B2B teaches students about international business

Issue 21, Jeff Wilson, News - By Jeff Wilson on Thursday, March 10, 2011 - 05:57

Students and faculty gathered in the living room of the Dezember Alumni House on Wednesday evening, March 9, to attend the Backpack 2 Briefcase (B2B) alumni panel on international business, sponsored by the Office of Career Planning and the Office of Alumni Relations.

The panel featured alumni Randall Davidson ’88, the Director of the Purchasing and Supply Chain at Gibson Overseas, Inc. and Kaz Ochi ’66, an employee training instructor for Cisco Systems.

Ochi, who has always wanted to travel for a living, has taken business trips to countries around the world, including India, Singapore, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia and Egypt.

“It’s taken me many years but I got what I wanted and Whittier helped me get it,” Ochi said. “I averaged 250 thousand miles a year on United Airlines alone.”
Davidson has spent over 15 years working in China.

“The danger of international business is that you may have to leave America and you may not come back,” Davidson, who misses his hometown in Oregon, said.

The alumni talked about a variety of subjects, including the increasing globalization of business and communication.

“When I lived in China, a 10-minute phone call to America cost $40 to $50,” Davidson said. “Everything is so much more international now than it was five years ago.”

Ochi emphasized the marketing potential of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as well as the advantages of people who understand them.

“How do you get a message across with under 160 characters?” Ochi asked, referencing the idea of advertising via Twitter. “The way things are going, big companies are reinventing themselves and you can take advantage of it. I still use cell phones to make voice calls. Even my wife says, ‘Why didn’t you just send a [text] message?’”

However, the alumni also made it clear that improved technology may also have its potential drawbacks.

“It scares me how you guys communicate on Facebook,” Davidson said. “[Human Resources] departments are getting more technically sophisticated, not that they have to be to check your Facebook. In my day, I was a Sachsen, I was in AOKP, but none of that was on the Internet! My suggestion to you is that you clean up your Facebook, clean up your MySpace, clean up your whatever.”

The student reaction to the event was generally positive.

“I really enjoyed it,” junior Political Science and Business double Major Lea Betsworth said. “[The alumni] provided a lot of information on how they got where they are and what they’ve done. You’re always told the great careers people and alumni have but you never really know how they got there. It was great to get a different perspective on what’s out there. Their advice really set my mind at ease.”

Sophomore Business Major Sandy Granados also liked the event.

“It’s my first workshop so I’m trying to take in as much information as possible. I don’t really know where I want to go, but I like the idea of going into international business,” Granados said.

According to Director of Career Services Linda Ross, Business is the most popular major offered at Whittier.

“After students come back from study abroad, many of them are wanting to work internationally in some capacity,” Ross said. “International business is one of the pathways I encourage students to take. It fits in with the language majors, with International Studies and the Political Science Major.”