UNews - Faculty of Management

Perseverance pays off for Patel

caroline.zentner — Mon, 30 May 2016 20:01:33 +0000

When Priscilla Patel first came to the city in 2009 to begin her studies at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, she saw land, lots of land, in fact, more land than buildings. And the buildings — most of them single-storey, were so unlike the highrises in her native Malaysia. The bustling neighbourhoods of her homeland were replaced by far more sedate streets.

She, her three siblings and their mother, Malti, left Penang so Priscilla could study new media at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, qualifications she would need for her dream job of being an animator at Pixar. Her father, Ashok, stayed behind in Malaysia to run the family’s textile business. The family became aware of the U of L through a Study in Canada event. Even so, her first sight of the Lethbridge landscape was a shock.

“I remember calling my dad up right away and telling him ‘You’ve got to book me a plane ticket; I need to come home now,’” she says. “I remember him saying ‘Just try it out for a month. If you don’t like it, you can come back.’”

Seven years later, she’s graduating (with distinction) with her second degree from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge. Along with a Bachelor of Fine Arts she earned in 2013, she will soon add a Bachelor of Management to her credentials.

“I’m glad I took the risk. I’m very thankful for my family because, without them, I wouldn’t be here. To have an education and to have so much support, not many people get that,” she says. “The Faculty of Management, I think that was my biggest support. I made friends with many of my student colleagues and professors. I don’t think I could have found that social network anywhere else and I’m very thankful for that, and for having profs who encourage students to come talk to them about anything.”

Priscilla found her way to the Faculty of Management after completing an internship in the marketing department at Lethbridge College. Even though she was passionate about graphic design, her supervisor, Carmen Toth, saw that she was also a people person. Toth suggested she consider marketing and, after a year of working as a general clerk at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library, Priscilla heeded the advice.

“I loved it,” she says of her time as a management student. “The first class I took was Marketing 2020 with Mike Madore. As soon as I got in that class, I said ‘Yup, this is it. This is where I belong.’ I’m very grateful because I experienced a real connection with my professors in the Faculty of Management.”

While each of the professors she encountered in the program played a role in helping her attain her degree, it was Madore and Dr. Mike Basil who especially motivated her to always do her best, she says. Priscilla credits the faculty with helping her learn presentation skills, how to handle pressure, manage a team and multi-task.

“If you ask any of my peers who started the program with me, they would tell you I was shy and I wouldn’t want to present,” she says. “If you ask my professor about the case analysis I presented last semester she’d say ‘I would never have known.’ Giving presentations boosts your self-confidence and makes you want to do the best you can. They always say you want to learn how to sell yourself. If you can’t sell yourself, no one’s going to want to listen to you because time is money.”

She, under Basil’s supervision, also did an independent research study investigating the predictors of celebrity effectiveness in advertisements.

“I found out that I love marketing research, collecting and analyzing data and being able to test my hypothesis,” says Priscilla.

Priscilla continues to work at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library and has taken on a special project for the summer, reviewing teaching materials in the Faculty of Education’s Curriculum Laboratory. Once the project has wrapped up, Priscilla hopes to begin her first career position and she’s ready to go wherever that might be.

When Priscilla crosses the stage and receives her parchment at Friday’s convocation ceremonies, her thoughts will be with her father, who won’t be able to attend. While he planned to join his family in Canada much sooner, economic circumstances have delayed his departure. Ashok hopes to be in Canada within a couple of years.

“I’m graduating with distinction and I want to make my dad proud. I want to tell him ‘I actually did it, taking six classes for three semesters. It paid off,’” she says, wiping away a few tears.

Pereira introduced as Management's first Executive in Residence

trevor.kenney — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 17:24:43 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Faculty of Management is launching its Executive in Residence program by appointing international technology marketing expert Anil Pereira as its first on-site executive.

Anil Pereira is the inaugural Executive in Residence for the Faculty of Manegement. (photo by Eva Kolenko Photography)

“We are delighted that our inaugural Executive in Residence is Anil Pereira, a technology entrepreneur with an intense passion for building highly visible and trusted global brands,” says Dr. Bob Ellis, the U of L’s Dean of the Faculty of Management. “Of course, we are also thrilled that he is ‘one of our own’ and able to return to campus to share his insights with students and faculty alike.”

Pereira (BMgt ’87) is a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and marketing executive with more than 20 years of hands-on experience at both start-up companies and global corporations. He is currently the founder and Executive Chairman of Verious, the world’s first code recommendation engine for software developers.

The company serves a booming market that industry analysts predict will be valued at more than $100 billion by 2015.

Pereira, who founded the company in 2011, works with a team of developers to aggregate programming libraries, open source code, tutorials, code samples and snippets and other content that helps app creators and other programmers speed up their time to market.

Verious received a significant award from technology news service TechCrunch as a “2011 Disrupt Award Finalist” in its first year of operation.

The purpose of the Executive in Residence program (funded by the Chartered Professional Accountants) is to create an opportunity for senior leaders in industry and government to visit the Faculty of Management to share the knowledge and insights gained from working in key industries with students, faculty and staff at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and the communities it serves. The program has been designed to tie research-based teaching in the Faculty of Management with practical, real-world examples of business strategy and implementation from senior industry leaders.

Pereira, the 2000 U of L Alumnus of the Year, brings a host of real-world business expertise to campus.

There should be no shortage of ideas that Pereira, the 2000 U of L Alumnus of the Year, might bring with him during his visits to campus – all drawn from his own extensive library of current and previous business experiences.

“You can learn all you want from textbooks, and theory is certainly an important foundation in the world of business, but it’s always eye-opening to successfully apply theory in the workplace,” says Pereira. “My goal is to provide practical examples – to apply research and classroom teachings to businesses in today’s marketplace that are in the midst of rapid change and growth and facing various challenges. I want to help students apply theory to practice in real ways, and help them understand how to manage their own careers.”

Ellis says that the key benefit of Pereira’s visit to campus will be his time spent with students.

“We occupy a unique place among Western Canadian business schools in that we ensure our students get a significant amount of in-class and beyond-the-classroom learning experiences,” he says. “We know that learning from successful leaders like Anil – who have also had the U of L experience – will help to motivate students as they navigate the complex and dynamic environment in which business operates.”

In addition to his time at the helm of Verious, Pereira also serves as an advisor to numerous start-up and established businesses in Silicon Valley around the world, among them a startup that teaches children how to code, a company that provides retailers with “intelligent CRM”, and a cloud computing security company.

Pereira serves as the lead independent director for Fnbox (a holding company that operates leading online businesses in Latin America), and is a senior advisor to Innovation Norway and a number of fast-growing start-ups including Capillary Technologies, Conference Hound and Tynker.

Additionally, he has held senior positions at American Express and VeriSign, a leading Internet infrastructure company, and was the founder and CEO of DataSphere Technologies.

Initially, Pereira will be on campus for a week beginning November 4 to engage students through a series of guest lectures and mentoring sessions. This will set the stage for a return visit in the spring that will feature similar activities as well as public presentations in Lethbridge, Calgary and Edmonton.

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