 For most people, the idea of facing their insecurities head on and choosing to love themselves anyways seems easier said than done. But for Babson senior Wes Woodson, it’s just another day at the office. During his sophomore year at Babson, Wes decided not only to confront his biggest insecurity, but to actually leverage it in a unique way. After writing an article detailing his lifelong battle with vitiligo, a skin condition that causes noticeable skin discoloration, he shifted his attention to his newest streetwear venture - thehidden. Once Wes published the article to Facebook and shared it on Instagram, it quickly spread around not only Babson’s campus, but beyond.
thehidden is Wes’s unique streetwear line that encourages its wearers to love themselves for who they truly are, rather than letting their insecurities and imperfections remain “hidden”. Throughout the brand’s two-year run, Wes has worked with dozens of students on campus to spread his message and promote his clothing. Fast forward now, 2 years after Wes’s viral Facebook post, and seldom a day goes by on Babson’s campus where you don’t see one of Wes’s wildly popular signature hoodies. To stir the pot even more, you can always find Wes heading from class to class in a prototype of a piece from his upcoming release. Still to this day Wes says that people tell him that his story inspired them to love themselves, which only fuels his fire even more. As Wes heads into the last semester of his Babson career, he’s working daily to establish a unique direction for thehidden and map out his battle plan to grow the brand. “I think that for a while I was overthinking and doubting myself a little bit, but I know that I can create one of the biggest brands in streetwear,” Wes reflects. Heading into 2020, Wes is working on his next few upcoming releases and working to grow his brand. Overall, Wes’s idea holds a unique spot in Babson’s entrepreneurial landscape. By leveraging one of his own weaknesses, Wes has found a unique strength: uniting people by teaching them not only to love themselves, but each other as well.
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 Professor Rich Hanna has always had a passion for marketing and advertising, and if you’ve ever taken one of his classes you know how deep his knowledge goes on the subject. Professor Hanna started his career in PR after college, but soon transitioned into B2B sales. Dr. Hanna found himself thriving in sales because of his natural salesmanship skills and wide knowledge of the tech products he was selling at the time. After several years in sales, he decided to go back to school for his doctorate (i.e., study more marketing and advertising) at Boston University, and after graduation got his first academic job to teaching at Boston College.
“It was similar to switching from the Red Sox to the Yankees” he joked when I asked him about the transition. After a few years at BC, he then got his next teaching gig at Northeastern, where he stayed for 6 years. Dr. Hanna had always had an underlying desire to teach digital marketing as it became more prevalent, and he finally got his chance 5 years ago when he started teaching at Babson. These days, he’s devoting his time and energy into revamping Babson’s “Marketing Communications” class. The revamped course will be called “Social Media and Advertising Strategy”, and will focus equally on the human behavior side of advertising as well as teaching students about today’s most prevalent platforms. In addition to digital marketing, Dr. Hanna is also teaching the introductory sales course, which allows him to leverage his sales experience to provide students the skills needed to be successful in business development. Dr. Hanna will be recognized very soon for his 5 years of service to Babson, and is looking forward to many more years of teaching our students about the world of marketing and advertising!  This semester Babson’s Service Marketing Class, taught by Professor Hill, has agreed to take on what could be one of the most challenging projects we’ve seen to date. The class will be working on a marketing consulting project for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Today’s art organizations are struggling with attracting Gen Z consumers so Professor Hill’s Service Marketing Class is taking on the challenge of creating a marketing plan for attracting this market. Students will conduct research on Gen Z, visit the museum to identify pain points, and propose service innovations that will garner excitement in a younger generation.
The students are currently just getting underway with this project, but the question remains: will they be able to pull it off? With all of the excitement surrounding the project, the Babson marketing community is looking forward to seeing the results of the project at the end of the semester! Professor Bravo's Marketing Management students who created marketing plans to launch a campaign to help foster children for their client, Friends of Children, Inc.   Wonderful SME event with impressive guest speakers Kristin Greene from Untold Brewing, Sasha Hartman from Shark Ninja, and Andrew Darcy from Broadway in Boston, along with faculty Sandy Bravo, Anjali Bal and Conwell Worthington.
