Rick Bauer, MA, EMTM’01 

Career Transformation

An ordained minister with an advanced English degree, Rick Bauer had segued his technology hobby into a serious consulting career in the '90s before landing a job as a CIO for The Hill School, a private school in the Philadelphia area. Rick transformed the campus into what E-School News Magazine called the "Most Wired School in America," but as the job was nearing completion, he started to think about his next steps. He realized he was going to need more training if he wanted to "step out of his niche" and take his technology career to the next level. "With my liberal arts background, I had a few technical certifications but it was time to make an investment in my education."

Why EMTM?

With the support of his employers, Rick decided to pursue graduate study in technology and he was drawn to the EMTM program on the recommendation of friends and by Wharton and Penn's reputation for excellence. "I'd also considered a conventional MBA, but I couldn't take time off from a pretty demanding work schedule. I also liked the broader exposure EMTM would give me to both technology and management disciplines," he says. In addition to the program's convenient location and scheduling, Rick was drawn to its faculty, which he found both approachable and encouraging.

Career Impact

After completing the program, Rick came upon the perfect job offer — thanks, he says, to EMTM.  "In Professor Hans Pennings' class on innovation, I'd researched growth in the digital storage market. It was a new concept in the late '90s and it immediately interested me." This project led to Rick's involvement with the executive council of the Storage Networking Industry Association, and later a position managing all of the Association's technology initiatives. "I never would have been qualified for this job had it not been for the preparation I got at the EMTM program."

In his work Rick has found numerous opportunities to demonstrate the power of his degree. "Two months into my job I was given the task of analyzing the pricing structure for the software testing programs we provide for our 7,000 members around the world. I did a pricing analysis, a marketing analysis, a competitive threat matrix, a SWOT analysis — all models I had learned about in my EMTM classes. With them, I was able to defend our recommendations to the senior VPs from the leading storage manufacturers in the world who make up SNIA's Board of Directors. More recently I have been managing our development efforts in India and China and I find myself applying lessons in global markets from Professor Ziv Katalan's class in Supply Chain Management."

As his organization continues to tackle hot issues like open source development and information security and privacy, Rick feels prepared for the challenges that face him. "The discussions and training I got at EMTM allowed me to step directly into a new professional environment and put my knowledge to work."

Top of Page