UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Anderson Strategy Group Increases Access to Adaptive Sports

By Apurv Awasthi (’16), George Buckley (MBA/MPH ’16), Jane Chynoweth (’15), Arthur Hu (’16), Danielle Koo (’16) and Nicholas Salameh ( FEMBA ’16)

Nick and Apurv with a coach and two athletes from Argentina. The athlete in the white shirt is sporting his new Go Bruins! pin on his backpack.

As members of the Anderson Strategy Group, our team — comprising Apurv Awasthi (’16), George Buckley (MBA/MPH ’16), Jane Chynoweth (’15), Arthur Hu (’16), Danielle Koo (’16) and Nicholas Salameh ( FEMBA ’16) — was tasked with helping our nonprofit client, Sports & Social Change, identify ways to increase access to adaptive sports. Participation in adaptive sports by people with disabilities is proven to have significant physical and mental health benefits, and so, from the start of our project, our team wanted to think about this issue within a global context so that we could have the greatest possible impact.

Although our client’s main goal was to increase access to adaptive sports, they also wanted us to analyze whether or not this could be achieved by reducing equipment costs through the use of 3-D printing manufacturing. This more specific goal resulted in several distinct work streams, including: 1) understanding the current technological capabilities and cost implications of 3-D printing; 2) understanding the current adaptive sports equipment market for sports wheelchairs, sit-skis and sports prosthetics; and 3) understanding the specific challenges, needs and price sensitivities of people with disabilities around the world.

Target CEO Brian Cornell to Address Anderson Class of 2015

Board of Visitors member Brian Cornell (BA ’81, Exec Ed CERT ’91), chairman and CEO of Target Corp., will join UCLA Anderson as commencement speaker for the MBA, Fully Employed MBA and Ph.D. Class of 2015. The commencement ceremony takes place on Friday, June 12, 2015, at 4:00 pm on Wilson Plaza at the UCLA campus.

As Target’s CEO, Cornell is responsible for the company’s global businesses, encompassing nearly 1,800 stores in North America and Target.com, more than 345,000 team members and millions of guests. He leads the retailer’s executive leadership team in accelerating Target’s performance, advancing its digital evolution and delivering on its “Expect More. Pay Less.” promise to guests.

Cornell joined Target in August 2014 following more than 30 years in ascending leadership positions at leading retail and global consumer product companies, including CEO roles at PepsiCo Americas Foods, Sam’s Club and Michael’s Stores Inc.

In addition to serving on Anderson’s Board of Visitors, Cornell serves on the board of directors of Polaris Industries Inc. He also holds board positions with the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The entire Anderson community is thrilled that Brian Cornell will address the Class of 2015 with a personal message borne of his transformational leadership journey.

On the Road to Improving Education

Hrag Hamalian in the outdoor corridor of Valor Academy Middle School, which he founded

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By Yoshi Chiang

How does one go from being a pre-med double major in college with an eye on consulting work to pursuing a career in urban education? The choice was an easy one for Anderson alumnus Hrag Hamalian (FEMBA ’14.)

Through research he conducted for a professor at Boston College, Hamalian saw dismal education data associated with urban schools throughout the country. Owing much of his success to public education, he found it difficult to ignore the statistics and opted to correct his own course and become a corps member of the Teach for America program, teaching ninth-grade biology at Locke High School in Watts, one of the most violent and underperforming schools in the country. Though he realized that the majority of that school’s teachers and administrators worked to make a difference, and while he saw great teaching happening in classrooms, Hamalian became frustrated enough with the educational options provided to his students that he left Locke at age 23 and opened his own school, with a focus on putting low-income students on the path to college.

Following completion of a master’s in education from Loyola Marymount and a competitive year-long fellowship program called Building Excellent Schools, Hamalian applied the basics he learned about charter school startups to found Valor Academy Middle School, a fifth through eighth grade charter school. Its mission was to ensure that the low-income students in the Southern California communities of Panorama City, North Hollywood and Arleta would have the opportunity to attend college and pursue their dreams. The outcome: “Valor has become one of the highest performing middle schools in the LAUSD, irrespective of income or demographics, and has won a number of accolades for our unique approach to education,” Hamalian says. He was also awarded the Gold Award for the alumnus of the decade at Boston College, his alma mater, as a result of his work at Valor.

Top Honors for AMR Projects: Sedgwick Memorial and Deloitte Consulting Awards Announced

Anderson AMR team Simpatica, winner of the 2015 Deloitte Consulting Award, conducted a primary research trip to Peru

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Each year, after student teams present their final Applied Management Research and Business Creation Option projects, teams are nominated by their faculty advisors for the elite Edward V. Sedgwick III Memorial Award and the Deloitte Consulting Award.

