BALDO KNOWS BUSINESS

Dr. Carlos Baldo has been named as the interim Head of the Business Department. Baldo is outgoing and very knowledgeable about the inner workings of business which stems from his work as an accountant for many years. 

Baldo has had an unconventional yet determined path to where he is now, starting even into his childhood.

Baldo was born in the United States but frequently moved due to his father’s military service. He spent most of his life in Venezuela but also lived in France for a couple years.

Baldo originally worked in banking after he completed his undergraduate in business administration in Venezuela. Dr. Baldo landed a gig as a loan underwriter during his senior year and had to work full time at a bank while he took night classes, an early sign of Baldo’s determination and work ethic.

From there, Baldo transitioned to business development where he sold financial products. He then got an offer from one of his clients to run a purchasing office in Miami. Baldo accepted and found himself traveling back and forth from Venezuela to Miami every 45 days for the job. 

He eventually worked his way up as a treasurer for that organization while also earning his MBA from Lynn University in Florida. He also spent a brief amount of time in Spain where he received a scholarship to study a semester course there.

Unfortunately, the company for which Dr. Baldo fell through, and he was forced to find another job. He bounced around in the paper, online, entertainment and cleaning industries before ultimately landing as an accountant at Royal Philips.

His time there was also short-lived however, as his former employer, a paper company, offered him a position as a controller which is usually awarded to the person with the highest level of accounting knowledge and good leadership skills. Baldo initially refused, but they incentivized him by offering shares of the company. 

He would work for the company for two years before competing views on how to run the company led to Baldo wanting to split once more. Instead of finding yet another accounting job, Baldo had his eyes set on higher education.

“That was [in] 2009. So at that point, I was kind of sick of the private sector. I applied to programs mostly in Europe, because I already had a degree in Venezuela, and I have my MBA from Lynn University. I wanted to do something different,” Baldo said. “I fell in love [with Spain] back in 2005 so when the opportunity came, I shot my application to Spain,”.

However, Baldo was initially rejected from that program. Undeterred, Baldo then applied for a similar program which was located in Seville, Spain. The doctoral program offered opportunities for a scholarship due to his Latin American heritage. He started his doctoral courses there in southern Spain. 

Spain and most other European countries require graduate students to study abroad in a country with a different language, however. Baldo called on his longtime mentor, Miguel, who worked as a professor at Clarion University in Pennsylvania to see if he would write a letter of recommendation to partner with Baldo for research. 

Miguel accepted Bardo’s offer and they worked together for three months before the school offered a teaching position to Baldo. 

“They said ‘Well you got your Master’s [degree] here, your MBA, why don’t you stay with us one year teaching and keep doing research with Miguel.’ And I said ‘Well, why not?’. It was a good gig. So I convinced my wife to move back to the States to see how things go. And it was a great experience. I was a PhD student and teaching three classes, and I was getting paid really well,” Dr. Baldo said. 

Baldo completed his PhD and decided that it was best to stay in the United States. He was hired for a tenure track job at Aquinas College in Michigan before heading to Southwestern Oklahoma State University. 

Baldo, who prides both his teaching and research, was only able to do limited research at that institution. And so, he once again looked for another teaching job. This time, Blado wanted to go to a school that was AACSB accredited, because those schools give value to research.

Baldo received an offer from Colorado Mesa University (CMU) and interviewed with the academic head back then, Dr. Steve Norman. Baldo and Norman got along well which convinced Baldo to take the job 5 years ago. 

Baldo is now the interim Head of the Business Department and is tasked with managing the Davis School of Business including, but not limited to, the curriculum, day-to-day activities of professors, some of the accreditation process and engaging with the school’s stakeholders. 

“Personally, I am going to do a little bit of outreach. That’s where I think I could be really good. I think that a business school must engage with the community and become an engine of change… The only way to do that is by knocking on doors, visiting people, having coffee with individuals and talking about our greatest students or programs and sharing what students are doing,” Baldo said.  

Baldo expressed the importance of student experiences such as student clubs and studying abroad. He wants to put a lot of his focus into the unique experiences that students can receive here at CMU. 

Baldo hopes that his efforts this year lead to his permanent hiring as the department head. He will still be teaching two classes this semester while he continues his research and becomes more familiar with his new position.