Joey Benadretti, SYSPRO USA President, Honored as “UCI Mentor of the Year”
Benadretti Named Along with Christen Chambers, Vice President, Digital Media, Fox Networks Group
COSTA MESA, Calif. (June 05, 2013) – SYSPRO, a developer of best-of-breed, award-winning enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for on-premise and cloud-based utilization, today announced that Joey Benadretti, SYSPRO USA President, has been honored as “Mentor of the Year,” by the Paul Merage School of Business and the Center for Global Leadership at the University of California, Irvine. In the 2013 Financial Times Global MBA rankings, UC Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business ranked 9th overall in the U.S. among public universities and 5th in the U.S. for employment upon graduation (at 94 percent).
Benadretti and Christen Chambers, Vice President of Digital Media for the Fox Networks Group, were selected from a group of more than 125 mentors who gave of their time and business acumen to advise and encourage over 170 MBA students over the course of an academic school year.
In his acceptance speech, Benadretti discussed why he felt the UCI Mentorship Program was so important for both the mentor and the protege:
- The ability to give back to the community;
- Investment in future generations;
- Encourage innovative thought leadership while providing meaningful vision and focus for future job selection;
- Mentorship programs inspire global leadership.
Benadretti also stated that he takes special pride in the MBA student whom he mentored for two successive semesters, Karl Riesen, an Engineering Manager employed by Western Digital. In wishing his “protege” success, Benadretti noted that Karl is a high caliber individual with huge capabilities and potential for growth and is exceptionally open to direction and new ideas. “In a more general context, I feel mentoring is always a ‘two-way street’ and a stage that facilitates the development of lasting friendships. At the same time, mentoring helps each student clarify what is important, focus on clear communication and articulation, encourage and establish a vision, structure ideas and develop attainable goals. Many of the proteges in the Mentoring Program are students who earn high grades and excel academically. It has been both a rewarding and powerful experience to see my protege deal with situations both in and outside the work place. In fact, it has become an inspiring collaboration that has had a lasting impact on me as well,” Benadretti notes.
In accepting his award from Dr. Jone Pearce, Dean’s Professor of Leadership and Director of the Center of Global Leadership and Anna Liza Garcia, Associate Director of the Center for Global Leadership at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business, Benadretti quoted Albert Einstein, indicating that the verbiage of the great sage should be a guiding principle of everyone in business: “I want to do something great and wonderful, but I must start by doing the little things like they are great and wonderful.”
Benadretti also noted how he applies mentoring principles in his position as SYSPRO USA President. “Mentoring is coaching,” he said, “and the SYSPRO strategy is to build coaches within the company, thereby extending the combined SYSPRO expertise to help customers achieve outstanding results from the utilization of our SYSPRO ERP software.”
About SYSPRO
SYSPRO is one of the longest standing and largest independent, international providers of ERP systems for mid-market manufacturers and distributors worldwide. SYSPRO has for more than 30 years delivered on its promise to provide thousands of its customers globally with
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Source: SYSPRO