Today’s guest on the OneHaas Alumni Podcast is D’Juan Wilcher, the Deputy Director of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and a 2022 graduate of the executive MBA program at Haas.

D’Juan comes from a military family with deep roots in Gary, Indiana. After getting his bachelor’s degree at Indiana University, he decided to join the Navy as an officer. Over the course of his 14 years in the military, D’Juan learned the importance of putting service at the center of all of his work.

D’Juan sits down with host Sean Li to chat about his time in the military, including the culture shock he felt arriving in Japan and his experience joining as an officer. They also discuss his decision to get an MBA at Haas and the impactful work the Bush Center does for veterans.

*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

On his family’s values around education

I also grew up in a home that was full of love, not full of very much money, not full of very much access. But my mother, she was definitely one who was big on education. She showed it when she was in school and she told us to lean into it the same way. I'm an advocate of public education for that reason. Every school that I've attended from the beginning all the way through Haas has been a public institution. Most of the time that has been by deliberate choice.

On earning the respect of his subordinates as a Naval officer

The way that I earn respect from them is from showing up every day. This was the most instructive period of my professional career, was that you show up. That's half the battle, right? Because some people don't. They just mail it in. That was the first way to earn their respect. Two, know my damn job. Take it seriously. I am new, so when they came to me, they expected to see my nose in a book. They expected to see me asking questions, being curious. Figuring it out so that I can get better to be a better leader for them.

On his decision to go to Haas

I'm looking down the road, and I can see the water, and I'm like, this is a done deal. This is a beautiful school, beautiful campus. Then I go to the classes, like, yeah, I like this approach. I went with my classmates. We had drinks and dinner afterwards. It's like, this is a done deal. I started my application and that's the end of that story. I never looked back at any other school. I didn't apply. This was my target school and I got in.

On some of the work the Bush Center is doing for veterans

We recognize that part of the reason why people don't get to mental health care is because it can be difficult to navigate. So we've thought of creating an easy button whereby we have essentially a concierge service to do an intake. We have all these clinicians and veterans service organizations to help identify whatever supports you might need and we connect you for free. Your services that they get are for free and this year we've been able to reach 2,000 people.

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The OneHaas alumni podcast is back for its seventh season and it’s kicking off with a special guest — Fernando Lopez, Sales Director at Conviva.

Originally from Mexico City, Fernando moved to the U.S. during the first dot com boom as a software developer and engineer. But the idea of building a business has always run deep in Fernando’s family. After falling in love with the San Francisco area, he decided to pursue his MBA at Haas where he found his passion for sales.

Fernando and host Sean Li chat about the art of sales, his experiences at tech giants like IBM and HP, why sales has historically been undertaught in business schools and how Fernando is working to change that.

*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

The origin of his passion for engineering and building things

“I was told stories about me having like one of those musical boxes next to my crib and I would reach out and take it and start disassembling it and like trying to figure out how it worked. And I've always, still to this day, I like building things and like figuring out how they work.”

His advice for facing rejection in sales

“You can look at it from a mathematical point of view, right? Let's say your conversion rate on reaching out to people is 5%, right? That means you need to make 100 calls to get five people to engage with you. When you're going through them, you're going to get 95 rejections. You might as well just go through them. And don't take it personally, right? Like people are not rejecting you because of you. They're rejecting you because maybe they're busy.

Maybe they don't need what you're offering.”

One of the important lessons he’s learned in his career

“Many times, it is not about trying to convince someone what you say or so on…It's about asking the right question. And the same thing applies to leadership in many ways, right? Like, when you're trying to lead a team and you're giving them the answer, you're like, ‘Oh, this is how you should do it. Let me try to convince you this is the way.’ You're not as effective as when you ask the right questions and they figure it out. So to me, that’s really important in sales, in leadership, in life in general, right? Like trying to figure out not what's the right answer. Yeah, share that answer. What's the right question? So that whoever you're working with can figure out what's the right answer for them.”

The critical role of sales in business

“Not a lot of people go into sales right after business school. But I was sharing this with someone recently, eventually you do end up in sales. Like if you go into consulting and you make it to partner, you're in sales now. You know what I mean? If you make it to the C suite, like if you're the CEO, you're in sales.”

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• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
• Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman

On this episode of OneHaas, hear from alumna Sahar Kleinman – a global strategy and operational excellence executive at Amazon Advertising.

Sahar, a first generation American, grew up in New York after her parents emigrated from Iran to further their education. The time she spent watching her mom work in finance on Wall Street and help run her uncle’s photo business had a significant impact on Sahar’s career path.

She and host Sean Li chat about Sahar’s experience moving from brick and mortar to the e-commerce world, the importance of taking risks, and how Haas provided her with her own personal board of directors.

*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

How her family’s photo business shaped her early on

“That was the first of my hard lessons to be learned as a child, to really learn what it takes to drive a business. And I'm talking about all the tasks that you can think of and having to earn my way to that spot where I could actually start working on developing photos for customers…and it started with grabbing that Windex bottle and wiping the windows outside of the studio. And really learning really early on that it takes hard work to get to where you want to go.”

Why it feels like she gained a personal board of directors from Haas

“There's something about putting yourself in a room with a bunch of strangers who all of a sudden over time become family… And you get to know people and you share your stories, and you have this unbiased group of people who are just looking to help you unblock yourself oftentimes. And so maybe during the program things would come up that were work related and then you find yourself just having these go-to individuals that really help you think things through and hold you accountable to the things that you think of doing for yourself and the things that you haven't even thought of doing for yourself and for others.”

What keeps her engaged and motivated to stay connected to the Haas network

“I want to be able to create that same feeling of being in school and back in the program, even though we're not in the program anymore. I always want to feel that optimism that I felt in the classroom, that not only can I do anything and lead through anything and be anything, but I want others to feel the same thing. And so I want to create these opportunities in the forum for people to stay connected and be able to share what they've been thinking about that's inspiring to them and, you know, have a sandbox of network members to collaborate with to nurture and debate those kinds of thoughts.”

On what’s next for Sahar

“I'm just always out there thirsting for the next big challenge. Ideally, I want to share my knowledge and help lead the next generation to solve big problems and make a big impact. And even better if those next generation leaders come from Haas.”

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