UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Alex Lawrence Recognized by Diversity MBA as Top Emerging Leader

On Sept. 18, 2014, Alex Lawrence (’99), assistant dean of MBA admissions and financial aid at UCLA Anderson, joined Diversity MBA’s 2014 Top 100 Under 50 Diverse Executive & Emerging Leaders to be honored at an awards gala. This highly selective group of leaders from Fortune 500 companies, health care organizations, educational institutions and nonprofit agencies are chosen based on their position within their company, their time in that role, the advanced degree held, their contributions to the community and achievements in the workplace.

“My role as dean of admissions is not just a job for me, but a significant part of my life. It is an honor to be recognized by colleagues for my performance in a field that is many times a labor of love,” says Lawrence. “One takeaway from the event, which is a constant reminder, is that ‘Diversity is not just about counting heads … it’s about inclusion and making heads count.’”

Lawrence stepped into his current Anderson role in 2012 and is responsible for sourcing, attracting, recruiting and enrolling qualified candidates to the Full-time MBA Program. Prior to that, he served as executive director of The Riordan Programs for more than eight years. He currently serves on the advisory board of The Riordan Programs, on the board of trustees for the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management and on the Business School Advisory Council for ETS (Educational Testing Service).

Lawrence was a successful systems engineer before graduating from The Riordan MBA Fellows Program in 1996. He remained involved in the program as a mentor, volunteer and as president of the Riordan Fellows Alumni Association. He received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Drexel University, his master’s degree in electrical engineering at Georgia Tech and his MBA at UCLA Anderson.

Diversity MBA is a leadership organization that aims to advance the understanding of diversity and inclusion in the workforce. This 8^th year of Top 100 Under 50 awards honored winners — selected from 300 applicants —from companies such as AT&T, Accenture, Verizon, Target, Sears, Intel, Kaiser Permanente and others. The winners will be featured in the 2014 fall issue of Diversity MBA Magazine. To learn more, visit here.

UCLA Anderson Adjunct Professor Jim Stengel Says A Brand's Relationship with NFL Is About "Partnership, Discussion and Action Taking"

Jim Stengel is an adjunct professor of marketing at UCLA Anderson. He is also president/CEO of The Jim Stengel Company, LLC and the author of the bestselling "Grow:  How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies." Previously, Stengel served as global marketing officer at Procter & Gamble, one of the most admired brand building companies in the world.

All of this (and more) make him eminently qualified to comment on whether or not the National Football League's sponsors should consider pulling out of their relationship with the league in light of the NFL's recent scandals involving incidents of both domestic and child abuse. 

In the video above released by CNBC, Stengel lays out his views. Stengel says he would consider this a priority and focus on the "actions" taken by the NFL, not simply the words. Stengel says that relations with the league are long-term and that the relationship is about "partnership, discussion and action taking." 

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew Visits UCLA Anderson; Talks Policy With Class of '16

 

(U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew speaking with Bloomberg's Ian Katz. Photo by Carla Bales.)

During a stopover in Los Angeles on his way to the G-20 Meeting of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in Cairns, Australia, United States Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew visited with the UCLA Anderson’s Class of 2016 in a wide-ranging conversation that covered such issues as world economic growth, international sanctions against Russia, U.S. corporate tax inversions and stemming the flow of funds to ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). Ian Katz, who covers the Treasury for Bloomberg, moderated the conversation.

“There is a problem with growth and demand in many parts of the world,” said Lew, referencing some of the topics to be discussed at the upcoming G-20 meeting. “It was not that many years ago, that the U.S. economy not contributing to the solution, it was seen as the problem, due to the financial crisis. Now the question is, why has the U.S. bounced back and what do other countries need to do if they want to bounce back as well?

“Stimulating demand in the short term is part of the solution,” Lew said. “You can’t cut your way out of economic problems. The discussion has shifted from one of austerity to one of growth.”

Regarding corporate inversions (re-incorporating a company overseas in order to reduce the tax burden on income earned abroad, Lew said that the right answer is tax reform. “We need to clean up the tax code and take away the thing that’s driving companies to invert. I’ve said before, tax inversions are legal, but wrong. Congress, if they don’t enact tax reform, needs to enact legislation that shuts the door on inversions.”

Lew said he believes that the sanctions imposed on Russia in the aftermath of their actions in eastern Ukraine have been successful. “We worked closely with our international partners on around the world, the EU the G7 have been as carefully put into place as any sanctions against a regime ever. They put an enormous amount of pressure on Russia and the Russian economy … and we’ve done it in a way that was intentionally designed to cause as little spillover on Europe and the United States and the global economy as possible. Our goal is not to hurt the global economy. Our goal is not to hurt the Russian economy, the goal is to change the way Russian leaders are making their decisions.” Lew said that until Russian leadership changes its policies, that country will be more and more isolated.

After his discussion with Katz, Lew took questions from the first year students and was asked about, among other things, the role of the Treasury in the fight against ISIL. “For any military operation, flow of funds is critical. It’s how you support your activities. It’s how you pay your people,” Lew said. “It is very important that we work with our counterparts around the world to identify and shut down the flow of funds to ISIL. Lew said that cutting off funds to ISIL is complicated because it’s not clear how the group gets its money, but that work is being done to limit the flow of funds into ISIL.

