A mutually beneficial relationship developed last fall between Kalamazoo College students and Greenleaf Hospitality Group (GHG), as the local business sought new ways to recruit prospective interns and recent college graduates to its employment opportunities.
That’s when GHG—which runs hotels, event centers, restaurants, retail outlets and more in the city—worked with K’s Principles of Marketing class, led by L. Lee Stryker Professor of Business Management Amy MacMillan. Students in the class presented ideas, and one in particular—generated by Savannah Chapie ’27, Jillian Smith ’27, Robert Ahlgren ’27, Matthew Matuza ’27 and Eamonn Burns ’27—received a real-world green light. The five recommended building a new job-shadowing program that could show career-minded students the benefits of the hospitality industry.
“We decided to show people that hospitality has a lot more that goes into it than most people think,” Chapie said. “It has duties like marketing, sales, human resources and more. We also used surveys to ask K and Western Michigan University students what their existing ideas of hospitality were and whether they knew what Greenleaf was and what they wanted out of their career.”
The process generated excitement from students and praise from GHG. Then, when the class ended, Chapie and Smith continued helping the business recruit students, first-year students and sophomores in particular, for spring opportunities.
“We thought first years and sophomores would be best for the job shadow because they were most likely to not yet know what they want to do with their careers,” Smith said. “It was a way to open up the doors for them and get them to see the benefits of the industry.”
It’s not unusual for K students to secure job shadows, but these were distinctive for the ultimate recipients—Victoria Gutierrez ’28, Nolan Jannenga ’27, Avery Hall ’28 and Bradley Eziuka ’28—because the opportunities were developed by two of their fellow students in cooperation with a company located only a mile from campus. The shadows helped the four students gain firsthand experience involving the hospitality industry along with clearer goals for developing their careers.
“I was interested in the job shadow with GHG because of its prior collaboration with Kalamazoo College,” Eziuka said. “I found the opportunity to gain a better understanding of GHG intriguing because I might work with them more as I advance through my school years.”
In addition to their core experiences, the students also shadowed several key departments, including Sales with Director of Sales Laura Ayan, Event Planning with Special Events Producer Lindsay Davies, and Golf Management at Kalamazoo Country Club with Director of Instruction Scott Adland.
All four shadowers spent a full day both downtown and at Kalamazoo Country Club, where they had the opportunity to meet with several organizational leaders, including Recruiting Manager Meg Brake, Finance Director Brian Beam, Vice President of Marketing and Technology Services Sarah Olszowy, and Senior Sales Manager Derrick Ricca. In the afternoon, they also met with Executive Director of Human Resources Stephanie Farrell, who offered personalized advice on their career goals and shared how the hospitality industry can align with a wide range of individual interests.
Did the students chosen find the opportunity to be valuable? Yes, beyond any shadow of a doubt.
“I’d say the opportunity absolutely provided me with clarity regarding my career path and sparked a genuine interest in the hospitality industry,” Eziuka said. “During my conversation with Derrick Ricca, he emphasized the importance of relationships within his department of the business—something I could strongly relate to, as I’ve become increasingly social and have been steadily improving my interpersonal skills. His dedication to the quality and condition of his clients’ experiences further piqued my interest. In addition to Derrick’s insights, Stephanie Farrell offered valuable advice about career development. I shared my interest in wealth management and finance, along with a budding entrepreneurial mindset, and she encouraged me to explore various roles throughout college. She highlighted that understanding that who you become during these experiences can play a crucial role in discovering a career that aligns with your personal goals.”
Chapie and Smith agreed the project was a success from their perspectives—so much so that they will have a chance to improve upon the program in the 2025–26 academic year.
“We hope that this will prove to be just a start for these shadows,” Smith said. “We would like to run these throughout the next few years and let them get bigger, because Greenleaf does have some amazing opportunities that we didn’t even realize were possible until we started working on this project.”
“Maybe going forward, we can have the event once per trimester with 15 students or so in the hopes of helping those undecided on their majors build some career ideas,” Chapie said. “It’s a big deal to be able to network and create opportunities for yourself. And speaking for both of us, it’s been a way to help ourselves network and make more connections, as well.”
Savannah Chapie ’27 (left) and Jillian Smith ’27, two students from Kalamazoo College’s Principles of Marketing class, helped Greenleaf Hospitality Group conduct job shadows designed to interest a new generation of students in the hospitality industry.
Executive Director of Human Resources Stephanie Farrell (middle) meets students during a day of job shadows at Greenleaf Hospitality Group.
Meg Brake (right) and Rhiannon Zielinski (far left) meet with Kalamazoo College students during a day of job shadows.
Recruiting Manager Meg Brake, Jade Ward and students meet during their job shadows.
After years of supporting her home state Atlanta Braves, Samantha Moss ’23 is aligning herself this Opening Day with a different team that often wears navy blue.
“I’m Team Umpire, 100%,” Moss said.
It might seem unusual for a fan to say that, but the Kalamazoo College alumna has a new job working for Major League Baseball: Moss, a timing operations administrator, is at MLB headquarters in New York, where she’s ready to assist on-the-field officials who need help interpreting the league’s new rules, especially those related to pitch clocks.
Starting last year, pitchers had 15 seconds to throw a pitch with the bases empty and 20 seconds with a runner on base. If a pitcher hadn’t started his delivery toward home plate before the pitch clock expired, he was charged with a ball. Plus, hitters needed to be in the batter’s box with eight seconds left on a pitch clock. If a batter delayed entering the box, he was charged with a strike.
Those rules were among several that helped drastically reduce the time it took to play a game from slightly more than three hours in 2022 to less than two and a half hours in 2023. This year, MLB has tweaked those rules in an effort to further speed up games. For example, a pitcher will have 18 seconds instead of 20 with runners on base to deliver his pitch this year. The league also is:
Decreasing the number of pitching mound visits a team is allowed each game to four in the first through eighth innings with an additional visit permitted in the ninth inning.
