UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Commerce Secretary Pritzker Tells MBAs Who Chose UCLA Anderson: "It’s Well Worth It"

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and UCLA Anderson Dean Judy Olian 

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By Carolyn Gray Anderson

For the final Dean’s Distinguished Speakers Series of 2015, United States Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker joined Dean Judy Olian in a frank conversation about the future of U.S. business, trade and manufacturing. On her first day in office — arriving with nearly 30 years of experience and success in the private sector — Pritzker famously hung a sign reading “Open for Business” on her door to underscore her department’s commitment to American business leaders.

And if Pritzker is about anything, it’s business. “It’s fair to call her America’s top CEO,” said International Business Association President Apurv Aswathi (’15) when he introduced her. She grew up mainly in Silicon Valley, daughter of Donald Pritzker, who developed the Hyatt Hotels chain. An heir to that fortune, Secretary Pritzker founded and ran five different businesses in real estate, hospitality, senior living and financial services. “Building businesses was what was revered in my household and extended family,” said Pritzker, influenced early by her mother “to be a bit fearless.” She created Pritzker Realty Group in 1991; in 2010, she co-founded Artemis Real Estate Partners and founded PSP Capital Partners, a private investment firm, in 2012. She also co-founded The Parking Spot, the fastest growing company in off-site airport parking management.

Pritzker is the 38th U.S. Secretary of Commerce, sworn in on June 26, 2013, following a near-unanimous vote by the Senate. As chief commercial advocate of the United States, she leads the administration’s trade and investment promotion efforts. It’s the native Chicagoan’s first government position, and she is focused on promoting startup activity, bolstering trade and investment, supporting advanced manufacturing and helping American companies export overseas. A champion of children’s education and athletics, she has founded, with her husband Bryan Traubert, a number of programs to advance and invest in Chicago’s youth. She’s also an avid triathlete and marathon runner.

Anderson Gears Up for 2015 Alumni Weekend, Conference, Reunions, Networking, Golf and More

UCLA Anderson Alumni Weekend brings back 1,000+ Anderson alumni for four days of events that include the Alumni Conference, class reunions, executive recruiter networking opportunities, and the ever-popular Alumni Golf Tournament. Events start Thursday, April 30, and continue through Monday, May 4.

New to conference is alumni access to the renovated MBA Lounge, housed in Mullin Management Commons. It’s a space for relaxation with TVs, a view of the North Lawn and ping pong tables for students’ recreation. Plug in or chill out — this lounge is at your disposal on Friday.

We are also eagerly supporting our own: For breakfast at Alumni Conference, we’re serving Stumptown coffee from Alfred's Coffee, a hip, local coffee shop chain owned by alumnus Josh Akhtarzad (’06). And class reunion attendees will enjoy the cocktail candy dessert table provided by Rosie O’Neill’s (’05) Sugarfina.

Launching this week is the first-ever Alumni Weekend app, which will help users navigate Alumni Weekend events via both Apple and Android platforms. It serves as a tool to stay connected to the Anderson community and its features include the schedule, map, class notes, reunions (including throwback photos from students’ days at UCLA Anderson), domestic and international alumni chapter resources, a social feed, videos and information on how to support UCLA Anderson. Download the UCLA Anderson Events app from the Google Play Store or iTunes.

How Tomorrow’s Shoes Launched a Movement

By Carolyn Gray Anderson

UCLA Anderson’s second annual Social Innovation Week culminated in a day of events that included a keynote address by Priya Bery, chief of staff of TOMS, the one-for-one shoe company setting an example of how for-profit businesses can be part of the solution to global problems.

TOMS is a giving company, plain and simple. Without giving, there would be no business. Period.

In a conversation with Anderson lecturer Gayle Northrop, Bery explained that the company didn’t start with shoes or any other product. From its inception, she said, TOMS was not a “business idea.” This distinguishes it from companies that produce and sell first, then tack on a separate foundation or nonprofit for their giving. Formerly, said Bery, “business only ever came to the table to write a check.” At TOMS, giving is integrated into every level and facet of daily operations. It’s the raison d’être.

So, what TOMS makes and sells is incidental to everything else it achieves. Getting shoes onto kids’ feet — in part by donating a pair of shoes for every pair purchased by a customer — means keeping children in school, enabling them to join team athletics and other forms of play, and staving off infections and disease. People who could not otherwise afford shoes get shod, as it were, and the truly important things in their lives — education, health, self-esteem — are possible. All because founder Blake Mykoskie wanted to help solve a world problem but didn’t want to ask for donations or write grants to do it.

