BLUE GENES
Mark Birkett (MBA2) and parents William and Barbara Birkett (both MBA, 1970)
Dale Leslie, Alumni Relations
Issue date: 3/10/03 Section: UMBS Alumni
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This love story bloomed in the classrooms of Davidson Hall. Bill and Barb Birkett's romance blossomed in the late 1960s while both pursued their MBAs in the Business School. You might say they gazed into each other's eyes with an occasional glance at a Statistics textbook.
One romantic, starry night at the Lord Fox Restaurant east of Ann Arbor, Bill popped the question. Barb accepted and in the most recent chapter of this wonderful story, their son Mark is planning his graduation from U-M as a second year MBA student.
And in the Birkett family tradition of togetherness, Bill and Barb have a combined 50-year career at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York, culminating in Bill's retirement this June. Barb will remain as an Associate Professor on the school's faculty.
Mark Birkett graduated Cum Laude from Villanova University in 1996 with a degree in Business Administration and with five semesters invested in the College of Engineering. He was selected for Raytheon's Financial Leadership Development Program, a two-year rotational program of exposure to a variety of accounting, finance and management functions.
"One of my most rewarding experiences was working with senior management to prepare due diligence analyses for divestiture of a
$2 billion division of the company," Mark recalls.
In September, 2000, he moved to the Boston area to become a part of Raytheon's efforts to install the enterprise resource planning software SAP. As a configuration analyst, Mark led a team responsible for the implementation of the system's Treasury Module. He spent the next year conducting needs assessment for Corporate Treasury and helped the company's smooth transition from the legacy systems to SAP.
Mark is True Blue dating from his memorable childhood trips to the Michigan football games with his dad. His dresser-drawers are stuffed with Michigan imprinted clothing, none of which he says he will ever throw away. "I remember the car I drove in high school had a U-M Business School decal in the window," he noted as an example of foreshadowing.
And from the "Why parents get gray" department: in March 1998, over the course of 36 hours, he drove from Philadelphia to Atlanta and back (800 miles each way) to see Michigan compete in the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
Last summer, Mark served as a Summer Associate at Goldman, Sachs and Company in New York City. The three-month association provided invaluable experience in mergers and strategic advisory planning. "I performed a capital structure evaluation for a $20 billion auto retailing company. It was an amazing experience."
Mark has entrepreneurial roots thanks to two family-operated businesses associated with the printing industry. His dad's enrollment in the Business School was an offshoot from a Ford Parts Catalog contract he won for his own plate-making company. Later, with wife Barb, Bill started a printing-related, typesetting company called Emergency Graphic Services.
"When I graduated from the U-M in 1970, I accepted a position in the Purchasing Department and then moved to University Printing Services on North Campus. Later, I served as Manager of Printing Services for the Institute of Social Research. We published over 100 book titles that were authored on campus," Bill noted.
He moved from the middle management position at ISR to a professorship at RIT in the School of Printing Management and Sciences.
Bill recalls, "When I started out in printing, old Gutenberg himself would have felt right at home. By the time I left the industry, it was heavily digitized and computerized. The printing of the large volume runs have remained conventional but the preparation of printing plates is almost totally digital."
Barb, an English major in college, entered the Business School after two years of teaching. When she arrived at Michigan, there were only six women in her class. After earning her MBA, she held administrative positions with Michigan Bell Telephone Company, once serving an area of Northern Michigan that included the Upper Peninsula. When Bill landed his job at RIT, they moved to Rochester and she eventually taught financial controls at RIT and became a tenured professor. She teaches Economics of Production Management, Financial Controls and Estimating and is also a CPA.
RIT is a regional University with enrollment of 12,000 fulltime students. It began as the Rochester Athenaeum in 1829 and evolved into a teaching institution funded heavily by the manufacturers in Rochester (Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, Xerox) who were interested in a well-trained workforce. RIT sits on a 1,300-acre campus and has a renowned Cooperative Education Program. After a 15-year teaching career, Bill was appointed by the Dean as the Associate Director of the School. He will be retiring in June after a 29-year career and plans to continue to serve as an author, lecturer and general ambassador for the University.
Mark is continuing the Birkett tradition of attending the University of Michigan. His grandmother graduated in 1918 Phi Beta Kappa and his aunt earned Michigan undergraduate and graduate degrees. His dad has two older sons and a daughter-in-law who are Michigan alumni and a granddaughter attending there.
Mark's plans after graduation include moving to Chicago in mid-July to work for GE Merchant Banking Group whose clients are private equity firms. He will miss his friends from the Business School, especially the fellow members of Section Four.
