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As FEMBApalooza 2015 approaches, Anderson FEMBA alumni will be interested to know what their classmates are embarking on. It turns out many have launched new ventures, as faithfully reported by Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions Dylan Stafford in his blog, “What I Love about UCLA FEMBA.”
Stafford recently profiled Hanson Chang (FEMBA ’14) and Oscar Rodriguez (FEMBA ’14), M.D., and also blogged about what they’re building together — their company Reassure Analytics and Care|Mind, a breakthrough in elder care. He heard from Dr. Bashir Tafti (FEMBA ’17), a clinical instructor at UCLA Health and one of the other eight M.D.s in the FEMBA Class of 2017 — the most in any part-time program. Bashir gratified Stafford by confirming that his thinking about business changed almost immediately after he started his program of study. As early as the Leadership Foundations course, he said, “I was already looking at problems (and solutions!) with new eyes from the moment FEMBA began.”
Stafford also interviewed early graduate Ryan Hughes (FEMBA ’14) one year after he founded the successful Bull Oak Capital. Hughes established the business as an investment firm using strategy he designed with the help of Anderson professors Hanno Lustig and Jason Hsu. A year later, he says, the business has momentum. “There are a lot of financial advisors that are good at retirement planning,” Hughes explained, “but not many of them are knowledgeable when it comes to portfolio management and the markets. Most advisors hire third-party managers via mutual funds and separate accounts. So, for a high-net-worth individual to work directly with a portfolio manager is rare. This is where Bull Oak Capital differentiates itself.”
Running into Corey Berse (FEMBA ’11), vice president and head of marketing at Houlihan Lokey, constituted a “star sighting” for Stafford, who revived “two of the finest pieces of FEMBA cinema ever produced” — the prize-winning 2010 and 2011 All-Anderson Commercial Challenge entries submitted by Berse and his team, Exploding Head Productions.
While traveling in Hong Kong with students on a Global Immersion trip, Stafford had a chance meeting with Sumukh Shevde (FEMBA ’13), who is now director of product management for wireless power solutions at Qualcomm. “I’m on a global team and we’re meeting,” Shevde told him. “It’s actually a job that Anderson helped me get. We’ve got a very cool technology that we’re close to launching.”
Stafford also published testimonials from peers praising outgoing FEMBA Council President Kari Schumaker’s (FEMBA ’15) service. Doug Longo (FEMBA ’14), who held the post the previous year, wrote, “Everyone knows how much pride I took in being a member of the council, and there really are no words that can explain how much comfort it brought me in knowing that Kari was going to be the one leading it after I graduated. I can’t thank her enough for that.”
Read more about FEMBA students’ travels, careers and personal milestones on Stafford’s blog, What I Love about UCLA FEMBA.
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