Professor Bravo's Marketing Management Class Takes On A Huge Project for Friends of The Children3/24/2019 Things have been heating up over the last few weeks in Professor Sandy Bravo’s Marketing Management Class. Students have been presented with a challenge unlike any other they’ve faced in their academic careers -- they must build a marketing campaign from scratch for the non-profit, Friends of Children (https://friendsofchildreninc.org/). The goal: to bring awareness of the plight of children in foster care.  Students who arrived early to class were immediately confused by what they saw. Professor Bravo had placed a single trash bag on the desk of each student. As students trickled in, they became curious what the trash bags had to do with that day’s class. Professor Bravo presented a stunning visualization of just how serious the issue of the foster care system in our country is.
She explained that a trash bag was the one singular thing that remained constant in the life of a foster child. As the child moved from home to home over many years, the trash bag contained all the child’s belongings and was the one constant in their lives. Inspired by the need to help these kids, the Marketing Management students are competing in teams to present campaigns to the client, Jane Lyons, Executive Director of Friends of Children. The winning team’s campaign will be implemented on social media and endeavor to teach the nation about the plight of foster care children For Rick O’Connor (MBA ‘87), marketing is all about adding value to the end consumer. Once he discovered marketing could be used to improve the lives of others and affect a positive change in the world, he never looked back. Currently, he is the Chief Marketing Officer at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and part of the team brought in to transform the company and evolve the New England health care market. He has traveled an interesting path to get to where he is today.
Rick was a psychology major at Tufts University, but he had no idea he’d end up in marketing. Before leaving his job as a counselor in the mental health field, he spoke with some family friends and connections about what they were doing as he tried to determine his career interests. He spoke with small business owners, marketers/advertisers, accountants, and more. Through many conversations Rick saw many parallels between his education and work in psychology and the world of marketing. Thus, he decided to forego his PHD in psychology and obtain an MBA at Babson. Then he spent a decade in CPG. Recently, after several years at Aetna and then CVS Health, he was lured to Harvard Pilgrim in 2016. His main goal is to bridge the gap between healthcare and today’s technology. “The healthcare sector wasn’t built on technology. We’re not as flexible and adaptable as companies that were, but that does not change our customers’ expectations” he said. “Our challenge is to create a technology-based customer experience on par with industries like banking. …especially today when everybody does everything from their phones.” Today, he’s part of the team driving the digital strategy to take advantage of emerging technologies like blockchain and CRM systems, while making the experience for end users more simple and effective.  Professor Gary Ottley started his career at Babson College as an MBA student on a Fulbright Scholarship. After graduating from Babson and spending some time working in Marketing Consulting, Professor Ottley came back to Babson to come and teach Brand Management at the MBA level. After about 5 years teaching exclusively MBA classes, he transitioned into teaching some of the core marketing classes at Babson’s undergrad level. Since then, he’s been a staple in Babson’s Marketing Division and uses his passion for teaching to deliver engaging lectures in both the undergraduate and graduate level marketing courses. Professor Ottley loves to spend his free time taking photographs, reading for fun, and hanging at home with his wife and kids.
The Babson Marketing Division has been giving students in all sections the chance to dive into real world issues and projects to be solved with modern marketing tactics. One such example of this has been taking place quietly in Professor Sandy Bravo’s Marketing Management elective for upperclassmen. Marketing Management’s primary focus is in overall marketing strategy and mobilizing that strategy using the most up-to-date marketing tools and practices. Once the skills are built and reinforced, students are then given real world issues to work with. The class encompasses everything from personal branding, to communication/ presentation skills, to client management. This semester, the class is tackling a real world problem that hits pretty close to home -- increasing the number of BABSON WOMEN RUGBY PLAYERS. The coach of the team has quite a tough job to do simply with coaching, and was looking for an innovative and entrepreneurial way to recruit new members into the program for next year. By the end of the semester, groups of marketing students will turn in a turnkey marketing plan and make a presentation to the client, who will determine the “winner.” According to one student, “This is the best project ever!” Stay tuned to see which group wins!  Dr. Krista Hill Cummings joined Babson College in the fall of 2016. Her research focuses on communication between service providers and consumers. More specifically, she has studied how providers should apologize to consumers after a service failure and has argued for the importance of understanding the emotional state of the consumer and responding appropriately. Dr. Hill Cummings has applied this to many different provider relationships including CEO-consumer, front-line employee-consumer, and doctor-patient. She is also interested in the importance of nonverbal behaviors and gender during the communication process. Dr. Hill Cummings teaches several courses at Babson including Marketing Foundations, Consumer Behavior, and Marketing Research. When she isn’t teaching or doing research, she enjoys travelling, watching massive amounts of Netflix, attending plays and comedy shows, and visiting doughnut shops all over the Northeast in search of the perfect doughnut.
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