UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Field Study Team Assessing Feasibility of Blockchain Technology as Key to Sustaining Guyana’s Indigenous Communities Earns Inaugural Impact Award

A quintet of UCLA Anderson students was commissioned by Conservation International Guyana to assess the feasibility of blockchain technology to solve a major challenge in the implementation and scaling of the Community Development Plan (CDP) in Guyana. The work was conducted in the group’s Applied Management Research (AMR) project, the field study assignment that serves as the capstone of Anderson’s full-time MBA experience. The team, comprising Class of 2018’s Miriam Leah Feygenson, Yuhei Iwasaki, Vasiya Krishnan, Anubhav Mishra and Harshita Mishra, was awarded the inaugural Impact Alumni AMR Award and received a $5,000 prize.

The Impact Alumni AMR Award recognizes the MBA student team that has excelled at making the greatest impact on their mission-driven client’s project through the course of the AMR program.

Earlier this year, the team published a story about their experience on the UCLA Anderson blog.

Alumni judges selected the winning team for the inaugural Impact Alumni AMR Award. Pictured left to right: Dave Gallon (’03), Nurit Katz (’08), Laura Ferretti (’95), faculty moderator Gayle Northrop (’96), Wendy Spinner (’89), Harshita Mishra (’18), Vasiya Krishnan (’18), Anubhav Mishra (’18), Miriam Feygenson (’18), Yuhei Iwasaki (’18)

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“This award was established to highlight and appreciate the specialized skills and abilities needed to work with a mission-driven organization’s unique need to balance financial and social impact returns,” says Bhavna Sivanand (’14), executive director of the school’s Impact@Anderson initiative. “An important objective for Impact@Anderson is to integrate impact into the core competency of the MBA program, so that all MBA graduates seek out opportunities such as social impact AMRs to be able to positively contribute to society during their time here and beyond.”

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Students Develop International Strategy for UCLA Center for World Health to Drive Sustainable Health Care and Education in Southeast Asia

The student consultants traveled to Bangkok to meet with doctors and administrators on the Siriraj Hospital International Relations team. Pictured left to right: Anita (Pei-Yu) Ho; Larry (Wen-Yan) Chang; John Hamilton, special assistant in the UCLA Vice Chancellor’s Office; Dr. Vitoon Chinswangwatanakul; Dr. Thawatchai Akaraviputh; Dr. Thawornchai Limjindaporn; Xiao Hu; Em (Kornrawich) Limpokaiyakul; Chalotorn Olanprasert, Siriraj Hospital International Relations.

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UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research (AMR) projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 teams to collaborate with established NGOs seeking sustainable solutions for global economies, health delivery systems and environmentally sensitive parts of the world. UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students made their final presentations on March 9.

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By Larry (Wen-Yan) Chang, Anita (Pei-Yu) Ho, Xiao Hu, Kornrawich Limpokaiyakul, Andrew Thai (Class of 2018)

Our field study team collaborated with UCLA Center for World Health (CWH), which coordinates the resources of UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and UCLA Health to explore international business development. The team and CWH evaluated opportunities for UCLA to establish a more deliberate presence in Thailand and Southeast Asia, in the form of a hub focusing on distance and on-site learning in various fields, including medicine.

During the first five weeks of the 2017 fall quarter, the team conducted more than 20 primary interviews with stakeholders in different areas, including the management of UCLA Health, UCLA professors in different research areas, researchers and students who have experience in Thailand and Southeast Asia. The purpose of the interviews was to understand the needs and explore potential benefits of UCLA’s presence in Thailand.

A UCLA Anderson Field Study Team Finds the “Lynk” for Kenyan Workers and Communities

Ryan Dumlao, Melody Akbari and Varun Chalupadi at the Lynk booth at Mum’s Village, a convention in Nairobi

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UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research (AMR) projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 teams to collaborate with established NGOs seeking sustainable solutions for global economies, health delivery systems and environmentally sensitive parts of the world. UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students made their final presentations on March 9.

