When Linda Voss, SBA ’82, needed to pare down expenses and improve business results over the past year and a half, she worked with her team to reduce operating costs by $25 million, sold $1.4 billion of undesirable and non-core assets at a profit, and acquired $2.6 billion in assets with higher returns.
As chief financial officer and chief operating officer of GMAC Commercial Finance, Voss is accustomed to large numbers, particularly those with dollar signs in front. Yet the Bay Port, Mich., valedictorian was not fond of mass quantities at the onset of her college career.
“I transferred to OU after two years at MSU because classes were very large and impersonal,” says Voss, whose transfer to OU resulted in a better learning environment. “Oakland University offered class sizes that provided an opportunity for involvement, a chance to get to know professors, and practical education that could easily be translated into the real world.”
Voss credits former Associate Dean John Tower for teaching her how to use VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers, and professor David Doane’s statistics and econometrics classes for increasing her interest in analytics.
This article is excerpted from the Fall 2008 issue of OU Magazine. Read the full story here
http://www4.oakland.edu/view_magazine.aspx?sid=134mid=805