UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

A Data-Driven Road to Better Public Health

By Elise Anderson

It was a far cry from what Arash Nasibi (’14) had envisioned as an MBA student. A former computer scientist with a focus on management consulting, Nasibi took a sharp left turn shortly after enrolling in a core strategy class with professor Phillip Leslie, and just kept driving.

Nasibi became interested in Leslie’s perspective on business strategy, which suggests that MBAs seek opportunities that exist in often overlooked “sleepy niche markets.” When he learned that Leslie was recruiting research assistants for work he was doing on restaurant inspection data, Nasibi was intrigued. “It struck me as one of those peculiar markets that he had discussed in class — enough to pique my curiosity and learn more,” Nasibi says.

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.

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.

L.A.’s Best Resource for Mobility Management Could Be Its Recent MBA Graduates

During Impact Week (April 9–13, 2018), whose theme is Purpose + Profit, UCLA Anderson is highlighting stories of mission-driven careers, companies and projects that fulfill unmet needs in sectors from entertainment to real estate. On April 16, Anderson presents the annual Energy Innovation Conference, which focuses on companies striving for energy resiliency through new technologies, robust policy and inventive business models.

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By Carolyn Gray Anderson

UCLA Anderson Inspirational 100 alumnus Gil Penalosa (’84) believes in government’s ability and authority to build and maintain urban infrastructures that can enhance a city’s livability. But he also believes that, in most cities, the efforts and policies are mismanaged. Take public transportation and traffic congestion mitigation. “No private-sector company is going to solve the mobility problem,” Penalosa says. “Not one city in the world solves the problem through the private sector — public transit has to be run by governments. But the public sector should do more steering and less rowing. You can outsource the rowing.”

Founder and chair of the board of the Toronto-based nonprofit 8 80 Cities and chair of the board of World Urban Parks, Penalosa works internationally as a consultant and strategic advisor to both public and private institutions looking to create vibrant urban systems. Penalosa has one catch phrase he considers the real key to making cities livable: healthy mobility. When people can safely navigate their communities on foot, bicycle or wheelchair, he says, a chain reaction of mental and physical health benefits follows. This raises the quality of life for every citizen, including the most vulnerable — the very young, the very old and the very poor.

Lynda Resnick Pursued a Second Career in Service to Others

Spirited, trim and energetic, Lynda Resnick could give the impression that success has come easily to her.

But in a keynote address to UCLA Anderson’s 6th annual Velocity Women’s Leadership Summit, Resnick, co-owner and vice-chair of the Wonderful Company, demonstrated the resilience that has made her a powerful force in California agriculture and philanthropy.

Together with her husband Stewart, Resnick co-owns the $4 billion Wonderful Company, whose brands include FIJI Water, POM Wonderful, Teleflora and Halo mandarins. Lynda Resnick is in charge of the Los Angeles-based company’s global marketing and product development.

Dr. Susan Love Hurdled Sexism to Make Greater Strides toward a Cure for Cancer

UCLA Professor of Surgery, breast cancer activist and Anderson alumna Susan Love delivers the morning keynote address at Velocity, UCLA Anderson's women's leadership summit, on Friday, February 9. Register now!

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Dr. Susan Love (’98) has been battling cancer for most of her life.

She’s battled it as a surgeon, as the founder of both the Faulkner Breast Center in Boston and the Revlon UCLA Breast Center here in Westwood. As the author of the definitive book on the subject, Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book, she’s helped millions of readers to battle it themselves. Today, she continues to take the fight to the disease as chief visionary officer of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation.

Love has also battled the disease in her personal life. Now cancer free, she is a survivor of leukemia. As she prepared her keynote remarks for UCLA Anderson’s 6th annual Velocity Women’s Leadership Summit, she took time out to speak with the UCLA Anderson Blog.

Q: What did your own experience with cancer teach you about fighting the disease?

It taught me (about) the collateral damage, the long-term consequences of treatments — what we euphemistically in the medical profession call “side effects.” But really, they’re not side effects, they last forever. They’re more like having your car in a crash. You can get it fixed, but the passenger door never quite opens the same way again.

After cancer, there are certain things that just don’t get better. We’ve made a lot of progress in treating metastatic breast cancer. We still can’t cure it, but we can certainly keep people alive a lot longer than we could in the past. The problem is that it’s not without a cost of collateral damage. And if you only have a limited amount of time, we certainly would like your quality of life to be as good as possible.

UCLA Awards Dr. Martine Rothblatt Its Highest Honor: The UCLA Medal

By Paul Feinberg and Carolyn Gray Anderson

In a popular series of television advertisements, a narrator describes the accomplishments of a charismatic swashbuckler, ultimately concluding that the fictional figure is, in fact, “the most interesting man in the world.”

Allow UCLA Anderson’s Dean Judy Olian to set the record straight: “Martine Rothblatt is the most interesting person you will ever meet,” the dean said in welcoming Rothblatt back to Anderson this week.

