial Mentoring Program, Co-founder and Board Member of the University Academy K-12 Charter School in Kansas City, Missouri, will give a talk entitled, Mentoring is the Most Selfish Thing I Do.

On February 19, 2010, Gabriel Jaramillo, President and Chief Executive Officer of Sovereign Bank, gave a lecture entitled, Grupo Santander: A Successful Model. Topics of discussion included how Santander’s success has been managed from the inside and how Santander’s model is being applied to Sovereign while minimizing the clash of cultures. 

On November 10, 2009, Lawrence Benjamin '77, Executive Vice President, Royal Ahold and Chief Operating Officer, Ahold USA, gave a talk focusing on business ethics entitled, Cleaning Up After a Fraud: Lessons Learned for Building an Ethical Culture.

2008-2009

On April 22, 2009, Donna M. O'Brien, President, Community Healthcare Strategies, LLC, gave a presentation entitled Reconfiguring Healthcare to Realize the Promise of Personalized Medicine:  A view from the trenches , which focused on how new scientific developments in molecular medicine and technology will require major changes in the healthcare system in order to become a reality for patients. 

2007-2008

On April 3, 2008, COE with its co-sponsors the Division of Engineering and the Swearer Center for Public Service hosted  An Afternoon with Paul Polak, Founder of International Development Enterprises and expert on sustainable economic development.

On November 26, 2007, Steve Gresham, Executive Vice President of Phoenix Investment Partners, Ltd., gave a talk on the global aging phenomenon.

On October 18, 2007, Mr. John Chen '78 gave a talk entitled, Examining the U.S. and China Business Landscape. Mr. Chen, Chairman, CEO and President of Sybase, Inc., discussed the business relationship between the United States and China--the world's largest developed country and the largest developing country.

On October 3, 2007, Mr. Hambleton (Ham) Lord '83, Managing Director of Launchpad Venture Group, delivered the first COE lecture series talk for the 2007-2008 academic year, Raising Money From Angels. With over 20 years in the software industry founding and building industry leading companies, Ham shared what an angel investor does and how they select companies for investment.

2006-2007

On April 10, 2007, Former United States Treasury Secretary, John Snow, delivered a talk entitled, A Discussion on Globalization, Exchange Rates, and Current Account Imbalances. Read the Brown Daily Herald article, Former Treasury Secretary Discusses Economic Policymaking.

On November 16, 2006 Dr. Sadeg M. Faris discussed the links between innovation and trading in his talk, "What Does Innovation have to do with Harmonious or Acrimonious Trading?" Dr. Faris also spoke about the challenges that arise with a growing disparity between the technology haves and have-nots and how this leads to instability and “technology colonization” in trading, as well as lessons learned from a recent case study involving a failed experiment by the government of Malaysia to achieve technology sovereignty.

On October 27, 2006, Mary Lou Jepsen gave a talk entitled: One Laptop per Child and the $100 Laptop: A Global Humanitarian Cause. Dr. Jepsen is CTO of One Laptop per Child (OLPC)—a new kind of startup designed to get to high volume manufacturing quickly, get massive purchase orders from the outset, and in the process has had to ignore some of the traditional tenets of business including maximizing gross margin (they have none), intellectual property protection (they believe in open source) and traditional sustainable competitive business advantages. Dr. Jepsen discussed OLPC’s thinking about this, and why it may be relevant to other business efforts trying to reach and help the developing world—the 4 billion people outside the reach of most of today’s technologies.

2005-2006

On April 26, 2006 Mr. Hank Greenberg gave a lecture on American Competitveness in the Global Marketplace. Mr. Greenberg was the chairman and CEO of AIG, a global financial corporation that is the largest underwriter of commercial and industrial insurance in the US. Mr. Greenberg presented his views on the current state of US-Sino relations, the impediments to financial system growth of the American regulatory system, tort reform, and higher education.

On October 3, 2005 the COE Lecture Series was inaugurated with a presentation by Sandy Grossman, an academician for 20 years, who now manages the hedge fund Quantitative Financial Strategies.  He spoke with students about the differences between hedge funds and mutual funds, linking economic principles to investment and regulatory issues facing the financial world.