Press Release
Contact: David Groves
(248) 370-2759
groves@oakland.edu
For Immediate Release
Friday, July 17, 2009
OU alumni help direct Graybar to Fortune 500 "World's Most Admired Companies" list
Rochester, Mich. – The rise of Graybar Electric to its recognition as one of Fortune magazine’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” has roots at Oakland University.
Graybar was recently recognized by Fortune magazine in several categories. The firm received top billing in Long-term Investment and Management Quality, and achieved a top 10 ranking in the categories of Use of Assets, People Management, Innovation, Financial Soundness and Product Quality.
Two of the top five financing and account executives at Graybar earned their MBAs from Oakland and consider those educational experiences to be instrumental to their current success. Martin Beagen, vice president and controller, and Tim Carpenter, assistant treasurer, said their Oakland experiences were overwhelmingly positive.
“Obtaining an Oakland MBA had an almost immediate, positive impact on my career at Graybar. Seven months after graduating, I received a promotion to director of finance at our Chicago office,” Beagen said. In 2005, he was appointed to his current position as vice president and controller after serving as assistant controller for five years.
Beagen found that his undergraduate education lacked the technical, micro-level business skills necessary to excel at the highest levels of corporate finance.
“My studies at Oakland filled two holes in my work and educational background. The first was the absence of a practical, as compared to a theoretical, business education,” Beagen said. “My other deficiency was common among college students that graduated prior to 1980; I had virtually no experience with information technology. These two shortcomings were obliterated by the graduate business education I received at Oakland University.”
Carpenter’s experience at Graybar was similar. He received a promotion within six months of graduating with an MBA from Oakland in 1999.
“The OU program did a fantastic job of refreshing the basics and then taking things to the next level in regards to corporate finance,” Carpenter said. “It was a great program.”
Carpenter considers his courses in international finance and advanced corporate finance as the capstone classes in the entire experience, and the ones that helped to jettison him to the next level. “The professors had a very knowledgeable combination of real world experience and thorough book learning,” he said.
For more information on Oakland University School of Business Administration programs, including MBA concentrations, visit www.sba.oakland.edu.
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