OSBN Newsletter, October 2017

October | 2017 | Issue 7

Transforming Business Thinking in the MENA Region

OSBN

- New Staff 3 - International Partnerships 4

- Student Competitions 6

OSB Launches Master’s in Business Analytics Degree The Suliman S. Olayan School of Business now offers a graduate degree in Business Analytics that will equip students with the knowledge, tools, and skills to analyze big data, to make effective business decisions, improve performance, create shared values, and enable the digital transformation from basic to smart organizations.

“Business analytics is about gaining insights from data and making informed business decisions, “said Krzysztof Fleszar, professor and convener of the Business Information and Decision Systems Track.

“Successful business analytics requires the right data, a skilled analyst who understands the technologies and the business, and an organizational commitment to data-driven decision-making.”

Graduates of the program will learn the various data analytics processes from managing, modelling, analyzing, visualizing, and recommending solutions

through 18 credit core courses.

Students will also learn how to apply such knowledge to various domains, including supply chain and operations, project management, marketing, human resources, and finance by completing 12 elective courses and a project or thesis. The program can be completed in as little as 12 months. Courses will be taught by OSB faculty and other experts in the field who will infuse the classroom experience with case studies, experiential learning and cutting-edge localized content.

The 2017 Big Data Executive Survey by NewVantage Partners found that 85% of Fortune 500 companies have either launched big data projects or are planning to do so in the near future.

Furthermore, McKinsey Global Institute estimates that by 2018, the U.S. could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 workers with deep analytical skills, and a potential shortfall of 1.5 million analytics-savvy managers and analysts.

A message from the Dean Dear colleagues, The Suliman S. Olayan School of Business (OSB) has long been recognized as a leader in business education in Lebanon and throughout the MENA region. We take great pride in facilitating the development of students as experts, leaders, and citizens ready to shoulder important responsibilities in society. This leadership is evident in our ongoing strategic plan campaign that features OSB students, staff and faculty academic research, teaching excellence, and business impact.

“Studying business at OSB gives students the opportunity to be at the world’s crossroads.”

Studying business at OSB gives students the opportunity to be at their best. Our degree programs not only develop graduates with business core competency, but also provide the required knowledge to become well-rounded citizens. We expect our students to be exposed to a mindset that will serve them for the rest of their lives, and not merely a skill-set that is going to have a momentary purpose. OSB is a community of people that make this happen, and you the reader, are part of making this community.

This issue of the newsletter contains stories and happenings that represent our commitment to strong values, an ambitious vision and an unwavering commitment to realizing our mission in everything we do.

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The campaign to roll out OSB’s strategic plan is live, and I therefore invite you to share your #OSBtransforms story with everyone as we continue to connect with the world.

Welcome

Best regards, Steve Harvey, PhD Dean

New Staff George Akkaoui

Director of Continuous Improvement In his role, George will oversee OSB’s continuous improvement initiatives, including the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation process and activities. George will also manage other forms of institutional activities, such as review of curricula, institutional reporting, and learning outcomes assessment. Before joining OSB, George worked as Research Director at Ipsos in Saudi Arabia where he headed its Research Business Unit. George holds an MBA and Bachelor of Science in Biology from AUB.

George Akkaoui

Rasha El-Hassan

Director of the Rami Makhzoumi Corporate Governance Initiative Rasha will lead the Rami Makhzoumi Corporate Governance Initiative through facilitating the dissemination and communication of research and policy on corporate governance in business. In her most recent role as Investor Relations and Business Development Manager at Dubai Financial Market, she established and headed the Investor Relations Department, the only listed GCC stock market. Rasha has earned her Master’s Degree in International Relations from the University of Westminster, UK and a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from AUB.

Rasha El-Hassan

Carol Baddoura

Career Management Coordinator Carol will administer and organize career planning and internship programs for OSB undergraduate students, including career counseling, conducting career workshops and recruitment events, and managing the AUB Online Career Portal. Carol has worked for a number of years in recruitment and human resources fields. Most recently, she was Regional Recruiter for M.H. Alshaya in Kuwait where she coordinated recruitment events, talent search, and hiring process. Carol holds a B.A. in Psychology with industrial psychology and human resources specializations from the Lebanese University.

