• Charlie Wilson, Vice President of Operations.  Mr. Wilson has served as Director of Operations of BRS since January 2004 and served as Director of Quality Improvement and Regulatory Compliance from 2000 to 2004.  From 1999 to 2000 he worked for C.C. Young, a retirement community, as Administrator.  From 1996 to 1999 he served as Healthcare Administrator for Trinity Terrace retirement community.  Mr. Wilson currently serves as the President of the Texas Society for the Advancement of Gerontological Environments (SAGE) chapter and serves on the board of the national SAGE Federation as Treasurer.  He also currently serves on the Texas Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (TAHSA) Culture Change committee.  With TAHSA Mr. Wilson has served on numerous committees including CQI, Public Policy, and Managed Care committees.  He has also served on the Professional Advisory committee for the Visiting Nurses Association and the Texas Wellspring Steering committee.  Mr. Wilson received his Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Southwestern Adventist University in 1992 and his Masters in Business Administration in May 2007 from Southwestern Adventist University.

Comments on the MBA program:

• Southwestern Adventist University’s MBA program gave me the opportunity to develop a significantly broader understanding of business.  Attending classes while working full time provided a great opportunity to apply my learning directly to what I love doing.  Every class related to aspects of our business and Buckner Retirement Services has benefited from everything I learned.  The final classes had projects incorporating elements of all the prior classes and these projects provided a path that has fundamentally shifted how we are doing business.

• I highly recommend the MBA program at Southwestern Adventist University to anyone wishing to become a great business leader in their field of work.  The experience is unmatched because of the strong faculty and the interest they have in each student.

• One of our MBA May graduate, Suelen Leão, got two managerial job offers before her May graduation this year.  One is the business analyst position at DFW Airport and the other one is service coordinator position at RIM – Research in Motion, the creator of Blackberry.  She said that she is very satisfied with her current position at Blackberry company and would like to introduce some job positions to you.  

• She said that RIM is a growing business and also one of the few companies is still hiring people during this economic downturn. 

• Sends greetings.  Peter now lives in New Jersey and works for the U.S. Government.  He is in training to become a Contract Specialist.  He is very happy with the position that he has, his salary as well as excellent benefits.  He would like to know of any graduating seniors interested in a career in acquisitions.  You have to be a U.S. citizen because the job requires Secret Security Clearance.  Please see Dr. Stembridge for contact information.

• Dr. Harrington recently received an e-mail from Chris Sauder.  Chris is an accounting graduate and earned his CPA.  He now works for Catholic Healthcare West as a Senior Reimbursement Analyst.  He also reports that Kyle Cowan (another one of our accounting graduates) works at Feather River Hospital in California.

• Jorge wrote from California.  He works for a company called Swagelok in operations management.  To quote Jorge, "Man, life is sure different from school.  No monkey business.  I feel I have had to grow up really fast and sometimes too fast.  I like it here though".

• Matt manages four medical facilities in Killeen, Texas.  He is in charge of setting the direction of the largest clinic in Killeen.  He also  handles all the billing, credentialing, hiring, firing, recruiting, and physician/insurance contracting.  Matt said that he does everything from planning strategies, goals, and desired outcomes to implementing and overseeing the plans to fruition.  Matt's company is currently planning to expand its biggest clinic to handle a MRI Imaging Center which will have state of the art equipment.
• Matt said, "I like the job very much and I was considered for the job because of my M.B.A."

• Dr. Chi,  it’s a pleasure to communicate with you again. Do you remember me? I was one of your MBA students, graduated on 2003… right now, I’m a business professor at the Adventist University Zurcher in Madagascar.

• I look at the SWAU business department web site, I’m very impressed with the improvement at SWAU, congratulations! I know that we have a very good MBA program, I enjoyed specially the Dr. Chi classes’ (I loved quantitative methods for managerial decisions), that’s why I advised my students to pursue their studies at swau for the MBA; one has already decided so please give us all the necessary information and specially your personal advice.

Sarah Proctor

• I am presently working as Vice President of Finance for All Church Home for Children.  I took this position with that organization shortly after I began working on my MBA.  I decided to go to graduate school in order to keep myself competitive in my career.  It has also always been a personal goal of mine.  I found it very satisfying to go to class and work in a professional position at the same time because I was able to relate the concepts to real life experience and apply new things that I learned in practical ways.  Our organization is accredited and licensed by several organizations.  It is important to those bodies that our executive team be educated and experienced, so obtaining my MBA helped our organization's standing in that regard as well.  I found the most useful courses for me in my present position have been Organizational Theory and Strategic Management.  We are engaging in some very innovative analysis of our portfolio of services that will incorporate some of the concepts I learned in class.

  Publication from our MBA Student- Congratulations!

  Ms. Sarah Proctor published an article to fulfill  the course requirements of BUAD 621 Organizational Theory and the title is “What if Jesus Were the CEO?”   If you are interested in reading it, please click

  http://adventistreview.net/article.php?id=1010.   

Batya Seguin

Dr. Chi, I am so glad to hear from you! I am doing just fine!

