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Alumni in the Press : Spring 2004
Tčo Joins Amy’s Ice Cream as Alumni-owned Confectioners
Austinites now have two great home-grown stores to satisfy their sweet teeth: Amy’s Ice Cream and Tčo (formerly Babbo’s Gelato). Owners Amy Miller (MBA 94) and Matthew Lee (MBA ), respectively, are both UT MBA alumni.
Nestled in the corner of the 26 Doors shopping center in Northwest Austin is a little taste of Italian heaven. Tčo offers treats created from authentic Italian recipes and coffee made from beans that come straight from Florence.
Lee opened Tčo about ten months ago to give Austin a specialty item in
a family environment. As the father of two children, he hoped to offer
a dessert store that wouldn’t lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. Gelato
contains zero to ten percent butterfat content compared to ice cream’s
standard 14 to 30 percent.
Raised in a household of culinary professionals, Lee has always had a
passion for food. Upon
complementing that passion with a graduate degree in business, he
embarked on a journey
to combine the two. He trained in Italy with a descendent of gelato
creator Francesco de Medici of Florence, learning how to make gelato
from ancient Italian recipes.
On his return to Austin, Lee began experimenting with flavors that combine the best of American and Italian cultures. He has a tasty Oreo and peanut butter blend that would never be found in any Italian gelato store, but tastes down-home delicious in Austin. All of Lee’s gelatos are made fresh daily in the store by Italian-trained ‘gelatai.’
But Lee doesn’t think you can really compare gelato to ice cream, “It’s like comparing Chinese food to sushi,” he said.
Amy Miller, owner of long-standing Austin icon Amy’s Ice Cream, agrees that the two don’t compare, but says she enjoys the competition. “It makes me look at what my product quality is, how my stores look,” Miller said.
Almost twenty years after choosing Austin over London as the ideal location to start her business, Miller has several stores throughout Austin and has expanded to San Antonio and Houston. Miller got her MBA after she started the business: “I wanted to broaden my background and exercise my brain,” she said.
There’s no doubt that healthy competition leads to innovation, though. Amy’s employees have implemented a system where regular customers receive calls when their favorite ice cream comes up as the flavor of the day.
“Our next step is to install an Internet cam focused on the board at
all times,” Miller said. “That way customers can see what we are
serving that day.”
So next time you’re looking to cool down on a hot Austin day, support
your fellow alumni and indulge yourself at the same time! —Missy Lay
MBA Alumna Paves the Way for Online Business Travel
You know what it’s like to book leisure travel these days—point, click and you’re on your way across the country at a competitive price. Not so for business travelers who have traditionally had bureaucratic red tape to combat. Companies using brick and mortar agencies may face higher prices and fewer benefits than vacationers who can bargain shop online.
Ellen Keszler is determined not to leave business travelers behind in the online travel shuffle. As president of Travelocity Business, the corporate arm of leading online travel agency Travelocity, the UT MBA (87) is working on bringing businesses onboard the Internet booking trend.
“It’s a very exciting time to be transforming the corporate travel market,” said Keszler. “We’re making the Travelocity brand available to corporate clients. Corporate Travelers want access to the same great rates people find for leisure travel, and they want to shop the same way too—online.”
A Texas A&M civil engineering graduate, Keszler found The University of Texas at Austin gave her necessary business skills to start her corporate career. “Without a doubt, it gave me the basic business knowledge I needed and also the confidence that I could compete in the business world and add value to a company,” she said.
Keszler moved from a finance position into general management when she became senior vice president of Sabre Travel Network 2000. She joined Travelocity as president of Travelocity Business in 2003 and launched the division last year.
Travel Agent magazine named Keszler one of the 100 most powerful women in travel four years in a row (2000 to 2003). She has remained active in the McCombs School community, most recently participating as the keynote speaker at the Women in Business Leadership Conference in February. She spoke of the importance of a healthy work-life balance.
“My career goal is to move from running a business unit to running a company,” she said. “I recognize that it will be a big challenge for me to do this while still being able to spend time with my two boys, but achieving tough goals is one of the things that I really enjoy doing.” —Amy Corenblith
BBA Alum Aids Reconstruction Effort with International Team
For seven months Ali Tulbah woke up on a cot—“the sweat cot” as he called it—in a room with 10 other people. With no air-conditioning to cool him, he’d splash water on his face and set off down the hall to begin his 15-hour workday.
He was in Saddam Hussein’s Republican Palace, and though the living conditions were less than ideal, he didn’t mind because he’d be meeting daily with diplomats from all over the world, synchronizing Iraqi reconstruction efforts as the chief of staff for the Coalition Provisional Authority’s (CPA) International Coordination team.
Baghdad seems a far cry from Austin, Texas, where Tulbah was just 10 years ago. He graduated from the McCombs School with a bachelor’s degree in the engineering route to business program and was president of the Undergraduate Business Council.
“The interpersonal skills, the communications skills, the leadership skills I learned as an undergrad are invaluable,” Tulbah said. “How in the world does a 32-year-old act as the chief of staff for all of these people? You can’t do that unless you’ve got significant training and experience working with people, leading a team toward particular objectives. I learned so much of that at the Business School with the Business Council.”
Tulbah was in Iraq from May to November 2003, during which time he helped the CPA work with the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other organizations to ensure that the international reconstruction team was operating as efficiently as possible and not duplicating efforts.
“There was no road map for this,” Tulbah said. “This had never been done before. We had to work with the world community and try to forge a consensus on infrastructure, health care, education and numerous different sectors.”
It wasn’t an easy task. He led a team of 15 people from all over the world, including Australia, the Czech Republic, Japan, Korea, Poland, the Ukraine and Spain. They worked together with the Iraqis to coordinate donor assistance, documenting the reconstruction needs of the ministries and regularly briefing the diplomatic community on the CPA’s efforts.
He credits his team’s successful collaboration with the high level of passion for the job they were doing. In addition, Tulbah’s cultural background—his father’s family is from Saudi Arabia—and his proficiency with Arabic helped him gain credibility among the Iraqi people.
Before his stint in Iraq, Tulbah worked at the White House. After graduating from UT Austin in 1993, he moved to Houston to work for Andersen Consulting. After transferring to the Andersen office in Washington, D.C., he met people who worked on Capitol Hill and decided to make a life-changing career move.
“I agreed to take a job making $17,000 a year opening letters and answering phones,” he said. Far from the two-month hiatus Tulbah envisioned, his job on Capitol Hill propelled him into politics, and he never looked back. After working for Congressman Joe Barton, Tulbah switched to the office of Senator Phil Gramm. He later became involved in the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign and was given a position on the administration’s transition team.
The week after Bush’s inauguration, Tulbah took a position in the Office of Cabinet Affairs. There, he acted as a liaison between the White House and the Departments of Defense, State, Veteran’s Affairs, Homeland Security, NASA and other agencies. He expects his experience in Iraq will lead him to a role focusing more on foreign policy in the coming months.
Tulbah has optimism for the future of Iraq, and cited the quantifiable
progress of infrastructure as one hopeful sign. “Roads, bridges,
ports, hospitals, schools, all the things that make people’s lives
better, you don’t see on TV, but they’re there,” he said.
—Amy Corenblith
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
