Chris Jensen, EMBA '05, believes HR management requires business acumen

A funny thing happened after Christopher L. Jensen earned his MBA degree from Baylor in May 2005. With his newly enriched level of understanding about business strategy, analytics and management, he no longer felt driven by the competitive pressures that previously molded his 20-year career.

He now feels more at ease in his surroundings, and more confident in his own judgment and capabilities. The Baylor MBA degree helped Jensen find his groove, and was instrumental in helping him secure his latest promotion this past June to director of Human Resources for the Networking and Communication Systems Group at Freescale Semiconductor Inc. He no longer feels compelled to engage in the title chase.

"I'm not sure I'd want to go anywhere else. Since I obtained my MBA degree, I have become less title-driven than I was," Jensen said. "I've become much more focused on stewardship of my team than on the direction of my personal agenda." Jensen had reached the executive level with two Fortune 500 companies even before enrolling in the MBA program. "The MBA gave me the right credentials to maintain that level."

Freescale Semiconductor is a privately held company that designs and manufactures embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial, networking and wireless markets. It originally was a subsidiary of Motorola, but was established as a stand-alone company in July 2004. With sales of $6.4 billion in 2006, Austin-based Freescale is one of the world's largest semiconductor companies.

Jensen said that Baylor's Executive MBA curriculum enabled his transition from his prior post as senior human resources manager in Freestyle's Worldwide Die Manufacturing division, also based in Austin. His new position requires a much broader perspective than his previous role. Rather than merely fulfilling staffing demands to meet production schedules, Jensen is now concentrating on what he defines as the "talent and culture" aspects of business operation.

"I'm now involved much more with end-to-end business encompassing all of the core functions, from design and R&D to direct interface with customers," Jensen explained. "I evaluate whether or not the right talent is where it needs to be, what type of talent the company should be attracting, and how to assist managers in creating the best type of work culture. I also am responsible for determining the kinds of cultural adjustments we should be doing for operations in Israel, and how those might differ from those for Romania--and how to identify and place managers who have sensitivity to the needs of each region."

Jensen credits the MBA finance classes for helping prepare him for the transition to more global responsibility.

"The finance classes instilled a broad understanding of how firms make decisions related to cash and investments, based on evaluation of likely short-term and potential long-term returns," Jensen said. The economic principles that Baylor's Executive MBA courses covered contribute to his understanding of the dynamics of foreign markets, which he translates analytically into projections for workforce demands for overseas operations.

Analytics have appealed to Jensen ever since his undergraduate college days. He initially studied sales and marketing at San José State University in California, but said he found it less exciting than he had envisioned. His father, Jan, was in HR at Data General and other companies. So Jensen transferred to the University of San Francisco, where he majored in organizational behavior. That held stronger appeal for Jensen because of its underlying scientific foundation.

For the first eight years of his career, Chris Jensen was a compensation specialist for Tandem Computers Inc. in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1994 he landed his first executive position, as human resources manager with Durham School Services in Austin. Two years later, he joined Applied Materials Inc. as senior human resources manager and advanced through two promotions in seven years to the position of senior human resources director.

By 2002, he recognized that he needed to develop a broader business management perspective.

"In order to participate in a room full of business executives, I needed to be able to express the HR implications that would derive from proposals under discussion," Jensen said. "You might ordinarily expect an HR person to get a master's in organizational development. But in order to develop business-sensitive talent and culture initiatives, I needed greater strength in business acumen rather than in the technical side of HR. I realized that as an HR professional, I always could hire people with organizational development expertise as it was needed."

Ever the analyst, Jensen chose Baylor's EMBA program only after conducting his own audits.

"I went through the exploratory process, sitting in on summer class sessions at Baylor as well as the University of Texas. At UT I sensed the competition between students for grades, but at Baylor the environment was one of camaraderie, which sat a lot better with me. You could hear the difference in the dialogs, and you could see the difference in the behaviors of the students."

The camaraderie that he perceived loomed large in his success in the EMBA program.

Shown in the photo (L-R) are Bill Townsend, Doug Andrews, Dean Yeck, Chris Jensen and Matt Rogers. When Jensen's EMBA class journeyed to Milan, Italy, to meet with business executives, he and his study group members visited the magnificent Duomo di Milano (Milan Cathedral).

"The five people in our MBA study group helped each other through the program, and the strong bond we developed has carried forward as each of us has advanced in our careers. The influence of those guys on my life has been huge," Jensen said. This small group of colleagues has continued their friendship and support of each other, meeting every Friday at 6 a.m. for breakfast.

To better accommodate his studies, he left Applied Materials and became operations manager of Harder Consulting Inc., a finance and accounting recruitment firm in Austin. He hooked up with Freescale in early 2005, during his last semester in the EMBA program.

Jensen has since returned to Baylor, as a guest lecturer in HR management classes in Dallas and Austin. He discusses theoretical and practical aspects of training and development, compensation and benefits, performance management, and recruitment and selection. Beyond the curriculum, he offers advice to day students.

"Get ready to step into a world of constant change, far different from the labor market that your parents have known," he tells them. "Remain flexible, and embrace continuing development."

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