Exemplifying Leadership By Paula Felps UTD Alumni Council honorees include four who show leadership in their personal and professional lives. The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) Alumni Council bestows the Alumni Achievement Award on graduates who, through excellence in their professional and personal lives, embody the qualities and values of UTD. Recipients this year include four School of Management (SOM) graduates, who were among those honored at an Alumni Weekend gala on October 29. The SOM alums exemplify many of the leadership qualities the school seeks to instill in all its students. Sam Gilliland Sam Gilliland spent the early days of his career focused on technology, earning his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas. He had worked at Lockheed Missiles and Space in Austin, Texas, developing hardware and software for land- and air-based defense systems, before joining Sabre Holdings in 1988. I didn't feel like I was contributing to our business at full potential, and therefore, I decided to go back to school, he explains. I was looking for an executive MBA program that would round out my skills. He found the program at UTD, thanks to Max Hopper, then head of the Sabre program and later chairman of SOM's Advisory Council. When Mr. Gilliland sought his advice, Mr. Hopper advised looking into SOM's Executive MBA (EMBA) Program, then in its infancy. UTD was such a life-enriching experience for me, both professionally and personally, Mr. Gilliland says. I vowed I would continue to push myself to learn. A member of the inaugural class of the EMBA Program, Mr. Gilliland, who graduated in May 1994, says one of the biggest lessons he learned was that education never ends. Because of his continued work with the school, as well as his career success, he earned a School of Management Distinguished Alumni Award in 2003. I also learned that, no matter how hard you work, you can always work a bit harder simply by sacrificing sleep! he says, adding that he continues looking for ways to learn, whether on the job or in personal situations. At Sabre, Mr. Gilliland has filled many leadership roles, including chief marketing officer, general vice president of Sabre Business Travel Solutions, and president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Travelocity, Sabre's online travel and product services offshoot. In December 2003, he was elected to Sabre's board of directors and appointed president and CEO of the corporation; the board elected him chairman last November. Mr. Gilliland says that he continues using his UTD education on a daily basis. My job now is all about asking the right questions, whether of my colleagues at work or of customers, he says. And the UTD experience taught me how to ask the right questions. Alan Halliburton Alan Halliburton's first project after graduating from The School of Management was to form his company, Halliburton Investor Relations. I graduated in May of 1990 [with a master's degree in international management studies] and started my company on November 1 of that same year, he recalls. I felt that the things I had learned at UTD had given me the education I needed to succeed. In 15 years, Halliburton Investor Relations has grown to an operation serving 18 client companies, and a staff of more than a dozen people provides those companies full-service investor relations programs. The courses he took gave him the ability to hold his own in business, he says. When I look back on some of the courses I took at UTD, they really helped me focus on what the world is all about. Today, we do everything there is to do in dealing with the investing public, and the things I learned at UTD are used every day in my business. It makes your job a lot more fun when you're armed with the appropriate information and material. Mr. Halliburton selected UTD because, through his involvement with the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce (where he served as interim president in 1988), he had come to recognize it as a world-class institution. He also says a chance meeting with one of UTD's founders, Erik Jonsson, greatly influenced his decision. I had the opportunity to meet him and discuss some events, and everything about him was molded around quality, Mr. Halliburton says. I felt that, if he's a guy who was instrumental in founding UTD, that was probably [a university] that I would be proud to be involved with. He admits that location also played a part in his decision campus is less than five minutes from his home. I'm very proud to be a part of UTD. It's humbling to be in such good company. It's amazing that I was able to get such a high-class education so conveniently. Dipak C. Jain Many of the most valuable lessons that Dipak C. Jain, Ph.D., learned during his days at UTD had little to do with his formal education and more to do with his social interaction. Almost immediately upon arriving in Dallas from India, my professors and peers at UTD taught me the valuable lesson of inclusion, he says. I was extremely influenced by the welcoming UTD community. Their strong work ethic and sincere willingness to help others continues to inspire me today. Dr. Jain, who earned his master's degree in management science in 1986 and his Ph.D. in marketing in 1987, today is applying many of those UTD philosophies in his role as dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. A member of the faculty there since 1987, he has been dean since 2001. A marketing professor who has had more than 30 articles published in leading academic journals, he is also the Sandy and Morton Goldman Professor in Entrepreneurial Studies and was appointed a foreign affairs adviser for the prime minister of Thailand in 2003. Through example, he says, at UTD he saw firsthand how important it was to create a sense of community between professors and students. Today, despite his duties as dean, he continues teaching, to stay connected, and, therefore, remain in touch with student needs. The UTD faculty and administration taught me the importance of being involved with the school community on every level, and that has been an inspiration for me, Dr. Jain says. No one can succeed alone; at the end of the day, if we consistently do our best and make decisions in the best interests of our colleagues and institution, then we have succeeded. Dr. Jain, an SOM 2001 Distinguished Alumni Award recipient, believes that his experiences at UTD made him who he is today, as a leader and as a teacher. I am eternally grateful that I was given the opportunity to study at UTD, he says. I believe the values practiced by the UTD School of Management are integral to achieving success. My experiences at UTD have helped me in every part of my personal and professional journey. Melendy E. Lovett When Melendy E. Lovett earned her bachelor's degree, she knew her education was far from complete. My main interest was in continuing to improve my credentials, she says. So I went for a graduate degree. I wanted to have more and differentiating credentials, because I figured I would have a better chance at the career opportunities I was interested in. She chose UTD partly because of its location and partly because it was easier on her pocketbook than some other institutions. As it turns out, she got much more than her money's worth. The most lasting learning experience I gained at UTD was how to learn from other people's business experience and apply it to my own work, says Ms. Lovett, who became a certified public accountant after earning her MS in accounting in 1982. That was invaluable. É It wasn't just that we were learning new things, but we were learning how to apply them on the job. She cited the business experience of her professors as among some of the SOM's best assets. They're people who had actually been in the business world, so they had tried things firsthand, and they knew how things worked, she says. Instead of only textbook case studies, they gave examples of on-the-job experiences. That was very valuable. Ms. Lovett today is a senior vice president of Texas Instruments (TI) Incorporated and president of TI's Educational and Productivity Solutions business. She founded an initiative at TI to help improve math and science education for girls, and she has worldwide responsibility for TI's leadership position in math and science educational technology. She continues to have some involvement with UTD, primarily in recruiting new talent for TI. I'm extremely impressed with what UTD has done over the last 20 years, she says. I think that, back in 1982, The School of Management wasn't very well known to a lot of people. That's changed. Now, given how much they have accomplished, it makes my decision of 20 years ago [to enroll] look much wiser.