I have also wanted to come by but didn't know exactly when you would be around there. I moved up here to Plano to be closer to my job. I am located at the Walmart store 2086 off of the Dallas Tollway and Park Blvd and love my job! I would be happy to write you a letter to share my wonderful experience in SIFE and the MBA program at SWAU.

I would first like to thank you personally Dr. Chi for being such an inspiration to me the two years I spent in SIFE and acquiring my MBA at SWAU. You showed me that I could do anything and that I could in fact increase my capacity to do more. My years at SWAU were very helpful to me in getting where I am today. The support I recieved from the faculty members I know I couldn't have gotten at a much larger University. I truly feel I developed a relationship with the professors that cannot be compared to anywhere else. I am very thankful that I decided to take the MBA course at SWAU and feel that it is a very good program that helped me to understand more about the business world and its day to day functions. But also I credit my experience in SIFE to my success with Walmart.

SIFE with its fast paced, business-like criteria helped me to be ready for the "real" world of business. Working at Wal-mart is ever changing, challenging and fast-paced. You have to keep up or you won't make it. In management, you are responsible for every aspect of business. Whether it be human resources (dealing with associates), community awareness, day to day task, customer demands and much, much, more. Meeting the demands takes time management and patients. SIFE helps you by making you part of a team that must work together dispite differences and to meet deadlines and to do your best. With SIFE you are competing so you want to do your best and show what a great comprehensive job you have done. In working in the real world, you are working and doing your best to take care of your customers, associates and to get promoted. I have been at Walmart for 1 year since graduation. On my first evaluation I was told I was promotable. I honestly believe that my SIFE experience helped me with this. After my first month with Walmart I was over one area of the store,  a few weeks later over two areas of the store, one week after that I was over half of the store. Upper management told me this was because they felt that my capacity was very large and that they felt confident in my performance to do this. SIFE brings this out in you when you take on all of the aspects of a project. Project management is what it is all about. I am managing projects and tasks all day long and the practice you get with SIFE helps you to know what you can do and what you didn't realize you could do! I only wish I would have joined SIFE sooner in my undergraduate studies at SWAU. Students really do not know what they are missing. SIFE is worth the effort it takes to gain the skills that it has to offer and the networking that becomes available to you. Thank you SWAU staff and thank you SWAU SIFE. It was a wonderful experience I will never forget!

Batya Seguin

Front-End Assistant Manager

Walmart Store 2086

Liliana A. Gil works at Johnson & Johnson as the Director of Worldwide Marketing Services providing category leadership for the management of Advertising Agencies (General and Multicultural Markets) on behalf of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies.

In addition to her role, for the last three-years, Lili has lead Johnson & Johnson’s “Proyecto MAS2”, an initiative focused on leveraging resources to bring increased visibility to the growing importance of the Hispanic segment. This initiative has pioneer an effort at J&J to bring together a comprehensive business case for corporation. She has directly worked with brands like: Topamax, Levaquin, Tylenol, Lactaid, Splenda, Johnson’s Baby, among others.

Since joining J&J in 2000 she has held positions of increased responsibility in the areas of Information Management, Internal Supply Chain and Strategic Sourcing. Prior to J&J she worked at Celebration Health- Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida and Huguley Healthcare Systems in Texas.

In 2001 Lili was one of the founders of J&J’s Hispanic Organization for Leadership and Achievement (HOLA). To this date, HOLA has grown to become a very influential and active organization with over 30 chapters nation wide, 2 internationally, and over 1,000 members.

Her contributions have been recognized internally and externally. In 2008 she was recognized by PODER Magazine as one of the “Top 20 Leaders Under 40”, for her contributions to business and community. In addition, she was awarded de “Business Woman of the Year Award” by the 2008 National Latin Pride Awards. In 2007 she was recognized by the Chairman of the Board with the 2007 Marketing Excellence Award for her leadership in Hispanic Marketing across J&J, and received two Leadership Awards for her contributions to Global Diversity and Inclusion at J&J. In 2007 she was also the recipient of the “2007 Colombia Exterior a la Excelencia” (2007 Colombian Excellence Award), which recognizes outstanding Colombian professionals in the U.S. and their achievements in support of business, healthcare and the community. In 2006 received the J&J Supplier Diversity Outreach Award.

Val Angasn

Val is currently working 50-60 hours per week at the Bristol Bay Housing Authority in Dillingham, Alaska as a manager and coordinator. They put him in charge of a $3.7M program.

Dear Dr. Chi,

I wanted to share some good news about my job hunt with you.

Countrywide hired me last week and I have just completed the paper work at their HR office. I am scheduled to comment orientation on Monday, 15th December.

I provided your name, Mr.. Dunder and Dr. Harrington as references. I know I already did this during the summer but I wanted to make sure you are fine with this.

The job, I understand, would be mainly generating management reports on a SQL platform for the Home retention division, a new section created to facilitate the merging with Bank of America being concluded in January '09 and also to manage the foreclosure loan modification process they are anticipating in light of the new rules being enacted. I should be leading a team of about six staff which is still being recruited.

I have attached an updated resume to provide you with my background and experience.

Thank you for all your support and I hope to continue to put the education you provided to use in my future work.

Sincerely,

James Adeogun