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By Melody Nazaneen Akbari, Varun Chalupadi, Adrienne Chang, Ryan Christopher Dumlao, Blake Matthew Rauba (Class of 2018)

Jambo! We would love to take you on a journey with us to Nairobi, Kenya, to tell you more about our team’s field study experience.

At the end of our first year at UCLA Anderson, we were matched with the Kenyan startup Lynk, a technology platform that connects customers with trusted domestic workers, called fundis, and skilled blue collar professionals. Around 80 percent of Kenya’s labor force comprises informal workers or contractors. Lynk was built in order to create a smarter way for households and businesses to get service throughout Nairobi. Lynk’s goal is to transform the informal worker industry by employing as many fundis as possible ― to date helping to direct $600,000 to workers.

Lynk, founded in 2015 by former Google product manager Adam Grunewald, currently has three product offerings: Requests, Projects and Discover. Our AMR project focused on Lynk Requests, a full-service solution whereby customers specify a job and Lynk matches them with a qualified worker. Lynk Requests has 1,300 vetted workers on the platform, with more than 6,000 jobs completed over 70 service categories that include plumbing, roofing, housekeeping, cooking, childcare and more.

Sustaining Effective NCD Screening in a South Africa Community Requires an Ecosystem of Strategic Partners

HSRC staff in Sweetwaters, South Africa, with Angela Tseng and Erin Kelm (far right and third from right, respectively)

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UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research (AMR) projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 teams to collaborate with established NGOs seeking sustainable solutions for global economies, health delivery systems and environmentally sensitive parts of the world. UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students made their final presentations on March 9.

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By Angela Tseng, Bahman Mirzaee, Colin Meade, Erin Kelm, Qingqing Wu (Class of 2018)

Our team collaborated with the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa to identify sustainable business models for noncommunicable disease (NCD) screening in the peri-urban community of Sweetwaters. HSRC works to improve health outcomes and employment in the community. Our goal was to assess strategic partners across various industries who could aid in sustaining the NCD screening program in the long term.

We carried on the work of previous UCLA Anderson Global Access Program and AMR teams who developed the structure of the screening program. We selected this project in order to broaden our understanding of challenges faced in the global health and social impact realms, as well as capitalize on the opportunity to learn about a community and culture that is very different from our own. Our five members are deeply involved in the health care community on campus through the Healthcare Business Association and are passionate about making an impact on the global community beyond Anderson.

On-the-Ground Strategies for Eroded Land in Guatemala’s Coffee-Growing Regions

Left to right: Justin Lee, Ernesto Cruz, Idan Ariav, Sid Parikh and Jose Lanzagorta toured a coffee plantation in rural Guatemala

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UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research (AMR) projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 teams to collaborate with established NGOs seeking sustainable solutions for global economies, health delivery systems and environmentally sensitive parts of the world. UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students made their final presentations on March 9.

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By Idan Ariav (’18), Ernesto Cruz (’18), Jose Lanzagorta (’18), Justin Lee (’18), Sid Parikh (’18)

In January 2018, our Applied Management Research (AMR) team visited Alta Verapaz in the northern highlands of Guatemala with our client Strategies for International Development (SID). SID is a nonprofit organization that develops and promotes methods for helping poor farmers reclaim eroded land, increase income and overcome poverty.

Having successfully launched campaigns in Bolivia and Honduras, SID focuses currently on helping coffee farmers in Guatemala. SID engaged our team to help answer some of the nonprofit’s toughest strategic and marketing questions in order to ultimately drive its fundraising efforts. We traveled with key members of the SID team, including executive director Charles Patterson and Guatemala National Program director Bayron Leon to apply and improve SID’s new strategy on the ground.

Improving the Quality of Sustainable Coffee Production in San Martín, Peru

In in the San Martín coffee-growing region of northern Peru, Don Pablo explains “coffee leaf rust,” a disease that has wiped out a significant amount of coffee crops worldwide

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UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research (AMR) projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored four UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 teams to work with Conservation International, which partners with indigenous groups internationally and pairs local expertise with student consultants.

