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By Carolyn Gray Anderson
In a joint ceremony for the graduating classes of UCLA Anderson’s Global Executive MBA for Asia Pacific and Global Executive MBA for the Americas programs on Saturday, August 22, Deputy Dean of Academic Affairs John W. Mamer welcomed MBA candidates who earned dual degrees from UCLA and the National University of Singapore and Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, respectively. The entire ceremony was live-streamed in the interest of involving an international audience, given the global nature of these programs. As Mamer reminded the graduates, completion of this degree “takes a personal network that stretches across borders and time zones.”
Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, Wasserman Dean and Distinguished Professor of Education, UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, delivered the keynote address. He commented on the great transition the occasion marked, urging the newly minted MBAs to embrace the worldwide Bruin network they are now part of. Quoting famed Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, Suárez-Orozco told them: “‘You only truly own something when you leave it behind.’ Now, as you leave us, you have come to fully own Anderson. … An Anderson Executive MBA is the very definition of success.”
Invoking Los Angeles as “the city of nations” with “breathtaking demographic diversity,” Suárez-Orozco emphasized the advantages of pursuing an education at an international crossroads that houses populations of people from all over the world in numbers second only to their countries of origin. “We are the ‘other’ Armenia,” he said, “the ‘other’ Cambodia, the ‘other’ Korea.” He cited staggering statistics regarding global migrations that link GDP to the largest physical movement of people ever recorded in history. “Think of your Anderson Global Executive MBA as your diplomatic passport,” he told the graduates. “Make the most of the priceless locational capital and geographic endowment you have accrued as Bruin citizens — of Los Angeles and your other city. … There are clear social, economic, cognitive and aesthetic benefits to transversing cultural spaces.”
Professor Carla Hayn, senior associate dean of the Executive MBA and Global Executive MBA programs, introduced the class speakers, MBA candidates Ali Abbassi (’15), for the Global EMBA for the Americas graduates, and Rael Levitt (’15), for the Global EMBA for Asia Pacific graduates. Abbassi spoke from the heart and remarked, “I aspired to learn, I planned to earn an MBA, and what actually happened was so much more. I started the program with my classmates and now I’m graduating with my dearest friends.” Levitt followed by recalling the day in 2014 when, telling himself, “You’re either green and growing or brown and dying,” he presented himself at NUS “to start a journey that would take me around the world.” He told his class, “If there’s one thing our global journey has reminded us, it’s that the best leaders love to learn. And the greatest organizations are in fact learning organizations — places where ideas are the currency of success.”
The Outstanding Academic Achievement Awards went to UCLA-UAI student Felipe Arriagada and UCLA-NUS student Ivy Wong. Arriagada and Wong, along with their classmates Steven Hicks, Deborah Chew, Alexander Ignatyev, Lander Isasi, Andrew Lee, Adam Radwanski and Sidantha Tantirimudalige were inducted into the Anderson Honors Society, representing the top 15 percent of the graduating students.
Ameer Gobran from the Americas class presented the Outstanding Teaching Award to Professor Al Osborne, who could not attend the ceremony but, through Hayn, delivered a message of gratitude from Panama; and Chew from the Asia Pacific class bestowed the award on Christiane Barz, who was on leave in Germany when she was told 24 hours earlier she’d been elected for the prize and booked a flight within three hours to be present at the ceremony.
Mamer conferred degrees on 39 students enrolled in the UCLA-NUS program, and 16 who graduated from the UCLA-UAI program. Hum Sin Hoon, deputy dean at NUS, and Manola Sánchez, dean of UAI’s business school, represented the partner schools. Mamer expressed congratulations on behalf of UCLA Anderson Dean Judy Olian, whose travel schedule prevented her from participating. Wishing the graduates well, he observed that “The world of business is not static. It seems to change at an ever-increasing rate. The most important thing we can teach you is how to learn. And I believe that this process isn’t completed in 15 months. It takes a lifetime.”
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