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By Carolyn Gray Anderson
On Tuesday, February 13, the African-American Students in Management and the Entrepreneur Association co-sponsored a public but informal talk between Dean Judy Olian and Dr. Alfred E. Osborne, Jr., the senior associate dean and professor of global economics and management whom most regard as an Anderson legend.
Now celebrating some 42 years at UCLA, Osborne — wearing his signature ball cap and fashionable “statement” socks — told the dean that he actually never expected to spend his career here. He had earned tenure at Anderson in the late 1970s, when he decided to join the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C., as a Brookings Institution Economic Policy Fellow, conducting studies on venture capital and early investments based on SEC Rule 144 (public sales of restricted and control securities exempt from registration). “I developed Potomac fever,” he confessed; but, luckily for Anderson, Osborne didn’t land the White House job he went after and he returned to California for good.
Olian wanted to hear from Osborne during Black History Month in part because his origin story and the events of his life defy predictable categories. Born to a naturalized U.S. citizen father, an educator from Antigua, and a Panamanian mother, Osborne grew up in Panama City. He earned four degrees at Stanford, a B.S. in electrical engineering, an M.A. in economics, an MBA in finance and a doctorate in business economics. His experiences are typical neither of other Panamanians nor other African-Americans; as Olian observed, the singularity of his choices and experiences thwart any notion that underrepresented groups always have “monolithic” similarities.
His formative instruction was in Spanish and he has very fond memories of his upbringing. He joined ROTC in high school in the Panama Canal Zone (“I loved medals being pinned on,” he remembered with a grin) and revisited the organization as an undergraduate at Stanford. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the Vietnam War era. “My military career is unspectacular,” he said with gratitude, never having seen combat.
Having begun his education in electrical engineering, Osborne once had a dream of returning to Panama to help improve communication infrastructure connecting the countryside to the city. But when he took his first economics class as a graduate student (Osborne returned to Stanford after working as an engineer set on a business career in what was to become Silicon Valley), it changed his life. “I finally understood what the world was all about.” At the very least, his epiphany explained what he had sometimes experienced as managers’ ineptitude; but in the bigger picture, it drove him to pursue a career that would give life to the Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies as a world leader in entrepreneurial education and research.
As founder and faculty director of the Price Center, Osborne is committed to investing in the human capital that will drive innovation and economic well-being. When the dean mentioned Osborne’s 1976 book Emerging Issues in Black Economic Development, an edited collection, she asked him what he thought was most current today that was true then. He said, “The fundamental issues which give rise to poverty in underserved communities have not changed. Statistics don’t speak well to progress.” What, she then asked him, would he do to shape the model for change — not just in terms of increasing the numbers of people who have access to the tools for success, but really changing how we get to a moment where places like Anderson really “look like the world”?
Osborne said, “We have to take a little chance on the margin and invest in what we’re looking for. We need to invest in human capital, even if it means taking a risk. Innovations are happening at the periphery of education that we have to pay attention to. You have to experiment at the margin of what you do best.” He advised students in the audience aspiring to be social entrepreneurs that whether they pursue management roles in nonprofit or corporations, “Think about it as your business. Be rigorous and disciplined about what you’re doing, add metrics to it.” In other words, doing good means not treating what you care most about as a hobby or charity, treat it as an enterprise. He says that the new leaders in philanthropy (think Gates Foundation) are disciplined about giving: “They want to see results.”
On the topic of leadership development, Osborne said that in the board room, he makes it his business to ask the questions on everyone’s minds that no one is asking. He speaks up when he sees others “losing engagement, when it’s awkward.” He said, “You’re better off if people can feel empowered. It’s better for the team. Otherwise, you’re just individuals not connecting.”
Revered for his expertise in entrepreneurship and new business development, Osborne remains humble in the face of his popularity and the obvious positive differences he’s made at UCLA Anderson.
“I’m an accidental professor,” Osborne insisted. “I adopted economics as my lens for life and it has served me well. I have nothing to prove at my age if, but if you see a need or recognize an opportunity for positive change — do something,” he said to his audience of MBAs, “that adds value and leaves people better off.”
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