What do Smith alumnus Dennis Cinelli and alumna Jamie Lee have in common? Both graduated from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business in 2005; both went to work for GE upon graduation; both joined the company’s Corporate Audit Staff; and both were awarded the company’s most prestigious award for young professionals in 2011: the Chairman’s Circle Award. “It’s an honor to win this award,” Cinelli said. “Everyone eligible for the award is doing great work and working really hard, so it was a good surprise.”

 

Albert (Al) P. Carey was named chief executive officer of PepsiCo Americas Beverages, a unit of PepsiCo. Carey received his B.S. from the University of Maryland in 1974 and is a former member of the Dean’s Advisory Council at the Robert H. Smith School of Business and also a former member of the University of Maryland College Park, Inc. Foundation Board of Trustees. Carey is scheduled to speak at the popular CEO@Smith Speaker Series on Nov. 15. Carey assumed this role in Sept.

Recent alumni of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business Christos Marafatsos and Kosta Dionisopoulous launchedDelta Produce in 2009 with a strategic detailed approach to penetrate and innovate in the perishable food industry – a sector valued at over $2 billion in the Washington, D.C., metro area alone. Delta Produce was selected byBusinessWeek as one of 25 promising companies started by young entrepreneurs under 25. They need our help to win this contest. Voting ends Oct. 20.

Five successful University of Maryland alumni joined on February 24, 2011 at the Robert H. Smith School of Business to impart secrets of success to aspiring student entrepreneurs at an event co-sponsored by the school’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship and Office of Career Services. The panelists included:

Gary Swart ’83, CEO of oDesk, made the cover of Inc. magazine in November. Swart and oDesk were featured as part of the magazine’s story on the “demand economy” and entrepreneurs who are providing services and goods to various niche markets.

Smith alumnus Bob Johnson, Chief Service Officer of Sprint Nextel and pioneer of the wireless industry, helped his company turn around its customer satisfaction ratings by focusing on solving customers' issues on the very first phone call, according to a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal.

Dominic Crapuchettes, MBA ’04, bet his future on North Star Games, a board game company he created in 2004 with Satish Pillalamarri, MBA ’04. Now you can find his games — Wits & Wagers, Say Anything and Cluzzle — in your neighborhood retail stores. He's won numerous awards in the past six years and he's nominated for "Rising Star Inventor of the Year" in the Third Annual Toy and Game Inventor Awards, presented by the Chicago Toy and Game Group and sponsored by Hasbro. His competition is movie star Daryl Hannah, and he needs our support! The deadline for voting was Wednesday, Nov.

Times Square is famous for many things: It’s the location of one of the most recognized New Year’s Eve celebrations in the world; it’s the site of the historic Times Square kiss in 1945; and it’s home to Times Square Studios, from which ABC’s Good Morning America airs each day. Times Square will also be remembered by many alumni from the Robert H. Smith School of Business as the spot of the Smith Alumni Club of New York launch event that was two years in the making.

The White House recently appointed Smith School Advisory Board member Frank F. Islam to the board of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the country’s official export-credit agency. He was also named to the Industry Trade Advisory Committee on Small and Minority Business, a four-year Department of Commerce appointment.