Road Trip: LA - Events at USC

The whole purpose behind the trip to LA was to attend a couple of events at USC, where I went to business school. The graduation of the most recent MBA class – IBEAR 30 (or XXX, out of respect for one of LA’s most prominent industries!) – and a reunion to celebrate the program’s 30th anniversary were the two focuses of this part of the trip.

The IBEAR program is an internationally-focused accelerated MBA for executives, completed with one-year in residence. Among the things you come away with, at least for my part, is a life-long affiliation with the university (you become a diehard Trojan football fan too).

Bill and I attended the graduation dinner on Thursday night, where among the festivities was an appearance of the Trojan Marching Band. These guys are among the best in the nation, and it is a good bet that if you see a marching band in the movies, it will have a number of these students in it – the band in the parade in the movie Animal House was the USC band, for example.

On Friday, there was a full day of networking and conferences on the future of the program – a retrospective and then look ahead, complemented by a lecture by leadership guru Warren Bennis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Bennis) . The program also included some prominent IBEAR MBA alums, including the CEO of the Hanjin Group, parent of Korean Air and Omni Hotels. Really good insight and food for thought.

In the afternoon, a party ensued. There were a lot of my classmates in attendance (11 years later!) and a highlight of the evening was performance by The Retreads (http://www.theretreads.net/news.html) , who came in from Boise. One of the band members is an alum; as a matter of fact he worked at Capital One in Richmond for some time and was here for the USC-Va Tech game in 2004. A good time was had by all…