 Major
Robert D. Franson, MBA ’00, has two jobs—the civilian one, and
the military one. A member of the United States Marine Corps
Reserve, Franson recently returned from a seven-month deployment to
Afghanistan, during which he served as a Marine Corps combat advisor
to the Afghan National Army. Franson was on active duty with the
Marines for five years in the 90s before he left to get his MBA
degree at the Smith School. He joined the Marine Corps Reserve
shortly after 9/11. Since then he’s been deployed twice, to Iraq and
Afghanistan.
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Major Rob Franson
poses with Taliban projectile and bomb-making equipment
captured after a successful joint U.S. and Afghan cordon and
search operation in the volatile Korngol Valley of eastern
Afghanistan. |
While in Afghanistan, Franson participated in numerous combat
operations against both Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents along the
Pakistan border, resulting in the discovery of several sizeable
weapons caches and the capture or killing of numerous Taliban and al
Qaeda terrorists.
Franson also dealt with Afghan tribal leaders on the border to
gain intelligence about insurgents. He would explain to the leaders
the importance of supporting Afghanistan’s new central government
rather than the insurgents. “There is so little infrastructure—no
running water, no electricity—that even people who are just 40 miles
from the capital often know nothing about the new government.”
Franson says that most Afghan people responded to him in an
“overwhelmingly positive” way. “Some of them had never seen an
American before. We literally represented the face of the United
States to them,” says Franson.
This is Franson’s second post 9/11 deployment in the past three
years. In 2003, he was deployed for 12 months to both the Persian
Gulf and the Philippines as part of a Marine Infantry Battalion
supporting the initial invasion of Iraq.
Is Franson using his Smith School education in the Middle East?
“Not really,” he laughs. “I’m an infantry officer. I use my business
education in my civilian life.” When he’s not making the world safe
for democracy, Franson is an AVP in the Debt Products Group at GE
Energy Financial Services, where he has worked since early 2004. “GE
has been incredibly supportive of my Reserve service,” says Franson. |
 “In
the 1970s, even though women were proclaiming their rights, many
were not getting the education they needed to upgrade themselves in
the workplace,” says Sally Reagan ’75. Reagan, who
is now an assistant vice president with a global financial services
firm, has personally experienced many of the challenges that women
historically faced in the workplace. She came to the Smith School
because at the time most undergraduate business schools weren’t
accepting women as students. After she graduated, she struggled to
find work that wasn’t secretarial in nature.
Today, she sees female business leaders keeping pace with their
male counterparts. “How times have changed,” says Reagan. “It is
encouraging to see how many women in the younger generation are
aggressively pursuing advanced degrees and how hard they are working
to excel.”
Reagan worked in sales in the computer industry before making a
most unusual career change at the age of 40—to the finance industry,
where even today women are not well-represented. She pursued success
in this highly competitive career with the same dogged determination
with which she had approached her education.
One of the most significant triumphs of Reagan’s career was
convincing her employer to use herself and a client in a national
television ad campaign. The company chose only six of its 14,000
financial advisors to feature in the 30-second commercials. “The
commercial was wonderful,” says Reagan. “It focused on the history
of women in the suffrage movement and blended with the message of
how women need to manage their money. The spot ran on numerous
networks around the world in 2000.”
Reagan credits her Smith School education with teaching her one
of the key principles in her field: that if one is to have
longevity, one must continually improve on the old and embrace the
new—the statement of a true leader for the ever-changing digital
economy.
Reagan stays connected to the Smith School by attending alumni
events in the New York area. She makes her home in Greenwich,
Connecticut. |
