Tag Archives: traveling

Doing Business in Brazil – Day 2

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Hannah Johnson

Bom Dia! I’m in Sao Paulo, Brazil for a class trip this week. While here, we’re doing some market research for a company as well as visiting local businesses. The class is called “Doing Business in Brazil” and is led by Prof. Mark Cohen.

On the 2nd day, we visited . It’s a cosmetics company, similar to Avon. They gave us an extensive tour of the manufacturing facilites.

Here are some photo highlights:

Rob Havens (our token first year) in the warehouse.

Rob Havens (our token first year) in the warehouse.

Me on a cardboard couch.

Fun facts:

6000 employees work at the Cajamar facility where we visited.

They offer daycare on site as well as a medical center, a tailor, and cafeteria. (The best part of  the visit was to the nursery!)

Employees need only pay $10 a month for breakfast and lunch.

Their slogan, Bem Estar Bem, means well being well.

Natura focuses on hiring a diverse group of individuals. They have a large population of the hearing impaired working in the warehouse. As a result, many of the employees speak sign language in order to communicate with everyone.

Natura uses novellas (soap operas) to advertise with product placement.

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Why International Networking is Essential

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Taylor Forman

Taylor Forman is a first year MBA student at the Owen Graduate School of Management. He comes to Vanderbilt from California where he worked in international human resources for an engineering company after graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill.

When I arrived at the Abu Dhabi airport a little before midnight on a Monday, I collected my luggage and walked outside to find a taxi. I only know two Arabic words so when I handed the driver the address and he looked confused, I had little recourse other than to simply point at it again. And then, after he asked me a question in Arabic, I responded with “shukran” (which means “thank you”) and again resorted to the pointing tactic. We started driving toward the city and I thought how massive and well lit and familiar it seemed, and as we passed grandiose mosques in the distance, how foreign it was. When we arrived at my new home for the next eight months, a large apartment building rising skyward in the midst of multiple similar buildings, I paid the driver, grabbed all my belongings and he sped away.

Abu Dhabi cityscape

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