UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

A Volunteer Spirit: John Wooden Global Leadership Fellow Corey McMillen

By Carolyn Gray Anderson

U.S. Marine Corps veteran Captain Corey McMillen (’17) is pursuing his MBA as much to attain his career goals as to make a difference for other military veterans. He specialized in logistics and operations and, in the months between departing the Marine Corps and starting his full-time MBA, he offered his skills pro bono to Wounded Warrior Homes in San Diego.

McMillen is one of four UCLA Anderson students who will receive a 2016 John Wooden Global Leadership Fellowship on November 2. He says early examples of leadership and service inspired his volunteer spirit.

Introduced to the teachings of Coach John Wooden as a teenager, McMillen says he only recently understood how deliberately the Pyramid of Success was built — and “the genius behind it,” as he puts it. “I don’t always think of myself as the smartest person in the room,” he laughs, “but I’m most likely the hardest working.”

The Fort Lauderdale native joined the Marine Corps Reserve in 2004 at age 17 with the consent of his mother, who eight years earlier had seized the reins of the family business when McMillen’s father — a cruise ship musical talent agent — died young. She wanted to see him complete his studies at the University of Central Florida, which McMillen combined with Officer Candidate School in 2005, becoming a full-time officer in 2008 and embarking on his first deployment in 2010, a second in 2011.

McMillen was stationed with a NATO unit in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, navigating and refining operations in a difficult international context when he found himself working under an officer of the Royal Air Force. “He was the smartest and most influential leader I have ever met. He consistently planned four or five steps ahead of everyone else and always knew the right question to ask, regardless of how chaotic or complex the environment,” McMillen says, recalling how he learned to own the challenge of sifting through information and language barriers, covering all contingencies to anticipate the needs of people and facilities while under attack.

UCLA Anderson Venture Accelerator Picks Up Speed with Donor Support

By Carolyn Gray Anderson

There are accelerators and there are accelerators. Recently, a 100-mile cycling trip proved to be the perfect incubator for Dean Judy Olian’s idea to involve donor and Board of Visitors member Jim Freedman (’78) in the Anderson Venture Accelerator — the 10,000-square-foot state-of-the-art co-working facility in Rosenfeld Library launched in late January by UCLA Anderson and UCLA Library. By the end of the annual Ojai Valley Century bike ride, Freedman, who is chairman and managing director of Intrepid Investment Bankers, found himself persuaded to claim a naming opportunity in the accelerator.

“Having the resources to incubate companies is phenomenal,” he said at an event jointly organized by Anderson and UCLA Library to recognize and bring together Anderson supporters and entrepreneurs. “We didn’t have something like this before.” Senior Associate Dean Al Osborne remembers Freedman as a student in his economics class, and appreciates Jim’s long association with the school, as well as his advice and counsel for almost 25 years as a member of the Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation’s board of advisors.

Olian gratefully acknowledged Freedman and fellow donor William Grabe (’63), who could not attend the event, for sharing their success with UCLA’s future entrepreneurs. “Jim’s generosity doesn’t end with what his gift enables here,” she said, “it extends to the advice he gives student entrepreneurs as an alumnus. That engagement is as priceless as anything.”

Air Force Veteran and Neurodiversity Advocate Says, “May We All Remain More Real than Our Struggles”

Zee Hanson and family, in Bruin colors

By Carolyn Gray Anderson

For someone who says she “stumbled” into the U.S. Air Force in 1996 and then “stumbled around” some more after her discharge in 2004, Zephrine “Zee” Hanson certainly appears to have her ducks in line now. The story of pitfalls and triumphs she tells in a 2015 Battle Tested Veterans talk links a chain of events and experiences that led her to UCLA Anderson’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities.

Newly relocated to Denver, Hanson is launching a business that features an all-natural skin care cream she developed. Her product is multipurpose but for marketing reasons as well as an agenda close to her heart, she positions it as an eczema remedy, bringing knowledge of the prevalence of the condition among people on the autism spectrum, especially kids.

“Children on the autism spectrum seem to be prone to allergies and skin problems,” she says. “Some are on very strong medications for ADHD, for instance, that may have side effects.”

Hanson is the mother of an eight-year-old son and six-year-old twin daughters. All three fall somewhere on the autism spectrum — which she and her husband were fortunate to find out early in the children’s lives, but not before Hanson began to wonder what she might be doing “wrong” in rearing them.

Once Homeless, Vietnam Veteran Turns to UCLA for a Fresh Start

By Jonathan Van Dyke

Through his connection with the UCLA baseball team and now UCLA Anderson, Rick Martinez has found his way back.

As a homeless Vietnam veteran in the 1980s, Martinez had to seek shelter nightly — sometimes at UCLA or on the grounds of the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus. At one point, to get out of bad weather, he stayed warm and comfortable in the staircase at the top floor of a Holiday Inn alongside the 405 freeway.

“If anyone came, I was just going to say I was looking for the bathroom,” he recalled. “That turned out to be my home for about two months.”

The unpredictable symmetry of life was not lost on Martinez when he found himself decades later back at UCLA, this time as a participant of the UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities that ran July 9 to 17. And the hotel the program put him up in during the course? The Hotel Angeleno — formerly the Holiday Inn.

“So it’s come full circle; I’m home,” Martinez said.

Read the full story of Rick Martinez’s journey back to UCLA and through EBV in the UCLA Newsroom.

Navy Veteran Turned Entrepreneur Wraps the Complete Package

By Carolyn Gray Anderson

Rachel Dailey is a female African-American general contractor — not exactly a common profile. She is also a veteran of the U.S. Navy, where she worked for four years in logistics, learning A to Z how to balance budgets, negotiate with vendors, manage inventory and deal with every possible personality in every rank of the Navy. When she launched Fort Lauderdale-based RTD Construction and Services Inc. in 2016, she was well versed in the pre-planning so crucial to operating a business and stewarding projects from conception to delivery.