Rothblatt (B.A. ’77, MBA/J.D. ’81), whose company United Therapeutics is based in Silver Spring, Maryland, returned to UCLA to be honored with the UCLA Medal in a ceremony at the home of UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. Before the medal ceremony, Rothblatt participated in a lively question and answer chat with Olian as part of UCLA Anderson’s Dean’s Distinguished Speaker Series.

In the conversation, Rothblatt credited the interdisciplinary education UCLA afforded her as an undergraduate and graduate student for much of her remarkable success. Named by Forbes as one of the World’s 100 Greatest Living Business Minds, Rothblatt leads a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical company that has brought life-saving treatments to market. Proudly transgendered, a medical ethicist, recognized as a technology and artificial intelligence pioneer, and now advancing the science of organ and consciousness transplantation, Rothblatt told the UCLA audience — which included UCLA Law School Dean Jennifer Mnookin and Department of Communications Chair Kerri Johnson — “This is what it looks like to ‘program’ someone with a UCLA curriculum.”

UCLA Anderson Launches New Online Journal Spotlighting Current Research

Across disciplines, UCLA Anderson’s faculty enhance the school’s relevance through cutting-edge research that is highly applicable to the economy, business and the wider world. The weekly UCLA Anderson Review chronicles for a broader audience the research our faculty publish in leading academic journals.

UCLA Anderson Review launched with articles examining retirement savings, including Americans’ aversion to annuities and the hot topic of decumulation — illustrating how, under a single roof at Anderson, faculty members are individually and collectively expanding understanding of how to solve one of the country’s biggest financial and societal problems.

The Review joins other leading graduate business school publications in making available to a global audience of business leaders, fellow academic researchers, policymakers and others the substantial intellectual capital UCLA Anderson possesses and adds to each day.

In Net Impact Consulting Challenge, MBA Students Provide Implementable Solutions for UCLA Mobile Eye Clinic

 

UCLA Mobile Eye Clinic (1st place): Pictured with two client participants (front row, center) are Benjamin Rostami, Michael Chester, David Goldman, Julie Ortega, John Double, Patricio Davila Gutierrez, all MBA Class of 2019

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By Nitya Ramaswami (’18) and Taylor Cramm (’18)

In mid-November, UCLA Anderson hosted the 13th annual Net Impact Consulting Challenge (NICC), in partnership with Impact@Anderson and the Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. This competition unites MBA students and the academic community with nonprofit organizations and for-profit social ventures to help achieve greater social impact in our community.

NICC is a hallmark event for UCLA Anderson’s Net Impact chapter, the 2017 Net Impact Graduate Chapter of the Year. UCLA Anderson aims to deepen its ties with the L.A. community through interactions with local nonprofit and socially driven organizations. A significant aspect of this outreach comes through consulting initiatives like NICC and Social Impact Fellows, where students have the opportunity to benefit mission-driven organizations while strengthening their business skill set.

Over the course of a two-week consulting engagement, MBA students provide strategic and operational guidance to local organizations to overcome challenges in a variety of functional areas such as fiscal management, operations, marketing and leadership transition.

Some of the client problems that students tackled included: developing a clinic’s growth strategy to reach new local communities in need of health services; mapping a plan to improve operational efficiency around relief efforts in areas affected by recent natural disasters; and proposing a financial plan that would help an organization benefiting children better manage existing funding and search for future opportunities.

A First-Place Win Expands Biopharmaceutical Network for UCLA Anderson Health Care Business Professionals

Left to Right: Andrew Clark, Dan Edlin, Gabi Larus, Zane Goodwin

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By Zane Goodwin (’19), Gabrielle Larus (’19), Daniel Edlin (’19), Andrew Clark (’18)

The global focus on health care is growing at an exponential rate, and we are lucky at UCLA Anderson School of Management to be close to so many companies instrumental in driving significant changes in the industry and impacting countless lives. As student leaders of Anderson’s Healthcare Business Association (HBA), we have built strong relationships with many of these companies, and we are always looking for new avenues to expand our networks.

When the opportunity arose early in the fall 2017 quarter to participate in the annual Rutgers Biopharmaceutical MBA Case Competition in Newark, New Jersey, our team — Zane Goodwin, Gabi Larus, Dan Edlin and Andrew Clark — quickly formed with the goal of gaining industry knowledge, helping to solve a real health care company’s business problem and expanding our networks to the East Coast.

The problem presented in the case focused on how Edge Therapeutics, a pre-revenue biotechnology company based in New Jersey, should plan to commercialize its lead candidate, EG-1962. This drug is being developed to improve the safety and efficacy of treatment for patients who have suffered an aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) caused by a ruptured brain aneurysm. While it has been granted fast track designation by the FDA, there are still many challenges facing the company and its potential product launch.