 Dr.
Betsy Gelb 
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Dear Dr. Gelb, I have never forgotten the semester I spent sitting in your classroom
and the note of encouragement you gave to me at the end of the
session. It has been nearly 22 years now, and the note, written
in pencil, has faded a bit, but the course was #4368 – Industrial
Marketing in the fall 1982 semester. I want you to know I’ve dragged this note out a number of times throughout my career, and it has made an impact. You made an impact. Of the eight years I spent attending college, I can honestly say (and often do) that those 18 weeks I spent under your instruction were the most influential of them all. As a teacher, your encouragement meant a great deal to me. While attending the U of H, I worked as a Project Coordinator for National Supply Company, a division of Armco Steel. National was the largest manufacturer of drilling equipment in the world. My job was a textbook industrial marketing job: I coordinated the construction and delivery of complete drilling rig packages to oilfield drilling contractors. In those days, salesmen were out taking orders for $10 million drilling rigs 10 at a time. They would drop the orders into my lap, and I’d oversee the work of purchasing agents, expediters, quotation writers, rig-up yard management, and traffic specialists who would buy the various equipment, deliver it to the construction (rig-up) yard, build the project, tear it down, ship it out to the contractor, invoice, and collect. It was great while it lasted. I remember in the fall of 1982, I had approximately 300 rigs on backorder, scheduled to be constructed over the next four years. By March 1983, they had all been cancelled. The bottom fell out that fast. I went to work for Bridas Energy, the second largest (and privately owned) oil company in Argentina. Bridas was engaged in an oil and gas joint venture with the government of Turkmenistan. Based in Houston, my role was to support the Turkmenistan operations with anything and everything they needed. We bought and delivered everything from toilet paper to heavy road building equipment. If the rig, located in the desert of Turkmenistan, needed something urgently, the quickest way to get it there was to buy a plane ticket and hand-carry it over. My oversized luggage bill on one trip totaled nearly $5,000. I was carrying six drill bits for the rig. In 1995, I began my current career with Compaq Computer Corporation, which merged with Hewlett-Packard several years ago. I’m again at a “real’ marketing job, holding the title for the last four years of Product Marketing Manager in the Business PC organization within the Hewlett-Packard Personal Systems Group. Specifically, I am the product manager for a line of commercial PCs targeted at the entry-level market segment. "My daily life could be a case study found in the textbook we used in 4368 Industrial Marketing!"I’m back in the coordinator role, working with engineers, supply chain specialists, and worldwide sales organizations to develop and bring to market a competitive PC for the intended target market segment. I get involved in everything from deciding what color the thing is to be, what specific features it will have, what it will cost us, what it will cost the customer, where and how it will be manufactured, etc. I write a great deal, and develop presentations, documents and other deliverables utilized by numerous internal organizations. I have to pitch ideas and plans to management on a regular basis, occasionally participate in interviews with the media, and visit with customers, channel partners, and manufacturing partners. The really amazing thing is that after 22 years, my daily life could be a case study found in the textbook we used in #4368-Industrial Marketing! I’ve been very fortunate to travel the world as part of my work. Every time I donate blood, I have to recount the foreign countries I’ve visited: Russia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, England, Scotland, Germany, Poland, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, and the Peoples Republic of China. So, there you have it: my life since college summed up in one email. Thank you for the part you played in it. I can only imagine how many people you have influenced over the past 22 years. Greg Morris,
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