From left: A. Hoffman, president of the Medill Alumni Club, Mike Oxman, event leader for Medill, John Tomaszewski ’98, president of KACC, and Lucy Cimino at a joint event between Kellogg and Medill at Ravinia on Aug. 5

Chicago

Fellow Alumni,

The Kellogg Alumni Club of Chicago has been quite active in the last year with 35 events held for local alumni! This couldn’t have been accomplished without a strong board and group of volunteers. Thank you!

I encourage you to visit our Web site to see what we have been up to as well as what is planned for the next months. I look forward to seeing you at our future events. Here’s a taste of some of the events held this summer.

Career Session 2003: The professional development committee held its annual career information session. More than 175 alumni came out to hear career experts discuss current trends and strategies in career searching. Specific topics were: résumé pitfalls to avoid; what executive search firms don’t tell you; learning how to effectively showcase your talents; discovering needed contacts; uncovering career opportunities and finding out who is hiring.

Author Series: More than 175 Kellogg and Law School alumni registered for the professional development author series. Jim Camp talked about his latest book, Start With NO…The Negotiating Tools That the Pros Don’t Want You to Know. He explained a system of decision-based negotiation so you will never again be out there on a wing and a prayer. Never again will you feel out of control. Never again will you compromise unnecessarily. Never again will you lose a negotiation.

For years now, Camp says, win-win has been considered the paradigm for business negotiation the “fair” way for all concerned. But don’t believe it. Today, win-win is just the seductive mantra used by the toughest negotiators to get the other side to compromise unnecessarily, early and often.

Win-win plays to your emotions; it takes advantage of your instinct and desire to “make the deal.” Start With No, Camp says, teaches you to understand and control these emotions, how to ignore the siren call of the final result, which you can’t really control, and how to focus instead on the activities and behavior that you can and must control to negotiate with the pros.

Book Club: The Kellogg Alumni Club of Chicago has been very involved in a great discussion of Good to Great by Jim Collins. The next book we will discuss is Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. It has been on the WSJ Bestseller list for months.

Ravinina Outing: The social committee of the Kellogg Alumni Club of Chicago and the Medill Alumni Club of Chicago are proud to have held a summer outing at the Ravinia Festival. More than 100 Kellogg and Medill alumni enjoyed the great summer weather and listened to Peter Frampton and special guests, The Elms, on Aug. 5. A great time was had by all.

TGIF: The social committee held the last summer TGIF for alumni on Sept. 12 at the Plaza Club, a private club on the top floor of the Prudential Building with a great view of Chicago.

Lucy Cimino ’90 (far right),event leader and chair of the KACC Social Committee and Book Clubs, and Joe Dondalski ’84, chair of the technology committee (next to Lucy), at TGIF at the Plaza Club atop the Prudential Building

The social committee has done a great job of keeping this venerable tradition of TGIF alive so alumni can catch up with our old classmates and make new friends. If you have not been to one of these Chicago Alumni TGIFs, it’s just like the old Kellogg days. You just show up at the end of your long work week for drinks with friends. Let’s have a great time with our fellow Kellogg alums and make the Chicago Kellogg alumni group the most connected alumni group in the world.

Chicago Cares Serve-A-Thon: The community relations committee participated in the biannual event, in which alumni had a chance to give back to the Chicago community through volunteering while renewing alumni ties.
Chicago Cubs Outing: The athletic committee held a Cubs outing on June 24, to see the Cubs play Milwaukee at Wrigley Field. A good time was had by all!

Remember that by signing up for email forwarding you will get exciting notices of the on-goings of the Kellogg Alumni Club of Chicago. To establish your email forwarding, please visit the website. Additionally, if you are not receiving our monthly KACC Newsletter, I encourage you to send a note to director@kacc.org requesting to be put on the KACC distribution list.