Carol Baddoura

Basma Momtaz

Business Development Officer Basma will help develop, plan and implement business engagement strategies to further the goals and objectives of OSB and AUB. Basma will also help manage external relations and business development activities so that OSB has a coherent and unified strategy when dealing with external entities. Before joining OSB, Basma held various positions at Procter & Gamble where most recently she worked as a Levant External Relations Senior Manager and site Leader based in Lebanon.

Basma holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from AUB and has Executive Education certifications from both Emory University and Harvard University.

Basma Momtaz

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Yasmina Habib

Yasmina will focus on enhancing student development through direct involvement in promoting and managing extracurricular activities in coordination with the OSB administration. Yasmina holds a BBA degree with a concentration in Finance from the American University of Beirut.

Prior to graduating from AUB, Yasmina worked as a Counter Operations intern at Bank of Beirut.

New Staff

Student Experience Coordinator

Yasmina Habib

Fostering International Partnerships

Internationalization

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OSB has been developing leaders to excel in the constantly and rapidly changing business world. Through an immersive experience in business education, students build a strong knowledge base and gain individualized skills to meet the ecomomic and social challenges of the future.

New York University, Stern School of Business Exchange Program OSB has signed an agreement with NYU Stern to offer a funded semester in NYU, through the Bobst Lebanon Scholars, for Lebanese MBA students. Up to three students can benefit from this agreement on a yearly basis.

The MBA program seeks to provide students with cutting-edge education by top scholars in each of the core areas of business management, and draws the most influential and innovative business thinkers and leaders to campus - to address, teach, and mentor students. Whether in consulting, strategy, innovation or even other areas from health services to entrepreneurship, OSB MBA offers students experiential learning opportunities, such as internships at well-renowned firms, allowing them to build informal networks of colleagues and peers as they hone their talents.

Shanghai Summer Program An agreement has been signed between AUB and ESSCA (École Supérieure des Sciences Commerciales d’Angers) one of the “grandes écoles” accredited French schools of management. One of the major fruits of this agreement is the ability to send an MBA student for a summer exchange program in Shanghai. AUB is now at par with other schools collaborating with ESSCA such as McGill and Boston universities.

OSB students now have the chance to participate in international exchange programs with leading partner schools around the world.

These study abroad opportunities will allow students to learn about the business world from a different perspective, experience another culture, and network with students, faculty, and professionals in a global context.

“We are proud to offer our students the chance to experience the world and learn from the brightest of minds. Such exchanges strengthen AUB’s commitment towards the best education of tomorrow’s leaders,” said Dr. Yassar Nasser, Academic Director of the MBA and EMBA Programs.

Harvard Business School – Joining the “MOC Affiliate Network” The MOC Affiliate Network launched in 2002 and is currently comprised of a group of more than 100 educational institutions from 63 countries around the world. We are proud to announce that we have recently become members of the network, which will enable us to offer the MOC Harvard-created course, and participate in cluster and competitiveness initiatives.

Canadian Lebanese collaboration looks at global financial technology (FinTech)

FinTech, or financial technology, describes the emerging technology used to support or enable banking and financial services. In the rapidly growing global financial sector, investment in financial technology in the 21st century has started to increasingly play a role in changing the perspective of the financial industry worldwide. With an interest to be ahead of every innovation, AUB hosted specialists in the field to shed light on the global dynamics of FinTech, its implications for the region, and the lessons learned from countries that have adopted it.

“The disruptive forces of FinTech have already started to present themselves and I hope that students will be part of these defining moments in the finance industry,” OSB Dean Steve Harvey told us.

