Economics & Strategy Podcast

2024 summer break brings our first guest with a B.A. in Economics Ryan Polak . Ryan is Associate Director for Purchasing at Bell Flavors & Fragrances ; a developer and manufacturer of ingredients in many consumer products who sits in the upstream market of the consumer product makers. Clients rely on Bell's scientific expertise to be successful, and their food scientists rely on Ryan to deliver ra...

June is part 2 with Luke Balderson and a great discussion on leadership and organizational culture. We explore how Luke made the connection between these two interdependent concepts and how they create sustainable business success. The servant-based leadership model discussed here begins at the top and requires discipline to scale and maintain. However, done well, this model, of selflessly develop...

For May, we begin a two-part interview with Business Strategy & Decision Making alumnus Luke Balderson . This part 1, dives deep into Luke's multidecade career in the far reaching and fascinating  industrial gases industry. L uke is a composed, experienced, and highly capable executive in a sector that demands clear thinking and strategic insight. These skills were honed by a remarkable father, a...

For Episode 51, MS-EPA graduate Roxy Kozyckyj joins us. Roxy is Senior Director, State Government & Regional Affairs for the advanced medical technology association AdvaMed and has spent most of her career in healthcare policy, from advocacy, to intern, to analyst, capitol hill fellow, and finally lobbyist. This experience gives her the ability to see how policy goals that serve everyone, require...

It's the end of winter term, and we're talking insurance; you'll be surprised by what you hear. Andrew Zarkowsky , MBA 2018, is Technology Industry Practice Leader for the insurance giant The Hartford and specializes in underwriting technology firms. In this episode, Andrew explains what's unique about insurance for technology firms and shares how today's insurance companies rely on technology, da...

For February, we host yet another successful woman from the economics department's graduate program, Mollie Markham . After a brief learning experience pursuing politics at the front lines in DC, she discovered what she doesn't want in a career. Fully embracing that lesson and, with some great counsel from family, she entered DePaul's graduate program. The rest is or will be legend as Mollie is no...

To kick off 2024, we begin a new, and perhaps recurring version of this podcast called Check Ins . Here, we're going to welcome back previous guests to update the topics we discussed in our original interview. For our inaugural episode, we welcome back Dave Ziegelski. Dave is Vice President of Information Technology for National Material L.P.; a partnership of over 30 business units in steel, meta...

For December we offer part 2 with MBA alumnus, and rail industry veteran Marcin Taraszkiewicz. In this episode we talk about trains, trains, and more trains. Yes, Marcin plays with big toys on big projects, but his work really exists at the nexus of rail technology and client goals. His industry recognized expertise helps clients navigate those often-competing forces towards better project outcome...

November begins a 2-part podcast with MBA alumnus Marcin Taraszkiewicz from the global design & engineering firm HDR. In this part 1, Marcin explains how he went from a design focused engineer to senior leader for large, multidisciplinary transportation projects. A transformation that took time, some failure, learning to ask questions, and how to value those answers. He gives some great examples o...

 October brings in MBA alumna Alla Antonov, to discuss her role as Principal Advisor, Commercial Strategy at the mining giant Rio Tinto. Alla specializes in Rio's borates market. Rio, though, is a global, diversified firm with many products and an interesting business structure of four distinct operational entities and a single commercial team, Alla's home, serving as its primary market interface...

Let's welcome strategy alumnus Howard Gilman to the podcast. Howard currently serves as Lead Deal Desk Strategist for LinkedIn's Sales Solutions group. LinkedIn, as a firm, is many things though; software company, social media platform, hiring & recruiting services, and more. So, what's the product, and who's the customer? Well, it depends. For Howard's group, it's firm's looking for market intell...

For August, MS-EPA alumnus Jason Knoespel joins us to discuss his work as Managing Director, Client Analytics at Evolent; a provider of technology, reporting, and intelligence services designed to increase efficiency & patient outcomes for its healthcare partners. Jason talks about his current work, new developments in value-based care, information sharing and big data, and the potential of non-tr...

 In our July episode MBA alumna Amy Wilson joins us to discuss her work at the market leading cloud services provider Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amy sells AWS offerings to state and local governments that operate in Windows environments. In this increasingly competitive industry, there are reasons why this segment would seem difficult to crack; even for AWS. So how do they overcome these difficult...

