UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Numbers Expert Elisa Long Rolls the Dice, Testing her Own Tolerance for Uncertainty

Elisa Long won top prize on the breast cancer awareness special of the CBS game show "The Price Is Right" and wrote about the experience for the Washington Post.

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Read Assistant Professor Elisa Long’s article in the Washington Post, “How Statistics Guided Me through Life, Death and ‘The Price Is Right’”

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By Carolyn Gray Anderson

When UCLA Anderson Assistant Professor of Decisions, Operations & Technology Management Elisa Long was an undergraduate at Cornell University, she started out in biomedical engineering — “I was too squeamish for medicine,” she confesses — but found her way to operations research when she realized its applications to so many everyday systems, from airline scheduling to retail supply chain management to fraud detection. Once she was in graduate school at Stanford, Long saw everything she had learned about operations and probability coalescing in health care policy and institutional practice, and she knew that was where her applied research would be most useful.

Long teaches the data and decisions course in Anderson’s full-time MBA program. She says her goal is to distill for students the most relevant information for their business objectives, to “connect the dots” so that they can use statistics and probability directly to solve problems or enhance their work. She recently had a chance to practice the basic principles she imparts to her students when she was invited to write an article for the Washington Post connecting the dots between her victory as a contestant on “The Price Is Right” and her diagnosis and treatment of a rare, aggressive form of breast cancer related to the BRCA1 gene mutation she carries.

Poets & Quants Names Anderson EMBA Derek Herrera among the Class of 2015’s Best Executive MBAs

Recent Anderson graduate and retired U.S. Marine Captain Derek Herrera (EMBA ’15) made news throughout 2014 and 2015, winning the John Wooden Global Leadership Fellowship and earning a Bronze Star for acts of bravery performed while fighting an enemy of the United States. In May he and Zach McKinney (Ph.D., biomedical engineering ’15), Beth Johnson (EMBA ’15) and Chandrashekar Hariharan (EMBA ’15) won the 34th annual Knapp Venture Competition for Herrera’s company Spinal Singularity’s innovative, minimally invasive urinary catheter for people with spinal cord injury or disease.

Now Poets & Quants has named Herrera among the Best Executive MBAs in the Class of 2015. He is recognized for his great resourcefulness and leadership in founding a new LLC while earning his degree. Herrera, in turn gives credit to his Anderson peers, professors and mentors for influencing him with their own talent.

“No matter what your title is or what industry you work in, you will be required to work in a team or interact with consumers and clients in a professional manner,” Herrera told Poets & Quants. “At the end of the day, individual skills are only a portion of what is required to be successful in business. Personal relationships and teamwork play a very important role in any company and I am very happy that the MBA program forces every student to grow in this area.”

Tech Sector Forecast: Good News, Bad News

Jerry Nickelsburg briefs the media on UCLA Anderson's June 2015 quarterly economic forecast

Take a look at photos from the June quarterly economic forecast

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By Maneula Reyna, Alston Chapman and Carolyn Gray Anderson

In 1991, a gigabyte of data cost $10,000. Today it’s free. Back then, one million transistors crowded onto a single chip, now one chip holds seven billion transistors. In 10 years we can probably expect chips to hold 100 billion transistors. If we think of these transistors like neurons, the 86 billion “logical switches” in our brains (where space opens up only as memories fade), then it’s fair to say we easily own more transistors than exist in the most complicated locations of the human body.

Scott McGregor, keynote speaker at the UCLA Anderson Forecast’s quarterly economic report, is president and CEO of Broadcom, which was founded in 1991. The company, just acquired by Avago Technologies in a cash and stock transaction that values the combined company at $77 billion in enterprise value, gave us the first digital modem and the first digital set-top box — connecting consumers to information in what were then new and expansive ways.

In keeping with the technology theme of the June Forecast, McGregor addressed the age of “smart machines” and the staggering rate at which they are getting smarter. He called it the microelectronics revolution, and it distinguishes itself from the industrial and electrical revolutions of the past in its exponential advancement. We will never again have a whole century to acclimate to change, he observed: when certain jobs go, they all go at once and don’t come back. There’s no gradual tapering off as automation and robotics take over.

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

UCLA Anderson Students on Winning Team: Koniku Takes Top Prize of $10,000 at MIT Global Startup Workshop

Koniku team members Osh Agabi (far left), Christina Salys (second from left) and Christopher McAndrew (far right) accept the grand prize in the MIT Global Startup Workshop Business Plan Competition in Guatemala City.

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By Christopher McAndrew (EMBA ’16)

Koniku Ltd., a startup focused on improving clinical trial success rates in the pharmaceutical industry, took home the top prizes at the MIT Global Startup Workshop held this year in Guatemala City and hosted by Universidad Francesco Marroquin (UFM), Guatemala. I was happy to represent the Koniku team and put into practice some of things we had studied just weeks earlier in Entrepreneurship and Venture Initiation, the class taught by one of the team advisors, Anderson’s Professor George Abe.

My UCLA Anderson EMBA colleague Christina Salys (’16) entered our team in the competition after learning about the program through an email from the Price Center for Entrepreneurship. Koniku’s team represented the global nature of the program, with us as members from UCLA Anderson, along with Laura Brightmann and Mark Brown from the University of Cambridge and Oshiorenoya (“Osh”) Agabi from Imperial College London. Christina, Osh and I traveled to Guatemala to present as finalists in the Business Plan Competition that highlighted the workshop.

