Marketing & Entrepreneurship Stories & News

UNI Business alumna Becca Flynn Kettman

UNIBusiness alumna tackles sustainability issues on national scale

With a UNIBusiness education as a base, Becca Flynn Kettman (Marketing ’14) has been serving a larger purpose in her career track — working to improve and preserve our planet. Kettman is a fellow with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water in Cincinnati, Ohio. 
polls in zoom

Did You Know you Can Create Polls in Zoom?

If you’re prepared for each meeting with an agenda and/or classroom instruction and you’d like to take a poll, simply set one up prior to the meeting directly in Zoom. It’s easy to do and you’re able to share the results with participants during the meeting and download the results.
Zoom virtual backgrounds

How to Look Like a Rockstar in Zoom

Zoom has become the virtual meeting platform of choice for thousands of people due to the COVID-19 pandemic. If you’re new to Zoom, or virtual meetings in general, the idea of online meetings can be overwhelming for us who’ve never worked or taken classes from home.
mother on laptop with dog and child

How to Successfully Lead an Effective Team of Newly Remote Workers

COVID-19 is forcing us to make organizational adjustments that are outside of the comfort zone for some. Although it’s been reported that 43 percent of employees work remotely with some frequency, leading a team of employees from afar can feel daunting, especially if those employees are new to working from home. 
uni aaf students accept Best of Show Addy award

UNI AAF students win Best in Show at 2020 ADDY Awards

The University of Northern Iowa student chapter of the American Advertising Federation (AAF) won three awards at the annual Cedar Valley Addy awards show (Student Best in Show and two Gold Addys) last month. The group earned the hardware thanks to its “Get Dogged” campaign, which it created for the annual National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) last year. 
Garden in town next to some houses

UNI alumnus develops Iowa's first agrihood

The past few years have been especially fun for Steve Bruere (Marketing ‘03).

The president of Peoples Co., a farmland brokerage firm, Bruere is also a partner in Diligent Investment, which focuses on real estate development. He is also the mastermind behind Iowa’s first agrihood, a development that will bring together housing and farming culture, in Cumming, a small town just beyond the southwest edge of Des Moines.

Bruere enjoys working on the agrihood project because he gets to mix both sides of his professional life — farmland and development.

Jessica Wise (Marketing '20)

The rise of the socially responsible entrepreneur

Laurie Watje has worked closely with UNI students and their businesses for 12 years. As the associate director of the UNI John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center, Watje has seen the whole gamut of business plans and ideas.

In recent years, she’s noticed a trend with Generation Z students — people born roughly after 1995 — and their passions. They don’t just want to create a business; they want to create a mission.

jacob smith, TK and Dean Leslie K. Wilson pose at the 2019 University of Northern Iowa commencement

University of Northern Iowa business student delivers unique commencement student address

Despite possessing one of the most common names in the English language, Jacob Smith (Marketing '19) rejects the idea of being generic. He’s a bowling-obsessed marketer and entrepreneur who has been described as “intense” on his worst day and “passionate” at his best.  Jacob was selected to give the student address at UNI's fall commencement ceremony Saturday, Dec. 21, 2019.

Courier's top 20 under 40, UNIBusiness's Andy Anderson, Katie Hillyer, Mark Watje, Bart Schmitz

UNIBusiness well represented on recent 20 Under 40 list

Four UNIBusiness alumni, faculty and staff were honored on the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier’s annual 20 Under 40 list, which names 20 Cedar Valley professionals under the age of 40 who have made outstanding contributions to the community in their work and professional lives. 

The list includes:

Andy (John) Anderson (Supply Chain and Operations Management ’05): assistant professor of management and John Deere Endowed Fellow at UNIBusiness, mountain climber and owner of TransChina Solutions LLC.

Windmill with red and blue

Can we find common ground on sustainability?

Bob Inglis, a former U.S. congressman from South Carolina, has a friend in the recycling business. Whenever Inglis discusses the topic of sustainability, the environment and how to tackle these issues, he gets a simple but practical answer from his friend: “Sustainability means making a profit.”

“That’s what he tells me,” Inglis said. “Fixing economics is key, and sustainability becomes sustainable because it’s profitable.”

Inglis is truly trying to make sustainability profitable. That’s how he believes everyone can get behind the sustainability cause.