After a successful weekend volunteering at Big Bash, the Junior Innovation Consultants
working at the Business Immersion Program this summer had the opportunity to have dinner
with alumni Ben Grisemer. Grisemer graduated from Wabash in ‘88, he was a brother of Sigma
Chi, the swim team, and the Sphinx Club. After getting his master’s in business administration
from Northwestern University, Grisemer started a successful career where he climbed the ranks
at GE Aviation. After enjoying our meal and comparing stories about Wabash, Ben opened up about the one accident at GE Aviation experienced while he was there. In 2018, an engine failed on a Southwest flight, resulting in one passenger’s death. The team of engineers knew that all engines on Southwest planes had to be checked. To keep the business profitable, Southwest could not stop all flights. Therefore, the team had to develop a plan where they could identify what engines were top priorities to check. Clearly, the team did not develop a strong enough plan which resulted in a fatality. There was not enough communication between the engineers and the
airline which resulted in the flight being allowed to take off. When hearing the story, I was reminded of the Challenger case study that we reviewed with alumni Ron Dostal ‘92 earlier in the program. The main takeaway from the case study was a clear lack of communication between a team as well as pushing a project to be done prematurely lead to failure.

The importance of communication has been repeated by almost every alumn that has spent time at BIP so far this summer. Clifton Strengths defines communication as “People exceptionally talented in the Communication theme generally find it easy to put their thoughts into words. They are good conversationalists and presenters”. Although it sounds basic, every successful businessman/woman and entrepreneur values communication skills. Outside of Dostal and
Grisemer, Sam Stewart ‘19 highlighted the importance of being honest and communicating with yourself when creating personal goals. Furthermore, Cassie Hagan and Brian Biddle spent a morning emphasizing the importance of personal branding and communicating what type of worker/student/person you want to present yourself as on LinkedIn. I want to thank Cassie Hagan and Brian Biddle for setting up countless great learning experiences this summer. I would also like to thank Ben Grisemer as well as every other alumni we have met with for taking time out of their days to spend time with the program. Lastly, I would like to thank Dean Jones for the
pictures!

Drew Rathbun ‘26