This story is one of the four by students who collaborated with CI to help find sustainable solutions to enhance economies in environmentally sensitive parts of the world. UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students made their final presentations on March 9.

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By Pascual Daniel George Eley, Santiago Fernandez Quiroz, Ryan Seiji Imamura, Alfredo Jose Noriega Aurazo, Michael David Snyder (Class of 2018)

Our Applied Management Research (AMR) team engaged with Conservation International to support the development of an environmentally sustainable value chain for coffee production in the San Martín region of northern Peru. The goal was to identify the key to scaling current efforts to improve sustainability by identifying optimal linkages in the value chain for intervention. Evaluating the current split of value-capture across the chain to understand how best to incentivize local farmers was inherent to these efforts and any intervention efforts need to consider the social and economic impact on the small communities in the San Martín region.

After several weeks of extensive secondary research, we understood the broader economic context in which the coffee sector in Peru operates. A combination of price pressure and limited power relative to middlemen in the value chain left smallholder farmers exposed to the fluctuations of the volatile coffee market. Along with the unfavorable effect this had on living conditions, the corresponding drive for increased yield to make up for limited pricing power adversely impacted the environment (coffee farming has been identified as the leading cause of deforestation in the San Martín region). Our primary research entailed interviews with coffee industry players and subject matter experts, and an in-country visit to meet with smallholder farmers, local community representatives and leaders of cooperatives.

The Project Management Key to Sustaining Guyana’s Indigenous Communities

UCLA student consultants visited Moco Moco Village, an indigenous community in Guyana

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UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research (AMR) projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored four UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 teams to work with Conservation International, which partners with indigenous groups internationally and pairs local expertise with student consultants.

This story is one of the four by students who collaborated with CI to help find sustainable solutions to enhance economies in environmentally sensitive parts of the world. UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students made their final presentations on March 9.

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By Miriam Leah Feygenson, Yuhei Iwasaki, Vasiya Krishnan, Anubhav Mishra, Harshita Mishra (Class of 2018)

In 2015, the United Nations set an ambitious goal for the entire globe by the year 2030: to “transform our world by ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring prosperity for all” through sustainable development. To align with the UN 2030 Sustainable Development goals, Guyana entered into partnership with Conservation International, a globally renowned NGO, to improve and expand the country’s existing sustainable development program catering to its numerous indigenous communities.

Conservation International, in collaboration with Guyana’s Ministry of Indigenous People’s Affairs (MoIPA) and the Kanuku Mountains Community Representative Group (KMCRG) of Region 9 (one of 10 administrative regions of Guyana), are piloting a program called Sustainable Development Framework (SDF) in order to create a standardized methodology for an impactful and successful sustainable development of the indigenous communities in Guyana.

UCLA Anderson Field Study Team Tackles Market Access for Cattle Farmers in Botswanan FMD-Zone

“Eco-Rangers” in the field in Botswana. The premise of social enterprise Meat Naturally Pty. (MNP) is to restore traditional cattle herding as a profession, with technology, dignity and a targeted emphasis on the environment.

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UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research (AMR) projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored four UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 teams to work with Conservation International, which partners with indigenous groups internationally and pairs local expertise with student consultants.

This story is one of the four by students who collaborated with CI to help find sustainable solutions to enhance economies in environmentally sensitive parts of the world. UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students made their final presentations on March 9.

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By Shivesh Bakshi, Brendan Joseph McNickle, Marianne Elizabeth Monroe, Richard Eric Mopas, Nitya Ramaswami (Class of 2018)

“Elephants are killing us!”

This is the jarring, personal testimony of a cattle farmer in Botswana. It directly challenges a first-world (mis)understanding of “conservation” and demonstrates how environmental and habitat conservation efforts cannot be pursued as a one-note campaign to save land and wildlife. Conservation is a balancing act affecting both the Earth’s most vulnerable natural ecosystems and the livelihoods of people who live there. Vital biodiversity includes human beings.

