UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Women Entrepreneurs Disrupting Retail: Maximize your UCLA Anderson Experience, Connect with Your Customers

By Angela Chong (’17) and Katie Satornino (’17)

On March 1, Women’s Business Connection (WBC), in co-sponsorship with Entrepreneur Association (EA) and Retail Management Association (RMA), held the “Women Entrepreneurs Disrupting Retail” panel at UCLA Anderson. Angela Chong, WBC’s director of professional development, kicked off the event and introduced the speakers, participants and moderator Katie Satornino, director of career and alumni for RMA. Katie welcomed the four successful entrepreneurs: Eunice Cho (’14), founder and creative director of AELLA; Ivka Adam, founder and CEO of Iconery; Kelsey Doorey (’13), founder and CEO of Vow to Be Chic; and Meg Johnson, senior director of JustFab.

More than 50 women from across three clubs filled the room and had the opportunity to have an intimate and authentic conversation with these successful entrepreneurs, who engaged in an informative discussion on various aspects of their startup experiences.

Three themes emerged from themed panel discussions: be persistent, maximize your Anderson experience and know your customers.

UCLA Anderson Welcomes New CFO Kate Motonaga, a Great Return on Investment

Kate Motonaga (FEMBA ’97), UCLA Anderson’s new senior associate dean for finance, has worked in the finance and accounting fields for more than 25 years, managing budgets up to $1 billion. With a broad reach across functions, she held increasingly senior finance and accounting positions in companies that included Honeywell, California Steel, Avery Dennison and Kaiser Aluminum, followed by 10 years providing CFO-level consulting services to private and public-sector organizations.

Kate joined Anderson’s executive team as CFO less than two weeks ago. As she readies one of her two teenagers for college and absorbs the sticker shock of L.A. area real estate prices, she’s looking forward to settling down and settling in.

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Q: You were already a senior financial analyst with what was then Allied Signal when you entered the FEMBA program at Anderson. What was it at the time that made you decide to pursue an advanced degree?

I wanted to be in management. At the time, Allied Signal (now Honeywell) required an MBA or a CPA for promotion. I was much more interested in the MBA route; they offered to pay for it and were very supportive of the time I’d need to dedicate to it.

Q: You studied business administration as an undergraduate, too. How early did you know you wanted your career to head the direction it did?

Too early… Even back in high school I was trying to figure out the return on my educational investment. I knew that if I wanted to go to college I had to figure out how to pay for it. I’ve pursued a path in both accounting and finance, which I have a personal tendency to group but are usually separate specialties.

My best subject in high school was algebra, which had me asking, “How do you convert a discussion or written paragraph into numbers? How does that translate?” I still do that to this day at a more sophisticated level. I know how important it is to understand what goes on behind the numbers and, as things change and evolve, how that will affect the numbers.

UCLA/Easton's Vandana Mangal Grooms High Schoolers for Careers in STEM

In 2012, the City of Santa Monica reached out to Vandana Mangal with an invitation to give a talk at their nascent six-week Youth Tech Program for high school students. Since then, she has returned every summer to teach a session on big data in this program that gives students from Santa Monica high schools a chance to learn about modern technology and gain real-life experience in a tech startup environment.

Mangal is executive director of the Easton Technology Management Center and the research director for Business and Information Technologies (BIT) at UCLA Anderson. She’s taught the subject of big data as an Emerging Technologies and Markets course at Anderson, published three books, guest edited a special issue of a journal and has authored articles on business and technology in academic and industry journals.

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Q: Why do you think you were pinpointed to teach in this program? Do you have previous experience training and educating pre-college age students?

My role in starting and growing the Easton Center from 68 to 560 students with focus and offerings in business and technology could have been what attracted the City of Santa Monica to invite me to speak in their program. I have experience teaching undergraduates and MBAs at the University of Wisconsin and, last year, I taught “Hinglish,” a combination of Hindi and English, to middle and high school students. I like that “Ah, ha!” moment when a student “gets it.”

Q: What exactly do you cover in the Youth Tech workshops?

I aim to introduce high school students to emerging technologies and their associated markets, with the goal of bringing out the opportunities for STEM majors and careers. The first year, I spoke about Anderson’s Business and Information Technologies research project, which looks at how technology adoption is impacting business practices, over time and across the world. Since then, having taught a course on big data and cloud computing at UCLA Anderson, I have spoken to the Youth Tech Program students about big data each year. Last year I also introduced the topics of the Internet of Things and sharing economy.

UCLA Anderson Places Second in National Real Estate Case Competition

By Janet Kang (FEMBA ’16), Jesse Mays (FEMBA ’16), Vivek Sai (FEMBA ’17) and Ray Van De Walker (FEMBA ’16)

A student team from the UCLA Anderson School of Management has placed second in a national real estate case competition.

