UCLA Anderson will be live-streaming the Global Executive MBA commencement ceremony on August 22.
On Saturday, August 22, UCLA Anderson confers degrees upon students in the Global Executive MBA for Asia Pacific and the Global Executive MBA for the Americas programs. The two classes of 2015 will participate in a joint ceremony on Alumni Plaza presided over by Professor of Strategy and Decisions, Operations and Technology Management John Mamer, faculty chairman and deputy dean of academic affairs.
Anderson’s Global Executive MBAs are 15-month dual-degree programs with Anderson and the business schools of the National University of Singapore and Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, respectively. Developed jointly by UCLA Anderson and NUS, the Global EMBA for Asia Pacific immerses students in international business education and practice in Bangalore, Shanghai, Los Angeles and Singapore. The Global EMBA for the Americas consists of six quarterly two-week modules held in California, Florida, Brazil and Chile. In both programs, students convene from around the world to gain the in-depth knowledge, skills and relationships needed to become global business leaders and confront regional and global business challenges.
The ceremony’s keynote speaker is Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, Wasserman Dean and Distinguished Professor of Education, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Hum Sin Hoon, deputy dean at NUS, and Manola Sánchez, dean of UAI’s business school, will represent the partner schools. The class speakers are MBA candidates Ali Abbassi (’15), for the Global EMBA for the Americas graduates, and Rael Levitt (’15), for the Global Executive MBA for Asia Pacific graduates.
Honor Society student Deborah Chew (’15), who was selected by her class to announce the Outstanding Teaching Awards for faculty in the Global EMBA for Asia Pacific program, is the chief operating officer of Emergenetics International – Asia. Emergenetics purchased the firm Chew founded, Caelan & Sage, a creative think-tank focusing on strategic communications and offering solutions in branding and design, public relations, and high-profile events management. A former school teacher, Chew is also director and co-founder of Project Happy Feet, a nonprofit organization that funds education and skills training for underprivileged youth in developing countries.
Since she does business in a host of Southeast Asian countries, Chew was looking for “the global experience, a business degree that would help me make the right decisions with tried and tested theories, and the discovery of the synergies between the two companies that I run. And it was the only school that was offering a dual degree, which is very helpful in Asia.”
Industrial engineer Ivonne Quiñones (’15), from Peru, founded Urbaner, a Web and mobile platform that provides what Quiñones calls “smart logistics,” connecting people and businesses with a network of fast local couriers using multiple forms of transport, including bicycle. She was inspired to launch Urbaner because of the challenges so many businesses and E-commerce companies face in making same-day package and document deliveries. “Urbaner is based on a collaborative economy,” says Quiñones. “In my country, there’s great interest in the cycling community and sustainable urban development.”
Urbaner has won recognition and support from the government initiative Startup Perú, which looks for businesses that differentiate themselves and have great potential to grow sustainably and expand over time. By competing successfully, Quiñones, who has worked for corporate giants Xerox, Sony and Nestlé, garnered seed funding for her new company as well as access to a network that can help develop the enterprise. Equipped with her UCLA-UAI dual degree, she says, she’s prepared to accelerate her company’s growth. “The GEMBA program is a great international experience. It puts you in an environment that challenges your ideas.”
In lieu of producing a master's thesis, Global EMBA students culminate their learning experience with a six-month-long strategic consulting project with an established company. The Management Practicum (MP), as it’s called, enables students to go beyond the classroom to apply and “test-drive” what they’ve learned to help companies facing global strategic challenges. Companies benefit because the students bring a combined average managerial experience of 12 years or more.
Quiñones’ classmate Felipe Arriagada (’15) is being recognized for Outstanding Academic Achievement, which is awarded to the graduating student with the highest GPA, and numbers among the 15 percent of Global EMBA candidates in the Honor Society. Arriagada is CFO of Inversiones Costa Verde investment company, which owns 20 percent of LATAM Airlines Group and makes a number of international investments in real estate as well. “I moved to the company one month ago, and the international MBA was a requirement.” He says his dual degree adds value for his company because “The main assets of the company are international, so the program really helped me to understand different cultures and to build a great international network.”
Arriagada did his MP devising initiatives for increased sales at Malabar International, a Simi Valley-based supplier of ground support and maintenance equipment for commercial, military and business jet aircraft. “I worked on a great team,” he says. “We worked very closely in a cooperative environment, and applied everything we learned. I’ve spent my career working in finance, and I had the opportunity to apply my knowledge of different fields, like marketing and operations.”
Fellow Global EMBA for the Americas student Bruno Moura is head of channel and distribution at Apple Inc. in Brazil, where he oversees the sales strategy and execution for Apple’s distribution and commercial channels. He says he chose the Anderson Global EMBA “for the exchange among global professionals, the worldwide business perspective that the programs offers, and the experience and knowledge that the professors at Anderson possess.” Moura worked on a nine-month MP pulling together a strategy for a major business turnaround for the Colombian company Amazing S.A. and he reports that the client plans to implement his team’s recommendations.
Ivy Wong (’15), who scored the highest GPA in her Global EMBA for Asia Pacific class, is the busy senior vice president of the airside concessions division of Changi Airport Group (CAG) in Singapore. Wong led CAG to double-digit growth and, in 2009, her team steered the transition from operating as a government statutory board to a commercial entity. “After almost 20 years of work in a now-familiar industry,” she says, “I decided to pursue my graduate degree for intellectual stimulation and broadening of my mind and perspectives. The UCLA-NUS program presents great opportunities to glean insights into both the fast-growing Asia Pacific region and the high-speed innovative and entrepreneurial culture of the West Coast of the USA. The structure of the program fit extremely well with other demands in my life, allowing me to balance family, work and study.”
As the UCLA-NUS and UCLA-UAI students become Anderson alumni for life, they have pledged to remain engaged with the worldwide Anderson network. Quiñones says she plans to take advantage of “the strong group we have developed in our GEMBA Class of 2015.” Arriagada adds, “I want to participate as much as possible in the Anderson network. It is one of the assets you get with the MBA, so it is important to be active to enhance it even more.”
Comments