EMP-38

EMP-38: Just when I thought that Scott Etzler's note saying, "We're all boring," was going to prove true, several of you stepped up to the plate and sent me some news.

Study Group E got together over the summer for dinner at Cindy Vanina's condo. Betsy Finkelmeier, Steve and Liz Aquina, and Tina and Erick Christensen all enjoyed a great dinner at Cindy's. I understand a future EMP student, Jake Christensen, was also in attendance. By all reports, he is the strong, silent type. Jake is the Christensen's latest addition to their growing family. The group had a good time and raised the "where in the world is Jim Dilworth?" discussion. I'm always happy to receive pictures or updates from study groups getting together.

Mary Bouskacontinues to work at Motorola in its global telecom solutions sector as director of its global services, enabling tools and applications development teams.Mary is managing software development teams in England, Ireland, Italy, India, Malaysia and the States. (Obviously, she has achieved Executive Platinum Status with the airlines.)As far as personal interests, Mary has received her master gardener certification and volunteers at Chicago Botanic Gardens in the plant information office on weekends.As a hobby,she isworking on a landscape design degree.This hobby has led to a Veteran's Memoriallandscapedesign installation for the Village of Buffalo Grove,as well as several other landscape designs that have now been implemented throughout the North Shore.

Jeffrey Vender reports that all is as well as can be in today's healthcare world. His family is great. His son, Todd, is working for Jones Lang LaSalle in NY, and his daughter, Kim, is now in the joint JD-MBA program at Northwestern. Jeff's wife, Bobbie, is great. (We already knew that, Jeff!) He serves on several medical boards and advisory panels, lectures and is involved in the Kellogg Alumni Advisory Board. Jeff reports as only he can, "I am quite busy, but that does not infer productive. "

Andy Martin reports that his company, Utopia, continues to show strong month after month growth in all of its business divisions. He writes: "Driven by market needs, we recently expanded our service offerings beyond call center operations, and successfully launched a technical services division that offers data enrichment, engineering and drafting services, as well as onsite contractor programmers. We seem to be a good fit for large companies with lots of disparate data and for those that want pure engineering and software horsepower."

At the time of his report, Andy had survived the second hurricane in less than three weeks. Andy says "both hurricanes passed over Orlando, but narrowly missed with a direct hit to our suburb. I guess the good news is Florida beachfront real estate prices will be dropping soon." By the time this reaches you, Ivan will have tested Floridians again.

Another Floridian riding out the storms is Steve Croskrey. Steve is president and CEO of Armor Holdings' products division. He writes: "We have created two other divisions since my arrival and have grown from $40 million to about $900 million. It has been a fun ride." When I asked Steve how they have achieved such tremendous growth, he said: "Our growth has been roughly 50 percent acquisition and 50 percent organic. We are experiencing some very high growth now in new and existing contracts to support the war on terror."

Jim Pogue's oldest daughter, who is 16, had quite a scare --- first with an inconclusive diagnosis of the potential for thyroid cancer, which required surgery, and second when she totaled her car driving to work one Saturday morning. I am pleased to report that her surgery went well and the thyroid tumor was benign, and she walked away from the accident (after unbuckling her seat belt) with only a black eye. The kid has used up two of her nine lives. Jim reports things are well in Pennsylvania, although he is still waiting for things to lighten up so he can come back to Chicago to get together with the PIGs.

Tom Schwingbeck competed in the Chicago Triathlon, performing a personal best.

Mick Phillippi reports that business for the Myra Group is picking up: "We have reached a long-term agreement to provide six sigma consulting and training for Easton Sports, are project-managing the return of four B-757 aircraft to active service and are project-managing a joint development venture with Pepsi and Information Resources (here in Chicago, yeah!). On the personal side, my wife, Marisa, and I picked up our daughter, Samantha, in London (she was studying for a month at the University of Richmond, outside London) and spent 2 1/2 weeks in Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels. We then spent a week in London doing theater. It was great."

Mike Smith, Julie and Mike Shelton and I got together for a Kellogg-sponsored event at Ravinia this summer. The Corrs were great entertainment, but it was even better to see some great folks. Thanks for organizing, Mike Smith. Otherwise we may not have seen each other this summer.

Thanks, everyone, for your contributions. As always, I hope that you will communicate with other people from the class. If you have updates or your group gets together, I'd love to hear from you. If you know someone who is not receiving my emails, I'd appreciate knowing and perhaps you can suggest that they contact me.