Louis “Kip” Cheroutes thrilled graduate marketing students on August 27 when he visited their International Marketing course. Instructor Lawrence Cunningham invited Cheroutes, an expert in all things Vietnamese, to share his real-world knowledge with the class.

For nearly two decades, Cheroutes was District Director to U.S. Representative Patricia Schroeder. Following her retirement, the University of Denver invited Cheroutes to teach “Understanding America” in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV).

“I started teaching adult professionals about politics in the United States,” said Cheroutes. “Eventually they started asking about business and ways to interact with Americans in business.”

As Cheroutes taught these students about America, they taught him about Vietnam. With nearly 20 year’s direct interaction with the peoples of Vietnam, he was the perfect guest speaker to an International Marketing class.

Cheroutes was able to share both market opportunities and insights into the cultures and mindsets of the 95 million people living in SRV. Following a map taped to the whiteboard Cheroutes took the marketing students on a mental tour of the country. From northern, political Hanoi to southern, entrepreneurial Ho Chi Minh, the students learned about the different industries and innovations in SRV. This included an anecdote about a French entrepreneur he met who rides a motorbike to the remote villages of northern Vietnam to purchase handmade textiles and sells them on the streets of Paris. “This is one way to do business in Vietnam: export the products and sell them yourself; no middleman.”

Cheroutes left the students with his view on how to handle global expansion: “Go into a market and convince them you want to know about them. And really do. Really learn about them.”

To learn more about the MS in Marketing program, visit the course catalog.