Alex Kouts Elected Co-Chair of the
Graduate Business Foundation President's Forum

After being elected as president of the Smith School’s MBA Association, Alex Kouts, MBA Candidate 2009, took a trip out to San Francisco to take part in the President's Forum at the Graduate Business Conference at Berkeley this spring. During this annual event incoming and outgoing presidents of each MBA Association from the top 50 MBA programs globally come together. One of the tasks that is accomplished during this meeting is the election of the chairman of the forum for the next year. This year Kouts had the honor of being elected co-chairman of the Graduate Business Foundation President's Forum, an international organization for MBA student leaders, along with the president from Carnegie Mellon. Kouts is the first president from Smith to be elected in to this position.

Over the next year Kouts’ responsibilities as co-chairman will be to facilitate communication between the presidents so they can all consult with each other on common issues, as well as share their practices that are taking place at each school. It is a way to pool all of the resources coming out of the top 50 programs globally. In order create a more open environment Kouts is working on setting up a communications network that will be integrated into the forums website. One additional duty that Kouts performs is providing insight into what should happen at next year's Graduate Business Conference.

Kouts is proud that he has earned this position and believes it will help make Smith more visible to other MBA programs. “I now have a direct line to every president of every program giving myself and the MBAA a detailed view into the best and worst practices of every member school,” he says. In addition to improving communication between all member schools, Kouts hopes to secure a revenue stream for the president’s forum and Graduate Business Conference through its member schools as oppose to solely relying on corporate sponsorship.

To be considered for this position all interested individuals had to submit a bid while at the conference. Then each candidate was required to give a three minute speech followed by a Q&A with all of the current presidents. Kouts ran against the president from Georgetown and the president from Carnegie Mellon. Since there was a tie in the voting the co-chairman role was created.

The Graduate Business Conference included presentations from Chip Conley (CEO/founder of Joi de Vivre Hotels), Richard Lyons (Chief Learning Officer, Goldman Sachs) and Marshall Goldsmith.

▓ Loretta Goodridge, MBA Candidate 2008, Smith Media Group