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| Rene Lopezvictoria, Sofia Nuñez, Santiago Hope, Miguel Cruz, Luis Contreras, Daniel Medina, Aurora Fuentes, and Claudia Tavera |
By Jesus R. Salinas, MBA’16, IGOE Global Fellow
The fifth MBA Mexico event took place at the Kellogg School of Management on April 17 and at the Chicago Booth School of Business on April 18. For this event, current Mexican MBA students from top US universities get together to network and enjoy sessions from very distinguished Mexican executives, politicians, journalists, entrepreneurs, and other successful business people.
In this year’s event 150 MBA students had the opportunity to hear from 9 different speakers. On Friday, Claudio X. Gonzalez, President and Board Member of Kimberly-Clark de Mexico, kicked off the session with his speech about Mexico and its future potential. Then, Carlos Loret de Mola, anchorman of Televisa’s news program Primero Noticias, provided an assessment of Mexico’s current political situation as well as a detailed panorama of challenges faced by journalists throughout the country. The day ended with a networking event with some cocktails and appetizers.
On Saturday, Adrian G. Sada, Chief Executive Director of Vitro, started the day with a speech about Vitro’s main challenges and how he has managed to turn things around after rough years the company was facing.
Afterwards, there was a panel discussion where Pilar Aguirre (Chief Executive Director of Endeavor), Claudio del Conde (Founder and Chief Executive Director of Kichink), Alberto Saracho (Partner and Director of Fundación IDEA), and Enrique Jacob (President of Instituto Nacional del Emprendedor) shared their experiences regarding the entrepreneurship realm and opportunities available in Mexico. After the panel discussion, Margarita Zavala, lawyer and active member of Partido Acción Nacional, talked about education in Mexico and the different metrics that show how the country is improving in several areas.
The last speaker was José Antonio Fernández, Chief Executive President of FEMSA’s Management Council, who spoke about the things that must be done to keep improving the country as well as to focus on such actions that would contribute to the well-being of the society as a whole rather than on one’s own well-being.
After the last session, the audience split into several groups for a networking get-together in several restaurants of Chicago. The closing event took place at Hubbard’s Inn where all the students mingled together for the farewell party.
These types of events are very important because they contribute to a collective sense of awareness of the different challenges that Mexico is currently facing. They also contribute in the sense that they urge the potential future leaders of the country in taking actions to improve the current problems of the country in order to foster growth.
I want to thank Kellogg and Booth MBA students for organizing this event, as well as to thank the Institute for Global Organizational Effectiveness (IGOE) for sponsoring Kelley students to participate. It was a great experience and I look forward for next year’s event.