Executive Vice President of Information Technology of Desjardins Group in Canada and member of the board of the Lebanese Canadian Tech Hub, Chadi Habib, was keynote speaker. He talked about the current technology and innovation impacting the financial industry in North America and how to bring best practices from the advanced FinTech ecosystem there to be applied in the

Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

“The most important ingredient in winning in the digital world and digital finance is a smart ecosystem that brings together companies, entrepreneurs, universities, governments, and talent,” said Habib. “This collaboration is counterintuitive to most but critical for leading and not suffering the digital revolution.”

Chadi Habib serves on the boards of Zag Bank and Monetico International. Responsible for a team of nearly 4,000 people, his mandate consists in offering specific solutions to all of Desjardins’ business units which include the banking and insurance sectors, as well as strategy, enterprise architecture, infrastructure, operations, risk and compliance management, and user services.

“I strongly believe that Lebanon has a major competitive advantage and is in the best position to become the FinTech capital of the MENA region,” said Fadi Joseph, President of Lebanese Canadian Tech Hub. “I see this capital competing at three sectors: banking, higher education and innovation, and the startups ecosystem.” The LC Tech Hub is an ecosystem that connects entrepreneurs, investors, and governments in North America, through Canada, to startups in the MENA region, through Lebanon, as well as the GCC. It provides a digital ecosystem to promote business opportunities and entrepreneurship.

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FinTech Event

The MBA Program collaborated with the Lebanese Canadian Tech Hub (LC Tech Hub) in a conference entitled “How disruptive is FinTech?”

​Left to right: Matthew Trotter, Jad Batlouni, Hrag Bedoyan, Dania Jabal, Maya Bekhazi and Hagop Panossian.

OSB places second in HSBC/HKU Business Case Competition in Hong Kong A team of undergraduate students from the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business (OSB) came in second at the 2017 HSBC/HKU Asia Pacific Business Case Competition, hosted by the Asia Case Research Center (ACRC) of Hong Kong University, Hong Kong on June 9.

Student competitions

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The OSB fearless foursome Maya Bekhazi, Hrag Bedoyan, Dania Jabal and Jad Batlouni competed with 24 business schools from 22 countries, placing among the top schools early in the competition. “It was amazing to witness the progress our students made during four months of training. We are thrilled to be recognized at the international level and eager to build on this success,” said management and strategy instructor Hagop Panossian, who trained the team along with graduate student Matthew Trotter.

The three-day international case competition challenged teams to develop solutions to real business case scenarios. With no Internet access, each student team had a brief 20 minutes to present their casework to a panel of judges.

Team member Hrag Bedoyan was thrilled about the results and commented, “The experience was as close as it gets to experiencing a real life simulation of solving realistic life problems in multinational corporations. This experience was the best in my life by far, and I sincerely recommend any undergraduate student to join this competition.”

Along with earning second place, the OSB team won a monetary prize of $5,000. “This placement is a wonderful showing by our students. We are so proud at OSB to see our case competition program meeting with such great success already at the undergraduate level,” OSB Dean Steve Harvey said. “These experiential forms of learning are a priceless part of what a business school experience should offer.”

International business case competitions are not new to OSB students. In January, a team of graduate students reached the semifinals and won top honors at the 36th MBA International Case Competition (ICC) in Canada.

Undergrads take top prizes at the BankMed Online Trading Competition Jana Hazimeh

Mohamad El Baba

Rawan Jalloul

Yara Chidiac

Rita Raad

Twenty-five OSB undergraduate students took part in the second Online Trading University Competition organized by Bankmed’s Treasury and Talent Management and Training unit. The annual event, which is specially designed for business, finance, and economics majors, gives students the opportunity to experience reallife online trading competition with virtual money.

“The competition is one of the most enjoyable and educational experiences any finance student can hope for. It gave me the opportunity to apply knowledge I learned in the class to a real

life situation,” said finance major Rawan Jalloul. “I devoted time for reading news and checking macroeconomic indicators so that I could make a good decision about going long or short on a currency, and I used some technical analysis to check historic events and forecast what would happen in the coming days.”