The Sedgwick Award, which has been presented since 1985, recognizes the AMR team that produces a written report of exceptional quality, clarity and persuasive analysis.

For 23 years, the Deloitte Consulting Award for management consulting achievement has been presented to the AMR team and project judged to represent the highest standards of leadership, teamwork, research and analysis, professionalism, and strategic creativity in its solution to a complex problem.

Big Data: Analyzing the Incredible

By Cheechee Lin

Kirk Dunn (UCLA ’83), chief operating officer of Cloudera, presented the Easton Technology Leadership Program’s annual keynote on Monday, May 18. Dunn backs his discussion of “Big Data Analytics: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow” with nearly 20 years of experience in technology engineering, marketing, sales and management.

Prior to Cloudera, in addition to serving in senior roles for a range of companies, Dunn served as CEO for PowerFile, which was successfully sold to Hitachi LG Data Storage, and Bang Networks Inc. Dunn’s impressive record in the data analysis sphere began early, when he graduated from UCLA with a degree in mathematics and applied sciences. Cloudera, which was founded by three engineers from Google, Yahoo, Facebook and a former Oracle executive, is at the very forefront of growth in the big data analytics space, with a valuation of over $4 billion. Intel invested $740 million in Cloudera last April, receiving an 18 percent stake in the company. The growth in data is astonishing, Dunn said: “Data doubling is now faster than Moore’s law.”

In addition to discussing industry trends, Dunn gave students advice on innovation and building businesses. “There are three ways to build a business: You can either do an old thing an old way, like reinventing the mainframe computer, or do a new thing a new way, such as Facebook with bonding people together through visualizing the social graphs of relationships. I believe the best way is to find a new solution to an existing problem — and this would be the whole market of big data.”

Read Easton’s blog for a full review of Kirk Dunn's talk

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Dunn's talk resonates following news of UCLA Anderson’s new Morrison Family Center for Marketing Studies and Data Analytics, made possible by a multi-million-dollar gift from Professors Don and Sherie Morrison. The Morrison Family Center will serve as a global resource for academics and practitioners as they use data and analytical tools to advance understanding of consumer markets and behaviors. 

For Entrepreneurial Alumni Erik and Kate Pletcher, Anderson and Southern California Were the Perfect Choice

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Erik and Kate Pletcher have much in common: their home in Venice, their rambunctious toddler, their feisty poodle-terrier, and their passion for the Southern California lifestyle. They’re also both members of UCLA Anderson’s class of 2007 who evolved into entrepreneurs. Kate is founder of Treehouse Partners, a firm that is transforming recruiting. Erik is a director at Ferrazzi Greenlight, a rapidly growing boutique change management consulting firm.

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Interviewed by Cheechee Lin

Q: Why did you choose Anderson?

Kate: Erik and I are originally from Minnesota. We were dating in college (Kate at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Erik at Bowdoin in Maine) and moved to Buffalo, New York, together after graduation. At the time, I was selling mattresses and Erik was working in banking while he prepared for the GMAT, and I had been helping Erik review the material — to the point where I just figured I would take the test and start exploring b-school myself.

We always knew we wanted to live in California and attend a top-tier business school, and the entrepreneurial-minded Anderson School of Management was the perfect choice. The California dream that embodied the spirit of being able to do anything we wanted out here was very appealing, as California offered a lot of opportunities to do cool things.

B-school for me consisted of three parts: social, academic and career. I gained a lot from each of these areas while I was here. I would say half of my business comes either directly or indirectly from Anderson alumni.

Erik: Coming to Anderson was also a lifestyle choice: Anderson is a high-caliber business school, but the lifestyle and culture of Southern California also suited us. After coming here, when I was thinking about what I wanted to do and how I wanted to get there, I realized the alumni network was amazing.

CREATE Keynote Conversations Revealed Business Pitfalls and Triumphs

Greg Craig pays tribute to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a keynote conversation with Bucs owner Edward Glazer

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By Paul Feinberg and Carolyn Gray Anderson

Both the lunchtime and afternoon keynote conversations at this year’s CREATE Conference were marked by great energy, thanks to the easy rapport between guests and their interlocutors. Edward Glazer, owner and co-chairman of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Docstoc founder Jason Nazar both shared their stories of business struggles and successes, doling out their best suggestions for MBAs interested in advancing ideas, projects and careers.

Though separated in age by a couple of generations, both guests advised unequivocally, “Just ask.” As Glazer put it, “You’d be surprised how much you get in life if you just ask. You have nothing to lose by asking.”

Judges Tap Spinal Singularity for First Prize in Knapp Venture Competition

Team lead Derek Herrera holds the first prize check. Behind him (left to right) are Zach McKinney, Bud Knapp, Beth Johnson and Betsy Knapp.