Adjusting when a pitch clock will reset after a dead ball situation such as a foul ball. Instead of waiting for a pitcher to retake the mound, the clock will restart as soon as the pitcher receives the ball.
Requiring any pitcher who warms up on the field to face at least one hitter. In the past, a manager commonly would remove his pitcher before a pitch was thrown if their opponent brought in a pinch hitter to gain an advantage in a lefty-versus-righty match-up.
The changes require trained people such as Moss, a former K softball player and economics and Spanish double major who knows baseball well, to provide administrative support when questions related to specific situations arise.
“Similar to the people in Replay, we’re watching all the games at once and waiting for pitch clock violations,” Moss said. “When they do happen, we’re acting on it, sending what we need to send to the right people to ensure the rules are followed precisely. We need to make sure we know the rules in and out and relay those rules to the umpires and the people who control the pitch clock during the games. It’s a well-oiled system for it only being in its first year. We’re there for when a problem arises during the game or if the umpires need to clarify a rule. If we’re noticing things happening on the field, we’re a different perspective to help out.”
Samantha Moss ’23 is serving Major League Baseball as a timing operations administrator this season in New York.
Moss, a former K softball player, will provide administrative support at MLB headquarters in New York when questions related to new rules arise on the field.
Moss first connected with MLB when she asked K baseball coach Mike Ott whether he knew anyone who works in the league. As luck would have it, Ott knows Jack Clark ’17, a K trustee and former Hornets baseball team captain, who started working with MLB in Replay Operations and now is its manager of draft operations. Thanks in part to Clark and a lot of continued networking, Moss attended baseball’s Winter Meetings last year and one of its events, Take the Field, a women-led conference.
“I always had an idea that I wanted to work in baseball when I started applying for jobs last year, but I wanted to be realistic, too,” Moss said. “I thought getting a corporate job is what I was supposed to do after I graduated from college. That conference was a game-changer for me. I got advice from women who are succeeding in the industry, and it opened my eyes to some possibilities I hadn’t considered before. I mark that as a pivot point in my career goals.”
Over the past year, Moss has coached and played softball in Sweden, worked in Grand Rapids and lived in Atlanta for a time while applying to about 90 baseball jobs. MLB, though, came along just in time for the season, and just two weeks after the call, Moss moved to New York.
“This just had to be what I did,” Moss said. “It’s one of those things where you say ‘yes’ and figure out the details for making it happen later.”
The full-time job is seasonal, although Moss is thrilled to be working in the sport and can’t wait to find out where her position might lead.
“I’m excited to be in the building with a lot of important baseball executives,” Moss said. “I feel like it’s a great place to network and see what opportunities there are around the league with MLB and with the individual teams. Baseball is a very fluid environment in terms of people’s positions and people are constantly moving in and out, up and down and all over. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next year. I just know that I want to work in baseball. At the conference, somebody said, ‘Any job in baseball is a good job in baseball.’ And that’s so right. I’ll just trust my ability to make decisions this year and follow my gut in my career.”
Over the past 35 years, the business and economics department at K has grown from one part-time business professor to a popular business major with several full-time faculty.
One constant over that time has been Professor Timothy Moffit ’80. Moffit took on that part-time business professor role in 1989 as a one-year sabbatical replacement, and other than a couple short breaks in the first few years, he has been teaching students at K ever since.
As Moffit approaches retirement this spring, a group of alumni—both classmates and students of Moffit’s—have established a scholarship in his honor. Given to students for the first time in the 2023–24 academic year, the Dr. Timothy Moffit ’80 Endowed Scholarship in Business has already raised $175,000 from a small group of donors. The goal is to increase that total to at least $300,000, which will provide $15,000 to scholarship recipients majoring in economics and business every year, forever.
The honor speaks to Moffit’s commitment to the classroom and his students, to business within the framework of the liberal arts, and to his department and the College as a whole.
Love of learning has kept Moffit in the classroom for 35 years.
“That’s what brought me to K, and that’s what’s kept me at K,” Moffit said. “As a teacher, you never stop learning, and I tell my students that you never really learn a subject until you teach it. I find that enchanting because I love learning.”
Moffit’s belief—supported by what he hears from former students—is that his classroom has been rigorous, demanding, and full of experiences and applications that bring meaning to theory.
“Many students who go to grad school say, ‘Boy, your classes are tougher than my grad school classes.’ The rigor and the toughness are not for the sake of being tough. It’s out of excitement for the material. I want to learn—let’s learn!—so I’m fairly demanding in terms of what we learn and how we learn. I think for a lot of students, it’s incredibly rewarding. Once they’ve graduated from K, they’re like, ‘Wow, in the workplace, I really do know how to do these things. I can accept this challenge, because I was beat up by Moffit,’” Moffit said with a laugh.
As Professor Timothy Moffit approaches retirement this spring, some alumni have established a scholarship in his honor.
Donate to the Moffit Endowed Scholarship in Business
Moffit’s approach to teaching and continued influence inspired Gary Lewis ’00 to help fund the business scholarship. Lewis is founder and managing partner of Aquila Equity Partners, and Moffit serves as an advisor to the company.
“For so many of us, Dr. Moffit helped to foster an unmatched passion for business, accounting and finance,” Lewis said. “Not only did he provide us with a rigorous academic foundation, but he also taught us the tenacity, big-picture thinking and real-world pragmatism which is so critical for being successful.”
Aaron Ries ’06, another contributor to the scholarship fund, applied lessons learned from Moffit’s classes in his first post-K job with the investment banking company Jefferies. Today, as the company’s co-head of leveraged loan sales and trading, Ries credits Moffit for having played a significant role in his life.
“Tim had an outsized positive impact on my mindset, approach, education, and as a result, my career,” Ries said. “And he did it one lesson, one interaction, one test at a time. His energy and enthusiasm are infectious. That type of compounding at the individual level, at first daily, then over years, and now decades, is so valuable.”
Jeremy Ardshahi ’25, a business major with a political science minor, took two accounting classes with Moffit before becoming one of the first recipients of the scholarship.
