Ben & Jerry's

I hope all of you like Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

The first time I heard about his ice cream brand was not in a super market or in a restaurant, but actually in a Financial Restructuring class that I took during my undergraduate degree at Universidade Nova in Lisbon. The case analyzed the acquisition of Ben & Jerry's by Unilever.


Around that time, Jeronimo Martins/Unilever started selling Ben & Jerry's ice-cream in Portugal, and I had the chance of trying them. The concept of the ice-cream is really interesting and fun: Ben & Jerry's has a strong social mission and sells "fun" ice creams with creative flavor combinations. Among best sellers are Cherry Garcia, Chocolate Therapy, Mission to Marzipan, Chunky Monkey and Yes Pecan (a reference to Obama's "Yes we can" slogan). There is even a "Flavor Graveyard" for ice-cream flavors that have been discontinued (Economic Crunch and Peanut Butter & Jelly rest in peace there).

This week, Jerry Greenfield (the Jerry from Ben & Jerry's) came to Columbia Business School to talk about the history of Ben & Jerry's, its social mission and the acquisition by Unilever (he seemed sad about the sale of the company to Unilever)

Jerry Greenfield at Columbia Business School

Easter in Canada

Like last Christmas, this Easter I decided to go to Canada and spend the weekend there with my family. This time my parents, grandparents and brother and sister-in-law, also joined us.
It was nice to see my father and grandparents again after 8 months! Yeah....a long time.

My grandfather celebrated his 80th birthday there! What a milestone...

Besides eating a lot, I also went on a plane ride over Toronto with my cousin, who is a pilot.


All the family around the table. It's where we spent most of the weekend.

Enjoying the sunset with Tio Rui, in Tia Mila's backyard.

The birthday boy celebrating his 80th birthday. The marks and bruises on his face are from a fight with a bear.

Grandma with the two oldest grandsons

Aerial view of Toronto

My cousin Nuno flying the plane over Toronto

Joao and Diana in the backseat of the plane



Movie of us going to the plane, with a very appropriate Top Gun's song in the background.



Landing in Burlington airport, after flying over Toronto

More interesting people

Some months ago I wrote a posting about some people in my MBA class that have non-traditional backgrounds, or that have done something very interesting and not usual in their careers.

Today I will post about two more people.

The first one is John Wolff.
John is part of the accelerated MBA program, and just started it last January. He was in the cluster that I was Peer Advising (organizing their orientation week).
John was a baseball player for the New York Mets.



The second person is Garen Thomas.
Garen has worked as an editor for children's books for many years, and is part of the MBA class that started in September (the same time I started).
Garen is the author of two books: Santa's Kwanzaa, and more recently a biography of Barack Obama entitled "Yes We Can".