Clausen Center for International Business & Policy

International Business Fellowships 2006

The Clausen Center commends the following Haas Students for their commitment to international business and policy as shown in their past, present and future endeavors.

Amity Balbutin - EWMBA '07 completed her Master’s in Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley in 2003, focusing on International Health Policy and Management. Her thesis work examined the use of strategic planning to increase the effectiveness of HIV prevention programs. Amity has ten years experience in running health programs including starting a community homeless clinic, working on a human immunization project in Paraguay, and coordinating one of the first pilot HIV rapid testing programs in California.

Amity is currently the President of the Evening Weekend MBA Association at Haas and is also an active member of the Net Impact and Berkeley BioBusiness Association. She will be attending the London Business School in Fall 2006 for a semester exchange. Her areas of interest include using international business and technological advances to improve world health.

Vijay Pillarisetti - MBA '08 worked with the Institute of Rural Management based in Anand, India. He used some of the ideas in his work at a state-owned firm in India to help improve productivity and processes at the Institute of Rural Management. He worked with consultants from UK and US to implement several well-known processes and incorporated ground-up suggestions with external opinions to come up with very effective local variants. Vijay would like to observe and study in detail the manufacturing and supply chain practices of one or two large firms in Brazil and hopefully impact their business in a meaningful way.

Tim Stucka - MBA '07 gained his global experiences from learning French and German "from scratch", working abroad for financial institutions and a small technology business in France and Germany, and traveling in forty countries. He represented Haas at the 8th Annual International Management Conference in India and will embark on an International Business Development project in Vietnam this May. In additional, he plans to organize an exploratory trip to Shanghai and Beijing next winter. Tim hopes to increase his understanding of Chinese business culture in preparation for an Asia-focused leadership role upon graduation from Haas.

Interstate Fellowships

Amity Balbutin is currently an Evening and Weekend MBA '07 candidate. She completed her Master's in Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley in 2003, focusing on International Health Policy and Management. Her thesis work examined the use of strategic planning to increase the effectiveness of HIV prevention programs. Amity has ten years experience in running health programs including starting a community homeless clinic, working on a human immunization project in Paraguay, and coordinating one of the first pilot HIV rapid testing programs in California.

Taruna Gandhi is currently an MBA '07 candidate. She received an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from California State University, Fullerton in 1994 and B.Tech in Electronics Engineering from Guru Nanak Dev University, India in 1992.

Since 1994, she has worked in telecommunications and software industries. She currently works for Red Hat, Inc as Senior Project Manager and her job entails feasibility studies for Linux and Open Source software, defining product road maps, on-time delivery and customer satisfaction. She works with a number of international companies like Toshiba, Nokia and Fujitsu and is interested in the Open Source business model and its impact on Globalization.

Meghna Majmudar is currently an MBA '07 candidate. She holds a Bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard University and a Master's in Public Health from the University of Cape Town. She has worked with numerous for-profit and non-profit organizations in the healthcare field.

Currently entering her second year at Haas, Meghna hopes to learn more social entrepreneurship and apply her knowledge to building better health systems in the US and internationally.

Grethe Petersen is an MBA '06 candidate. She is seeking a position in international development building on her combination of project development experience in Ghana and India; 20 years in banking in three different countries; and six years volunteering on non-profit boards.

With the UN, she developed a business plan to scale up nationally a community-led school feeding program in Ghana. As a result the Government of the Netherlands committed $250m to fund the program.
As an investment banker in London (1991-2004) she specialized in high-margin financial products tailored to banks’ and insurance companies’ portfolios. Speaking five languages fluently she led cross-cultural, multi-disciplinary teams to produce results.