"Having a robust system that enables us to care for patients through the continuum of life is critical."

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Nasim Afsar-Manesh is a FEMBA(’17) candidate at UCLA Anderson. She performs a variety of roles, including chief quality officer for the Department of Medicine at UCLA Health, mother and student.

Q: Tell us about your education and why you chose to pursue a FEMBA degree at Anderson.

While I was in medical school, I became interested in internal medicine, it basically includes all of adult medicine, including heart and lung disease and cancer. I further developed an interest in hospital medicine, a branch of internal medicine that focuses on treating hospitalized adult patients. I was drawn to the acuity and urgency that comes with having to care for patients in a significant moment in their lives.

Shortly after I began working as a full-time clinician, I became engaged in opportunities that could help us build thriving and sustainable systems of care. This eventually led me to health care administration. I am really intrigued by how we can improve health care to provide higher quality and increased value for our patients and society. Interestingly, in my administrative roles within the UCLA Health, I realized that there were a number of areas, such as organizational behavior, strategy, finance and economics that I had not been exposed to in the past — an MBA at Anderson was the best logical step.

 

Annual Riordan Programs Gala Celebrated Alumni Achievement, Enrichment and Empowerment

Enjoy the complete photo gallery.

By Bijan White

 “It is one thing to tell someone to follow their dreams and a fundamentally different thing to empower them to do so,” said Ramsey Jay, Riordan Fellow (’02) and 2015 recipient of the Riordan Program’s Excellence in Civil Engagement and Leadership Award. The Riordan Programs at Anderson, established in 1987, provide training in leadership to diverse groups of individuals all over the country. Through mentorship, workshops and community service, the program works to guide the leaders of tomorrow.

The annual Riordan Gala celebrated the program’s 28th anniversary, bringing together Riordan Scholars and alumni to honor the program’s commitment to empowering inner-city youth. Hosted at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, the gala entailed a night of musical performances, presentations by members of the program, a silent auction, and an abundance of food and laughter.

“Tonight is about community. The Riordan Program are a beacon of light for all students who strive to attend college and earn their degrees,” said Kimberly Freeman (’02), Anderson’s assistant dean for diversity initiatives and community relations. The sense of community was palpable as alumni from years past crowded the grand ballroom, speaking excitedly over the band. “I am proud to be part of the Anderson family,” said Alex Lawrence (’99), assistant dean of MBA admissions and financial aid and former executive director of the Riordan Programs, “because it is a family. We are there for the good and for the bad.”

The 100th Anniversary of Armenian Genocide: A Catalyst for Change

 

To leaders in our Armenian community here at UCLA Anderson, today is an important historic anniversary as well as a deeply personal call to action. They share their thoughts and perspective below.

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By Arek Santikian (’15) and Araz Khodabakhshian (Ph.D. ’18)

The United States is home to roughly 1.5 million Armenians (500,000 of whom live in the greater Los Angeles area). Russia is home to roughly 2 million Armenians. In these two countries alone, one can find more Armenians than within the Republic of Armenia.

Why? Why did they leave the beautiful mountainous heights of the Caucasus in Eurasia, and move to countries thousands of miles away? The population of Armenians living in countries outside of Armenia (11 million) is almost four times the population living inside of Armenia (3 million). This was not a natural result of emigration. The reason lies in a not-so-distant past, buried and ignored inside a very dark time in world history. The reason is genocide. The first genocide of the 20th century. The Armenian Genocide.

Google’s Jim Miller Awes Anderson Audience with His Company’s Mind-Boggling Immensity

By Carolyn Gray Anderson

Anderson’s Easton Technology Leadership Program and High Tech Business Association jointly sponsored guest speaker Jim Miller, vice president of worldwide operations at Google. More than 250 people turned out for Miller’s talk, which addressed the diversity of Google’s supply chain and its operational breadth.

The big takeaway? Google is immense. Its in-house data center dwarfs the scale of entire tech companies. One student remarked, “The scope and vertical integration at Google [is] mind-blowing. Jim Miller was inspirational in his vision and expertise, yet down-to-earth. I valued hearing his perspective about his company and his position there.”

UCLA Anderson Students on Winning Team: Koniku Takes Top Prize of $10,000 at MIT Global Startup Workshop

Koniku team members Osh Agabi (far left), Christina Salys (second from left) and Christopher McAndrew (far right) accept the grand prize in the MIT Global Startup Workshop Business Plan Competition in Guatemala City.