“The classes were not easy, but I really liked Dr. Moffit as a teacher,” Ardshahi said. “When we would get stressed out about the work, he would take us off topic a bit, make us laugh, and then bring us back on topic, and that worked well to keep the class learning. The course work is definitely not easy, but it’s rewarding, and he makes it a lot more fun than it could be.”
As a student, Moffit loved the liberal arts experience, taking many English classes in addition to religion, philosophy and history. (He met his wife, Kimberley Yull Moffit ’82, when she tutored him in French.) As a professor, he appreciates how business pulls from many disciplines, including communication, psychology, mathematics, history and philosophy.
“I took a lot of different types of classes, and I have used them extensively, both in my business career and also in my teaching of business,” Moffit said. “I try to integrate all of these because they’re important in business. You need to bring all those skill sets into play to be effective.”
Moffit is proud of how the business department has grown and flourished during his tenure, and he is loyal to the school itself. When he first came to K as a transfer student, Moffit “fell in love with the school immediately, and I have been in love with it ever since. That’s why I came back, because I had such great memories of learning and the community.
“The campus is lovely, the study abroad makes this place special, and the students are unique. They have this entrepreneurial flair about them, whatever discipline they may be interested in. That is true throughout the ages.”
Moffit felt a calling to teach when he was young, and taught Sunday School classes in high school and piano lessons in college. After graduating from K, he taught English in Japan for two years, earned an M.B.A. from Dartmouth College, and worked in investment banking for about six years before taking on his first teaching position at K.
“Teaching is my passion, business is my profession, and I marry the two in the classroom,” Moffit said. Yet after 35 years, it’s “just time” to retire, Moffit said. “I have a lot going on and a lot of outside interests.”
He owns three local businesses with his son—Kalamazoo Kettle Corn, Heilman’s Nuts & Confections and a medical supply company. He also sits on the board of Delta Dental as well as other boards.
“I have a new grandson; I’m a granddad,” Moffit said. “There are just so many things I want to do. I want to go fishing and hunting and take my grandson fishing. I’ve done this for a long time, I think I’ve accomplished what I set out to accomplish, and I’m ready to move on.
“I’ll miss the classroom for sure, but this doesn’t mean I’ll stop teaching.”
Moffit also intends to do what he can to help make the scholarship in his name successful.
“I was just a poor dirt farmer kid,” he said. “The school really supported me and helped me get through. I didn’t have the money to go here, but they found a way for me, and I would like to help create that same opportunity for others. I have a soft spot in my heart for those first-generation students, or the kids from these little schools that don’t have educational opportunities, let alone life opportunities like traveling abroad and seeing the bigger world. If this scholarship in any way can help students who need help to have that experience, that would be phenomenal.”
“I would 100 percent need to have a job if I didn’t receive the scholarship,” Ardshahi said. “If I were working and playing sports and going to class, I would have a lot more stress in my life. Knowing that the fund is dedicated to someone who has taught me and is still teaching at the school makes it more personal, too.”
In this way, Moffit’s commitment to teaching, to business and the liberal arts, to K and its students, will continue long after his upcoming retirement.
“This scholarship is a well-deserved and fitting tribute for someone who has given so much to the K community and deeply impacted numerous K students’ lives over the last 30-plus years,” Lewis said. “I’m very grateful for his life-long mentorship and wish him and his family nothing but the best in their next chapter.”
Moffit is excited about what the scholarship could do for students at K.
“It’s a huge honor, of course, that students would establish this in my name,” Moffit said. “Usually, you do that when someone dies. I’m not there yet. I’m still teaching, even. I think there’s a lot of opportunity to make this a substantial scholarship for students who want to study business, and that would be great. I want it to be about students and outcomes. It’s not about me.”
Quantitative economics, which is now declarable, follows most of the curriculum for a standard economics major, but requires two additional math courses, Integral Calculus and Linear Algebra, and two new additional quantitative economics courses, Econometrics and Game Theory, without needing more time to graduate. Econometrics is a computer lab-based theory course that delves into economic questions and issues using statistical methods. Game Theory applies strategic decision making and microeconomics to solve real-world individual and business problems, using mathematical tools.
The adjustments for the new program might seem subtle to some. However, Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics Patrik Hultberg said quantitative economics will better prepare students who are interested in pursuing academic programs beyond K and more technical career paths, such as data analytics. Overall, it will examine economic issues, explore theories and predict future conditions using statistics and mathematical models while emphasizing analytical skills.
Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics Patrik Hultberg said that quantitative economics will be an excellent option for students who are interested in pursuing academic programs beyond K and technical career paths such as data analytics.
“What we have today is two groups of students,” Hultberg said. “Some are perfectly happy with an economics major as it is. Those are students who might be interested in going to law school, public policy fields or similar jobs. But we also have a subset of students—a greater number than in the past—who might double major in economics and mathematics or computer science. The new major will give students interested in quantitative economics—and not upper-level math courses, for example—a chance not to double major and thus open up their schedules so they can take other important courses, like courses that teach how to communicate effectively.”
Hultberg said that over the past few months, he has received emails from students who are thrilled about the new major option. The opportunity should be especially enticing for international students as the Department of Homeland Security defines quantitative economics as a STEM program. That means the major can help international students extend their Optional Practical Training (OPT) by up to three years and stay longer in the U.S. by pursuing practical training or temporary jobs while gaining valuable work experience through their F-1 student visas.
“I’m excited for it and we have some students who are super excited for it,” Hultberg said. “If economics is your true passion, you just want to have options that support that. And if prospective students are interested in quantitative fields and come to K, they will be well-prepared to go to graduate school, whether that’s a master’s in finance or a Ph.D. in economics, and they will be well prepared for jobs in quantitative fields.”
For more information about the quantitative economics major, contact Hultberg at Patrik.Hultberg@kzoo.edu.
Darsalam Amir ’24, a triple major in business and economics, biochemistry, and religion, is launching a natural fragrance company based on her family’s heritage from her dorm room.