Asked to describe what it’s like to work with his international counterparts – or the U.S. Congress – Lew said, “There’s no substitute for personal relationships. I think you’ll find that that’s true in the business world as well as it is in the public sector. I’ve invested a great deal of time getting to know the people I interact with internationally. If you don’t know each other, it’s very difficult to communicate effectively. And the distances are large, it means flying four days to spend two days in a meeting and not speaking much for a week but if you don’t put the time in, you can’t develop the relationships. And you have to listen. You can’t always be in broadcast mode,” Lew added.”

UCLA Anderson Welcomes International Students

On September 12, international students gathered at UCLA Anderson for International Student Orientation Day. Faculty, administrators and second-year students welcomed international students to campus at the daylong event that occurs each year prior to the Full-time MBA Orientation. ISOD was created to provide students with information helpful to students in the U.S. on a student visa.

Check out a Flickr gallery of the day's events here.

Businessweek Interviews Petrossian (’14) on MBA and Entrepreneurship

On September 12, Businessweek featured a conversation with Leo Petrossian (Ph.D., MBA ’14), co-founder and CEO of startup company Neural Analytics, which offers a noninvasive solution for measuring intracranial pressure without a neurosurgeon drilling a hole into the patient’s skull. The company has licensed four patents from UCLA’s department of neurosurgery.

Petrossian and his team were the Entrepreneur Association Conference Fast Pitch Competition winners and Knapp Venture Competition second place finishers in 2013.

Read the Businessweek article here, as well as coverage of EA Fast Pitch and the Knapp Competition.

UCLA Anderson Professors Carla Hayn and Guillaume Roels Garner New Faculty Appointments

Dean Judy Olian announced a pair of faculty/administration appointments today:

Dear Colleagues,

I’m delighted to share news of two appointments.

After her remarkably successful tenure as Senior Associate Dean for FEMBA and other Professional MBA programs during which she introduced numerous program innovations, Professor Carla Hayn has assumed the new role of Director of Global Initiatives -- focused on global immersions and exchange programs.  In this new role, she will be a part of the Center for Global Management. Under Carla’s leadership, the Global Immersion Program was launched in the FEMBA and EMBA programs in 2008; two years later it was expanded to the full-time MBA program. These intensive and rigorous courses, led by our faculty, focus on core business competencies of other countries, especially countries with rapidly developing economies.  Close to 2,000 students have participated so far in at least one immersion course, developing students’ global perspective and mindset and enhancing their understanding of global cultures and markets. One of Carla’s areas of focus in her new role will be to expand access to global immersion experiences among full-time MBA students.

Associate Professor Guillaume Roels will become the faculty director of the Easton Technology Leadership Program. He succeeds Professor Charles Corbett who was the founding director of the Program and introduced a wide range of very innovative courses, speaking series, and interactions among students and technology-based executives. The Easton Program, popular among students given their hi tech interests, exposes them to the rapidly transforming technology landscape.  The program  prepares them to lead with current industry and technology knowledge – whether in smaller startups to large global technology firms – culminating in a certificate of completion of the program. Guillaume intends to expand student access to the program with a broad portfolio of courses and program activities, and with strong connections to students in the High Tech Business Association and to those with an interest in tech.

Profound thanks to Carla and Guillaume for assuming these vital roles. 

UCLA/J&J Head Start Management Fellow Accepts Invitation From White House

From left to right: Eva Milona, Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition Executive Director; Jennifer Amaya-Thompson, MA Department of Early Education and Care/Head Start State Collaboration Office Director; and Silja Kallenbach, MA, Vice President, US Division World Education.

On July 16, 2014, just days after completing the UCLA/Johnson & Johnson Head Start Management Fellows Program at UCLA Anderson, Jennifer Amaya-Thompson put her new skills to use during a special visit to the White House. Amaya-Thompson was among roughly 170 policymakers, faith leaders, elected officials, researchers and business representatives from across the country invited to share best practices at the first-ever White House National Convening on Immigrant and Refugee Integration.

During her trip to the White House, she helped brainstorm new strategies to enhance local, regional and national programs that ensure immigrants are fully participating in and contributing to American society. In her role as Head Start State Collaboration Office Director for the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, Amaya-Thompson works to improve quality early education for the state’s young immigrant and refugee children and to enhance support services for their families.

The UCLA/Johnson & Johnson Head Start Management Fellows Program not only helped prepare Amaya-Thompson for her meeting at the White House, it also better equipped her for her other role, overseeing Massachusetts’s Dual Language Learners School Readiness initiative. As part of the Fellows program, students had to develop a Management Improvement Plan. Amaya-Thompson’s MIP focused on implementing a systemic, statewide approach in Massachusetts that provides professional development to educators to better meet the needs of dual-language learners ages 2.5 to 5.5 and support their families.

“With the support of this fellowship, its coursework and network, I feel confident in my ability to grow the initiative into a sustainable and replicable one that can serve as a national model for years to come,” Amaya-Thompson says, adding that the program provided her additional skills in strategic planning, financial management, management effectiveness and understanding data for school readiness. “I look forward to using what I learned to continue being an architect of change.”

To learn more about the UCLA/Johnson & Johnson Head Start Management Fellows Program, visit the program website.