Student Profile: Frank Ladonne

For Lake Forest MBA student Frank Ladonne, the financial accounting course he took from Dr. Marian Powers was “the toughest course I’ve ever taken at LFGSM.” Trained as an engineer, Ladonne found accounting concepts “foreign and difficult,” until one recent day when his accounting perseverance paid big dividends for him at work.

Recalls Ladonne, “I am heading a major global project for my company, and as part of the project had recommended, after careful due diligence, that we sign a significantly large contract with a service provider. One day I was asked, with very little lead time, to defend the recommendation to one of our senior vice presidents after someone in my company e-mailed our chief legal officer claiming that the service provider was going out of business.

“Thanks to the accounting training I received in Dr. Powers’ class, particularly her use of real company examples, I was able to quickly address the e-mailer’s flawed financial thinking. I created a financial analysis that convinced our management to proceed with my original recommendation. I demonstrated that the company was not in financial trouble but rather was realizing staggering growth by executing a very sound strategy. I supplemented my case by noting the company’s numerous Fortune 500 clients and its classification as a ‘strong buy’ by almost all major investment houses.

“I impressed my management and kept the project on track. Thank you, Dr. Powers, for helping me master a challenging subject. Lake Forest really is a place where you use tomorrow what you’ve learned today.”