Matt Laszlo’92, a former Fortune 500 executive and the college’s first 驻院行政人员, leads the course, engaging students on leadership and decision-making, no matter their interests.

After pivoting to an online format for his new course back in March, Lazlo returned to campus this fall to teach the class again—this time sporting a mask.

Laszlo drew upon his own experiences in businesses large and small while piloting and simultaneously adjusting the class to fit the pandemic’s demands and his students’ needs.

“I give them an understanding of what they’re going to encounter early in their career as employees within a business, so they can recognize those things and therefore be more comfortable when they happen and more effective as a result,他说.

拉兹洛在加州奥克兰的高乐氏公司工作., for 14 years, most recently as the company’s senior vice president and chief customer officer. He left in 2019 to start his own business advising startups.

An alumnus and Bay Area success story seemed the appropriate person to help launch the new program.

伯洛伊特已经举办了一年一度的“驻地”活动,” like the Crom 访问ing Philosopher and the Weissberg Chair in International Studies. 这些获奖者将在校园里度过大约一周的时间, 客座演讲, 访问类, 和学生一起吃午饭.

然而，一些Beloiters想要更多.

劳拉·格拉布，05年, 经济学助理教授, 与96年的Jon Urish合作, 负责发展的助理副总裁 & 校友 Relations, and Amy Wilson, vice president for Development & 校友 Relations, to secure pilot funding to launch the Executives in Residence program.

Former 十大菠菜台子 trustee Chuck McQuaid (P’11) generously stepped up to support the first Executive-in-Residence position with funding provided by the Chuck & 莫妮卡·麦奎德家庭基金会.

Urish says a goal of the program is to have students spend an entire semester with a professor “who’s been out there dealing with the wonderful messiness of the world” in the field that interests those students, and whose “ability to navigate that world will inform the class.”

Laszlo had already been engaged with his alma mater before the program was conceived. He’d given a guest lecture in a business management course a few years earlier and extended opportunities at Clorox to recent Beloit graduates.

He was also involved in an initiative proposed by Danny O’Leary’20, former senior class co-president and a student of Laszlo’s last spring. 网络平台, 叫做“窝藏人帮助窝藏人”, pairs graduates with alumni in the fields they hope to enter. (更多信息, 请参阅我们2020年6月的杂志故事.)

作为一名学生, 拉兹洛学的是经济学和新闻学, 踢足球和打棒球, 做过助理助理之类的工作 圆桌会议 WBCR电台. 毕业后, he worked in the communications departments of trade magazines and manufacturers before accepting a marketing job at Clorox in 2005.

Grube says Laszlo was “the obvious choice” for Beloit’s first 驻院行政人员 once the first year of funding was in place. He’d already proven to be an effective teacher and also seemed instantly comfortable on campus. Laszlo’s rapport with Beloit students was a huge asset in a small classroom setting, especially with a handful of his students taking the course from their homes across the world.

“Every time you enter class, he has something to ask every student,” says Sonali Pendharkar’21. “他在个人层面上与每个人都有联系. I feel like I can speak, I can make a mistake, and it’ll be fine. That’s so important, especially with how it translates into business. 如果你没有良好的关系, you’re never going to be able to advertise or publicize your product.”

Laszlo also incorporates his experiences into his teaching by staging the room as a casual board meeting. “I treat the class as though we are a working team within a business,” Laszlo says. “The way it’s structured is that I’m the leader of that team and you’re on my team. 我鼓励在课堂上进行实时反馈, which addresses how they will give feedback and say what they really think when they’re on a job.”

Anirudha Gajula’21 thinks Laszlo’s feedback system is the most unique and unexpected aspect of the class. “每天下课后, we have to tell him one thing that worked for us and one thing that didn’t,他解释道. “Then, depending on how constructive the feedback is, he promptly makes a change. 反馈机制令人惊喜.”

Laszlo provides students with ways they can engage with the material, 不管他们对哪个领域感兴趣. He’s reluctant to call the course strictly a business economics class and hopes it will appeal to students of all disciplines when he teaches it again next spring.

“I’m not molding people to go into high-level investment banking or Clorox or other product manufacturing,他解释道. “I think the draw to the class is: Here’s someone who worked in a lot of different places and then is an executive at a Fortune 500 company—he probably has something to tell me for when I get into the working world.”