With the help of a student team from Amy MacMillan’s Principles of Marketing class, Amir held a fragrance testing in Hicks Student Center to narrow down which scents she should produce and sell first.
Operculum onycha shells from Chad are a key ingredient in the handcrafted perfumes and incense Amir makes in her dorm room and sells at oudalsalamscents.com.
Darsalam Amir ’24 started pondering the idea of launching a fragrance business based on her family’s cultural heritage in high school.
At Kalamazoo College, she found the support she needed to bring that dream to life before she graduates. As of November 15, Oud Al Salam is up and running, offering body oil, incense and perfume in two different sandalwood and musk scents at oudalsalamscents.com.
A triple major in biochemistry, economics and business, and religion, Amir was born in Sudan. Her mother is Sudanese, and her father’s family is from Chad. The two African nations share a border, and Amir’s parents grew up in similar cultures.
After living in several different African countries, Amir’s family settled in Ghana when she was 3 years old. When she was 11, they moved to Lansing, Michigan—both times for educational opportunities for Amir and her siblings. At the same time, her father insisted that they speak only Zaghawa at home and maintain connections to their cultural background through food, dress and music.
The creation and use of natural scents represent a big piece of that cultural connection for Amir. On the Oud Al Salam website and on her Instagram at oud_al_Salam, Amir shares both updates about her scents and insights into their cultural significance.
“The scents and fragrances I create are a direct reflection of the cultural significance of perfumes and incense in my community,” Amir said. “They have held a special place in our lives for generations and have been a part of our traditions and rituals. The art of crafting perfumes and incense is a communal activity in my family and community.”
In Ghana and in the U.S., Amir’s mother found Sudanese communities that gathered often at each other’s houses.
“I vividly remember the gatherings, the sharing of fragrances, and the discussions about formulas and tweaks to create unique scents,” Amir said. “This cultural practice fostered a sense of togetherness, identity and appreciation for our heritage. By sharing these fragrances with a broader audience through my company, I am preserving and promoting the cultural heritage of my family and community. The scents are not just products; they are a bridge that connects people to our roots, evokes memories and fosters an understanding and appreciation of the beauty of diversity.”
Having completed an early college program, Amir came to K with both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree in pre-health studies. She planned to earn a bachelor’s in biochemistry and proceed to medical school.
“I came to K thinking, ‘I know exactly what I want, I’m going to get in and out,’” Amir said. “I only needed a few courses to get my degree. Then the K culture got me and I wanted the full experience.”
Amir worked with a student team from Amy MacMillan’s Principles of Marketing class to help launch her natural fragrance business. Pictured at the end-of-term presentation are (from left) James Dailey ’26, Helen Le ’26, Amir, Francesca Ventura ’26, Zach DeVito ’26 and Eric Paternoster ’26.
Principles of Marketing students James Dailey ’26 (left) and Eric Paternoster ’26 stage a photo shoot for the natural fragrance business launched by Amir.
Amir’s Principles of Marketing student team staged a photo shoot to create this promotional image for her website.
Amir realized business classes at K might help her budding entrepreneurship more than her years of unsatisfying internet research had. She started with introductory economics classes and basic accounting—which she found fascinating—before working her way up to marketing classes with L. Lee Stryker Associate Professor of Business Management Amy MacMillan. She found inspiration in MacMillan’s Principles of Marketing course, where students work with clients to build a marketing plan.
“Our client was in nonprofit work,” Amir said. “She wasn’t making any money, but she was running this business, and I thought, ‘If she’s doing it, I could do it, too.’ It was a real-world situation. I had thought I was doing market research by watching YouTube videos and reading online articles. Now we were doing real market research and it was so impactful.”
Amir had been working in a pharmacy and saving as much as she could to invest in her company. When she finished the Principles of Marketing course as an enrolled student consultant, she approached MacMillan about returning as a client.
“I knew Darsalam to be a very dedicated student, so I knew that she would follow through and make it a worthwhile project,” MacMillan said. “I was also intrigued with her idea. When you introduce a new product, you want to make sure it is truly something new and different that meets a meaningful need. In this case, the idea of this high-end perfume that would incorporate ingredients from Chad seemed like a unique positioning that would have appeal.”
While the class has had a few past clients who are current K students, that happens rarely—and MacMillan gets excited about it every time.
“What I love about it is students supporting other students, and the recognition that you don’t have to wait until you’re grown up to be an entrepreneur; you can be an entrepreneur now and have these great ideas,” MacMillan said. “What really excites me about this is that peer-to-peer experience.”
Working with Amir provided her team with real-time, hands-on experience.
“The student teams work with the client the whole term,” MacMillan said. “The final presentation is usually a plan the client can execute sometime in the next six to 12 months. What is just wild about this project is that they’ve actually been off and running. They did fragrance testing in Hicks where they helped test both the appeal of certain fragrances and which ideas resonated most to help Darsalam understand not just how to choose the fragrances, but how to position and market them. It’s unfolding under their eyes, a business using their input in real time.”
During summer 2023, Amir traveled to Chad for the first time since her family settled in Ghana so many years ago. While conducting interviews, visiting museums and translating texts in service of her Senior Integrated Project examining how the Zaghawa people of Chad embraced Islam and synchronized it with their pre-Islamic beliefs and practices, Amir also spent time with family she had never met and visited local markets, with a cousin as her guide, to buy fragrance ingredients.
Amir’s ingredients for her fragrances include musk stones, sandalwood and operculum onycha shells she purchased in markets in Chad.
Amir is launching a natural fragrance company, Oud Al Salam, to share an important aspect of her family’s culture. “My work is a tribute to the traditions I cherish and a means of sharing the richness of my Sudanese-Chadian heritage with the world.”
Helen Le ’26, a member of Amir’s Principles of Marketing student team, agreed.
“Everything we have learned in class we apply immediately to our project,” Le said. “I feel like it is a more authentic experience and perspective. This class allows me to quickly apply the knowledge I’ve learned in practical situations.”
The project experience taught Le about handling workload, working in a group, time management, how to promote and execute ideas, and more.
