Future Alumni
Entering the Network
by Behnaz Abolmaali
Bob Krentler
Texas Evening MBA
Common purpose, synchronized actions and mutual support. These crucial elements of a winning rowing team also characterize flourishing business work groups. Bob Krentler, MBA ’10, draws on his coaching experience when leading successful projects at IBM—and persistence is a key component in his leadership style.
“It took three months to get people fully behind what I was trying to do,” recalls Krentler about taking over as coach of the Texas Crew freshman rowing team in 2004. “What I love most as a coach is that you build something great that people can be proud of. I used to be solely focused on winning. But now as I’ve become more experienced, I focus more on maximizing our success within our capabilities and upgrading our speed through recruiting and retention.” Krentler says that since coming to McCombs, he’s learned as much about leadership and team management from the classroom experience as he’s learned as a coach.
“I’ve learned more about what a really good team is,” he says. “I’m fortunate in that my classmates have been great; we have great complementary skills.”
During his undergraduate years at the University of Michigan, Krentler studied electrical engineering because he says it gave him the flexibility to choose from a variety of career fields. In seven years with IBM, he developed custom digital circuits for supercomputing chips and game console applications such as the Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox360. His work earned seven patents and has been published in key industry journals.
He returned to school after realizing an MBA could give him skills in management and an understanding of the underlying business decisions that drive people’s lives.
“When I came to business school, I decided that this time around I really wanted to understand why something works, why it happens,” he says. “So far I’ve generated an idea of what really makes the world work, and I’m only halfway done, so that’s good.” Krentler says he hopes to one day go into a management consulting role to help governments set up infrastructure and education systems and “to make a positive impact on customers and, by extension, the world.”
Krentler’s goal for Texas Crew is simple: to win the national championship this May. “And if we can’t win the national championship, I want the next coach after me to win it,” he says. “The goal is to leave an organization and have it set up to get better. That’s really what I want to do.”
Naruby Schlenker
Texas MBA Full-Time Program
In 2007 Naruby Schlenker, MBA ’10, began her journey toward starting her own business by researching and visiting business schools. She says she was drawn to McCombs not only because of the strength of its entrepreneurship and marketing programs, but also by the individual attention and collaborative atmosphere she sensed as a prospective student.
“When I visited McCombs for Explore McCombs Diversity Weekend, I felt so at home and could truly see that the students weren’t just being nice to me, they were being nice to each other,” she says. “You could tell there was a collaborative environment.”
Originally from Venezuela, Schlenker moved to the United States to do her undergraduate work at the University of Illinois, earning a degree in finance with a minor in technology and manfuture alumni agement. After graduating, she began working for Eli Lilly and Co. as a financial analyst and later as an internal auditor.
In 2008, Eli Lilly gave her the opportunity to work as a sales representative in her home country of Venezuela, an experience that she says gave her the assurance of knowing she could apply her skills across cultures and settings.
“Latino culture is very broad and includes people from many different countries and levels of assimilation to U.S. culture,” she says. “The Latino culture is morphing as the population grows into a demographic that is neither 100 percent American, nor is it 100 percent Latino. The challenge is to understand the middle ground to be able to satisfy customers’ needs.”
The MBA program has also given Schlenker the opportunity to put her academic knowledge and business instincts to the test. At the Entrepreneur Society’s annual Pitch Party last fall, Schlenker was a finalist for her idea to develop a smart TV in Spanish to target Latinos in the United States. At the Global Business Challenge, Schlenker and a team of classmates worked to solve a business case dealing with Wal-Mart’s entry strategy into the Chinese market.
Through her involvement with the McCombs Admissions Committee, which helps the school attract top students to the fulltime MBA program, Schlenker seeks to instill prospective students with the same affinity for McCombs that first attracted her to the MBA program. “I want to welcome the new class of students to McCombs and have them feel the same way I felt at Explore McCombs,” she says.