To summarize his time at the Business School, Mark talked about a personal experience this summer. "While a Summer Associate at Goldman, Sachs and Company in New York City, I worked with students from other business schools. There was no comparison between their academic experience and the breadth of my business preparation at the University of Michigan Business School. I feel very fortunate to have spent time in Ann Arbor to earn an MBA from the University of Michigan."
One romantic, starry night at the Lord Fox Restaurant east of Ann Arbor, Bill popped the question. Barb accepted and in the most recent chapter of this wonderful story, their son Mark is planning his graduation from U-M as a second year MBA student.
And in the Birkett family tradition of togetherness, Bill and Barb have a combined 50-year career at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York, culminating in Bill's retirement this June. Barb will remain as an Associate Professor on the school's faculty.
Mark Birkett graduated Cum Laude from Villanova University in 1996 with a degree in Business Administration and with five semesters invested in the College of Engineering. He was selected for Raytheon's Financial Leadership Development Program, a two-year rotational program of exposure to a variety of accounting, finance and management functions.
"One of my most rewarding experiences was working with senior management to prepare due diligence analyses for divestiture of a
$2 billion division of the company," Mark recalls.
In September, 2000, he moved to the Boston area to become a part of Raytheon's efforts to install the enterprise resource planning software SAP. As a configuration analyst, Mark led a team responsible for the implementation of the system's Treasury Module. He spent the next year conducting needs assessment for Corporate Treasury and helped the company's smooth transition from the legacy systems to SAP.
Mark is True Blue dating from his memorable childhood trips to the Michigan football games with his dad. His dresser-drawers are stuffed with Michigan imprinted clothing, none of which he says he will ever throw away. "I remember the car I drove in high school had a U-M Business School decal in the window," he noted as an example of foreshadowing.
And from the "Why parents get gray" department: in March 1998, over the course of 36 hours, he drove from Philadelphia to Atlanta and back (800 miles each way) to see Michigan compete in the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
Last summer, Mark served as a Summer Associate at Goldman, Sachs and Company in New York City. The three-month association provided invaluable experience in mergers and strategic advisory planning. "I performed a capital structure evaluation for a $20 billion auto retailing company. It was an amazing experience."
Mark has entrepreneurial roots thanks to two family-operated businesses associated with the printing industry. His dad's enrollment in the Business School was an offshoot from a Ford Parts Catalog contract he won for his own plate-making company. Later, with wife Barb, Bill started a printing-related, typesetting company called Emergency Graphic Services.
"When I graduated from the U-M in 1970, I accepted a position in the Purchasing Department and then moved to University Printing Services on North Campus. Later, I served as Manager of Printing Services for the Institute of Social Research. We published over 100 book titles that were authored on campus," Bill noted.
He moved from the middle management position at ISR to a professorship at RIT in the School of Printing Management and Sciences.
Bill recalls, "When I started out in printing, old Gutenberg himself would have felt right at home. By the time I left the industry, it was heavily digitized and computerized. The printing of the large volume runs have remained conventional but the preparation of printing plates is almost totally digital."
Barb, an English major in college, entered the Business School after two years of teaching. When she arrived at Michigan, there were only six women in her class. After earning her MBA, she held administrative positions with Michigan Bell Telephone Company, once serving an area of Northern Michigan that included the Upper Peninsula. When Bill landed his job at RIT, they moved to Rochester and she eventually taught financial controls at RIT and became a tenured professor. She teaches Economics of Production Management, Financial Controls and Estimating and is also a CPA.
RIT is a regional University with enrollment of 12,000 fulltime students. It began as the Rochester Athenaeum in 1829 and evolved into a teaching institution funded heavily by the manufacturers in Rochester (Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, Xerox) who were interested in a well-trained workforce. RIT sits on a 1,300-acre campus and has a renowned Cooperative Education Program. After a 15-year teaching career, Bill was appointed by the Dean as the Associate Director of the School. He will be retiring in June after a 29-year career and plans to continue to serve as an author, lecturer and general ambassador for the University.
Mark is continuing the Birkett tradition of attending the University of Michigan. His grandmother graduated in 1918 Phi Beta Kappa and his aunt earned Michigan undergraduate and graduate degrees. His dad has two older sons and a daughter-in-law who are Michigan alumni and a granddaughter attending there.
Mark's plans after graduation include moving to Chicago in mid-July to work for GE Merchant Banking Group whose clients are private equity firms. He will miss his friends from the Business School, especially the fellow members of Section Four.
To summarize his time at the Business School, Mark talked about a personal experience this summer. "While a Summer Associate at Goldman, Sachs and Company in New York City, I worked with students from other business schools. There was no comparison between their academic experience and the breadth of my business preparation at the University of Michigan Business School. I feel very fortunate to have spent time in Ann Arbor to earn an MBA from the University of Michigan."