“Darsalam’s energy and attitude will bring her and the business more success in the future,” Le said. “‘Where Fragrance Becomes a Cultural Connection’ is one of my favorite Oud Al Salam mission statement sentences. This is the part I like the most about this start-up; it is not only about selling a product, but also the experiences and the cultural promotion.”
“It’s exciting when you see a student take an idea and make it into a reality, especially when it aligns with a passion of theirs,” MacMillan said. “It’s a way for Darsalam to blend her business skills with her cultural heritage and to bring something new and different to the market.”
The student team has provided crucial marketing research, surveys, product testing and pricing assistance, Amir said. Her friend Amalia Kaerezi ’25 helped design the logo. An entrepreneurship workshop with David Rhoa, visiting assistant professor of economics and business, has helped inspire and shape Oud Al Salam. Her chemistry knowledge and lab experience proved invaluable in the process of developing the fragrances. Even her religion major has played a role, as a summer 2023 trip to Chad in service of her Senior Integrated Project in the religion department offered an opportunity to learn from family, practice perfumery and purchase ingredients—musk stones, sandalwood and operculum onycha shells.
Other supplies, such as bottles and labels, have been purchased online.
“One of the main hurdles has been finding reliable vendors who understand and share my vision for designing unique and appealing product packages,” Amir said. “This process has taught me the value of persistence and the importance of building strong partnerships with suppliers who believe in the same aesthetic and quality standards that I uphold. Balancing my business with my other commitments both on and off campus has been another significant challenge.”
In addition to her three majors and her pharmacy job, Amir works in the College library and as a residential assistant for Trowbridge and Dewaters halls. She also serves as president of Kalama-Africa and as an active member of the diversity committee for Kalamazoo College Council of Student Representatives.
“Sometimes we walk behind Harmon past the K buses that say, ‘More in four,’” Amir said. “Whenever my friends see that, they’re like, ‘That’s you, Darsalam! They said more in four, you said more in a lifetime, and you’re doing it.’ That slogan speaks to me right now. I tried to get all the experience that I could in these four years.”
Amir plans to graduate in spring 2024 and take two gap years to develop Oud Al Salam before beginning medical school. She is looking into fellowships that could help her travel around Africa to learn more about the art of perfumes and incense.
Launching Oud Al Salam is just the beginning of the dream. Amir wants to explore sustainable and eco-friendly packaging, collaborations with local artisans, support for the communities where she sources ingredients, and classes for people interested in learning more about perfumery.
“I’m genuinely excited about the future of my company,” Amir said. “My primary goal is to see it thrive and reach new heights, with our scents becoming household names that people trust and love. I envision physical stores opening up across Michigan, offering our customers a tangible and immersive experience with our fragrances.
“My goal is not just to sell products but to create a brand that resonates with people on a deeper level and contributes positively to society.”
Amir said her fragrance company’s name is derived from the Arabic word for “comes from wood” as well as from her name.
BIGGBY Coffee Co-Founder and Co-CEO Mike McFall ’93 knows a thing or two about leadership. After growing his coffee franchise from one to 370 locations across 13 states, McFall understands that people are the most critical ingredient to any successful enterprise, and he’s ready to share his hard-won wisdom with students at Kalamazoo College.
The Department of Economics and Business will host an on-campus event with McFall at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 14, in the Olmsted Room at Mandelle Hall. All students, regardless of their major, are invited to attend to discuss leadership and progressive practices in business and the workplace.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics and Business David Rhoa said he’s had the honor of hosting McFall in his classes at least a half-dozen times with each encounter proving to be a new experience.
“I think our students find Mike such a compelling speaker because of his authenticity and honesty,” he said. “He shares his real-life experiences in a candid, sometimes even brutally honest manner. While many successful entrepreneurs tend to focus solely on their achievements, Mike fearlessly addresses the value of his failures, emphasizing their pivotal role in the journey to success.”
L. Lee Stryker Associate Professor of Business Management Amy MacMillan shares Rhoa’s enthusiasm.
“I feel tremendously grateful toward our alumni who share their time and expertise with our students,” she said. “We’re fortunate to have alumni—and community members—who support our courses in so many ways. But when Mike McFall, co-Founder and co-CEO of BIGGBY, comes to class, that turbo-charges the whole experience. By having made his big dreams a reality, he’ll help others to dream big, too, and believe in these dreams. By focusing not just on profits but also on people and purpose, he inspires others to do the same and to see what great business leaders can look like. He walks the walk, and while he does, he lays a footpath for others to follow.”
In 2019, McFall published his first book, Grind, which focuses on the commonsense strategies needed to turn a start-up idea into a positive-cash flow business. He recently released his second book, Grow: Take Your Business from Chaos to Calm, which addresses his experiences with leadership, a theme he expects to explore heavily with students.
BIGGBY Coffee Co-Founder and Co-CEO Mike McFall ’93 will visit Kalamazoo College to talk with students at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 14, in the Olmsted Room at Mandelle Hall. All students, regardless of their major, are invited to attend.
“As leaders, we need to understand the impact we have on others,” McFall said. “Business needs to go beyond what it has been historically, which is to try to get as much productivity for the least amount of money possible. We need to start emphasizing human-centric leadership and what goes into making that happen. I also like to focus on progressive thinking in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion, and things like biomimicry. It’s a little bit of a look into what’s coming or what leaders should be focused on in the next five to 10 years to become more effective leaders.”
As an alumnus of Kalamazoo College, McFall places high value on his liberal arts background.
“So much of what I’ve learned in the world was built off of the foundation I had at K,” McFall said. “I’ve said forever that a liberal arts education is the best training ground for an entrepreneur because you get a much more well-rounded education. As an entrepreneur, you need to fit into all kinds of different scenarios with different kinds of people. As you grow and build your company, you need to be comfortable with that and you need to be comfortable with change. That’s exactly what a liberal arts education provides. I look at some of the extraordinarily successful entrepreneurs that came out of my class and the years around me, and I think a lot of their success has to do with the structure and format of a liberal arts education.”
