Thursday, June 02, 2016
Professor Monica Sharif, from the College of Business Management program, in collaboration with Citibank added an innovative Reverse Mentoring Program as part of the MBA curriculum. Professor Sharif and the Citibank team interviewed many candidates and three SF State CoB MBA students, Caelin Boman, Time Toy, and Leo Yang were selected to participate in the semester long project for course credit. The students had the opportunity to be paired with Citi Senior Leaders in Commercial Banking such as Thierry Jenar who is Group Head of Citi’s Middle-Market Technology Banking, Brian Hepburn, Division Manager, Northern California, and Lisa Deloney, Managing Director & Division Manager, Southern California. Throughout the semesters, students learned about not only the responsibilities of Citi’s Senior Leaders, but also the challenges they face. Citi leaders wanted to learn more about Millennials consumer behavior and the technologies they use and tasked our students with researching questions such as:
How do Millennials learn about bank?
What do millennials expect from their bank?
What are banks not doing for millennials?
What do millennials think of Citi and what can Citi do for them that Citi isn’t already doing?
Based on those questions, and after extensive secondary research and surveys, Caelin, Tim, and Leo executed an hour-long presentation to ten Citi Senior Leaders and three SF State faculty members at the Citigroup Center located at One Sansome Street in San Francisco and received a standing ovation from the audience.