The Business Plan Competition was open to early-stage startup companies from around the world. With clinical trails failing over 85% of the time, Koniku developed a system, based on Osh’s Ph.D. research, that allows drug developers to replicate human organ drug interactions using “lab on a chip” technology in order to radically improve preclinical testing procedures. The competition organizers received over 120 applicants in the first round and eight finalists were selected to present their plans to a panel of judges in Guatemala. Finalists were given five minutes to present their plans followed by a three-minute Q&A session with the judging panel.

Anderson Professor Emeritus Richard Roll Receives 2015 Onassis Prize for Finance

UCLA Anderson Professor Emeritus Richard Roll, the former Joel Fried Chair in Applied Finance, has been awarded the 2015 Onassis Prize for Finance, which he shares with Professor Stewart Myers, the Robert C. Merton (1970) Professor of Financial Economics at MIT.

The prestigious $200,000 prize is sponsored by the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation and awarded every three years by Cass Business School, part of City University London, jointly with the Onassis Foundation.

Roll said, “Previous recipients of the Onassis Prize in finance include Eugene Fama — also 2013 recipient of the Nobel Prize — and Stephen Ross, this year’s recipient of the Deutsche Bank prize. I’m humbled and honored to be included in such company.”

Roll and Myers have made foundational contributions to finance since the beginning of its transformation to a rigorous science-based discipline, nearly a half century ago. Roll, who is now Linde Professor of Finance at the California Institute of Technology, is widely acclaimed for his work on portfolio theory and asset pricing.

Read the Onassis Prize press release

Coaching Executive MBAs Is Changing Character

Traditionally, Executive MBA (EMBA) students have sought career services that focus on managing their careers with their current employers. But with fewer companies sponsoring their executives to pursue MBAs, and more and more EMBA students paying their own way, the demand for services has increased and also changed character.

Susan Dearing, executive director and EMBA career coach in the UCLA Anderson Executive MBA program, spoke with Top MBA about her role in helping to guide and advance the careers of a new generation of EMBA students.

EMBAs, unlike most full-time MBA candidates, have 10-12 years of professional experience; but if they are looking to move into a new area or change companies, they may need much the same coaching that less experienced graduates rely on.

“Students need to understand the process of finding work, which is all about getting out there and knowing how to research the job market,” says Dearing. “This allows students to target and identify job opportunities that are going to be the right fit for them. The networking process is particularly important — being able to create relationships [that] put students in a position where they can hear about opportunities when they come up. They won't just be relying on the advertised job market or the job openings that are posted in various places. A commonly quoted statistic is that 80 percent of all executive-level jobs are never advertised, they are filled through word of mouth. So, there's a big emphasis here on what the process is for finding those kinds of unadvertised jobs.”

Read Susan Dearing’s full interview with Top MBA

UCLA Anderson’s Hal Hershfield Recommends Forgetting the Present to Find Purpose

By Bijan White

How do we derive meaning from the mundane world in which we live? Hal Hershfield, assistant professor of marketing at Anderson, attempts to decipher the complex mechanism of the mind. In research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Hershfield and his colleagues tested whether simulation in general corresponds to and, more important, predicts meaning in life.

In his recent article in Slate, Step Outside Yourself, Hershfield writes about the formal studies and reports, “We found that having people project themselves forward or backward in time or into other geographic locations — compared with having people think about the present — boosted their subsequent reports of meaning in life.”

He reminds us that the mind possesses remarkable abilities of time travel, projection and imagination. We are constantly traveling through time and space in our minds, reliving memories, envisioning faraway places, and entering peoples’ heads. Hershfield asserts that mental stimulation is correlated with a stronger sense of meaning in one’s life.

When feeling a little lost, try to get lost in thought and discover a place deep inside yourself to bring some meaning to the present.

Read more about Hershfield’s research on decision-making in Harvard Business Review.

UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate Announces Major Gift from the Gilbert Foundation

Richard Ziman, founding chairman of Rexford Industrial Realty (left), and Stuart Gabriel, Ziman Center director, announced the Gilbert Foundation gift and program.

The UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate has announced a partnership with the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation to establish the UCLA Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Program in Real Estate, Finance and Urban Economics. The transformative research program is the result of a $1 million gift from the Gilbert Foundation to fund research and scholarship on crucial economic issues.

“This is a transformational gift, both to UCLA and to the community at large,” said Martin H. Blank Jr., director of the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation. “The Gilbert Program will greatly assist the Ziman Center in expanding its efforts to help solve pressing issues that impact us all, including housing and mortgage markets, the affordable housing crisis, environmental sustainability, urban transportation, municipal finance, the regulatory environment, capital markets and macroeconomics.”

Ziman Center Director Stuart Gabriel added, “UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate provides crucial economic research, and its work is cited widely by media, academics, policy planners and community stakeholders. This gift amplifies that impact, while it prepares the next generation of leaders to address these issues as well.”

Read more about this gift and the Gilbert Foundation on the Ziman Center website.