A Day in the Life: Pearbudget's Charlie Park

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Charlie Park is the founder of two internet startups. One (pearbudget.com) is a personal finance web application (see it featured on CBS "The Early Show"). The other (monotask.com) is still-in-beta-testing, a web application focused on attention management — he describes it as “Ritalin for your computer.” He didn’t set out to be a business entrepreneur when he got his B.A. from William and Mary in 2001. Today he discusses how he got where he is, what has contributed to his success, and what a typical work day is like.

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In Conversation: Smith Barney's James W. Brinkley

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In this edition of the Thought Leadership Project, I talk to James W. Brinkley, who is the Vice-Chairman of Smith Barney's Global Private Client Group following Citigroup Inc.'s acquisition of Legg Mason Wood Walker, Incorporated (LMWW). He was previously CEO of LMWW.

He talks about leadership, operational challenges, and gives advice to graduating MBAs. As a professor, I could not resist giving him a quiz: I asked him “Say you were to write a letter to Alexander Hamilton explaining the current state of the financial industry, what will you write about?” Go on, read his wonderful response.

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A Day in the life: Steve W. Nerheim Jr.

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Steve Nerheim is the First Vice-President of a Financial Services Company. A recent graduate of the Executive MBA program of the Mason School at The College at William and Mary, he talks about his job, his typical day, and how he uses some of the operations tools he learned in school. This is the first in a series called the "Day in the Life" where senior managers let us in on their typical day.

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In Conversation: LeggMason's Raymond A. "Chip" Mason

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It gives me great pleasure to launch Operations Buzz with a short interview with Raymond A. “Chip” Mason. This interview is first in a series of what I call the “Thought Leadership Project.” The Thought-Leadership project is a conversation with business leaders on what it takes to operate smart and sustainable companies. Some of the questions are on leadership, the business environment, the challenges of running large organizations; and others explore the lighter side of the person that runs the organization. The goal is to explore leadership and its relationship to running smart & sustainable operations from multiple perspectives.

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