Janet Kang (FEMBA ’16), Jesse Mays (FEMBA ’16), Vivek Sai (FEMBA ’17) and Ray Van De Walker (FEMBA ’16) competed in the annual competition, known as “The CASE,” sponsored by the MIT Center for Real Estate Alumni Association. In January, the team had five days to develop an original proposal, including a financing plan and architectural renderings, for the redevelopment of a nine-acre waterfront parcel at the Port of Miami.

The team developed a mixed-use development program for the site that included a 400-key hotel, 250,000 square feet of retail and 180,000 square feet of office, surrounded by a park and open-air auditorium. They called their development Crucero Bay.

Industry experts assembled by MIT winnowed the original 31 entrants down to 12 semifinalist teams. The UCLA team traveled to Boston in February to compete in the semifinals, where they presented their proposal to a panel of real estate industry representatives.

“It was our goal to make it to Miami, so we were incredibly excited when, at the end of the day, they announced we were one of the top three teams and would be heading to the finals,” said Kang.

An Experience for the Books: ACG Cup Was Hard Won but Worth It

By Jeremy Mau (’17)

Our team was fortunate enough to represent UCLA Anderson in the ACG Cup case competition. The Association for Corporate Growth Los Angeles hosted the best teams from 10 schools in this annual investment banking and private equity competition. After a grueling two weeks with multiple all-nighters, David Shin (’17), Kyle Patterson (’17) and I went into the final rounds prepared and confident. In the end, our hard work and determination paid off, as we came out victorious, taking the grand prize of $10,000 — and, more important, the privilege of retaining the coveted ACG Cup for one whole year.

ACG is the global community for middle market M&A dealmakers and business leaders focused on driving growth. The ACG Cup competition provides a tremendous opportunity for aspiring dealmakers to get real-world experience while interacting and networking with leading finance professionals and organizations. It is a true showcase of talent, and current industry leaders “may just meet [their] next rising-star dealmaker.”

The road to glory is far from easy, as each year teams of two to four MBA students participate in the first round of competitions. Each team receives a case study problem based on an amalgam of actual corporate finance and M&A engagements.

One week later, student teams present their analysis, recommendations and conclusions to a panel of local ACG finance professionals consisting of bankers and M&A lawyers, who engage in a spirited debate designed to challenge and encourage the students. The competition at Anderson this year was fierce, as all of the participating teams consisted of future bankers and some of the brightest people I have ever met. Any of the teams would have done well, but we were honored to be selected as the one that would represent UCLA Anderson.

UCLA EBV Alumnus Warren Foster Wins National Entrepreneurship Competition

Interview by Golie Alemi 

Entrepreneurial veterans got the opportunity to apply skills obtained from the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans program and the chance to receive a share of more than $110,000 in seed funding during the national D’Aniello Family Foundation Business Plan Competition. Graduates of the EBV and EBV-Families programs were invited to submit business plans to be judged by a panel of independent experts with long track records in entrepreneurship. UCLA EBV program alumnus Warren Foster was one of 10 semifinalists who presented his business plan at the annual Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) National Training & Alumni Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina.

UCLA proudly congratulates Warren for winning the first place prize of $35,000, which will help launch his startup company the Science Playhouse, a hands-on science lab providing STEM education and enrichment programs for kids ages six to 12 in two large, adjacent school districts in the North Colorado Springs area. We asked Foster to share more about his experience and his inspiration for Science Playhouse.

Q: You spent more than 30 years in the U.S. Army. How did your military career prepare you for your current role as an entrepreneur?

I think the biggest areas that the military assisted were leadership, management and operational planning, training and curriculum development, but most of all, the idea that nothing was impossible with a good team and teamwork.

Q: What was your inspiration behind Science Playhouse?

Science Playhouse was inspired by my own three boys, who love science, computers and experimenting. After living overseas for seven years with them, I was sorely disappointed by the quantity and quality of STEM education in the lower, elementary school grades. Instead of complaining about it, I decided to fix my own problem. Science Playhouse was one of several ideas percolating in my head before I attended EBV at UCLA Anderson. EBV helped solidify the concept and taught me how to do a thorough analysis of the idea and flesh it out into a real, workable business.

Q: Did anyone at UCLA Anderson help you prepare for the business plan competition?

Professor George Abe reviewed my business plan and was able to provide some feedback and recommendations over the phone.

Q: Science can be confusing; how is the curriculum designed to teach children about tech?

The curriculum is kept very simple and provides a simple outline of the subject, but most of the activities are exploratory and hands on. Our focus is on making STEM fun, not work. We want kids to have a great time while still learning, and we start them off young!