This episode welcome's strategy alumnus Dain Rideau. As a Product Manager for autonomous vehicle developer Torc Robotics, he works on connecting vehicles to information. Torc, a subsidiary of industry leading OEM Daimler Truck, focuses on self-driving trucks and while this space is filled with strategic uncertainty, this OEM partnership is a strategic marvel. Why? During uncertainty, a leading fir...

This month we meet Liam Bruno, a Double Demon currently serving as Senior Manager for Procurement at Walgreens. Liam's focus is on integrating ESG into day-to-day operations. ESG is, of course, well established and proven to create value when executed well, but there are many obstacles. Still, forward thinking firms like Walgreens are widening their definition of stakeholder to include social and...

In this episode we meet entrepreneur Philip Costa Hibberd. Philip designs and builds robotic process automation, or RPA, for clients in the finance industry. He solves a productivity problem by automating rote computer tasks often done by highly paid analysts. This is a great example of firm-level microeconomics where investments change production functions and the allocation of resources towards...

In this Part 2 with Aaron Pagel, we learn more about his practice of wandering, and how ultimately that inspired him to ask an interesting question; what is hype? Turns out, isolating hype as a function itself, apart from its context, is relatively uncharted territory with little precedent or literature to lean on. So, he decided to enter a PhD program and find out for himself. The open-ended, sch...

This month, I'm delighted to welcome my friend and creator & original host of this podcast Aaron Pagel. Aaron is currently pursuing a PHD at University of Oregon in Management Strategy with emphasis on Hype. However, his path getting there was anything but a straight line. He joins us for part one of a two-part interview to discuss his unorthodox career path, lessons learned along the way, and whe...

To start the year, I spoke with DePaul MBA Alumna Paulina Costa, Sales Director – Americas at Kalsec. Paulina has always been a natural in sales but completing her MBA positioned her to become sales lead for Kalsec's entire Latin American territory. Kalsec is a global provider of taste and sensory solutions. Which means, they research, test, and produce the all-natural ingredients used by CPG comp...

For December's episode, I was honored to speak with US Military Veteran, Double-Demon, and MBA Strategy Alumna Rachel Burke. Rachel's impressive combination of career experiences landed her at the seemingly perfect spot as Director of implementation at the Industrial AI firm Uptake. Here we discuss that combination, Uptake's fascinating work, and why her role is a great example of the strategic co...

This month DePaul MBA alumnus Dan Jungels and I discussed how to successfully enter new markets. A topic Dan knows well as he was fortunate enough to go straight from the Business Strategy & Decision Making classrooms into the exact challenge he'd been training for. In his current role as Manager of Renewable Energy Strategy and Business Development at the manufacturer Panduit, he has helped plan,...

In this episode I hosted DePaul MBA alumnus Dave Ziegelski, Vice President of Information Technology at National Material LP, to discuss his career in IT and the increasingly important role it plays in strategic planning. It IS a digital world and IT touches everything in it, connecting resources & people through process & data. Through Dave's career he's accumulated both deep knowledge and some h...

To welcome a new academic year, I was joined by MBA alumna Alison Tinnon, Senior Campaign Manager at StudioNorth. As an agency-based marketing professional Alison helps other firms navigate their own strategic goals. This puts her right at the nexus of markets and firms and economists love that! It also requires a clear understanding of both a firm's current positioning in the eyes of customers &...

In this late summer edition, DePaul MSEPA Alumni Carsten Raaum and I discuss his research work at the real estate giant CBRE. In his role as Associate Research Director, Global Research he studies macroeconomic issues, and analyzes their potential impact on global markets and industry sectors; a super interesting role to be sure. For strategy development, this kind of information is vision and, in...

This month, I caught up with DePaul MBA Alumna Brittany Strebel; Lincoln Operations Manager at Ford Motor Company. I was lucky to attend graduate school with Brittany and learned quite a bit from this smart, composed and savvy woman. In this episode, Brittany takes us through her 10+ year career at Ford and describes the current transformation taking place at the legendary automaker. A transformat...