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.
Food waste is a big problem throughout the world, and the United States is one of the biggest offenders. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food waste is estimated at between 30-40% of the total United States food supply. That equals about 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food.
Not only is wasting food an ethical or moral issue, it’s a business and economic one. That’s literally billions of dollars being thrown away, directly affecting revenue, profits and economic vitality. Luckily, food waste is starting to get attention in business circles.
UNI alumnus and entrepreneur Russell Karim's newest venture seeks to boost profitability and workers' salaries in apparel companies in his home country of Bangladesh.
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.
Every Monday night for five weeks in the fall, a team of UNIBusiness students gathered with Brett Olsen, associate professor of finance, for up to two hours. The time was spent preparing and crafting a presentation for the upcoming Private Business Valuation Challenge, an international competition that offers a unique opportunity for students to assess the value of public and private companies.
A wise professor in graduate school once told me that the most relevant research questions come when you least expect them, and usually when you are talking with people about their everyday activities and concerns. He was known for always carrying a pen and notepad regardless of the social setting. While I carry a smartphone instead, his advice has served me well. For me, a casual conversation with a colleague has led to a new line of research involving beer. Tough gig, right?!
Ronnie Chen, assistant professor of finance at UNIBusiness, has noticed corporate social responsibility becoming a hot topic in the finance research world over the last decade. More companies are paying attention to social responsibility as more consumers become more socially conscious, and researchers have taken notice.
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.
Over the next 10 years, Forrester Research estimates that AI will take over up to 16% of jobs in the United States. Being analytically-literate will soon be an integral skill set, if it hasn’t already.
It’s no secret that business decisions are largely driven by the bottom line. Historically, that’s how sustainability has been viewed, as a financially driven concept, said Scott Blankman (Accounting ‘89), director for energy and air programs at Clean Wisconsin, a nonprofit environmental policy advocacy organization.
In short: Does sustainability make me money? More recently, that question is becoming easier to answer.