All five winning OSB undergrad students received financial awards, and on top of that, the first winner was granted an internship opportunity at Bankmed’s Treasury Unit. The winners of this competition were Rita Raad, Jana Hazimeh, Rawan Jalloul, Mohamad

Students pitch their startup ideas for Darwazah Contest Awards

Teams of students made their final pitches in front of a new jury at the contest’s concluding event, held at the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business (OSB). On hand at the ceremony were OSB Dean Steve Harvey and Dr. Bijan Azad, Director of the Samih Darwazah Center for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship. The Darwazah Center was established in 2011 by the Darwazah family to focus on the pivotal domain of organizational renewal and wealth creation through creative enterprise.

Dean Harvey praised the Darwazah Center’s student contest, “for both supporting and promoting student entrepreneurship initiatives,” and noted that this is now an established

institution at OSB and AUB. Dr. Azad also explained the contest procedures, remarking on its growth over the years.

“The quality of the startup pool has been going up steadily over the past four years,” said Dr. Azad. “This year, half of the finalists had already been working on their ideas even prior to the contest.”

The first place award was given this year to two outstanding startup ideas. One was Night Owl (Mariam Dabbousi, Carine Saad, and Nour Khouzami), which is a mobile app to deliver real-time information on nightlife events and parties around Beirut. The other first-place winner was CartilaGene (Waddah Malaeb), which is a multi-parametric tissue engineering bioreactor. The first runner-up was CalMetrum, a mobile application that calculates the calories in food based on images; and the second runner-up was Thabet, an online platform to harmonize the relationship between employers and employees through incentivized education.

Mariam Dabbousi

Waddah Malaeb

Carine Saad

7 Nour Khouzami

Student Competitions

The fourth edition of the Samih Darwazah Center’s Innovation Gathering and Contest Awards was held on May 22, where eight finalists pitched their startup ideas to a jury of experts. Two first-place winners each received an award of $10,000 to help further develop their business plans and hopefully bring them to fruition.

Business Honorary Beta Gamma Sigma Inducts 32 New Members Every year, the OSB Undergraduate Program celebrates the high achievement of students who made it to the top 10% of their class. This year, 32 students were inducted into the business honorary society Beta Gamma Sigma Society (BGS), which is the honor society serving all AACSB accredited business schools.

El Rachid, Ahmad Soueid, Aline Haddad, Elissa Jouni, Jinane Al Halabi, Mira Basma, Nour Khater , Raissa El Jamil, Ramzi Ghaziri, Rim

Bshara, Roy Hoteit, Tarek Ghandour, Tatiana Sabra, Ali Shana, Ali El Taha, Dana El Ajouz, Dana Touma, Fadi Abou Safa, Jad

Tabet, Joseph Dergham, Mariam Kheirallah, Marion Moudabber, Mark Ramia, Maroun Nahlus, Ramzi Mahfouz, Roya El Hachi, Sari Kroumian, Shannon

Homsy, Teddy El Raba, Wajiha Aoun, Zeina Jamal Abdul, Karim Abou, Ghaida Dalia Saliba, Joelle Kassab, Maher Trotter, Matthew Feghaly, Rita

Class of 2017

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Gala for Class of 2017 The Business Student Society (BSS) at the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business organized the annual Gala for Class of 2017.

On this night, students, faculty and staff celebrated the end of year achievements and graduation. The Gala took place in Les Talus venue on May 24th.

KIP workshop tackles sexual harassment in the workplace

The participants included managers and senior Human Resources staff from a variety of local organizations and industries, including education, telecommunications, banking, healthcare, and production. Representatives from OMSWA were also present during the training, in addition to observers from civil society and academia.

Participants learned how these regulations can stipulate the type of behavior—such as sexual harassment—which warrants sanctions and eventual termination, under Article 66 of the Lebanese Labor Law. The trainers also gave an overview of the definitions of sexual harassment according to the ILO standards, as well as those presented in the three draft laws

proposed by each of the Office of the Minister of State for Women’s Affairs, MP Ghassan Moukheiber, and the feminist group Nasawiya in collaboration with the Legal Agenda.