“The role of logistics personnel is planning — monitoring budgets, putting together ops, learning how to move money from one project to the next,” Dailey says. “‘Staying in the black’ was always our slogan.”

Dailey earned an MBA but, as a mother of four children, she took the non-traditional route via online learning and found later that, whereas she had learned quite literally by the book, her course of study lacked exposure to real-world scenarios entrepreneurs might face.

She enrolled in UCLA Anderson’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) to drill down to the brass tacks of density tests and the nuances of various markets. And she needed a more strategic network that included mentors. “I didn’t want my next step to be so trial-and-error,” she says.

Serving Veterans Coast to Coast: EBV Program Provides Entrepreneurship “Bootcamp” Training to Post-9/11 Veterans

Enjoy an album of photographs from UCLA Anderson’s 2015 EBV

Celebrating its 10-year anniversary nationally this month, the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) returns to UCLA Anderson July 9–17 for the ninth consecutive year. EBV was launched at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management in 2007. Since the original class, the Institute for Veterans and Military Families has expanded the EBV Program to 10 world-class universities throughout the U.S.

More than 80 veterans with disabilities will converge on the UCLA, Texas A&M and Syracuse University campuses in July to leverage the valued skills gained from military service and learn the basics of business ownership. The Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University (IVMF) and nine other EBV consortium schools across the country deliver the EBV Program to post-9/11 veterans with service-connected disabilities, who desire to develop the skills and tools needed to launch and maintain successful businesses. Assistance from the U.S. Small Business Administration, corporate partners and donors allows participants to attend the EBV program cost-free.

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!

Of Missions and Misconceptions: UCLA Anderson Military Veterans Open Up

 

Left to right: Kelcey Cheung, Jessamy Zimbalist, Jay Murphy Bryan Whitmer, Hans Mantor, Derek Bailey

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Explore UCLA Anderson's portal to our military veterans' stories

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The UCLA Anderson Veterans Association and the ASA’s Diversity & Inclusion held a special “Ask-a-Vet” panel on the occasion of the latest Fireside Chat event. Admissions Ambassador Corps VP of events Kelcey Cheung (B.A. ’09, ’16) introduced five full-time MBA students with military service under their belts — former U.S. Army officers Jay Murphy (’16) and Bryan Whitmer (’16), and former U.S. Marine Corps officers Jessamy Zimbalist (’17), Hans Mantor (’16) and Derek Bailey (’16).

The Firesides provide a safe and open forum for personal stories and questions, and Cheung invited the audience to participate in a discussion about the veteran experience post-active duty. The panelists spoke candidly about a variety of topics, including gender equality, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” meaningful career moments, what they consider their missions following service, civilians’ most common misconceptions about the military and the transition to business school.

The panelists number among the 125 Anderson students who are either active military or veterans pursuing their degrees. “The room was packed,” said Whitmer, “with over 50 students, faculty and Anderson staff asking insightful questions. This was one of the best Firesides yet, with a tremendous level of engagement on all sides.”

UCLA Anderson Team Joins Mayor’s Office on 10,000 Strong Initiative for Veterans

Left to right: Kristopher Rawls, Courtney Gosnell, Natalie Chladek, Brandon Hale, Guilherme Kratka Lins Rocha

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Explore UCLA Anderson's portal to our military veterans' stories

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By Natalie Chladek (’16)

We are thrilled to be working with the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of Veterans Affairs for our Applied Management Research project. Our concept was inspired by Mayor Eric Garcetti’s 10,000 Strong initiative, whose goal is to secure employment for 10,000 veterans in Los Angeles County by 2017. With the expectation that thousands of military personnel will leave the service and settle in Los Angles in the next five years, our project will develop sustainable processes to assist veterans in finding work in Los Angeles in the long term.

Our project is divided into three main components. First, we will develop a comprehensive analysis of the Los Angeles business landscape to identify high-growth industries in the area. Second, we will conduct extensive primary research with veterans and employers to determine the core competencies and skill sets of veterans who enter the civilian workforce after their time in the military. Finally, we will use our findings to identify assessment tools that produce useful data and form recommendations for the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of Veterans Affairs and its partners that they can use to provide better support to connect veterans and prospective employers.

A Balance of Duties

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Across UCLA Anderson’s various MBA programs are 125 students who are either active military or veterans pursuing their degrees. In honor of Veterans Day, Anderson is conducting a series of interviews with some of our student vets. Here, we talk with U.S. Army Captain Branden Wong (FEMBA ’17), currently stationed in Hawaii and enrolled in the FEMBA Flex program, balancing his active-duty military service with business school.

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Explore UCLA Anderson's portal to our military veterans' stories

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By Cheechee Lin

Q: Why did you join the military?

I vividly remember the day of the September 11 attacks — that was a turning point for me. I looked up the United States Military Academy, subsequently got into West Point Academy, and spent four years there.

My mother had come from Hong Kong and had modest roots when she immigrated. However, America afforded her a good life, and seeing that spurred me to pursue a career that would allow me to give back to my country.

My grandfather had served as an officer in Pomona, and he played an influential role in my decision to become an officer as well. After my commission in 2008, I was stationed in Seoul, South Korea, until 2011, and then I was deployed to Baghdad, Iraq, for a year before my current position as a senior intelligence officer in the Pacific.

Q: Why did you come to Anderson?

I was a management minor while at West Point and we often had exchanges with Harvard Business School and Wharton. From those experiences, I knew I wanted to pursue an MBA, and I set my mind on Anderson eight years ago, as I’d always wanted to return to California, my home state.