OLEGARIO, Rowena

PERSONAL: Female. Education: Harvard University, graduated, 1998.

ADDRESSES: Office—Vanderbilt University, 2201 West End Avenue, 101 Benson Hall, Nashville, TN 37235. E-mail—rowena.olegario@vanderbilt.edu.

CAREER: Author and educator. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, assistant professor of history.

WRITINGS:

(With Davis Dyer and Frederick Dalzell) Rising Tide: Lessons from 165 Years of Brand Building at Procter and Gamble, Harvard Business School Press (Boston, MA), 2004.

Works have been published in Business History Review and in Credit Reporting Systems and the International Economy, MIT Press, 2003.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A book on the history of trade credit, trust, and transparency in the United States during the nineteenth century.

SIDELIGHTS: Rowena Olegario is an assistant professor of history at Vanderbilt University. Her primary research interest is international business history, with a particular focus on how institutional and culture development interact. Olegario coauthored Rising Tide: Lessons from 165 Years of Brand Building at Procter and Gamble, with Davis Dyer and Frederick Dalzell, two partners at a consulting firm.

Rising Tide chronicles the growth of Procter and Gamble, taking a particularly close look at the way the company has historically managed to develop and market products that end up dominating their individual market categories. The volume was approved by the company, which gave the authors access to corporate archives dating back to the company's founding in 1837. Aside from tracing the firm's history, the book notes the five principles that define the company, from rules regarding branding to policies on experimentation. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly remarked that the volume "will appeal to a wide audience including MBA students, employees at P&G's rivals and others in advertising, marketing, and consumer products businesses." An Economist, reviewer remarked that "Rising Tide is a readable account of P&G's continuing success at inventing and sustaining a vast range of brands in markets from Lima to Beijing. Its authors … convey the astounding scale of the company's operations."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Economist (US), July 24, 2004, "A Long-running Opera of Soap: Procter and Gamble and Unilever," p. 76.

Publishers Weekly, May 17, 2004, review of Rising Tide: Lessons from 165 Years of Brand Building at Procter and Gamble, p. 44.

online

Vanderbilt University Web site, http://www.vanderbilt.edu/ (November 12, 2004), "Rowena Olegario."*