McFall’s business strategies have helped him and his co-founder, Robert Fish, build their franchise into the third-largest coffee franchise in the United States, according to Forbes, a fact that’s sure to resonate with students.
“I think it’s important for students to see the practical applications of their work and then learn from the experiences of alumni who are at different intervals removed from college,” McFall said. “Someone who graduated from K 30 years ago like me has a very different take than someone who graduated five years ago, but both takes are important. As alumni, that’s what we should be focused on in terms of our engagement with the student body. We should bring our perspectives and share the many different practical ways we use our education from K to move forward and build powerful lives.”
L. Lee Stryker Associate Professor of Business Management Amy MacMillan
Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College are embarking on an exciting new partnership that will allow students from both institutions to go outside the classroom to gain powerful experiences in leadership and business strategy by consulting with local companies on their business challenges.
Managed by Drs. Doug Lepisto and Derrick McIver, co-directors of Western’s Center for Principled Leadership and Business Strategy, and Amy MacMillan, L. Lee Stryker Associate Professor of Business Management for Kalamazoo College, the project will ask students to collaborate through an immersive consulting experience at Sleeping Giant Capital’s downtown office.
The partnership taps into the existing leadership and business strategy practicum course at WMU, which Lepisto co-teaches at the WMU Haworth College of Business, and integrates elements from the strategic marketing management course that MacMillan co-teaches at Kalamazoo College.
Both courses are structured so students work for the entire semester on a business issue for a company, in the same way that a management consulting firm would, exploring all possibilities and conducting research to generate the best solutions for the business.
Now, the two schools have joined forces to take things to an even higher level. There will be a total of six teams, and each team will have two student leaders and a group of student analysts from both schools. At the conclusion of the project, students will be prepared to lead, excel in project-based work and create value for small- and medium-sized businesses.
Doug Lepisto ’04
The client this semester is construction and development firm AVB, which has asked students to look at growth strategies for its future. Students from Western and Kalamazoo College will work on teams in a competitive process throughout the spring 2023 semester, where faculty members will provide feedback and decide which strategies best address AVB’s business question. At the end of the semester, the top teams will present to company leadership with a cash prize of $5,000 to be awarded to the winning team.
Along the way, students will be mentored by executives, who are WMU alumni, from management consulting firms including McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company and others.
From the beginning
The idea for this partnership first formed as Lepisto was watching a WMU football game and gazed across campus to see the Kalamazoo College stadium with a Hornets’ game taking place at the same time. Lepisto, who is a graduate of Kalamazoo College, kept thinking about that parallel and began exploring the ways in which both institutions were similar: a focus on experiential learning, a commitment to the Kalamazoo community and a passion for social good in any industry or career.
“Kalamazoo is an education city,” Lepisto says. “By connecting WMU, Kalamazoo College, Sleeping Giant Capital and local businesses, our goal is to offer an unrivaled experience that is transformative and drives widespread benefit.”
Lepisto’s concept for the collaboration soon led him to MacMillan, and after lots of brainstorming together, they created the partnership that is being piloted this semester and likely expanded in the future.
“Experiential education has long been a defining feature of Kalamazoo College,” says MacMillan. “As educators, we constantly need to innovate these experiences to meet student needs. This unique collaboration with WMU and Sleeping Giant Capital provides real-world experience that builds leaders ready to hit the ground running when they graduate.”
Students will be participating in a docuseries, providing an insider’s view of the project and what they are learning from the process and each other. Follow the story on Instagram.
About Kalamazoo College
Kalamazoo College, founded in 1833, is a nationally recognized residential liberal arts and sciences college located in Kalamazoo. The creator of the K-Plan, Kalamazoo College provides an individualized education that integrates rigorous academics with life-changing experiential learning opportunities. For more information, visit kzoo.edu.
About Western Michigan University
Western Michigan University prepares students from around the globe for a life well lived. In an environment focused on well-being and holistic success, students thrive academically, emotionally and physically and go on to pursue their purpose, prosper in meaningful careers and make an impact on society. Founded in 1903, Western offers nearly 250 academic programs to nearly 18,000 students pursuing degrees through the doctoral level. The University’s focus on well-being supports holistic success, empowering students to craft a life of meaning and fulfillment. Nine of 10 Broncos get jobs quickly in their field in jobs they like. Learn more at wmich.edu.
Annika Rigole ’04, visiting international program alumna Sharon Musee and Paloma Clohossey ‘11 are three with Kalamazoo College connections who all work about 8,000 miles from campus at UNICEF in Kenya.
At Kalamazoo College, international immersion and study abroad offers students opportunities to delve deep into other cultures. Along the way, they develop knowledge and skills that parlay into future careers and often form meaningful personal relationships with others around the world.
Such is the case for Paloma Clohossey ‘11, visiting international program alumna Sharon Musee and Annika Rigole ’04. Although each of them had a distinctive road in finding their way to Kalamazoo College, all three have succeeded in journeys that have taken them professionally to UNICEF in Kenya. It might seem amazing that three alumnae from a small liberal arts and sciences institution such as K all ended up at the same employer nearly 8,000 miles away. However, it makes sense that UNICEF is a desirable destination when one considers the College’s connections with foreign study and service learning.
UNICEF, originally called the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund in full, is now the United Nations Children’s Fund, an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide.
The organization was established in 1946 in the aftermath of World War II to help children and young people whose lives were at risk no matter what role their country had played in the war. In cooperation with governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector and others, UNICEF works to advance and protect children’s rights while providing health care, immunizations, nutrition, access to safe water and sanitation services, education, protection and emergency relief.
‘You’re the Best Female Student in Your Class’
Of the three with K connections, Musee is the only one originally from Kenya. She first attended the University of Nairobi when she began her higher education pursuits, a time that revealed her limited world experience, she said. She didn’t know there was such a thing as an exchange program that would allow her to study in the United States until she got a call from the university’s Registrar’s Office, requesting an appointment.
Musee was apprehensive about the meeting, yet her fears were soon quelled.
