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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The two weeks before Oct. 4 were a sprint for the UNIBusiness American Marketing Association (AMA) Marketing Strategy team. At least, that’s how Jacob Smith (Marketing ’20, Urbandale, Iowa) described it.
In those two weeks, the four members were preparing for the annual Marketing Strategy competition at the AMA Regional Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Their task was to create a comprehensive marketing plan for Montgomery Ward, a 140-year catalog company. The goal was to target Generation X.
The inaugural Digital Marketing Forum, hosted by UNIBusiness’ department of marketing in coordination with the digital marketing agency Spinutech on Oct. 24, gave students an inside look at the role technology plays in today’s customer expectations.
The event was made even more special thanks to Google executives Nima Oftadeh, principal analyst, and Matt Gaither, account executive, who presented at the conference and spent much of the day meeting and helping students.