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By Christopher McAndrew (EMBA ’16)

Koniku Ltd., a startup focused on improving clinical trial success rates in the pharmaceutical industry, took home the top prizes at the MIT Global Startup Workshop held this year in Guatemala City and hosted by Universidad Francesco Marroquin (UFM), Guatemala. I was happy to represent the Koniku team and put into practice some of things we had studied just weeks earlier in Entrepreneurship and Venture Initiation, the class taught by one of the team advisors, Anderson’s Professor George Abe.

My UCLA Anderson EMBA colleague Christina Salys (’16) entered our team in the competition after learning about the program through an email from the Price Center for Entrepreneurship. Koniku’s team represented the global nature of the program, with us as members from UCLA Anderson, along with Laura Brightmann and Mark Brown from the University of Cambridge and Oshiorenoya (“Osh”) Agabi from Imperial College London. Christina, Osh and I traveled to Guatemala to present as finalists in the Business Plan Competition that highlighted the workshop.

The Business Plan Competition was open to early-stage startup companies from around the world. With clinical trails failing over 85% of the time, Koniku developed a system, based on Osh’s Ph.D. research, that allows drug developers to replicate human organ drug interactions using “lab on a chip” technology in order to radically improve preclinical testing procedures. The competition organizers received over 120 applicants in the first round and eight finalists were selected to present their plans to a panel of judges in Guatemala. Finalists were given five minutes to present their plans followed by a three-minute Q&A session with the judging panel.

Anderson’s Annual Woo Conference Emphasizes Continued Collaboration between U.S. and China Markets

By Bijan White

UCLA Anderson hosted the annual Wilbur K. Woo Greater China Business Conference, which brings together business leaders from the U.S. and China to discuss economic and investment opportunities for growth between the two nations. With the Chinese economy undergoing fundamental shifts, the conference represented one of many efforts to foster Chinese-American economic relations.

Opening statements by Anderson economist William Yu and Alan Chu, a partner at China Business Network, emphasized the changing nature of the Chinese economy. China’s GDP growth is decreasing and its export economy is unsustainable. “China’s economy is adjusting to a new normal,” said Yu. “In the future, it will shift away from investment towards consumption.” The China market represents 20% of U.S. agricultural exports and its economy is gradually centering on services. China’s debt crisis and rising wages beg the question of how China will maintain a healthy level of growth. How to rebalance the economy?

Anderson Social Innovation Week Launches with a Range of Inspiring Stories from the Social Impact Trenches

Alexa Binns, Craig Jones, Ani Okkasian, Ian Gardner

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By Carolyn Gray Anderson

Today Net Impact launched Social Innovation Week with the first of a series of guest panels addressing social and corporate responsibility in 21st-century business enterprises. Anderson Social Innovation Week provides an opportunity to learn from high-profile professionals who advance the discussion around social entrepreneurship, social impact in media and entertainment, corporate social impact and one-for-one models.

The panel “Social Entrepreneurship: Strategies for an Accelerated Path” was organized by Net Impact’s Gena Goh (’16), co-sponsored by the Anderson Entrepreneur Association and moderated by Bhavna Sivanand (’14), a Johnson & Johnson fellow in health care management. Leaders from LA Cleantech Incubator, Hub LA, Cheeky and Formative engaged in an informative discussion about incubators, accelerators and startups. With some unexpectedly divergent stories to tell in addition to the overlap in their respective experiences, the panelists assumed admirable humility while talking about their success.

Craig Jones (’14) was still in the MBA program at Anderson when he began building Formative, a platform that allows teachers to see all their students’ work in real time, track growth to learning standards and intervene at moments that matter most. With four years of classroom teaching experience, Jones came to business school already knowing the problems he wanted to solve. He entered a growing and increasingly competitive sector when he launched Formative, but he’s been willing to take risks in order to give his venture a chance. Startup UCLA funded his first $5,000 and things snowballed from there — with a Wolfen Fellowship, subsequent funding from the Wolfen family, who are passionate about giving and learning, and great interest from Anderson alumni following his and Kevin McFarland’s (’14) success in the Knapp Venture Competition for SmartestK12, a software-technology company designed for the classroom. Additional funding has come from a range of no-equity investors, though Jones advises entrepreneurs to review what accelerators have accomplished to make sure the eventual deal is a good match. “Seek out funders who share your passion,” he says. And be prepared to “commit yourself for six years” or you’re unlikely to see it through. “A startup is about survival — and grit more than anything.”