“It was within walking distance, so I walked over and they said, ‘do you know why we called you here?’” Musee said. “I said, ‘no, what did I do?’ They said, ‘Yes, you’ve done things, but they’re why we think you’re the best female student in your class.’”
Her recognition as an accomplished student meant Musee was empowered to attend college in the U.S. through an exchange program, and as luck would have it, the program brought her to K.
“I say it was lucky because it wasn’t something I was working for,” she said. “I was working hard to get good grades, but I was not expecting to go to K.”
Today, Musee is a partnerships and resources mobilizations officer who supports UNICEF in cultivating new public partnerships and managing its existing public partnerships.
“Being at K exposed me to a lot to multicultural settings, so I was meeting people that don’t have the same background as I do,” Musee said. “When I left K, I went back to the University of Nairobi, I graduated, and almost immediately got a job in the public sector. I kept traveling in the region. It was very easy for me to fit in if I went into Somalia or into South Sudan. If I went to speak to donors who would be people of a different race or a different culture of a different color, I would say it was very natural for me to fit in as opposed to before K. It came naturally for me as a result of K.”
‘They Immediately Bought My Plane Ticket for Me to Go Visit’
Clohossey, an English and psychology double major from California, first learned of K when her parents read about it in the book “Colleges That Change Lives” and encouraged her to visit as a result.
“When I say encouraged, I mean they immediately bought my plane ticket for me to go visit and I’m grateful to this day for all their support,” Clohossey said. “I thought there was no way I would go to college at a place called Kalamazoo. But as soon as I stepped foot on the campus, I remember having an intuitive feeling that it was going to be the place for me.”
Clohossey chose to study abroad in Africa and selected Kenya through a process of elimination. Her study abroad cohort’s visit at the University of Nairobi turned out to be when she would meet Musee—before Musee had ever arrived at K.
When Musee’s life path did curve toward K, the two became friends and they participated together in College Singers. In fact, Clohossey said their relationship makes them feel more like sisters and Musee agreed.
“We share a lot,” Musee said. “We go for random lunches. I know that if I need something quickly, I can reach out to Paloma offline—outside of the office or within the office—and I know that she’s got me. This is the sisterhood I feel knowing that we went to K.”
Clohossey says she splits her time between supporting regional program planning and regional knowledge management efforts for UNICEF.
“These functions involve things like supporting UNICEF’s annual work planning, monitoring and reporting, as well as ensuring that UNICEF is capturing, documenting, organizing and using knowledge to ensure we’re as effective as we can be as we pursue our goal of achieving results for children and protecting their rights,” Clohossey said.
The connections she has with colleagues like Musee is a big part of what makes the job special.
“Meeting again was like going back 10 years,” Clohossey said. “We were super happy to see each other.”
‘K Is Such a Special Place’
After her years as a mathematics and economics and business double major at K, Rigole—originally from Belgium and a Michigander since age 10—served in AmeriCorps where she helped nonprofits and government agencies in the southeastern U.S. alongside a team of about 10 people.
In starting her career, she embraced a passion for nurturing education. Through work with an international educational exchange organization, then grad school at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and subsequent work with NGOs in Malawi and Zambia, she helped improve access to quality education and skill-building opportunities, particularly for young girls.
“Education has always meant so much to me because I love learning and it has been so formative in my life,” Rigole said. “It was important to me that I could help others have similar opportunities.”
When she looked for a career shift toward the end of her time in Zambia, she found UNICEF. Rigole worked with UNICEF in New York for two years as a consultant strengthening monitoring, evaluation and research in education before applying for her position at the regional office in Kenya.
“As a regional office, we provide technical support to our country offices,” Rigole said. “In particular, I focus on strengthening data systems within education, and the use of data to inform decision making. It’s about having data and research speak to policy, for example so governments can better understand the differences between districts or provinces and how they’re doing in terms of equity and quality, or can learn from how some schools perform better than others.”
Rigole didn’t know Clohossey or Musee when she started at UNICEF, but that changed at a July 4 holiday barbecue.
“I didn’t know that many people yet, but I’d been invited by another colleague of ours,” Rigole said. “I was introduced to Paloma and she said she was from California. I said I was from Michigan. She said, ‘Oh, I went to college in Michigan.’ I said, ‘Oh, cool! Where?’ She said, ‘It’s a small liberal arts school.’ I said, ‘What’s the name?’ She said, ‘Kalamazoo College.’ I said, ‘I went to Kalamazoo College!’”
Rigole doesn’t work with Musee very often, although Clohossey has introduced them since. However, working with Clohossey has been special for Rigole since the moment they met.
“Immediately it felt good to have something in common with her,” Rigole said. “It’s not quite like family, but it gives you this bond because K is such a special place and shared experience.”
Assistant Professor of Economics Darshana Udayanganie is one of the faculty members examining whether national attempts at combined trade and environmental policies might provide a key strategy in fighting climate change.
Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics Patrik Hultberg is one of the faculty members examining whether national attempts at combined trade and environmental policies might provide a key strategy in fighting climate change.
With much of the world debating how to reverse climate change during a sweltering summer, two Kalamazoo College faculty members are examining whether national attempts at combined trade and environmental policies might provide a key strategy.
The analysis by Patrik Hultberg, K’s Edward and Virginia Van Dalson Professor of Economics; and Darshana Udayanganie, a K assistant professor of economics, will be published soon in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy. Among their findings, it will note that Europe and the U.S. are talking about adopting border-adjustment taxes by 2026, targeted toward influencing foreign countries’ carbon emissions.
Hultberg and Udayanganie suggest those taxes could be options because the world’s environmental-policy deals—such as the Paris Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol and the Montreal Protocol—seem to have shortcomings.
“The best thing would be for countries to work together and come up with those international agreements,” Hultberg said. “But countries have an incentive to violate those agreements. One might think, if other countries change their behavior, maybe I don’t have to change mine. In addition, environmental-policy authority does not reach into foreign countries.”
