Pathways to Business Success
As a business looks for areas in which to expand, it considers the best options to reach its goals, its competitors and the company’s vision, as well as other challenges. These are exactly the kind of issues currently facing New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson.
In response, a group of students from Rider University’s College of Business Administration have less than a month to study these issues and then compile analytical case-study presentations for Kathy Fitzpatrick, the vice president of finance leadership development at Johnson & Johnson. And if they can impress the Rider alumna, they might just parlay that into an internship with the company, the most comprehensive and broadly based manufacturer of healthcare products in the world.
It’s all part of a new mentoring program at Rider called Pathways, where nine students from the College of Business Administration will have the chance to discover traditional and non-traditional routes into the fields of accounting, economics and finance.
The program, designed for second-semester sophomores and first-semester juniors, will feature at least two participating organizations per semester. Each organization will visit the Lawrenceville campus twice to give a company presentation and challenge students to present an analysis of a case study. Johnson & Johnson gave a company presentation on Tuesday, April 1, and Lehman Brothers, a global investment bank, will visit the campus on Tuesday, April 15. Students in the Pathways program will also have a chance to job-shadow at the organizations participating in the program.
During the first visit, Fitzpatrick, who earned a bachelor’s degree in Accounting in 1987, gave an overview of Johnson & Johnson, including its strategic principles, business structure, performance results, as well as co-op/internship and training opportunities, before presenting students with a case study. Students are currently working in teams of three to put together an analysis of the case study, which they will present to Fitzpatrick on April 24.
Dr. Steven J. Lorenzet, associate dean of the CBA, instructed the students to present their cases in a clear and concise presentation, which is exactly what they’ll be doing in the business world.
“She’s your client right now,” Lorenzet advised the students during Fitzpatrick’s first visit.
Pathways is a selective program designed to give some of the college’s best and brightest students exposure to the world’s top organizations, Lorenzet explained. Each student was judged on his or her GPA, which had to be 3.5 or higher, résumé and faculty evaluation.
The students selected were Nicole Addesso, a junior Accounting major; Michael Colonel, a sophomore Accounting major; Marianne Conville, a sophomore Accounting major; George Helock, a sophomore Accounting and Finance dual major; Rose Indoe, a sophomore Accounting and Finance dual major; Erin Mulryne, a sophomore Accounting major; Lauren O’Hara, a sophomore Accounting major; Lisa Pinckney, a junior Accounting and Psychology major; and Tomasz Jarosz, a sophomore Finance major.
Lorenzet said the program will give employers a chance to get to know the students before they apply for internships and co-ops as juniors and seniors. At the end of the program students will have a chance to submit their résumés to the participating organizations.
The representatives from Lehman Brothers will be Rider alumnus Jim Drake, senior vice president in the Investment Banking Division Business Planning & Strategy Group, and Mary-Jo Capko, vice president of finance. American International Group, Inc. (AIG), a world leader in insurance and financial services, will participate in the program for the fall 2008 semester.
The College of Business Administration also announced that five students in the college were recently offered positions in the U.S. Finance Summer Analyst Program at Lehman Brothers.
The students who will be working at Lehman Brothers this summer are Rebecca Brauer, Matthew Cardia, Colin Jennings, and Joseph Seaton, all junior Finance majors; and Anthony Parillo, a junior Accounting major.
Last year, four CBA students worked at Lehman Brothers during the summer, all of whom were extended full-time offers.