In human settlements that overlap with elephant migration routes, elephants will venture into fields to feast on (and destroy) gardens and grazing land. This problem is complicated by the fact that many elephants are fleeing poachers in neighboring nations that may not have the same protections in place as Botswana’s pro-conservation government. The protected lands of the Okavango Delta are designed to provide sanctuary.

Fishing for Profits: UCLA Anderson Field Study Team Dives Deep into Galapagos Tuna Supply Chain

 

Left to right: Daniel Osorio, Traci Kuratomi, Will Berman and Kevin Oswald visited a fishing cooperative in the Galapagos 

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UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research (AMR) projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored four UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 teams to work with Conservation International, which partners with indigenous groups internationally and pairs local expertise with student consultants.

This story is one of the four by students who collaborated with CI to help find sustainable solutions to enhance economies in environmentally sensitive parts of the world. UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students made their final presentations on March 9.

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By William Roger Berman, Guilherme Mattos Kobylko, Traci Yukiye Kuratomi, Daniel Osorio, Kevin Christopher Oswald (Class of 2018)

In 2015, the Galapagos Marine Reserve instituted various “no-take zones,” which restricted fishing in areas deemed vital for adequate biodiversity and sustainability of fish stocks. Our AMR team is working with Conservation International to increase the market value of local fishermen’s tuna catch. Tuna is an important source of income for the people in the Galapagos Islands, and they need ways to sustain and improve their lives while still protecting the natural beauty and diversity of the Galapagos.

Galapagos is synonymous with nature and biology and, since the time of Charles Darwin, world-renowned for its endemic wildlife species. Therefore, protecting its biodiversity is an important task, but increased restrictions on fishing stress the local fishermen. Already under strict regulations to fish in artisanal ways without the use of more efficient but environmentally damaging industrial techniques, fishermen often struggle to make ends. With roughly 3 percent of the employed population working as fishermen, this is a problem for the local community and its economy.

UCLA Anderson Field Study Team Applies Global Purview to a Compelling Business Case

Team members met with female business leaders in Jamaica, which reports the highest percentage of women in business and management globally. Left to right: MBA student David Poli; Eva Lewis, corporate and investment banking head of Citi Jamaica; Cathrine Kennedy, group chief officer of GraceKennedy Limited; Marjory Kennedy, director of administration of Jamaica Fruit & Shipping; Mariame McIntosh Robinson, president and CEO of First Global Bank; Lisa Lewis, founder/CEO of Great People Solutions; Patricia Francis, chairman of the Trade Facilitation Task Force for the Government of Jamaica; MBA student Jessica Lin.

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UCLA Anderson MBA students conduct Applied Management Research projects in lieu of a thesis. The nation’s first business school field study program, AMR partners students with top organizations to solve a key strategic problem. The Center for Global Management sponsored one UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 team to work the International Labour Organization, which brings together governments, employers and workers of 187 member states to set labor standards, develop policies and devise programs promoting decent work for all women and men. The project focused specifically on engaging leaders in the business community through a new ILO publication on women in business and management.

UCLA Anderson Class of 2018 AMR students make their final presentations on March 9.

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By Katie Donovan (’18), Anna Goldberg (’18), Jessica Lin (’18), David Poli (’18) and Jennifer Yoohanna (’18)

Over the past four months, our team of five full-time MBA students has had the privilege of working with the International Labour Organization Bureau of Employers’ Activities (ILO-ACT/EMP). Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the ILO-ACT/EMP is a specialized unit of the United Nations (UN) that supports employers’ organizations (EOs), such as chambers of commerce and industry associations, to inform their members on topics related to job creation and employee well-being.

In 2019, the ILO-ACT/EMP will publish a new global report focusing on Women in Business and Management (WIBM) and our team worked closely with our client counterpart, Anderson alumna Jae-hee Chang (Ph.D. ’08), to research and ultimately make recommendations on how to increase business leaders' engagement with this new publication.