As a result, Udayanganie said one alternative to environmental policies would be to calculate the amount of carbon content a good’s production creates to add a tax, imposed on the producing nation, that thereby increases the product’s global price, incentivizing actions that benefit the environment. That’s the idea behind Europe and the U.S. exploring border-adjustment taxes.
“When we just use stricter environmental policies, some of these firms could simply go to another country,” she said. “That means the pollution being created is not going to be reduced; it will just be produced somewhere else. Such border-adjustment taxes might encourage nations to adjust their environmental policies to avoid the environmental taxes from us.”
However, one consequence from such a plan could be wealthier nations taking advantage of developing nations by placing the most policy hardship on the developing nations.
“Europe and the U.S. are trying to tell a story that we’re trying to do this, not because it’s good for us, but because we want to save the global climate, while telling other countries, ‘You need to change your behavior to help us do that,’” Hultberg said. “A developing country might look at that border-tax adjustment and say, ‘You are doing something to make us worse off while benefiting your own consumers and producers.’ It is true that by changing the international price, we are making ourselves better off at the expense of producers who might be in developing countries.”
Therefore, a strategy that combines environmental and economic action, could provide the best option in fighting climate change. Such a combination, Udayanganie said, could force firms to clean up the environment in one country or stop relocating and produce where they are. The thought leadership behind these ideas could go a long way in stopping concepts such as carbon leakage, which is the relocation of emissions from regulating countries to countries with weaker or no environmental regulation.
The Model as a Teaching Tool
The work of Hultberg and Udayanganie may prove beneficial to students completing Senior Integrated Projects at K and in the College’s environmental economics and international trade courses, not to mention at other institutions. “One of the comments we got from reviewers mentioned that he could use models like these to teach students how to combine these policies and implement their own,” Udayanganie said. “That way we could convince environmental policy agencies, or the people who work them, to educate themselves on how to use those policies.”
“The problem we have in most of economic literature is that the models used are so abstract and so mathematically challenging that we can’t really use them at the undergraduate level, both in terms of economics and in mathematics,” Hultberg added. “One goal we had with this paper was to use the model that we teach in intermediate microeconomics, for example, a core course for our majors. That’s why Darshana and I are able to use these ideas in our courses.”
The publication date for their article has yet to be determined. Yet this was not the first project on which Hultberg and Udayanganie have combined their efforts, and don’t expect it to be their last.
“It motivates me to work with Patrik,” Udayanganie said. “We both like microeconomics and mathematical models, so it helped us to work together.”
“It’s more fun to work together,” Hultberg added. “The other people I work with are all around the world and we often work on things like educational policy, and when COVID hit, it took me away from what I really want to work on, which is international trade. This was a real opportunity for me to do the economics I enjoy doing.”
Anne Schechinger ’10 leads a team of three at Environmental Working Group, where she serves as a leading national expert on agricultural conservation and how it affects the climate crisis.
A Kalamazoo College alumna is hoping you’ll think about where your food comes from this Thursday, April 7, which serves as World Health Day.
Anne Schechinger ’10 was recently promoted to Midwest director at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit organization that specializes in research and advocacy in agricultural subsidies, toxic chemicals, drinking-water pollutants and consumer products. EWG’s annual Dirty Dozen list describes pesticides that have been associated with adverse health impacts including some that have been restricted in certain countries; its databases allow consumers to look up what chemicals are in their cleaning products, personal care and beauty supplies, food and specific region’s drinking water; and its quick tips allow consumers to learn about reducing their climate footprint through what they eat.
Within that, Schechinger—an economics major in her time at K—explores agriculture’s impact on the environment while analyzing how government policies could reduce agricultural pollution. She leads a team of three while serving as a leading national expert on farm subsidies, nitrate pollution in tap water, toxic algae blooms, and federal policies related to agricultural conservation and how they affect the climate crisis among other topics. She regularly is a subject-matter expert for the news media, interviewing with outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, NPR, Bloomberg and the Guardian.
“At EWG, I work with a lot of smart, knowledgeable people and we’re tasked with becoming experts on new things every year,” Schechinger said. “K has helped instill that love of lifelong learning in me, which has helped my career. A liberal arts education has helped me think critically, and a big part of my job is to come up with unique solutions to problems.”
World Health Day, established by the World Health Organization (WHO), features a different focus each year. This year, it’s the growing climate crisis, making Schechinger’s expertise especially relatable.
“World Health Day is important because it brings public health to the forefront of our minds and the climate crisis should be a part of that thinking,” she said.
WHO estimates that more than 13 million deaths around the world each year are attributable to avoidable environmental causes. Plus, the climate crisis is the single biggest health threat facing humanity as more than 90 percent of all people breathe unhealthful air thanks largely to the burning of fossil fuels. Agriculture is responsible for at least 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., Schechinger said, and the federal government’s current Farm Bill isn’t doing enough to help farmers reduce their impact on the environment.
“There are agricultural conservation programs within the current Farm Bill that pay farmers to do certain things that we hope would be good for the environment and public health,” she said. “But many of them are structural practices like animal waste lagoons for concentrated animal feeding operations. We’re really focusing in this next Farm Bill on getting more funding to the conservation practices that actually help the environment and help farmers mitigate and adapt to climate change.”
WHO says breaking cycles of destruction for the planet and human health requires legislative action, corporate reform and individuals to be supported and incentivized to make healthful choices. Schechinger wants to be a part of that as an agricultural expert in her career and wants you to think about how these policies affect your daily life.
“Agriculture affects everyone, even if you don’t live next to a farmer’s field,” Schechinger said. “I did a report last year about nitrates in drinking water, and with how watersheds work, you can live pretty far from agriculture and still have agricultural contaminants in your drinking water. We found that Los Angeles, San Francisco and major cities across the U.S. have nitrates in their drinking water from agriculture because it’s easy for pollution to get into a river or stream, and then flow many miles downstream into your drinking water. We need to be reminded of these issues because I think we can get bogged down in what we hear just with how much greenhouse gas emissions are growing. But at the end of the day, climate change affects people. It affects all of us. It affects our health and our lives.”