“This is an example of AUB’s OSB advocating creatively for policy change, garnering support from private sector for human rights activism and building strong and sustainable partnerships with government,” said Dr. Charlotte Karam, KIP project director. “This is new, exciting and a demonstration that we don’t just create informational conferences, but also critical dialogue and substantive advocacy work for positive change.”

Partnering to transform Lebanon: GCNL holds highpowered forum at AUB The United Nations Global Compact Network Lebanon (GCNL) held a multistakeholder forum at AUB on October 10, 2017. An over-capacity crowd gathered to share and discuss how the Lebanese public and private sectors have been working towards achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and how the Global Compact Network Lebanon is helping. The GCNL national representative and associate dean at AUB’s Suliman S. Olayan School of Business (OSB), Dr. Dima Jamali, opened the forum and welcomed all participants.

The keynote speaker for the event was Phillipe Lazzarini, UN deputy special coordinator for Lebanon, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator, and UN Development Program resident

9 International Competition

Twenty-six participants from the Lebanese private sector attended a workshop at AUB for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) on the drafting of anti-sexual harassment guidelines and policies. The workshop was organized by the Knowledge is Power (KIP) Project on Gender and Sexuality, and held in partnership with the Office of the Minister of State for Women’s Affairs (OMSWA), the Lebanese League for Women in Business, and the Global Compact Network Lebanon.

Learn. Impact.

Grow. Program Targets Executives With the rapidly evolving business challenges, competitive markets, and customers’ high expectations, the Learn. Impact. Grow program at the Suliman S. Olayan School of Business will help business owners, executives and entrepreneurs to shift their mindset and enable them to apply high impact strategies that deliver quick results, create value, and drive growth.

Starting mid-January 2018 over six weekend modules and ending first week of March, the program will be delivered by internationally recognized faculty and experts in the areas of leadership strategy, digital marketing, and finance.

“Throughout the program participants will learn new skills in leading people, developing strategies for growth, design and execute digital marketing strategies, and pitch their ambitions to investors” said Laith Dajani, Executive Director of Executive Education.

May Makhzoumi honored at the Global Hope Coalition and Leadership Summit 2017 ​ The Global Hope Coalition and Leadership Summit 2017, under the patronage of UNESCO, has selected AUB alumna and OSB’s Middle East Advisory Board member May Makhzoumi to be among the heroes honored in the global campaign against violent extremism and intolerance.

Mrs. Makhzoumi was honored for her achievements and the works of Makhzoumi Foundation, which was established in 1997 to empower the Lebanese community.

HERoes Ranking: Champions of Women in Business AUB alumna, OSB Middle East Advisory Board member and talent and communications partner, Deloitte Middle East - Mrs. Rana Ghandour Salhab leads the global HERoes ranking: champions of women in business. The HERoes lists celebrate company leaders who support women in business.

SAP Visionary Award

Executive education

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Director of Executive Education and AUB Stanford WiDS Coambassador Fida Kanaan Kharrat has been awarded the SAP Visionary Award for Social Impact by SAP Next-Gen. The award recognizes innovative initiatives developing the next generation of leaders for the digital economy.

The ceremony took place during SAP University Alliance Academic Conference in Karslruhe, Germany and it was attended by many SAP global c-level executives and senior management team along with more than 400 faculty members representing leading universities.

“I am honored to bring back SAP’s visionary award for the AUB Stanford WiDS initiative. At AUB OSB, we see such initiatives as critical to develop the next generations of leaders for the digital economy. SAP-Next Gen has been a great partner throughout this journey,” said Kanaan Kharrat.

Suliman S. Olayan School of Business American University of Beirut P. O. Box 11-0236, Riad El-Solh Beirut, Lebanon 1107 2020 Phone: +961-1-350 000 ext. 3930 E-mail: osb@aub.edu.lb Website: www.aub.edu.lb/osb #OSBtransforms