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See highlights of the 2015 Knapp Venture Competition

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The 34th annual Knapp Venture Competition rewarded medical device startup Spinal Singularity with first prize of $15,000 for its product Connected Catheter. The teamwork of Derek Herrera (EMBA ’15), Zach McKinney (Ph.D., biomedical engineering ’15), Beth Johnson (EMBA ’15) and Chandrashekar Hariharan (EMBA ’15) paid off as they accepted the prize from Bud and Betsy Knapp, who endowed the competition in 1996 to secure it as an Anderson tradition.

The HR platform Rankmi was the runner-up and also took the People’s Choice Award (a $2,000 prize), while online capital markets platform FundOpp and “jewelry experience company” For Luxe and Love tied for third place. Swift Analytics, which provides a smartwatch-based mobile platform to monitor Parkinson’s disease patients’ symptoms, won fourth place.

Amid Friends and Fellow Donors, Marion Anderson Gives Momentum to Anderson’s Into the Next Campaign

Marion Anderson (center) with Jim and Phyllis Easton, donors of the Easton Technology Management Center.

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Can we count on you to make the impossible possible? Join the many generous donors who support UCLA Anderson as it moves Into the Next.

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By Paul Feinberg

“I am incredibly privileged and extraordinarily proud to announce a transformative new gift to the Into the Next campaign from Marion Anderson, a new gift of…one hundred million dollars.”

These words from UCLA Anderson Dean Judy Olian elicited first a collective gasp and then a rousing standing ovation from the nearly two hundred attendees of the school’s Into the Next campaign kickoff event. According to Dean Olian, this latest gift from the widow of the school’s namesake John E. Anderson will be used to build Anderson’s endowment, benefit student fellowships, research and programs, and to seed the construction of a new building to be named the Marion Anderson Building.

Dean Judy Olian toasts Marion Anderson and UCLA Anderson’s many other benefactors.

“This sets us on a path to realize our grandest ambitions, while remaining true to our values — and to the values of John and Marion — by reaching even further,” said Dean Olian. “Tonight, our sights are lifted and our ambitions are fortified. We are raising our goal for the Into the Next campaignto $300 million.” The original goal for the campaign, which is part of UCLA’s Centennial Campaign that concludes in 2019, was $175 million. To date, the Into the Next campaign has raised more than $183 million, including the latest from Marion Anderson.

Olian said the campaign will allow UCLA Anderson to create opportunities for more women and men who will become the future leaders of organizations and communities. It will bring to the world the most impactful ideas that will shape markets and management practices, and will continue to imbue the values of John and Marion into the entire Anderson family in all of its endeavors.

The Anderson Example: Historic $100 Million Gift from Marion Anderson Sets the Pace for the Into the Next campaign

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Can we count on you to make the impossible possible? Join the many generous donors who support UCLA Anderson as it moves Into the Next.

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On Wednesday, at Anderson’s gala dinner officially launching our part of the $4.2 billion UCLA Centennial Campaign, Dean Judy Olian announced the largest gift in the history of UCLA Anderson: $100 million.

The generous donation comes from long-time supporter Marion Anderson, chair of Topa Equities and wife of the late John E. Anderson, for whom the school is named. This transformative sum will go toward raising the endowment by $60 million to support the research and teaching mission of Anderson faculty and programs and fellowships for students, with the remaining $40 million set aside as seed funding for a new building that takes the school Into the Next.

Our original fundraising target was $175 million plus another $80 million for improvement of facilities. Thanks to Marion Anderson’s latest gift, we have already raised more than $183 million. As a result, the Into the Next Campaign now has momentum to target $300 million.

With the initial gifts that John and Marion Anderson made first in 1987 to name the school, and then in 2011 toward the Accelerate Campaign, they are among the most generous donors to any business school, ever.

As UCLA’s director of media relations Phil Hampton reported, Anderson said her gift is motivated by her appreciation of the role and impact of UCLA Anderson as a global innovator in management education, and that it is a tribute to her husband’s passion for education and community priorities. “UCLA Anderson has adopted an innovative financial model that depends on private giving,” she said. “I hope my gift will inspire others to join me and my family in making significant philanthropic investments in UCLA Anderson and UCLA, and in future generations of students and faculty.”

Dean Olian told the UCLA Newsroom, “I am inspired every day by Marion’s personal values and fierce integrity, and I am so very proud and grateful that she is so closely connected to our school. She has been an unfailing supporter and driver of change around the educational needs of business school students and graduates in a rapidly changing marketplace.”

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Read the full article in the UCLA Newsroom

Visit UCLA Anderson’s Into the Next portal for news and information about the campaign 

Enjoy the album from the campaign launch gala