PHOTO OPS
Mendoza students and alumni are making waves across various fields, from audio technology to entrepreneurship. Resonado has secured a partnership with Notre Dame Athletics, while a finance major just launched an innovative cricket farming venture. Additionally, undergraduates are applying their classroom lessons to real-world business challenges with local businesses like Gigi's Cupcakes, and a speaker series has kicked off with insights on workplace culture from former NetApp executive Tom Mendoza. The vibrant experiences of students, including a dancer who parallels her art with consulting, highlight the dynamic environment at Mendoza.
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- Melissa Jackson
HEAR COME THE IRISH
Resonado, an audio technology startup company founded by Mendoza undergraduates in 2017, signed a deal to become the "Official Sound Partner of Notre Dame Athletics." Company founders are Brian Cho (BBA '19), Erikc Perez- Perez (BBA '19), and Peter Moeckel (FIN '20) and Christian Femrite (ND '19).
Photo provided.
LAUNDRY BAG SWAG
Teressa White of Philadelphia, an intended finance major, poses with a laundry bag handed out during Welcome Weekend for Mendoza's Class of 2023.
Photo by Jennifer Mayo.
TASTE FOR BUSINESS
Undergraduates in the Innovation & Design Thinking class taught by associate teaching professor Wendy Angst worked with Gigi's Cupcakes this fall on a five-year business plan.
Photos by Matt Cashore (ND '94)
CANDOR ATTITUDE
"Candor is being able to take input from your employees. What can we do better? What is it you think we should do better? No matter what they say, take it right, and then use it . . . . I believe that if people feel part of the decision, they have ownership of it; you execute at a completely different level than if you just sit there and do what somebody tells you to do."
Tom Mendoza's talk "Building a Vibrant Workplace Culture in Good Times and Bad" kicked off the new Dean's Speaker Series. He is the former president and retired vice chairman at NetApp. Watch the lecture at Mendoza.nd.edu/deans-speaker-series.
STARTUP BUG
Senior finance major Jimmy Suszka and his friend, computer science major James Philhower, welcomed 80,000 crickets to their lives in September as part of their cricket farm venture. The pair identified an innovative way to raise crickets more efficiently, rented space in South Bend and signed on as a partner farmer with a company that processes the protein-packed insects into products like the Chocolate Chirp Cookie.
Photo by Barbara Johnston.
FRESH PERSPECTIVE
Junior management consulting major Tatiana Pernetti has been dancing since age 4. She performs with Project Fresh, a hip-hop dance group on campus, and enjoys freestyling, which she says is a good way to get people out of their comfort zone. "Being able to randomly go and just dance some moves takes a lot of courage," she says. She sees some parallels between freestyling and how consultants take their expertise and apply it to different situations.
And it takes similar courage, she notes, to "stand up in front of a bunch of people you hardly know and tell them what you think they should do."
Photo by Matt Cashore (ND '94)
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