8 Leadership Lessons from Nike CFO Andy Campion

By Golie Alemi

Double Bruin Andy Campion (B.A. ’93, ’03) returned to campus to join Dean Judy Olian for a discussion on leadership as part of the Dean’s Distinguished Speaker Series. Campion was appointed chief financial officer of Nike in 2015, succeeding Donald W. Blair, who served as the company’s CFO since 1999. Campion joined Nike in 2007 as vice president of global planning and development; in that role he was responsible for managing Nike’s long-range financial and strategic planning. Appointed chief financial officer of the Nike Brand in 2010, his new duties included leading all aspects of financial management for the company’s flagship brand. In 2014, he was appointed senior vice president of strategy, finance and investor relations, in addition to his role as CFO.

Campion kicked off the event by quoting NBA great Michael Jordan: “Talent wins games, teamwork wins championships.” Leadership comes with many qualities, Campion said; but for his part, he doesn’t subscribe to a philosophy that suggests people are born leaders. Rather, he believes that leadership is a skill developed over time.

Former Mattel Executive Bryan Stockton Predicts Evolving Markets in Latin America

By Cheechee Lin

Bryan Stockton, former chairman and CEO of Mattel Inc., joined Anderson at the Latin American Business Conference to speak about “the ups and downs and the ups again” of Latin America’s economy.

Stockton served as the chief executive officer of Mattel Inc. from January 1, 2012 through January 25, 2015.He oversaw the day-to-day operations of Mattel, ensuring the success of brands such as Barbie®, HotWheels® and Fisher-Price®. Stockton was specifically appointed to this position to accelerate growth and scale, particularly in Brazil.

“I believe there is tremendous potential to accelerate growth and the possibility to create scale so that the Latin America Region can be as independent and successful as the states in Europe and America,” Stockton said. “We need to be ready for the next economic upswing in this market.”

AMR Team Helps Bali Take Out the Trash

By Daniel Abbott (’16), Akinori Matsuda (’16), Lucy Prom (’16), Britney Sussman (’16), Richard Wang (’16)

Currently, 7.9 million people (locals & visitors) reside in Bali, Indonesia. This population generates 3,452 cubic meters of waste each day, 75% of which ends up burned or in illegal dumping sites. The Indonesian government provides limited waste collection services to a small number of high-density, urban areas in Bali. Therefore, if a household, hotel, or restaurant (i.e., waste generator) wants its trash collected, it usually has to find and pay a private party for that service.

Since there is little incentive or regulation encouraging citizens to dispose of trash properly, 50% of households don’t utilize any type of waste management service. This is particularly harmful in Bali where improperly disposed-of trash can negatively impact the beauty of the island and therefore its tourism industry, which accounts for 60-70% of the island’s economy. Trash management and disposal in Bali is an extremely complex problem, but the good news is nearly everything being thrown away has value. It must be sorted and disposed of properly, but Bali’s trash is actually treasure.

A small subset of the population is already making a living from Bali’s trash. In the “formal” waste management economy, waste collection companies have emerged with a pay-for-pick-up model offered to waste generators. On the “informal” side, scavengers on motorbikes scramble to collect anything they think has value from wherever in the waste lifecycle they can find it (local trash depots, outside of households, landfills, etc.). They aggregate all of the waste that has value and pass it along to their scavenger bosses, who then sell the bulk waste to a materials recovery facility. Bali’s relatively low current recycling rate (far more recyclables are consumed than are recycled) indicates significant potential to give people the opportunity to earn a livable wage while also addressing the tremendous waste problem.

Enter our AMR project clients, Kopernik and Olivier Pouillon of Bali Recycling. Kopernik, a Bali-based non-profit, was founded in 2010 to fight poverty by helping to connect last mile, most marginalized populations with simple, life-changing technology globally. Past technologies delivered included solar lamps, water filters, clean cookstoves, and educational toys. The waste issue in Bali is a passion project for Kopernik because of its location.

Financial and Governance Insights from Larry Fink, Founder of the World's Largest Asset Manager

Larry Fink (B.A. ’74, ’76), chairman and CEO of BlackRock Inc., was welcomed this week to a conversation with Dean Judy Olian as part of the Dean’s Distinguished Speaker’s Series. The founder of what is now the world’s largest asset management company, with $4.6 trillion in assets under management, shared his insights on the health and risk factors in the world’s largest economies, retirement savings and the responsibilities of corporate boards. His conversation with Olian coincided with his receiving the UCLA Medal from Chancellor Gene Block later the same day.

“For China to ascend further, it needed to really transform its society into a domestic-oriented service economy,” Fink said, noting that China must expand health care and establish an ecosystem for tourism. He pointed out that it’s more affordable for Chinese citizens to vacation abroad in Hong Kong, New York or Los Angeles than in their own country, and carry back goods that are too expensive in their own country — which send trillions of dollars outside China. According to Fink, the world’s second largest economy is shifting rapidly out of low-wage manufacturing and needs a new competitive edge. Most economies, he said, need about 50 years to make the kind of transformation China is aiming for, but China’s trying to do it in 10. Make no mistake: Fink said, “All economies have to go through this transition.”