BGSU alumni arrange memorable visit to Hewlett-Packard for study abroad students in Spain

BGSU professor Dr. Man Zhang connects with former student Zach Hunnell ’14 during Global Entrepreneurship Study Abroad Program in Barcelona.

As he browsed his news feed earlier this summer, Bowling Green State University alumnus Zach Hunnell ’14 did a double take.

Living in Barcelona, Spain, as a global logistics business manager at technology giant Hewlett-Packard, Hunnell’s often Spain-centric feed showed a group of students holding a distinctive orange flag.

In the back row was Dr. Man Zhang, a professor of international business in the Schmidthorst College of Business, whose class Hunnell had taken as an undergraduate.

“It’s not very often in my Barcelona news that I see students with a BGSU flag,” Hunnell said. “I commented on the College of Business page and let them know that I’m a BGSU alum living and working in Barcelona if there was anything I could do to help or make their trip a little bit more exciting.”

Word trickled back to Zhang that Hunnell had reached out, and within a day, the two were in contact about organizing an experience for the BGSU students in the Global Entrepreneurship Study Abroad Program.

Jessica Hoffman Kipp ’03, a fellow BGSU graduate who is HP’s senior vice president, global head of supply chain markets and logistics, also happened to be in Barcelona during the time of the students’ visit.

Within the span of an afternoon, the two BGSU alumni had sprung into action to organize a full HP Barcelona campus visit with speakers to give students a crash course on how the company operates across the world.

“Zach came back probably four or five hours after we spoke and let us know he and Jessica had arranged a company visit with five speakers lined up,” Zhang said. “I was thinking, ‘Wow, this can’t be true.’ We were so excited.”

Within 48 hours, the group of BGSU students studying abroad in Spain was learning from C-suite executives at a Fortune 500 company.

“By the time that Friday rolled around, we had a full-blown site tour planned where they got to meet some of our executives and see what we’re up to at HP,” Hunnell said. “It was so cool that we were able to work something out.”

The chance to learn from two BGSU alumni in the very field they are studying was an invaluable experience for the students, Zhang said. During the visit, students had the opportunity to see how global entrepreneurship and innovation contribute to HP's success.

“The speakers stayed for two hours on a Friday afternoon to give us a comprehensive tour of HP’s business, and I think our students were so impressed by what they saw and heard,” Zhang said. “They got to see what international business or global strategy — the things they learn in class — looks like.

“We were very proud that BGSU alumni played such an important role at this international company that they helped arrange this visit on such short notice for us.”

The chance to give back to students who were in the same position he was a decade ago was a special experience for Hunnell, a native of Mansfield, Ohio, whose BGSU degree opened the door for a career in international business.

A decade after graduating, Hunnell said he’s still applying things he learned at BGSU into practice for a major international corporation.

“It’s really every day,” Hunnell said. “I majored in supply chain management and logistics, and now I work for the global supply chain organization of HP, and more specifically in their logistics function. I apply a lot of the concepts and theories I learned at BGSU every day in real life.”